Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,

where we revisit past episodes for the

most potent and actionable science-based

tools for mental health, physical

health, and performance.

I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor

of neurobiology and opthalmology at

Stanford School of Medicine. And now for

my discussion with Dr. Andy Galpin.

Welcome, Dr. Professor Andy Galpin.

There are only a handful, meaning about

three or four people who I trust enough

in the exercise physiology space that

when they speak, I not only listen, but

I modify my protocols. And you are among

those three or four people. I would love

to have you share with us what you think

most everybody or even everybody should

know about principles of strength

training and principles of let's call it

hypertrophy power and the other sort of

categories of training. There's about

nine different adaptations you can get

from exercise. First one to think about

is what we'll just call skill. So this

is improving anything from say a golf

swing to a squatting technique to

running. And this is just simply moving

mechanically how you want your body to

move. From there, we're going to get

into speed. So, this is moving as fast

as possible. The next one is power. And

power is a function of speed, but it's

also a function of the next one, which

is strength. So, if you actually

multiply strength by speed, you get

power. So, there's carryover. So, like a

lot of things you would do for the

development of strength and power, um,

they are somewhat similar, but then

there's differences. Once you get past

strength and the next one kind of down

the list is hypertrophy. This is muscle

size, right? Growing muscle mass is one

way to think about it. After

hypertrophy, you get into these

categories of the next one is um these

are all globally endurance based issues.

And the very first one is called

muscular endurance. So this is your

ability to do how many push-ups can you

do in one minute? You know, things like

that. Past muscular endurance, you're

now into more of an energetic or even

cardiovascular fatigue. So you've left

the local muscle and you're now into the

entire physiological system and its

ability to produce and sustain work.

Think about this as um I call this

anorobic power, right? So this is your

ability to produce a lot of work for say

30 seconds to maybe 1 minute kind of 2

minutes like that. The next one down

then is more closely aligned to what

we'll call your V2 max. So this is your

ability to kind of do the same thing but

more of a time domain of say 3 to 12

minutes. So this is going to be a

maximum heart rate, but it's going to be

well past just max heart rate. Then

after that, we have what I call long

duration endurance. So this is your

ability to sustain work. The time domain

doesn't matter in terms of how fast

going you're going. It's how how long

can you sustain work. This is 30 plus

minutes of no break like that. So as

just an highle overview, those are the

the different things you can target. And

again, some of those cross over and some

are actually a little bit contrarian to

the other ones. So pushing towards one

is maybe going to sacrifice something

else. There is a handful of things you

have got to do to make all of those

things work. One of them is functionally

called progressive overload. If you want

to continue to improve, you have to have

some method of overload. Adaptation

physiologically happens as a byproduct

of stress. So you have to push a system.

So if you continue to do say the exact

same workout over time, you better not

expect much improvement. You can keep

maintenance, but you're not going to be

adding additional stress. In general,

you have to have some sort of

progressive overload. This could come

from adding more weights. This could

come from adding more repetitions. It

could come from doing it more often in

the week. It could come from adding

complexity to the movement. So, there's

a lot of different ways to progress, but

you have to have some sort of movement

forward. So, if you have this kind of

routine where you've built Monday,

Wednesday, and Saturday or something,

and you just do that infinitely, um

you're not going to get very far. So

what are the progressive overload

principles um that are most effective

over time for strength and hypertrophy?

You have what we call your modifiable

variables. So this is a very short list

of all the things you can modify the

different variables within your workout

that can be modified that will change

the outcome. Fancy way of saying if you

do this differently then you're going to

get a different result. Um so modifiable

variables. Um the very first one of

those is called choice. So this is the

exercise choice. you select. So if you

choose I want to get stronger, I'm going

to do a bench press. Well, if you do the

wrong set range, the wrong repetition

range, the wrong speed, you won't get

strength. You maybe get muscular

endurance and very little strength

adaptation. So the exercise selection

itself is important, but it does not

determine the outcome adaptation, right?

