How to Build Endurance in Your Brain & Body
Chapters
0:0 Introduction5:45 Why Everyone Should Train Endurance
9:49 All Episodes Now Searchable at hubermanlab.com & The Neural Network
11:28 How To Maintain Muscle
12:56 Endurance: It’s Not What You Think, Crossover With Brain Function
14:38 Energy; Many Paths To ATP: Creatine, Glucose, Glycogen, Fat; Ketones
18:0 The Vital Need For Oxygen: But Why?
19:0 What Allows Us To Endure (Anything)?
20:46 The 5 Things That Allow Us To Persist/Endure & What Causes Quitting
22:50 Why You Quit: It IS All In Your Mind
27:19 The “90% Mental” Myth
28:10 The Critical Need For Carbohydrates & Electrolytes (& Sometimes Ketones)
30:10 Phospho-Creatine, Glycogen, pH, Temperature Is Key
31:36 Using Your Blood, Heart, & Lungs To Go Longer, Further, With More Intensity
35:40 An Excellent Review on the Science of Training Adaptations (See Caption On YouTube)
37:15 The 4 Kinds of Endurance
38:53 Muscular Endurance: Powerful for Everyone: Posture, Performance, Resilience
41:50 Protocol For Building Muscular Endurance. No Major Eccentric Component
48:40 How to Make Muscles More Resilient: Mitochondrial Respiration, Neuronal Firing
51:31 Long Duration Endurance: 12minutes or More, One “Set”, Efficiency of Movement
57:0 Why Everyone Should Train Long Duration Endurance: Capillaries In Muscle & Brain
61:0 Two Distinct Types of High-Intensity Interval Training: Anaerobic & Aerobic
62:20 Anaerobic HIIT: 3-12 Sets, Work:Rest Ratio of 3:1 or 1:3; Quality of Repetitions is Key
67:0 Maximizing Oxygen Utilization, Heart Rate & Nerve-Muscle Energy Utilization
70:59 Aerobic HIIT; 1:1 Work:Rest Ratio, Tapping Into All Energy Utilization Systems
75:20 Building A Stronger Heart & Better Brain: Eccentric Loading the Heart: Stroke Volume
80:10 Resistance & Weight Training: Useless for the Brain? What Is Good For the Brain?
83:25 The Strength-Endurance Tradeoff; How Long to Wait Between Workouts
85:45 Breathing During Endurance, Explosive and Weight Training: Nose, Mouth, Gears
89:50 Intercostals & Diaphragmatic Breathing: Warming Up Intercostals Is Useful
91:0 Increasing Motivation & Adrenaline
92:10 Eliminating the “Side Cramp” With Physiological Sighs
94:45 Accelerating Through “The Wall”: Accessing Alternative Fuel Sources; Ketone Use
97:50 Hydration: Why Hydrate, How To Hydrate, & How Much Fluid To Drink
101:35 “The Galpin Equation”; Gastric Emptying Time, Adapting Hydration Mid-Training
104:20 Boosting Mitochondrial Density With Cold; Wait 6 Hours Before Cold/Between Training
106:0 Accelerating Recovery with 5 Minute Parasympathetic Down-Shift After Training
108:0 Leveraging The Visual System During Effort, Milestones; Dilation & Contraction; Pacing
113:10 The Physiological Basis of Your “Extra Gear”, Accessing Your “Kick”, Steve Prefontaine
116:0 Programming Examples; Concurrent Training
117:57 Caffeine, Magnesium Malate to Reduce Soreness, Nitric Oxide, Beta-Alanine
120:0 Synthesis; Next Episodes, Zero-Cost Ways to Support, Sponsors, Sources
00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools
00:00:04.920 | for everyday life.
00:00:05.920 | I'm Andrew Huberman,
00:00:10.480 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology
00:00:13.320 | at Stanford School of Medicine.
00:00:15.240 | This podcast is separate from my teaching
00:00:17.000 | and research roles at Stanford.
00:00:18.640 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort
00:00:20.900 | to bring zero cost to consumer information
00:00:22.980 | about science and science-related tools
00:00:25.240 | to the general public.
00:00:26.880 | In keeping with that theme,
00:00:28.120 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
00:00:31.240 | Our first sponsor is Roca.
00:00:33.280 | Roca makes sunglasses and eyeglasses,
00:00:36.040 | and I'm delighted that they're a partner
00:00:37.960 | and a sponsor for the podcast.
00:00:40.040 | As some of you may already know,
00:00:41.860 | I've spent two decades or more studying the visual system,
00:00:44.960 | how we see vision is absolutely the most important sense
00:00:48.480 | by which humans navigate the world and survive,
00:00:51.000 | and our eyes as two pieces of our brain
00:00:53.220 | do many other important things as well.
00:00:55.440 | So taking good care of our eyesight is essential.
00:00:58.420 | Founded by two All-American swimmers from Stanford,
00:01:01.260 | Roca was born out of an obsession for performance.
00:01:04.320 | They've carefully put science and purpose
00:01:05.840 | behind their design choices,
00:01:07.180 | and they've built absolutely terrific products as a result.
00:01:10.200 | The glasses are amazing.
00:01:11.200 | I love them because they look great,
00:01:13.940 | they are super comfortable,
00:01:15.260 | and the optical clarity is incredible.
00:01:18.160 | They filter out sunlight in a way
00:01:20.000 | that still allows you to see contrast and shadows
00:01:22.320 | the way you need to.
00:01:23.340 | For me, one of the things that's really irritating
00:01:24.960 | is if I have a pair of sunglasses
00:01:26.680 | that don't allow me to see all the things I want to see.
00:01:29.660 | And with Roca glasses, I get incredible contrast,
00:01:33.180 | but then I can also relax and be outdoors in bright light.
00:01:36.040 | And as the amount of light changes with cloud cover
00:01:38.560 | and things of that sort,
00:01:39.940 | my ability to see my surroundings
00:01:41.520 | is still really sharp and really clear.
00:01:43.440 | And that only comes from really understanding
00:01:45.480 | how the visual system works
00:01:46.880 | and how it adjusts to contrast and adaptation
00:01:49.600 | and all these different things.
00:01:50.440 | They really understand the science,
00:01:52.120 | and that went into the design of these glasses.
00:01:54.640 | And as many of you know,
00:01:56.080 | sunlight and the viewing of light is also very important
00:01:59.340 | for setting circadian rhythms.
