Fundamentals
Endurance
This type of exercise offers numerous benefits, including improving brain function, increasing oxygen and nutrient delivery to neurons, and boosting mental toughness.
Endurance protocols include:
- Long duration endurance training protocol: one set of anything longer than 12 minutes
- Anaerobic HIIT endurance protocol: 3-12 sets with a ratio of work to rest at 3:1 (e.g., 30 seconds work: 10 seconds rest) – or – a ratio of 1:5 (e.g., 20 seconds hard work: 100 seconds rest)
- Aerobic HIIT endurance protocol: 3-12 sets with 3:1 ratio (e.g., 30 seconds work: 10 seconds rest) – or 1:1 ratio (e.g., 30 seconds work: 30 seconds rest)
Hypertrophy
• Hypertrophy target: a minimum of 10 working sets, per muscle group, per week, 5-30 reps per set
driver of hypertrophy is volume
Dos & Don'ts:
- It’s okay to cold shower
- Don’t ice bath after
- Fasting isn't optimal
- You can cardio, just don’t do tons of intense stuff on the same day
- You’re better off cutting your workout short and hitting a focused 30 minutes than going through the motions for 60 minutes
• If you ingest protein + carbohydrates (fuel) + exercise, the benefits stack to maximize muscle growth
slow down and increase time under tension
- Hypertrophy training is simpler to program – the most important consideration is how many times per week/total volume of muscle group per week you are training a muscle group – target 10 working sets per muscle group, per week (or up to 25 if highly trained)
- Keep reps between 4-30 per set, stopping about 2 reps short of failure; rest about 2 minutes – to maximize hypertrophy, spend most of your time in the 8-15 reps per set range
Athleticism
• Speed, power, strength training tips: pick 3-5 exercises, 3-5 reps, 3-5 sets, take 3-5 minutes rest between, train 3-5 days per week – (85% 1RM for strength; 40-70% 1RM for power)
strive to work all joints through all ranges of motions
Do as much variation as possible: change exercise types, speed, load, etc.
For testosterone: 6 sets of 10 repetitions with 120-sec rest between reps
Workout tips
Workout without your phone
During exercise, your brain/body is undergoing neuroplasticity. Using your phone distracts you from the work and doesn’t give you the full training experience.
Put something cold on your hands (palmer cooling)
You have a blood vessel on your palms that connect directly to your core body temperature. When you cool your hands (specifically, the palms), your body immediately cools down. This lets you last longer in the workout
You can take a cold water bottle or ice pack to the gym. Or hold a cold can while you’re running.
Choose a visual spotlight during an exercise
They did a study and noticed that when people stared at their target (ex. finish line), their performance improved. A spotlight is basically focusing your eyes on that particular thing without looking elsewhere.
If you’re running, you can use a far building or the person ahead of you. If you’re at the gym, choose a mirror or poster that you stare at during reps
Mentally activate your muscles
It’s called the nerve-muscle connection. If your brain is in tune and able to flex/contract a specific muscle group, you’ll get a ton more neuroplasticity with each movement. This is a great tool if you have a muscle that’s weaker than the rest of your body.
You can close your eyes and visualize what’s going on inside the muscle or let someone press on the muscle so you can localize it easier
Use Caffeine to boost exercise performance
You can take it a few hours before workouts. Keep in mind, if you are not caffeine adapted, do not use this right before a competition.
Ideal dosage: 1 to 3 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight per day
Listen to something motivating
Especially at the end of a workout or competition. This psychologically reminds you to keep going and endure.
Someone could give you encouragement in real time or you can listen to a song that reminds you that ‘you can do it’
Create Variation
Especially at the end of a workout or competition. This psychologically reminds you to keep going and endure.
Someone could give you encouragement in real time or you can listen to a song that reminds you that ‘you can do it’
Weight Loss
Incorporate movement with your day to day activities
Daily movement is as important as heavy exercise. It increases metabolism and burns a significant amount of calories
Fidgeting and bouncing help you burn white fat
fidgeting is when you move your limbs unconsciously. It’s also known as NEAT. It can be done at any time of day. People who eat a lot but still look skinny are probably very good at this.
Feel the Burn
When you exercise, you use oxygen. But when your oxygen is depleted, your muscle gets acidic. You start feeling a burn. Your body realizes this and sends a molecule called lactate. Lactate is good for you. It buffers the acidity and helps you exercise for longer. But it's not just that.
Although you're only working on muscles, lactate influences hormones across other areas of the body like the heart, liver, and especially, the brain. It improves cognitive and hormonal functions outside of just working out.
Okay, so how do you secrete lactate?
You need to work your muscles to failure and feel the burn. The burn comes around the end of moderate to intense exercises with high repetitions. So it's rare during zone 2 and heavy lifting. And you shouldn't do it often. Huberman says "10%" of the time.
Change your beliefs about your physiology
When you think you’re not exercising enough, your body acts as if that’s true. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t exercise, but you shouldn’t put yourself down.
Shiver after a cold shower to burn more fat
You have white fat and brown fat. White is bad. Brown fat, however, increases your metabolism.
If you expose yourself to cold, you have the opportunity to trigger activation of brown fat, and to convert more beige fat into brown fat.
Introducing new exercises
This reactivates neurons in fat cells that might've got too adapted and hence ineffective.
If you usually do lat pulldowns, try a reverse or close grip variation
Stretching & Flexibility
How to stretch
Protocol: warm up body temperature first (or do this right after exercise). 3 sets for a muscle (ex. Hamstring), hold for 30 seconds, then rest (no data on timing). This is one session.
If a muscle is tight, work its antagonist.
Release neural spindle reflex by contracting the antagonist hard (such as triceps vs. biceps).
Injuries
Yoga increases pain tolerance
Studies showed that the pain tolerance of yoga practitioners is at least twice as high as non-yoga practitioners. It’s related to the fact that they had higher gray matter particularly in the insula, which is associated with pain processing
Pain has a lot to do with the brain. You can rewire it with thinking.
You can find pain meditations on youtube. Essentially it’s like a pain therapy. You once had a physical injury. It healed after a while. But your brain is still super cautious and didn’t learn that you healed. So you still feel pain even though there’s nothing wrong with your body.
Put a pillow under your ankles while you're sleeping
This supports recovery and circulation of the glymphatic system. It’s very simple, just put anything that raises your lower body a bit. A pillow is fine.
If that’s too uncomfortable, you can look for a customize pillow for this use case online
Walking in the sun improves pain tolerance
Endorphins or endogenous opioids are released. 20-30 minutes in short sleeves and exposed skin 2-3 times a week in mid day. This helps a lot if you’re not used to getting a lot of sun.
Recovery
Add a spacing effect after workouts
You need to calm down your nervous system before jumping into the next activity. You just stressed your body and nervous system a lot so doing something else right after can take away from those healthy adaptations. Some report that this spacing effect help them recover faster between workouts.
You can do a breathing exercise or short walk for 5 minutes after each workout.
Breathe between sets
Elite athletes now do a breathing exercise between every set. This will help you get more done within each workout and keep you focused throughout. (instead of getting distracted by your phone and other conversations).
Strength training can be done everyday
You can do strength training every day. Intensity is the driver, so frequency can be as high as you want. However, depending on your training goals and your biology, it may not be the best option for you.
Recovery tests
This helps you assess whether you are ready to do your next workout.
- the CO2 test
Inhale for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 8. repeat 3 times. then at the last one, take one extended controlled exhale. measure your duration on a well-rested day and use that to compare to other days. If it’s not close, then you didn’t recover yet.
- the grip test
test your grip strength as soon as you wake up and compare across days.