It is the application of the exercise.

What are the sets? What are the reps?

What are the uh rest ranges that you're

using? That's going to be your primary

determinant. The second one is the

intensity. And that refers to in this

context not perceived effort like wow

that was a really intense workout. It is

quite literally either a percentage of

your one rep at max or a percentage of

your maximum heart rate or V2 max. So

for the strengthbased things you want to

think about what's the percentage of the

maximum weight I can lift one time. And

that's that's what we're going to call

one rep max or it's a percentage of my

heart rate. Right? So if I tell you to

get on a bike and I want you to do

intervals and I want you at 75%. I'm

typically referring to 75% of your max

heart rate or V2 max or you know

something like that. If I tell you to do

squats at 75%, that means 75% of the

maximum amount of weight you could lift

one time or close. The third one is what

we call volume. And so this is just how

many reps and how many sets are you

doing, right? So if you're going to do

three sets of 10, that volume would be

30, right? Five sets of five, that

volume is 25. It's just a simple

equation. How much work are you totally

doing? Uh the next one past that is

called rest intervals. So this is the

amount of time you're taking in between

typically a set. Um then from there you

have progression which is what we

started to talk about this progressive

overload. Are you increasing by weight

or reps or rest intervals or complexity?

All of those things can be changed as a

method of progression. And so maybe you

want to go um progressing from a single

joint exercise like a a leg extension on

a machine and you want to progress by

moving to a whole body movement like a

squat. That in of itself you don't have

to change the load or the reps or the

rest. That is a representation of

progressive overload and it's probably a

pretty good place to start because

number one, especially for beginners.

You want to make sure that the movement

pattern is correct. Don't worry about

intensity. Don't worry about rep ranges

or any of these things. You need to

learn to move correctly and you need to

give your body some time to develop some

tissue tolerance so that you're not

getting overtly sore. In general,

soreness is a terrible proxy for

exercise quality. It's a really bad way

to estimate whether it was a good or a

bad workout, especially for people in

that beginner to middle to moderate. In

fact, even the bad for our professional

athletes. Um, we do not use soreness as

a metric of a good workout. On the same

token, because stress is required for

adaptation, you don't want to leave the

gym and feel like I don't really do

much. Like, if you're sore of like

you're moving around a little bit and

you're like, man, this is a little bit

sore, you can train. If you're like, I

can't sit on the couch without crying

because my glutes are so sore. In that

particular case, I'd say you've actually

gone to the place of detriment because

now you're going to have to skip a

training session and now you're behind.

So your actual total volume, say across

the month, is actually gonna be lower

because you went way too hard in those

workouts, had to take too many days off

in between. You're going to see that

you're going to cover less distance over

the course of a month or six month or

even a year. So you want to walk a

pretty fine line and for most people I

would say hedge a little bit on the side

of less sore than more sore because

frequency is very very important for

almost all these adaptations.

>> Training frequency

>> which is the last modifiable variable

right frequency which is how many times

per week are you are you doing that

thing. So those are kind of our global

things that we can play with. So when

I'm trying to manipulate and get

strength versus hypertrophy or you know

what I want like a little bit of both

all those variables are the things that

are going through my mind which one do I

need to move in which direction so that

I can get this outcome and not this

outcome over here for example some folks

might want to get stronger but not put

muscle mass on some folks are just kind

of want both and that's a lot of the

general public I want to get a little

stronger and a little bit more muscle

great but there are instances where

people for performance reasons or for

purely personal preference like I don't

want to get any more muscle, great, but

I want to get stronger. Awesome. If you

manipulate those variables correctly,

you can get exactly that. Very little

development of muscle size and a lot of

development and strength. And this is

why we continue to break world records

in sports like powerlifting and

weightlifting that have weight classes.

So, there's a top number that we can hit

in terms of body size, but yet we

continue to get stronger and faster. So,

this is very possible if you understand

how to manipulate all those variables.

>> How should we modify the variables?