00:02:00.720 | So that's also been incorporated into the design
00:02:02.880 | and science behind these glasses.
00:02:04.720 | I do wear readers.
00:02:05.860 | I don't often wear them during the podcast,
00:02:07.840 | but I have to wear reading glasses at night.
00:02:10.080 | So I use their readers and I own a pair of their sunglasses,
00:02:12.960 | and I'm delighted with them.
00:02:14.720 | If you'd like to check out Roca glasses,
00:02:16.620 | you can go to roca.com, that's R-O-K-A.com,
00:02:20.120 | and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order.
00:02:23.660 | That's R-O-K-A.com, enter the code Huberman at checkout
00:02:27.360 | to get 20% off your first order.
00:02:29.280 | Today's podcast is also brought to you by Inside Tracker.
00:02:32.780 | Inside Tracker is a personalized nutrition platform
00:02:35.220 | that analyzes data from your blood and DNA
00:02:37.680 | to help you better understand your body
00:02:39.220 | and reach your health goals.
00:02:41.060 | I'm a big believer in getting regular blood work done
00:02:43.840 | for the simple reason that many of the important things
00:02:47.200 | that are vital to our immediate and long-term health
00:02:50.520 | can only be detected in a good quality blood test.
00:02:54.280 | The problem with blood tests is that most blood tests,
00:02:57.300 | you get a lot of information back about levels
00:02:59.260 | that are too high or too low of this thing
00:03:00.940 | or the other thing, but making sense of that
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00:03:11.820 | With Inside Tracker, they make it very easy to understand
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00:03:21.060 | So they offer you directives in terms of nutrition,
00:03:23.760 | supplementation, as well as lifestyle factors
00:03:26.760 | like exercise, sleep, et cetera,
00:03:29.020 | that can allow you to take control of those numbers
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00:03:34.240 | and your long-term health.
00:03:35.880 | Another feature of Inside Tracker that's great
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00:03:39.440 | This test shows you what your biological age
00:03:41.500 | and how it compares to your chronological age,
00:03:43.680 | which I can only imagine most everybody, including me,
00:03:46.700 | are extremely interested in.
00:03:47.800 | How long am I likely to live?
00:03:49.000 | How old am I really in terms of my biology?
00:03:52.480 | If you'd like to try Inside Tracker,
00:03:54.060 | you can visit insidetracker.com/huberman
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00:04:00.760 | Use the code Huberman at checkout.
00:04:02.900 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Athletic Greens.
00:04:06.080 | Athletic Greens is an all-in-one
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00:04:10.240 | I've been using Athletic Greens since 2012,
00:04:12.840 | and so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.
00:04:16.000 | With Athletic Greens, you get a ton of factors
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00:04:19.720 | mixed into this one really good tasting drink.
00:04:22.160 | I like to mix mine with water
00:04:23.600 | and a little bit of lemon juice,
00:04:25.000 | and I drink that once or twice a day,
00:04:26.860 | typically once early in the day,
00:04:28.720 | and sometimes also in the afternoon or even evening.
00:04:31.500 | I'm able to sleep after drinking in the evening just fine.
00:04:34.640 | The reason I've been using Athletic Greens for so long
00:04:37.360 | that I continue to use Athletic Greens is that,
00:04:39.980 | one, I feel better when I take it.
00:04:41.800 | I just do.
00:04:42.640 | Psychologically, physically, I feel better.
00:04:44.920 | But also, it covers all my bases of the things that I need
00:04:48.400 | for my general health.
00:04:49.800 | It's sort of a foundational supplement,
00:04:51.460 | as I like to call it.
00:04:52.480 | In fact, when people ask me, "What should I take?"
00:04:55.400 | If I were to recommend just one supplement that people take,
00:04:58.160 | it would be Athletic Greens.
00:04:59.980 | With Athletic Greens, you get support for your gut,
00:05:02.640 | which is important because the gut microbiome
00:05:04.980 | is important for the gut brain access,
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00:05:08.800 | There are so many data that support that statement.
00:05:11.440 | As well, there are many factors in Athletic Greens
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00:05:19.520 | So with Athletic Greens, I drink it once or twice a day,
00:05:22.020 | and I know that I've got all that covered.
00:05:24.180 | If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,
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00:05:28.800 | And if you do that, you can claim a special offer.
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00:05:37.520 | So you get the five free travel packs
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00:05:45.800 | For the last month, four episodes to be exact,
00:05:49.380 | we've been discussing physical performance
00:05:51.520 | and skill learning.
00:05:53.440 | We've talked about how to learn skills faster,
00:05:56.060 | whether or not those are skills for athletic performance,
00:05:59.080 | dance, music, things of that sort.
00:06:02.200 | We've also talked about how to gain strength
00:06:04.440 | and how to lose fat faster by leveraging the nervous system.
00:06:08.020 | Things like shiver and non-shiver,
00:06:11.320 | non-exercise activity-induced thermogenesis.
00:06:14.460 | We talked about how neurons can actually
00:06:16.720 | trigger accelerated fat loss.
00:06:19.160 | We talked about hypertrophy, also called muscle growth.
00:06:22.440 | And we covered everything from sets and reps, protocols,
00:06:26.240 | how long to stay in a cold ice bath, when to get out,
00:06:29.360 | how to keep shivering.
00:06:30.720 | We've covered a lot of tools and a lot of science.
00:06:33.720 | So if you're interested in those things
00:06:35.080 | and you even perhaps want to learn a little bit
00:06:37.720 | about how we make energy, ATP, from carbohydrates
00:06:41.320 | or from fats, it's all covered in the previous four episodes.
00:06:45.280 | This was going to be the time that we moved
00:06:47.080 | to a new topic entirely, but we are going to do
00:06:50.360 | one more episode in this series on physical performance
00:06:53.800 | for the simple reason that you asked many questions
00:06:57.540 | about something that's vitally important,
00:06:59.680 | both for physical performance and long-term
00:07:02.240 | and short-term health, and that's endurance.
00:07:05.880 | And so today we are going to talk about endurance.
00:07:08.880 | Now, if you're a strength athlete
00:07:10.820 | or you're not interested in endurance,
00:07:14.360 | don't depart just yet because it turns out
00:07:16.880 | that there are ways to train endurance
00:07:18.620 | that are very different than I would have
00:07:21.520 | previously imagined.
