How to End Every Workout for Best Improvement & Recovery | Dr. Andy Galpin & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | So what are some tools that we can use to enhance our recovery?
00:00:05.000 | Yeah, let's start off with that acute overload phase.
00:00:08.000 | So in other words, I just did a workout and I'm feeling awful,
00:00:11.000 | or I just did one two days ago and I'm super sore.
00:00:14.000 | How do I get rid of that right now?
00:00:16.000 | Well, there's a couple of things you can do immediately after your workout,
00:00:19.000 | and then others that are maybe more actionable a day later or two days later.
00:00:23.000 | And we'll just cover a handful of them.
00:00:25.000 | We'll do some nutrition and hydration and supplementation in the next episode.
00:00:29.000 | I'm going to cover everything else not in that category right now.
00:00:32.000 | So a couple of things.
00:00:33.000 | Number one, you can actually kickstart that recovery process
00:00:39.000 | at the end of your current training session.
00:00:42.000 | And I guess I should say it this way.
00:00:44.000 | I strongly suggest you start this recovery process immediately after the workout.
00:00:50.000 | You mentioned earlier about this idea of you've got to get a really high peak of stress
00:00:55.000 | to cause adaptation, but I actually didn't explain that correctly
00:00:59.000 | because what has to happen is you need that extremely high peak,
00:01:02.000 | but then you have to be met with an extremely sharp recovery back down.
00:01:07.000 | And so, you know, you've talked about this before in some of your neuroplasticity stuff
00:01:12.000 | and in terms of what has to happen that caused the insult,
00:01:15.000 | and then you immediately need to be able to recover to make sure that that causes changes.
00:01:20.000 | Same thing happens here.
00:01:21.000 | So we need a really sharp and high inflammatory response,
00:01:25.000 | and then if you do not meet it with an immediate recovery period,
00:01:29.000 | the signal won't be there to maximize your results.
00:01:32.000 | So what's that mean?
00:01:33.000 | You can actually do a couple of things.
00:01:35.000 | Number one is actually listening to slow-paced music.
00:01:38.000 | There's evidence to suggest fast-paced music may slow down your recovery
00:01:43.000 | and slow-paced would actually enhance it.
00:01:45.000 | So if you just change from, you know, your maximum get you up and get going music
00:01:50.000 | during the workout to a slower, lower cadence, that will help you kickstart the idea.
00:01:55.000 | Of a similar note, you can also use what we call down-regulation breathing.
00:01:59.000 | You could do them in conjunction or one or the other, whichever is up to you.
00:02:03.000 | So my personal favorite method here is somewhere between 3 to 10 minutes
00:02:08.000 | of finishing your training session, laying down.
00:02:12.000 | I like to be in that position.
00:02:13.000 | You can certainly do it in the lotus position,
00:02:15.000 | but I think laying on your back is generally more effective.
00:02:17.000 | Personal preference there, no science.
00:02:20.000 | I like the eyes being covered, getting into this dark, quiet sort of area.
00:02:25.000 | And then just breathing through your nose in a structured cadence.
00:02:28.000 | There's a lot of different things you can try.
00:02:30.000 | An easy example is just box breathing.
00:02:32.000 | So you can imagine a box having four squares.
00:02:35.000 | So what you're going to do is inhale for somewhere between like 3 to 8 seconds,
00:02:40.000 | and whatever number you choose, you keep that same tempo.
00:02:44.000 | So let's say you chose to do a 5-second inhale.
00:02:47.000 | That's going to take you up vertically,
00:02:49.000 | and then horizontally for your box is a 5-second hold,
00:02:52.000 | and then a 5-second exhale, and then a 5-second hold.
00:02:56.000 | And you just need to repeat that for the time domain.
00:02:58.000 | I typically honestly don't use a timer.
00:03:00.000 | You'll actually notice a lot of people will like fall asleep
00:03:03.000 | or get really close to falling asleep in this period.
00:03:06.000 | You could do a triangle version of that where you do an inhale, hold, exhale,
00:03:11.000 | and then go right back into your inhale.
00:03:13.000 | There's a bunch of different tricks you can try here.
00:03:15.000 | You need to play around and see what actually works best for you.
00:03:18.000 | 10 minutes is probably better, but if you can just at least give me 3, that'll work.
00:03:24.000 | If you're really, really resistant, you can actually do that just in the shower.
00:03:28.000 | And so if you're going to finish your workout, get in the shower,
00:03:31.000 | again just close your eyes in the shower, give me 3 minutes of focused relaxation breathing,
00:03:35.000 | and that will accelerate the recovery process.
00:03:37.000 | I love it, and I particularly love it
00:03:39.000 | because my laboratory works on stress and respiration, a.k.a. breathing,
00:03:43.000 | and the interactions between the two.
00:03:45.000 | And I'll just mention a result that was just accepted for publication,
00:03:50.000 | so it should be out by the time this episode airs.
00:03:53.000 | Thank you.
00:03:54.000 | This is the beautiful work of not me directly, although it took place in my lab,
00:03:58.000 | but as we know, it's the students at Postdocs who really do the heavy lifting
00:04:01.000 | of Dr. Malisse Balbon in my lab.
00:04:05.000 | She's a phenomenal researcher that showed that a short period of 5 minutes of box breathing,
00:04:12.000 | of exactly the type that you described, or cyclic sighing,
00:04:16.000 | so two inhales followed by an extended exhale to lungs empty,
00:04:19.000 | ideally the inhales are done through the nose, the exhales are done through the mouth,
00:04:23.000 | although it could all be done through the nose, or the mouth for that matter,
00:04:27.000 | but probably nose, nose for inhale, inhale, mouth for exhale,
00:04:31.000 | or inhales through the nose and exhale through the nose,
00:04:37.000 | cyclic sighing as we refer to it, done for 5 minutes,
00:04:40.000 | both of those produce very significant decreases in resting heart rate.
00:04:45.000 | Over time it will increase things like heart rate variability and so on and so forth.
00:04:50.000 | So provided that there are extended exhales,
00:04:54.000 | it seems like the calming response and the reduction in overall stress occurs.
00:05:00.000 | The only thing that really sends things in the other direction
00:05:02.000 | would be something like cyclic hyperventilation, I'm sure you've observed that.
00:05:06.000 | And interestingly, when we had people just do 5 minutes of meditation,
00:05:12.000 | during which of course they are breathing,
00:05:15.000 | but they're just allowing their breathing to progress however it happens to be in that moment,
00:05:20.000 | or moments across the 5 minutes,
00:05:23.000 | there were reductions in the same sorts of markers of stress that I described,
00:05:27.000 | but not as significant as breathing.
00:05:29.000 | So I love the Brock's breathing tool post-workout,
00:05:32.000 | and there's some other alternatives there too that I just mentioned.
00:05:35.000 | But I think people greatly underestimate the potency of breathing
00:05:40.000 | for shifting one's nervous system function away from stress,
00:05:44.000 | or if one wants, toward more alertness and stress.
00:05:47.000 | [music]