>> Love it. All right. Great. So, one of my

other laws of strength and conditioning

is in general, the default is all joints

through all range of motion. So, this is

important because it's going to answer

your very first question on this

strength category. In general, the ankle

should go through the full range of

motion of the ankle. The knee should go

through the full range of motion, the

knee, the hip, the elbow, etc., etc.,

right? So, across I would even say it

doesn't even have to be the day, but

maybe throughout the week. Try to get

every joint through full range of

motion. When I say full range of motion,

that's the default. That doesn't mean

every single person can do that for

every single exercise. It means that's

where we should be striving to and

that's our starting point. You're going

to see a lot less injury and a lot more

productivity out of your training

sessions. In fact, the science is fairly

clear on this one. Well, strength

development as well as hypertroy is

generally enhanced with a larger range

of motion of training. So, if you need

if you're doing a say a deadlift and in

order to take your knee through a full

range of motion or deadlift, you have to

compromise your back position. That's no

bueno.

So caveats there aside, don't kill me

like in good positions always

>> and don't kill yourselves more

importantly.

>> So why that matters is if we walk

through strength the very first thing

I'm going to go through is the exercise

selection. So let's choose an exercise

which ideally has a full range of motion

or close to it that doesn't induce

injury for you that you can still

maintain good neck and low back and and

position and everything else. um you

feel comfortable with so you can feel

strong but you don't feel like oh my

gosh if you've never snatched before

having you do a snatch for a maximum

even you know 75% like it's a terrible

idea you're not going to feel confident

it's going to be a train wreck I would

rather put you on a machine bench press

so you can go I feel stable I feel safe

here and I can just express my strength

so exercise choice in general full range

of motion and you want to kind of

balance between the movement areas so

this is an upper body press so this is

pushing away from you bench press,

things like that. Upper body pull,

pulling an implement towards you. Uh

bent row, pull up. Um the pressing

should be horizontal, so perpendicular

to your body, as well as vertical. So

this is lifting a weight over top of

your head, lifting a weight away from

you. The pull version is pulling

horizontally to you and pulling

vertically down, pull up, things like

that. So if you were going to do a

single workout, you could choose four

exercises and you could choose one of

each. one press, upper body press, one

upper body pull, one lower body hinge,

one lower body press, and then that

would be like a decently well-rounded

exercise. Um, that's your exercise

selection. And if you're taking those

through your full range of motion,

you're at a pretty good spot, as close

as you can. The next one is intensity.

So, if you want to develop strength,

there's a certain recruitment threshold

needed for neurons to fire. And we have

muscle fibers in what we call fast

twitch muscle fibers and slow twitch

muscle fibers. And in general, you're

going to activate the slow twitch ones

first because they tend to be associated

with low threshold motor neurons. It's

not exactly that way, but it's it's

close enough, right?

>> Well, the only way that you activate

some of these higher threshold neurons

is to demand the muscle to produce more

force. So, in general, the only way to

use these big chunks of your muscle,

which are incredibly important for

aging, by the way. One of the major

problems we have with aging developing

or development of aging related issues

with muscle is the fact that we lose

fast switch fibers preferentially and

then we have major problems as we go

down the line because we've lost a big

chunk of our strength and size. So you

want to make sure these fibers stay

alive and intact. So if that being said

the only way to develop strength is then

to challenge the muscle to produce more

total force. So if you want to get

stronger you need to impose a demand of

strength not repetitions. So, this has

to be the load has to be very high. Um,

in general, you're probably looking at

above 85% of your winter rep at max. If

you're moderately trained, maybe 75%.

So, because the intensity demand is so

high, that is going to enforce you to do

a low repetition range. You can't do 12

reps at 95%. That then it wouldn't be

95% of your one rep max. So, by

definition, true strength training is

really going to be in like five

repetitions per set or less range. So,

we've covered choice, intensity, and um

repetitions, right? The total amount of

sets that you do is is really kind of up

to your personal fitness level, right?