00:07:23.280 | If you only think about long runs, long swims,
00:07:26.480 | marathons, half marathons, 10Ks, 5Ks,
00:07:29.760 | and that sort of thing puts you to sleep,
00:07:31.700 | kind of like Costello is snoring
00:07:33.000 | in the background right now.
00:07:34.760 | He's not a long distance endurance athlete, that's for sure.
00:07:38.260 | If you're interested in those things,
00:07:41.000 | or if you are averse to those things,
00:07:43.520 | I encourage you to continue listening
00:07:45.360 | because we are going to talk about a little bit of science
00:07:48.280 | and then some specific protocols
00:07:50.140 | that really define what endurance is,
00:07:52.600 | the four types of endurance and ways to train those
00:07:56.040 | in concert with the other things that you might be doing,
00:07:58.960 | like weight training or skill training or yoga.
00:08:03.320 | And if you are an endurance athlete,
00:08:05.340 | we are going to cover a lot of tools and science
00:08:08.280 | that I'm certain will also help enhance your training
00:08:11.080 | and performance in races or even just recreationally.
00:08:15.440 | The topic of endurance, I think,
00:08:17.960 | has been badly misrepresented, frankly, online.
00:08:22.120 | And when you start digging into the science
00:08:24.160 | and you start talking to real experts in this area,
00:08:27.240 | what you discover, what I've discovered,
00:08:29.120 | is that it's an incredibly interesting area
00:08:31.360 | because it teaches us so much
00:08:33.320 | about how our body and our brain use fuels
00:08:37.820 | and how we can control which fuels
00:08:40.200 | are used by our body and brain.
00:08:42.520 | So today we will talk about the four kinds of endurance.
00:08:45.960 | We will also cover the topic of hydration,
00:08:48.840 | which might sound incredibly boring,
00:08:51.520 | like, okay, just drink more water.
00:08:53.360 | But it's really interesting
00:08:54.920 | because not only is hydration
00:08:57.560 | a limiting factor on performance,
00:08:59.480 | but there is a right way to hydrate
00:09:02.120 | and there is a wrong way to hydrate.
00:09:04.200 | There actually is a formula that I'll teach you
00:09:06.320 | to know how much water to be drinking,
00:09:09.800 | depending on your activity levels.
00:09:11.300 | And if that sounds like a simple thing,
00:09:13.800 | like, oh, just tap off water until your urine runs clear,
00:09:17.040 | that's actually the wrong advice.
00:09:19.360 | It turns out that if you don't hydrate properly,
00:09:21.400 | you can see 20 to 30% reductions in performance,
00:09:24.400 | whether or not that's strength,
00:09:26.000 | whether or not that's increasing hypertrophy,
00:09:28.540 | whether or not that's running, swimming,
00:09:30.280 | even mental performance.
00:09:32.120 | So even if you're not an athlete
00:09:33.700 | or a recreational athlete at all,
00:09:35.440 | I encourage you to stay tuned for the part about hydration.
00:09:38.900 | So we're going to cover as usual a little bit of science,
00:09:41.740 | and then we're going to dive right into protocols
00:09:43.980 | that you can apply if you like,
00:09:45.600 | and if you deem those correct and safe for you.
00:09:48.900 | Before we dive into all that,
00:09:50.160 | I want to make an important announcement,
00:09:51.640 | which is all the episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast
00:09:54.860 | are now housed on a single website,
00:09:57.380 | which is hubermanlab.com.
00:09:59.880 | If you go to hubermanlab.com,
00:10:01.680 | you can find all the episodes in YouTube,
00:10:04.100 | Apple, and Spotify format with links there.
00:10:07.080 | The website is also searchable.
00:10:08.840 | So if you go into the little search function,
00:10:10.720 | which you'll find very easily,
00:10:11.840 | and you put in, for instance, creatine, or sleep,
00:10:15.460 | or ice bath, or sauna,
00:10:17.680 | it will take you to the specific episodes
00:10:20.620 | that contain that information.
00:10:22.960 | And in addition, if you go to the website, hubermanlab.com,
00:10:26.360 | you have the opportunity to sign up
00:10:28.480 | for what we call the Huberman Lab Neural Network.
00:10:31.660 | The Huberman Lab Neural Network is a zero-cost resource
00:10:34.560 | where once a month, perhaps more often,
00:10:37.380 | you'll receive a email newsletter,
00:10:40.280 | and that newsletter will contain specific protocols,
00:10:43.280 | announcements, attachments of PDFs,
00:10:45.840 | and things of that sort of protocols, tools,
00:10:48.680 | and science from the podcast.
00:10:50.960 | We will also make any announcements about live lectures,
00:10:55.160 | which at some point I'll probably start doing
00:10:56.920 | in various cities in the US
00:10:58.560 | and probably around the world as well,
00:11:00.520 | as well as other things
00:11:01.800 | that I think would be really useful to you,
00:11:03.440 | all of course at zero cost.
00:11:05.720 | So that's hubermanlab.com.
00:11:07.540 | Sign up for the neural network newsletter.
00:11:09.980 | You can find that in the menu tab,
00:11:11.560 | or it might pop up when you get there.
00:11:13.440 | And I hope you will join.
00:11:15.000 | And as a final announcement,
00:11:16.960 | if you're not already following us on Instagram,
00:11:19.580 | you can go to Huberman Lab on Instagram.
00:11:21.680 | And if you do that, I often make announcements
00:11:23.920 | and release protocols and links to protocols
00:11:26.120 | and things there as well.
00:11:28.320 | I briefly want to touch on something
00:11:29.720 | from the previous episode,
00:11:31.800 | which is that if you are somebody
00:11:33.880 | that is trying to increase muscle strength and or size,
00:11:37.480 | or if you're simply somebody
00:11:39.240 | who doesn't want to increase muscle strength and size,
00:11:42.480 | and you just want to maintain the musculature that you have,
00:11:45.920 | it's vital that you perform at least five sets
00:11:48.660 | of resistance training per muscle per week.
00:11:52.240 | If we don't do that, we lose muscle over time.
00:11:55.140 | And that is one reason among many
00:11:59.000 | to have a regular resistance training protocol.
00:12:02.720 | Nobody wants to start resembling a folded over envelope
00:12:06.320 | or a melted candle.