Um if you did as little as like three

sets per exercise, that's probably

enough.

>> Work sets.

>> Totally. Yeah, totally. Work sets,

right? So, get fully warmed up and build

up to that 85%. Don't just walk into the

gym and throw 85% on and go, "Thank

you." That's a that's an important

distinction. A very classic warm-up

thing would be like a set of 10 at 50%,

a set of eight at 60%, a set of maybe

eight again at 70%, and then maybe like

a set of five at 75%. So two or three or

four sets kind of building intensity and

lowering the rep range. And then you

would go after your two or three working

sets. Also, in terms of rest intervals,

the primary driver of strength is

intensity.

It's it's not the volume, right? It's

the intensity. So in order to maintain

that we have to do a low repetition

range but in addition we also have to

have a high rest interval because if we

have any amount of fatigue incur and we

have to then either reduce the reps or

reduce the intensity we've lost the

primary driver. We've lost that main

signal. So the number we're going to

throw out typically is like two to four

minutes. Um so imagine you did you know

your set of bench press and you did five

repetitions at 85%. You probably want to

rest two to four minutes before coming

back to the bench. That doesn't mean you

have to sit there on your phone like in

fact please don't like everyone will

thank you for not doing that I promise

you can engage other muscle groups this

is what we call super setting so you're

doing your bench press and while that

twominut clock is running for your chest

to rest you can go over and do your

deadlifts you can kind of move back and

forth and this is how you can make

strength training not seven hour workout

if you're a professional athlete you're

going to take that time because you want

to maximize the outcome um sup we've

done this actually in our lab too

supersets will reduce the strength gains

but by a tiny amount and most of us

don't care enough relative to it's going

to triple the length of your training

session. It's not worth it. So for the

average person I will tell them yeah

superset. For someone who's trying to

break a world record in weightlifting or

powerlifting I don't super set.

>> How often can can and should one train a

muscle and how do you know if a muscle

is recovered locally and how do you know

if your nervous system is recovered

systemically? One of the question is

well what are you training for? If

you're training for hypertrophy right

muscle size muscle growth we need to

hedge towards recovery because what

you're trying to do is cause a massive

insult there allow then protein

synthesis to occur building of new

tissue which takes time 48 to 72 hours

like kind of at a minimum that process

needs to occur. If you're doing actually

more strength strength is not going to

cause a lot of soreness. Therefore

intensity is the driver. Therefore,

frequency can be as high as you want.

So, you can train every single day the

same exact muscle if speed or power or

strength are the primary training tools.

But if you want to allow for that

process of connect contractile proteins

to to add and grow, then you're going to

have to allow some recovery because if

you go back into that muscle too soon,

you're going to blunt the response.

You're going to stop it. You're going to

cut it off. You have all kinds of of

problems going on in the cell that are

going to um just attenuate that that

growth response. So the answer for

hypertrophy is

probably less than 3 out of 10 on level

of soreness. You can go again. In

general, you're probably looking at 72

hours is the optimal window. So if you

trained your your shoulders on Monday,

you probably would don't want to train

them again on Tuesday if hypertrophy is

the goal. Maybe Wednesday, maybe

Thursday is best. So something like an

every two to three day window is is

probably um and we know a little bit

more now about why that is. Um the gene

cascade the signaling response happens

well the signaling happens

instantaneously right within seconds.

The gene cascade is probably in the

peaked in the 4 hour window like

depending on which gene you want to look

at but it's just kind of a snapshot but

the protein synthesis process is 24 to

48 hour thing. And so it tends to kind

of look like let that thing finish and

let that signal go back to baseline and

then hit it again and then hit it again.

And now as long as you're providing the

nutrients, the recovery should happen

and you should be able to sustain the

same work output in the training

session. So the stimulus stays high and

the recovery is there and you can now

continue to grow muscle. What if the the

training split uh lifestyle factors etc.