00:12:08.280 | No one wants to have challenges getting up out of a chair
00:12:10.740 | or off the ground.
00:12:12.280 | Maintaining musculature is vital,
00:12:14.240 | not just to our immediate health,
00:12:16.000 | but to our long-term health trajectory.
00:12:18.760 | So I just want to emphasize that point.
00:12:20.400 | If you're curious about the sets, the reps,
00:12:22.680 | how close to failure to go or not go,
00:12:25.520 | whether or not you should be
00:12:27.080 | doing your cardiovascular training
00:12:29.080 | before or after your weight training,
00:12:30.680 | all of that is in the previous episode,
00:12:32.600 | right down to the details.
00:12:33.800 | And I like to think it made simple for you to understand.
00:12:37.160 | But I do strongly believe that resistance training,
00:12:39.840 | whether or not it's with body weight or bands or weights,
00:12:43.200 | or simply lifting rocks in the yard or logs in the yard,
00:12:46.880 | is vital for our systemic physiology
00:12:50.200 | and our overall health.
00:12:51.280 | And that includes our brain health.
00:12:52.840 | And I described the reasons for that
00:12:54.160 | and the mechanisms in the previous episode.
00:12:56.580 | Today, I'd like to talk about endurance
00:12:58.760 | and how to build endurance and how to use endurance
00:13:02.940 | for the health of your entire body.
00:13:05.220 | Endurance, as the name suggests,
00:13:08.480 | is our ability to engage in continuous bouts of exercise
00:13:12.760 | or continuous movement or continuous effort of any kind.
00:13:18.040 | And I do believe that our ability to engage in activities
00:13:23.040 | that we call endurance training
00:13:25.820 | or physical endurance activities
00:13:28.200 | do have carry over to mental performance
00:13:33.020 | of things that require long-term effort.
00:13:36.280 | I'll touch on that at the end
00:13:37.580 | and why there's reason to believe
00:13:39.600 | that there's a biological crossover
00:13:41.560 | between those two things.
00:13:43.560 | I don't think it's simply the case
00:13:44.920 | that if you train yourself to be a strength
00:13:46.600 | and speed athlete and to do short bouts of exercise,
00:13:49.040 | they're very intense,
00:13:50.220 | that you can only do mental work
00:13:52.500 | that's of short bouts and very intense.
00:13:55.520 | But it is clear that cardiovascular exercise,
00:14:00.520 | exercise where you're getting your heart rate up
00:14:02.560 | continuously for a period of time
00:14:04.280 | and endurance exercise,
00:14:05.740 | we will define what that is in a moment,
00:14:07.880 | is vital for tapping into and enhancing various aspects
00:14:12.380 | of our biology in the body and in the brain
00:14:16.000 | such that our brain can perform work
00:14:19.600 | for longer periods of time,
00:14:21.080 | focused work, learning, et cetera.
00:14:23.920 | So I want to dive into the topic of endurance
00:14:26.480 | and I want to just begin by addressing something
00:14:30.200 | that's vital to any kind of effort,
00:14:33.000 | whether or not it's mental effort or physical effort.
00:14:35.180 | So as always a little bit of science
00:14:36.640 | and then we'll get right into protocols.
00:14:38.840 | So the key thing to understand
00:14:41.440 | about energy production in the body,
00:14:43.540 | meaning your ability to think,
00:14:45.080 | your ability to talk,
00:14:46.320 | your ability to walk,
00:14:47.500 | your ability to run is this thing that we call ATP.
00:14:52.040 | ATP and mitochondria,
00:14:55.040 | which are just little what we call organelles within cells,
00:14:59.080 | these little factories that make energy, if you will,
00:15:02.380 | ATP is required for anything that requires energy,
00:15:08.000 | for anything that you do that requires effort.
00:15:10.880 | And there are different ways to get ATP.
00:15:15.300 | And we have been gifted as a species
00:15:18.840 | with the ability to convert lots of things into ATP.
00:15:23.840 | We can convert carbohydrates,
00:15:26.680 | literally the kinds of carbohydrates.
00:15:28.040 | You eat a bagel, you eat a piece of pizza.
00:15:29.760 | Pizza usually has dough and it has cheese
00:15:32.720 | and some other things.
00:15:34.360 | Costello here is me talking about pizza.
00:15:35.720 | Costello loves pizza by the way.
00:15:37.320 | Eating a piece of pizza,
00:15:39.400 | it gets converted into various things,
00:15:42.080 | fatty acids from the fats,
00:15:44.720 | glucose from the bread,
00:15:46.960 | and those things get converted into ATP within cells
00:15:51.960 | through things like glycolysis,
00:15:53.960 | things like lipolysis.
00:15:55.240 | I talked about this in previous episodes.
00:15:57.240 | So our muscles and our neurons
00:16:00.460 | use different fuel sources to generate ATP.
00:16:04.140 | The ones that are used first
00:16:07.280 | for short bouts of intense activity
00:16:09.240 | are things like phosphocreatine.
00:16:10.880 | If you've only heard about creatine as a supplement,
00:16:12.880 | well, phosphocreatine actually exists on our muscles.
00:16:15.640 | And that's why people take creatine.
00:16:16.880 | You can load your muscles with more creatine.
00:16:19.120 | And excuse me, phosphocreatine is great
00:16:23.680 | for short, intense bouts of effort.
00:16:26.520 | So when you're really pushing hard on something physical,
00:16:28.840 | let's say you see a car on the side of the road
00:16:30.800 | and that car is stalled and the person says,
00:16:32.840 | "Hey, can you help me push my car?"
00:16:34.160 | And you start to push,
00:16:35.320 | that's going to be phosphocreatine
00:16:36.520 | is going to be your main fuel source.
00:16:38.280 | Then you start to tap into things like glucose,
00:16:40.940 | which is literally just carbohydrate,
00:16:42.700 | it's just sugar that's in your blood.
00:16:44.780 | And then if you keep pushing on that car,
00:16:47.000 | you keep in engaging in a particular effort
00:16:49.560 | or you keep studying or you keep listening to this podcast,
00:16:52.560 | you start to tap into other fuel sources
00:16:54.960 | like glycogen from your liver,
00:16:56.300 | which is just, it's like a little pack,
00:16:58.400 | just like you might've packed a sandwich
00:17:00.540 | or something for work.