Somebody say let's use your example

trains uh shoulders on Monday. Um

ideally they would train them again on

Thursday. Yeah.

>> In their particular instance somewhere

Wednesday or Thursday but they don't.

they wait until Saturday or Sunday for

whatever reason. Maybe it's more

compatible with their work work and

other exercise schedule. Are they

actually losing hypertrophy that they

gained or they've missed a a window to

induce further hypertrophy?

>> It's probably better to think about it

the latter. It's not that you're you've

lost, it's just you've just kind of lost

an opportunity to to make more progress.

If you want to take 5 days or six days

in between each muscle group, you can do

that. In fact, if you look at the

research, it's going to show that

frequency, it can handle changes as long

as you get to the same total volume. So,

you can do that. You just have to do a

lot more work in that one workout. The

challenge with splitting up your

training sessions for hypertrophy into

smaller numbers, like once or twice a

week, it's just difficult to get that

number. It's difficult to get that

volume done. Volume-wise, the more

recent meta analyses are going to say

that you're probably looking at around

10 working sets per muscle group per

week seems to be kind of the minimum

threshold that you're going to want to

hit. So, if you did three sets of 10 at

your shoulders on Monday, three sets of

10 shoulders Wednesday and three on

Friday, that's nine working sets. The

problem is 10 is kind of the minimum.

You probably want to look for more like

15 to 20 and in fact well trained folks

20 25 that becomes very challenging in

one workout. In fact defunct you're not

going to be able to do it right and so

that is where it's not the frequency

that looks like it kills you. It's just

the fact you have got to get because the

total driver of strength is intensity

but the total driver of hypertrophy is

volume assumed you're taking it to

fatigue right or muscular failure. So

it's just tough to get enough done

>> for hypertrophy.

>> Sure. What are the repetition ranges

that are effective? And what are the

ones that are most effective if one is

trying to maximize some of the other

variables like people don't want to

spend more than an hour to 75 minutes in

the gym?

>> The quick answer there is anywhere

between like 5 to 30 reps per set.

That's going to show across the

literature pretty much equal hypertrophy

gains. Um, but I'm just remembering one

thing from a second ago. I want to give

a better answer for the frequency. You

can do every single day for strength if

you want though. like what's probably

minimally viable two twice per week per

muscle. So hamstrings strength twice per

week. That that's a good number to get

most people really strong.

>> Okay,

>> you can do every single day. You don't

need to though. So I want to make sure

that like I wasn't saying you have to

train a muscle 85% every single day to

get it strong. Two is a good number.

Three is great, but probably even two is

really effective. When it comes to

hypertrophy training, the way I like to

explain it is it's kind of idiot proof.

The programming is idiot proof. The work

is hard though. So here's your range.

anywhere between, you know, five reps

and 30. Like, can you hit somewhere in

there? Perfect. It's all equally

effective. You can't screw that up. The

only caveat for hypertrophy is you have

to take it to muscular failure.

>> And you need enough rest for the

adaptation and protein synthesis to

occur.

>> Yep.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. And if you recover faster, you

can maybe do it more frequently. And if

you don't, maybe less frequently. Should

people perhaps experiment and figure out

what repetition range allows them to

recover um in concert with the training

frequency that they can do consistently?

>> My recommendation is I think you should

actually use the repetition range as a

way to have some variation because most

people don't want to go in the gym and

do three sets of 10. They're going to

get very bored very quickly. And so I I

think you should actually intentionally

change the rep schemes for simple sake

of having more fun. It is a very

different challenge. The mechanisms that

are inducing hypertrophy are different

but there's only a maximum amount of

growth that one can get right but the

three most likely drivers are one

metabolic stress two mechanical tension

and then three muscular damage you don't

have to have all three one is sufficient

you can have a little bit of one or two

and you can kind of so you get it to

play here we've already talked about the

muscular damage again it's very clear

more damage is not better but it is

somewhat a decent proxy Okay? Like

again, a little bit of soreness is good.

Just don't get so sore it's compromising

your total volume. All right? U

mechanical tension is kind of like

strength. And this is why if you do even

sets of five or eight and you're kind of

close to that strength range, you will

gain a little bit of muscle. It's not

optimal muscle gain, but you're going to

gain some because everything in these

like physiology doesn't cut off at four

reps and then five reps is a different

thing, right? It's it's always a blend.

So, think of it as like a a fading

curve. As you get closer to the end, it

fades less effective. As you get closer

to the middle, it's more effective.

Anywhere between eight reps per set to

30, it's equally effective. Past 30,

it's going to blend out. Past 8 to 5 to

4 to three, it's going to blend, you

know, lesser there. So, mechanical

tension is the one that's heavy. Muscle

damage is the other one. The third one

is metabolic stress. And this is um I

get a bit of an area of scientific

contention, but something's there. I

know something's there. we just we're

just kind of fumbling to figure out what

exactly it is. And this is metabolic

stress is the burn, right? It it's

there. So, you want to train to failure,

but you don't need to go to extreme

failure. So, you don't need to

necessarily go to that like

a partner has to lift the barbell off my

chest, but you have to get close.

>> If you'd be willing to throw out a few

sort of sets and rep parameters that

could uh act as broad guidelines for

people who want to uh explore further, A

really fast answer is what I just call

the three to five concept. All right?

So, pick three to five exercises. If

you're feeling better that day, choose

on the higher end. If you're feeling

less that day or you have a shorter time

frame to train, go less. So, three to

five exercises. Do three to five reps,

three to five sets. Take three to five

minutes rest in between and do it three

to five times a week. So, that can be as

little as three sets of three for three

exercises three times a week. That's

that's a 20-minute workout three times a

week. It can be as high as five sets of

five for five exercises five days a

week. So, it's very broad and allows

people to still stay within the domains

of strength and power while still being

able to move and contour toward their

lifestyle and and soreness and time and

all those things. The only

differentiator to pay attention to

between power and strength is intensity.

So, if you want strength, this is now

85% plus of your max, right? If you want

power, it needs to be a lot lighter

because you need to move more towards

the velocity end of the spectrum because

power is strength multiplied by speed.

So, while getting stronger by definition

can help power, you probably want to

spend more of your time in the 40% to

70% range, like plus or minus. So,

that's it. Both of them conceptually

though work everything else, the

exercise, the reps, the the frequency,

all that can be still in the 3 to five

range. Just change the intensity

depending on which outcome you want. The

nervous system obviously plays an

important role at the level of nerves

controlling the contraction of muscle

fibers. But of course, we have these

upper motor neurons which are the ones

that reside in our brain that control

the lower motor neurons that control

muscle.

>> Yeah.

>> This takes us into the realm of where

the mind is at during a particular

movement. I can imagine doing workouts

that are mainly focused on strength or

mainly focused on hypertrophy.

And in the case of strength, am I trying

to move weights? And when I'm trying to

generate hypertrophy, am I trying to

quote unquote challenge muscles, that

subtle mental shift changes the patterns

of nerve fiber recruitment? So, can we

say to get stronger, focus on moving

weights, still with proper form and

safely, and to get hypertrophy, focus on

challenging muscles, still with proper

form and safely?

>> Intentionality matters for both. In

other words, if you look at some

interesting science that's been done on

power development and speed development,

the intent to move is actually more

important than the actual movement

velocity.

So, if if you're doing say something for

power or strength and you're doing just

enough to get the bar up, that will

result in less improvements in strength

than even if you're moving at the exact

same speed, but you're intending to move

faster. And this is one of the reasons

why good coaching matters. So, if you're

coaching an athlete through a power

workout, especially, and they're doing

enough to just lift 50% of their one rep

max, it's not going to generate as much

speed development as them trying to move

that bar as fast as they can, even if

the net result is the same barbell

velocity. Turns out nerves matter.