00:17:02.360 | You have a little pack of glycogen in your liver
00:17:05.580 | that you can rely on.
00:17:07.200 | And you have fats stored in adipose tissue.
00:17:09.840 | Even if you have very, very low body fat percentage,
00:17:13.080 | like you're one of these people
00:17:14.440 | that has like 3% or 5% body fat,
00:17:16.460 | really thin skin, very little body fat,
00:17:20.260 | you can extract lipids, fatty acids from that body fat.
00:17:24.820 | It's like a storage pack.
00:17:26.000 | It is a storage pack for energy
00:17:27.640 | that can be converted to ATP.
00:17:29.420 | So without going into any more detail,
00:17:33.040 | when I say today, energy, or I say ATP,
00:17:35.940 | just remember that regardless of your diet,
00:17:39.700 | regardless of your nutritional plan,
00:17:41.880 | your body has the capacity to use creatine,
00:17:45.760 | glucose, glycogen, lipids,
00:17:48.240 | and if you're ketogenic, ketones.
00:17:50.800 | We'll talk about ketosis in order to generate fuel energy.
00:17:55.640 | Now, the other crucial point
00:17:59.080 | is that in order to complete that process
00:18:01.860 | of taking these fuels and converting them into energy,
00:18:05.580 | most of the time you need oxygen.
00:18:08.900 | You need air basically in your system.
00:18:12.300 | Now it's not actual air.
00:18:13.360 | You need oxygen molecules in your system,
00:18:16.480 | comes in through your mouth and your nose,
00:18:18.360 | goes to your lungs and distributes via the bloodstream.
00:18:22.120 | Oxygen is not a fuel,
00:18:24.740 | but like a fire that has no oxygen,
00:18:27.860 | you can't actually burn the logs,
00:18:29.900 | but when you blow a lot of oxygen onto a fire,
00:18:34.160 | basically onto logs with a flame there,
00:18:37.520 | then basically it will take fire, it will burn, okay?
00:18:42.340 | Oxygen allows you to burn fuel.
00:18:45.140 | So today we are going to ask the critical questions.
00:18:49.040 | What allows us to perform?
00:18:51.800 | What allows us to continue effort for long periods of time?
00:18:55.940 | And that effort could be a run, it could be a swim,
00:18:58.680 | it could be studying,
00:19:00.160 | it could be anything that extends over a long period of time.
00:19:04.580 | Well, you're going to need energy
00:19:06.340 | and you're going to need oxygen.
00:19:08.500 | But the way to answer a question,
00:19:10.920 | like what allows us to endure, right?
00:19:14.340 | Endurance, what allows us to keep going?
00:19:17.660 | Well, we think of things like willpower,
00:19:19.660 | but what's willpower?
00:19:20.500 | Willpower is neurons, it's neurons in our brain.
00:19:23.940 | We have this thing called the central governor,
00:19:25.560 | which decides whether or not we should or could continue
00:19:28.580 | or whether or not we should stop,
00:19:31.120 | whether or not we should quit, okay?
00:19:33.520 | So whether or not you're somebody who has a lot
00:19:35.680 | of what we would call resilience and endurance,
00:19:37.460 | or whether or not you're somebody who taps out early
00:19:39.940 | and quits early or can't handle frustration,
00:19:42.160 | that has to do with your fuel utilization
00:19:44.420 | in specific neurons.
00:19:45.760 | So we have to ask the question,
00:19:47.920 | what is the limiting factor on performance, right?
00:19:51.280 | So instead of saying, what allows us to endure,
00:19:53.780 | we should say, what prevents us from enduring?
00:19:56.540 | What prevents us from moving forward?
00:19:58.500 | What are the factors that say, you know what, no more.
00:20:02.220 | I'm not going to continue this run.
00:20:03.760 | Or you know what, I've had a really long, hard day,
00:20:07.000 | or maybe I've had an easy day or I'm feeling lazy,
00:20:09.000 | I just don't even really feel like getting up and moving.
00:20:11.600 | So what we're going to talk about today actually gets right
00:20:13.580 | down to the heart of motivation and fuel use,
00:20:16.760 | motivation and fuel allocation.
00:20:19.440 | And we are going to talk about specific training protocols
00:20:22.240 | that you can follow that have carry over
00:20:25.660 | between the bodily systems of running, swimming, et cetera,
00:20:29.180 | and the way that your brain works.
00:20:31.300 | So let's talk about endurance by asking first,
00:20:33.820 | what are the limiting factors on endurance?
00:20:36.820 | What stops us?
00:20:38.620 | Because in addressing that and answering that,
00:20:40.880 | we will understand what allows us to get into effort
00:20:44.740 | and to continue effort.
00:20:46.340 | There are five main categories of things
00:20:49.100 | that allow us to engage in effort.
00:20:51.820 | And they are neurons, nerves, muscle, muscle,
00:20:56.820 | blood, things in our blood, our heart, and our lungs.
00:21:03.220 | Now, I don't want to completely write off things
00:21:06.900 | like the immune system and other systems of the body,
00:21:09.980 | but nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs
00:21:13.260 | are the five that I want to focus on today
00:21:15.340 | because that's where most of the data are.
00:21:18.980 | As we go forward into this,
00:21:20.220 | I want to acknowledge Dr. Andy Galpin,
00:21:23.100 | who as with the last episode,
00:21:25.420 | has been tremendously helpful and informative
00:21:28.100 | in terms of the exercise physiology.
00:21:30.020 | He's a true expert.
00:21:31.820 | He has a laboratory.
00:21:32.940 | He's a full professor who does work on muscle biopsy,
00:21:37.420 | who understands the science,
00:21:38.780 | but who also works with athletes
00:21:40.880 | and works with recreational athletes, professional athletes,
00:21:44.040 | really understands at a variety of levels
00:21:46.540 | how all these systems work.
00:21:47.700 | He's the person I consulted with about today's episode,
00:21:50.960 | although I did access other literature as well.
00:21:52.820 | And I'm going to mention a key review
00:21:55.340 | for any of you aficionados
00:21:56.740 | who really want to get down into the weeds.
00:21:58.460 | But I encourage you, if you want more detail,
00:22:01.300 | to check out Dr. Andy Galpin's YouTube page.
00:22:04.240 | I think he's also on Twitter.
00:22:05.840 | He's definitely on Instagram.
00:22:07.660 | His content is excellent, and he really understands.
00:22:10.900 | I have learned and I really believe
00:22:13.140 | that an intellectual is somebody who understands a topic
00:22:16.980 | at multiple levels of specificity of detail
00:22:20.300 | and can communicate that.
00:22:21.540 | And Andy is a true intellectual
00:22:24.460 | of muscle physiology and performance.
00:22:26.780 | And if you hear the word intellectual
00:22:28.580 | and you kind of back up and cringe from that,
00:22:30.720 | understand that he's also a practitioner.
00:22:33.020 | So thank you, Andrew Galpin, Andy Galpin,
00:22:36.280 | for your support in these episodes.
00:22:40.420 | And we hope to have you as a guest on the podcast soon.
00:22:44.240 | So nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs.
00:22:46.180 | Let's talk about neurons and how they work, okay?
00:22:48.860 | But I want to tell you about an experiment
00:22:51.140 | that's going to make it very clear
00:22:53.840 | why quitting is a mental thing, not a physical thing.
00:22:58.300 | So why do we quit?
00:22:59.960 | Well, an experiment was done a couple of years ago
00:23:02.540 | and was published in the journal Cell,
00:23:04.120 | Cell Press Journal, excellent journal,
00:23:06.440 | showing that there is a class of neurons
00:23:10.300 | in our brainstem, in the back of our brain,
00:23:13.640 | that if they shut off, we quit.
00:23:18.040 | Now, these neurons release epinephrine.
00:23:23.800 | Epinephrine is adrenaline.
00:23:25.220 | And anytime we are engaged in effort of any kind,
00:23:28.200 | we are releasing epinephrine.
00:23:29.680 | Anytime we're awake, really,
00:23:31.300 | we are releasing epinephrine into our brain.
00:23:33.860 | In fact, this little group of neurons
00:23:38.700 | in the back of our brain,
00:23:39.560 | it's called the locus coeruleus, if you like,
00:23:41.920 | is churning out epinephrine all the time.
00:23:44.220 | But if something stresses us out, it churns out more,
00:23:47.080 | and then it acts as kind of an alertness signal
00:23:49.000 | for the whole brain.
00:23:50.680 | We also, of course,
00:23:51.520 | have adrenaline epinephrine released in our body,
00:23:53.760 | which makes our body ready for things.
00:23:55.640 | So think about epinephrine as a readiness signal.
00:23:58.600 | And when we are engaged in effort,
00:24:01.000 | this readiness signal is being churned into our brain.
00:24:03.280 | When we're relaxed and we're falling asleep,
00:24:05.280 | epinephrine levels are low, okay?
00:24:08.760 | So they did a really interesting experiment
00:24:11.840 | where they had subjects engage in bouts of effort
00:24:16.840 | of trying to move forward toward a goal,
00:24:20.180 | but they manipulated the visual environment
00:24:22.520 | with these stripes,
00:24:23.480 | kind of like fences passing on both sides of them.
00:24:25.980 | And by doing that, they could trick subjects
00:24:30.320 | into thinking that their effort
00:24:32.480 | was either allowing them to move forward, right?
00:24:35.440 | Because these rungs on the fence were moving past,
00:24:39.160 | or that their effort was futile,
00:24:41.840 | that they were no longer moving forward
00:24:43.420 | because they would make the rungs move slowly,
00:24:45.280 | even though the subjects were making a lot of effort
00:24:47.700 | to move forward, okay?
00:24:49.240 | So this is analogous or similar to being on a treadmill,
00:24:52.360 | and you're trying to walk on this treadmill,
00:24:54.360 | and you just can't move the conveyor, right?
00:24:57.280 | Or you're in virtual reality
00:24:58.960 | and you're putting a ton of effort,
00:25:00.420 | but it seems like you're moving excruciatingly slow.
00:25:02.640 | I had this experience recently in real life.
00:25:05.260 | I was doing a swim in the Pacific.
00:25:07.440 | I was trying to go south and I was swimming
00:25:10.640 | and I was caught in a current,
00:25:12.040 | not the kind that pulls you out to ocean.
00:25:14.160 | And I kept looking to my left
00:25:16.320 | and I saw this hotel on the shoreline.
00:25:19.040 | And then I was swimming and swimming
00:25:20.820 | and swimming and swimming.
00:25:21.740 | And 20 minutes later, I looked to my left
00:25:23.480 | and the hotel is still exactly where it was before,
00:25:26.160 | which meant that I wasn't moving.
00:25:28.400 | It felt futile.
00:25:30.520 | Eventually, either the current changed or something changed,
00:25:34.300 | and I eventually swam past the hotel,
00:25:37.660 | got back on the beach and eventually drove home.
00:25:40.180 | That's essentially what they did in this experiment.
00:25:43.140 | But what they found was these neurons
00:25:45.460 | that release epinephrine,
00:25:46.980 | there's another cell type called glia,
00:25:51.300 | which actually means glue in Latin,
00:25:53.260 | that is paying attention
00:25:54.260 | to how much epinephrine is being released.
00:25:56.200 | And at some point, the system reaches a threshold.
00:26:00.040 | It reaches this threshold
00:26:01.340 | and it shuts off the release of more epinephrine.
00:26:04.380 | It's like, I quit, that's it, no more effort signal.
00:26:07.640 | If they could extend the time before those glia said enough,
00:26:14.200 | if they could release more adrenaline into the system,
00:26:18.300 | then subjects would keep going.
00:26:20.620 | So our desire to continue, or put differently,
00:26:25.620 | our willingness to continue and our desire to quit
00:26:29.460 | is mediated by events between our two ears.
00:26:33.440 | Now, that doesn't mean that the body's not involved,
00:26:35.540 | but it means that neurons are critically important.
00:26:37.660 | So we have two categories of neurons that are important,
00:26:39.900 | the ones in our head that tell us,
00:26:41.540 | get up and go out and take that run,
00:26:43.820 | and the ones that allow us,
00:26:46.460 | encourage us to continue that run,
00:26:48.340 | and we have neurons that shut things off, that say no more.
00:26:51.360 | And we, of course, have the neurons
00:26:52.900 | that connect to our muscles and control our muscles.
00:26:55.620 | But the reason we quit is rarely because our body quits,
00:26:59.600 | our mind quits.
00:27:01.500 | Now, I would never want to encourage people
00:27:02.740 | to drive themselves to the point of injury.