>> Even if the bar is moving at the same

speed, same weight,

>> if my internal representation, my

thoughts are I'm trying to move this as

fast as possible. Yeah. versus I'm just

trying to get the bar away from me and

and get the weight up. I'm going to get

different outcomes.

>> Yep. This is quality of work, right?

This is did you do enough to just check

off the box or did you actually strive

for adaptation, right? Similar concept

actually works for hypertrophy in terms

of there is a handful of very recent

studies that have looked at what we'll

call the mind muscle connection. And

this is doing things like imagine a

bicep curl and you're simply looking at

and watching your biceps and you're

thinking about contracting it harder.

Even though you execute the same

repetitions at the same exact intensity,

initial indications are the mind body

connection are going to result in more

growth than not. I think it's very much

worth your time to do a higher quality

training session, be more intentional,

be present than just executing the same

exact workout. I think that's globally

very clear to be to your advantage. So,

if you're thinking,

look, I'm going to like I don't want to

work out today. I got all this going on

or I'm tired or whatever. I'm just going

to do the workout anyways and get

through it. Okay. If you can go, you

know what though, like I'm going to cut

15 minutes out of this thing. I'm going

to get my head right. I'm going to go

get two 20 minutes of quality work done.

That's that's your best option by far.

Mhm.

>> Are there ways that people can learn to

engage particular muscle groups more

effectively over time for sake of

hypertrophy or strength or for cases of

trying to overcome injury potential or

injury because imbalances are bad across

the board?

>> Yeah, this is actually very common and I

think everyone has probably gone through

this. There's some part that you just

can't get going which goes back to

earlier part of our conversation which

is why exercises themselves do not

determine the adaptation. It's the

execution that matters, right? It's the

technique, it's the rep range, all of

those are going to determine your actual

result. So, if anytime you were you're

you're banging your head against the

wall and thinking like, why am I not

getting movement here, growth or

strength or whatever, it's guaranteed to

be one of those areas, right? You're

probably not getting the muscle groups

to activate. Whenever I'm diagnosing

movement quality, I look for a handful

of things, but very first one is

awareness. You'd be surprised how many

folks um when you just simply tell them

that muscle group right there and maybe

you give them a tactical prompt. So you

touch it and you just tell them things

like, "Hey, squeeze my finger. Squeeze

my finger." As you're doing your bent

row or your pull down, you can touch the

lat. All this stuff can help get people

uh to activate. Outside of simple

awareness, eccentric overload is a very

effective way for activation of a

difficult to target muscle. Things like

a pull-up. Okay? So, if if if I'm going

to do a pull-up and I have poor lat

activation, to make the movement

simpler, I'm going to go all the way to

the top. So, imagine stepping on a box

or something, going all the way to that

top of that pull-up position and

starting from there. And I want you to

simply lower it under control. And so,

you're just simply breaking the movement

down into smaller pieces that allow you

to to focus on the execution more.

Eccentrics are great for strength

development, very good for hypertrophy,

and allow you to focus on control. I I

I'm willing to bet a huge percentage of

you out there who've like I've never had

a sore lat. Even though I've done a lot

of pull-ups and things like that, if you

do that eccentric only, you'll probably

wake up the next day going, "Oh gosh, I

feel it there." And that's a sign even

if you didn't feel it during the

workout, but it got a little sore the

next day. Keep down that path and

eventually work that into a progression

where you can do the concentric,

eccentric, and isometric portions and

get activation. So that that may take

you six weeks, may take you six months,

but that's generally a pretty good

strategy for learning how to activate a

muscle group.

>> Is there a uh prescriptive for how to

breathe during resistance training that

applies 75% of the time to 75% of the

people?

>> In general, a a decent strategy is to

maintain a breath hold during the

lowering or eccentric or most dangerous

part of the movement and then you can

exhale on the concentric portion. So if

the bench press is our example, if you

held in, braced, lowered under control,

and now started the concentric pushing

away force, and then you wanted to take

an expiration

during the last half of the concentric

portion, that's that's an okay strategy.