00:27:05.940 | That's not going to be good for anybody,
00:27:09.420 | but it is good to know that it's neural.
00:27:13.120 | Our ability to persist is neural.
00:27:15.020 | So when people say, is it,
00:27:16.900 | I hear that sports or effort or fighting,
00:27:19.920 | or it's 90% mental, 10% physical,
00:27:25.180 | that whole discussion about how much is mental,
00:27:27.180 | how much is physical is absolutely silly.
00:27:29.260 | It just proves that there's no knowledge
00:27:31.620 | of the underlying biology behind that statement.
00:27:34.340 | It's neither mental nor physical.
00:27:36.620 | Everything is physical.
00:27:38.660 | Everything is neurons.
00:27:40.000 | Your thinking is the responsibility of chemicals
00:27:43.300 | and electrical signals in your head.
00:27:44.780 | So it's not 90% mental, 10% physical.
00:27:47.880 | It's not 50/50.
00:27:49.080 | It's not 70/30.
00:27:51.040 | It's 100% nervous system.
00:27:53.860 | It's neurons, okay?
00:27:56.000 | So when people say mental or physical,
00:27:58.180 | understand it's 100% neural,
00:28:01.060 | and I'd love for the how much of it is mental
00:28:04.140 | and how much is physical to just disappear.
00:28:06.900 | That argument means nothing and it's not actionable.
00:28:10.040 | Now, what do nerves need in order to continue to fire?
00:28:13.820 | What do you need in order to get neurons to say,
00:28:16.180 | I will persist?
00:28:17.860 | Well, they need glucose.
00:28:19.720 | Unless you're ketogenic adapted,
00:28:24.080 | you need carbohydrate is glucose.
00:28:26.360 | That's what neurons run on.
00:28:28.840 | And you need electrolytes.
00:28:31.680 | Neurons have what's called a sodium potassium pump,
00:28:34.760 | blah, blah, blah.
00:28:35.600 | They generate electricity.
00:28:36.800 | We could go into all this.
00:28:37.800 | I will probably do an entire lecture
00:28:39.060 | about the action potential,
00:28:40.040 | but basically in order to get nerve cells to fire,
00:28:43.880 | to contract muscle, to say, I'm going to continue,
00:28:46.860 | you need sufficient sodium salt
00:28:49.940 | because the action potential,
00:28:52.100 | the actual firing of neurons is driven
00:28:55.180 | by sodium entering the cell, rushing into the cell.
00:28:58.900 | And then there's a removal of potassium.
00:29:01.900 | And then there's a kind of resetting of those levels
00:29:04.340 | by something called the sodium potassium pump
00:29:06.020 | and the sodium potassium pump
00:29:07.540 | and sodium and action potentials.
00:29:09.860 | Even if you don't know anything about that is ATP dependent.
00:29:13.540 | It requires energy.
00:29:15.420 | So you need energy in order to get neurons to fire.
00:29:18.540 | And it is pH dependent.
00:29:21.240 | It depends on the conditions or the environment
00:29:24.340 | within the brain being of a certain pH or acidity.
00:29:27.540 | pH is about how acid or how basic the environment is.
00:29:32.020 | And we will talk a little bit about pH in simple terms
00:29:34.220 | that you can understand.
00:29:35.060 | So nerves need salt, they need potassium,
00:29:37.780 | and it turns out they need magnesium
00:29:39.680 | and you need glucose and carbohydrates
00:29:42.060 | in order to power those neurons
00:29:43.380 | unless you are running on ketones.
00:29:46.340 | And to run on ketones,
00:29:47.820 | you have to make sure that you're fully keto adapted.
00:29:50.900 | I will talk about adding in ketones on top of carbohydrate
00:29:54.520 | at the end of the episode.
00:29:56.300 | Okay, so that's how nerves work.
00:29:57.940 | You need carbohydrate, you need sodium, potassium,
00:30:00.300 | and magnesium in order to drive the brain.
00:30:03.220 | Muscle, muscle is going to engage and generate energy first
00:30:08.780 | by using this phosphocreatine system.
00:30:11.460 | High bouts of effort, really intense effort,
00:30:14.040 | short-lived seconds to minutes,
00:30:16.460 | but probably more like seconds
00:30:17.660 | is going to be this phosphocreatine,
00:30:18.980 | literally a fuel source in the muscle
00:30:20.540 | that you're going to burn,
00:30:21.700 | just like you would logs on a fire.
00:30:24.780 | And glycogen, which is stored carbohydrate in the muscle,
00:30:28.280 | that also can be burned just like logs on a fire
00:30:30.700 | to generate energy.
00:30:31.660 | So let me make this crystal clear.
00:30:33.240 | If you move your wrist towards your shoulder
00:30:35.140 | and contract your bicep really hard,
00:30:37.300 | muscle fibers are burning up their own carbohydrate.
00:30:39.940 | They're converting that into ATP
00:30:41.760 | in order to generate that energy, okay?
00:30:45.000 | And pH is important and temperature is important.
00:30:50.000 | In the episode on supercharge, your physical performance,
00:30:53.780 | I talked all about how by using cooling,
00:30:56.980 | specifically of the palms or the bottoms of the feet
00:30:59.660 | or the cheeks of the face using particular methods,
00:31:02.660 | you can adjust the temperature of the body and of muscle
00:31:07.740 | in a way that allows you to do more work,
00:31:10.080 | to do more reps, to run further,
00:31:12.440 | to keep going and to persist.
00:31:14.740 | And that's because if temperature is too low or too high,
00:31:19.740 | then ATP is not going to be available
00:31:23.960 | because of this whole thing
00:31:24.800 | called the pyruvate kinase pathway
00:31:26.660 | and the temperature dependence of pyruvate kinase.
00:31:28.660 | Check out that episode if you want to learn more about that,
00:31:30.480 | but temperature is important and pH is also important.
00:31:33.560 | So we've got nerve, muscle,
00:31:34.700 | and then there's stuff in our blood
00:31:36.500 | that's available as an energy.
00:31:37.700 | Source and in blood, we've got glucose.
00:31:40.360 | So literally blood sugar that's floating around.
00:31:42.220 | So let's say you have fasted for three days,
00:31:44.420 | your blood glucose is going to be very low.