If you're going to do a single rep, you

don't need to worry about it. You you

can just avoid or omit breathing

entirely. You're going to be just fine.

If you're doing more than that,

especially three to four to five to

seven, eight, you're going to have to

have some breathing strategy. A very

common one is um probably every third

breath I'm going to do like

exhale on the third reset rebreathe

something like that. If you feel like

you need to breathe after every one

that's okay but it's going to get

wasteful because you have to take time

in between reps of sitting there. If

it's a squat that's different um versus

a deadlift if you're resting at the

bottom. So there there is a little bit

of game here. So in general though is is

that 75 75 kind of rule you thrown out

you threw out Breathe in, do the

lowering, and exhale on the out if you

have to. Less reps, don't worry about

it. More reps, then you need to come up

with some sort of breathing strategy.

>> How about breathing in between sets? Um,

and maybe even after the workout.

>> Yeah, we're not going to just finish a

workout, high five, drink water, and

walk out of the gym. There will be a

down regulation strategy that is heavily

involved with some sort of light control

as well as breath control. um the

individual prescription on that, there's

a ton of variation with what you can do.

The easiest thing is do something that

calms you down. Most likely that's going

to be move towards as much nasal

breathing as you can possibly do. And a

a really easy rule of thumb is a double

exhale length relative to inhale. So if

you need to take a like 4 second inhale,

double that time and breathe out for 8

seconds. A box breathing is fine. So

equal inhale, equal hold, equal exhale,

equal hold. So 4 second inhale, 4 second

ex hold, etc., etc. And just breathe for

5 minutes. And I started doing this and

it completely changed the rate of

recovery for me. I realized that I was

leaving workouts, both endurance

workouts and strength hypertrophy

workouts, feeling great, but looking at

my phone, getting right into email in

meetings, not concentrating on my

breathing. And all I did was to

introduce a on your recommendation a

five minute down reggulation, so exhale

emphasized breathing of a bunch of

different varieties, physiological size,

box breathing, exhale emphasized, twice

as long as the inhale component for 5

minutes.

>> And I noticed two things. One, I

recovered more quickly workout to

workout. No question about it. Yeah.

>> And the other is that I used to have

this um dip in energy that would occur

three or four hours after a hard

workout. And I always thought that had

to do with the fact that I generally

eaten a meal at some point post-workout.

>> Turns out it wasn't the meal at all.

It's that that that adrenaline um ramp

up during the workouts. I wasn't

clamping that at the end. And so I think

eventually it just crashed. Turns out

the down regulations allowed me to work

through the afternoon. It's really been

quite powerful. And so I'm grateful to

you for that. And I think this is

something that I think 98% of people are

not doing. And it's only five minutes.

>> You don't even have to do five. Give me

three. If you really have to push it,

give me three. You can do this in the

shower if you have to. You need some

sort of internal signal that we're safe.

Throttle down here. We're going to move

on. That has to happen.

>> Yeah. And you're saving energy. I mean

the energy here is neural energy. I

think fighters do this, good fighters

learn to do this between rounds.

>> Sprinters learn to do this between

events. I think humans should learn how

to do this between any

>> social engagement. I mean this is so

such a powerful tool. Do this for one

minute after every important

whether it's an individual high volatile

interaction or if it's you just did a

nice 45minut sprint of work and you're

deep into it or whatever fine just give

me one minute and that also will pay

dividends. I think uh the listeners and

I can well appreciate on the basis of

today's discussion what a enormous

wealth of information you are how clear

and um and potently you communicate that

information and also how you can uh take

a huge cloud of information and still

distill it into um protocols that ought

to work for 75% of people 75% of the

time which is an immensely valuable um

thing to do. So for me and from the

listeners, I just want to say thank you

so much.

>> My pleasure, man. I'm f I'm glad we

finally got to connect.

>> Professor Andy Galpin, thank you ever so

much. My pleasure.