00:31:46.440 | So that's not going to be a great fuel source,
00:31:48.780 | but you will start to liberate fats from your adipose tissue
00:31:52.220 | from your fat, fatty acids will start to mobilize
00:31:55.100 | into the bloodstream and you can burn those for energy
00:31:58.860 | and oxygen in your blood.
00:32:00.420 | When you inhale, you're bringing oxygen into your blood.
00:32:03.140 | So these are all fuel sources in your neurons,
00:32:05.340 | in your muscle, in your blood, in your various tissues
00:32:09.700 | that are providing the opportunity to give effort,
00:32:14.700 | to induce effort, whether or not it's a run or a swim
00:32:17.480 | or writing or talking.
00:32:19.260 | Now, there are some other factors that are important
00:32:22.860 | and those are the heart, which is going to move blood.
00:32:26.100 | So the more that the heart can move blood and oxygen,
00:32:29.980 | well, the more fuel that's going to be available
00:32:33.740 | for you to engage in muscular effort and thinking effort.
00:32:38.180 | So your heart is vitally important
00:32:39.940 | to your muscles ability to work
00:32:41.960 | and your brain's ability to work.
00:32:43.600 | And as I've mentioned, oxygen a few times,
00:32:46.660 | it should be obvious then that the lungs are very important.
00:32:49.020 | You need to bring oxygen in and distribute it
00:32:51.580 | to all these tissues because oxygen is critical
00:32:54.700 | for the conversion of carbohydrates
00:32:56.740 | and the conversion of fats.
00:33:00.060 | And we could get into the discussion about
00:33:02.580 | whether or not oxygen is important for ketogenic metabolism,
00:33:05.500 | but you need oxygen there.
00:33:06.920 | You need to breathe and you need to breathe properly.
00:33:09.640 | So I just covered what would normally be about
00:33:13.060 | four lectures of energy consumption and energy utilization.
00:33:16.940 | I didn't go into much detail at all,
00:33:18.320 | but what I want you to imagine
00:33:20.980 | is that you've got these different cell types.
00:33:23.380 | You've got neurons, you've got muscle.
00:33:25.580 | They need to collaborate in order to generate effort
00:33:28.460 | or to make the decision to do something
00:33:30.180 | or to think hard or to run hard or to run far.
00:33:33.060 | And then you've got fuel sources,
00:33:34.940 | both in the neurons, in the muscle, in your blood,
00:33:39.940 | and then the heart and lungs are going to help distribute
00:33:43.980 | the oxygen and those fuels.
00:33:45.720 | And of course you have that little energy pack
00:33:48.540 | that we call the liver that will allow you
00:33:51.220 | to pull out a little more carbohydrate
00:33:53.180 | if you need it for work.
00:33:55.300 | Okay, so that's as much as I want to cover
00:33:57.920 | about energy consumption,
00:33:59.160 | because that's a lot.
00:34:00.860 | But what it tells you is that when you eat
00:34:03.020 | and you use food as a fuel source,
00:34:05.000 | that food can be broken down
00:34:07.840 | and you can immediately burn the glucose
00:34:10.040 | that's in your bloodstream,
00:34:10.900 | or you can rely on some of the stored fuel in your liver,
00:34:13.740 | or you can rely on stored fuel in the muscle,
00:34:15.960 | so-called glycogen.
00:34:17.360 | And there are a lot of different ways
00:34:19.060 | that we can generate ATP.
00:34:20.960 | So when we ask the question,
00:34:22.200 | what's limiting for performance?
00:34:25.320 | What is going to allow us to endure,
00:34:28.280 | to engage in effort and endure long bouts of effort,
00:34:31.900 | or even moderately long bouts of effort?
00:34:34.540 | We need to ask which of those things,
00:34:36.560 | nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs is limiting?
00:34:40.620 | Or put differently,
00:34:41.820 | we ask what should we be doing with our neurons?
00:34:44.040 | What should we be doing with our muscles?
00:34:45.380 | What should we be doing with our blood?
00:34:47.020 | What should we be doing with our heart?
00:34:48.180 | And what should we be doing with our lungs
00:34:50.320 | that's going to allow us to build endurance
00:34:53.940 | for mental and physical work,
00:34:55.980 | and to be able to go longer, further with more intensity?
00:35:00.980 | That's the real question.
00:35:03.960 | How can we do more work?
00:35:06.100 | And the way we do that is with energy,
00:35:07.980 | and the way to get energy to it is to buy those five things.
00:35:10.500 | And so now we're going to talk about
00:35:12.240 | how you can actually build different types of endurance,
00:35:16.440 | and what that does at the level of your blood,
00:35:19.760 | your heart, your muscles, and your neurons.
00:35:21.500 | So we're going to skip back and forth
00:35:23.400 | between protocols, tools, and the underlying science.
00:35:26.880 | So rather than heavy stack the science at the front end,
00:35:29.520 | and then just give you all the tools at the end,
00:35:31.240 | we're going to talk about the protocols,
00:35:34.760 | the four kinds of endurance, and how to achieve them.
00:35:37.240 | And we are going to talk about the underlying science
00:35:39.560 | as we move through that.
00:35:41.560 | If you would like a lot of detailed science,
00:35:44.180 | I encourage you to check out a review
00:35:46.200 | that we've linked in the show notes.
00:35:48.800 | And the review is called
00:35:50.200 | Adaptations to Endurance and Strength Training.
00:35:53.120 | This is a review article with many excellent citations.
00:35:56.520 | It's from Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine.
00:35:59.280 | The Cold Spring Harbor Press
00:36:00.320 | is an excellent scientific press.
00:36:02.320 | It's been the last 21 years doing summers
00:36:04.840 | at Cold Spring Harbor teaching neuroscience,
00:36:07.220 | but Cold Spring Harbor is involved in all sorts of themes
00:36:10.200 | and topics related to neuroscience and medicine.
00:36:14.240 | This review by Hughes Elifesen,
00:36:18.600 | Elifesen, that's the name, Elifesen and Barr, B-A-A-R,
00:36:22.140 | Adaptations to Endurance and Strength Training
00:36:24.200 | is rich with citations.
00:36:26.040 | It can be downloaded as a complete PDF.
00:36:28.400 | There's no paywall, and we will link to it.
00:36:30.840 | And it gets really deep into all the signaling cascades,
00:36:34.980 | the genetic changes within muscle
00:36:37.640 | with high-intensity interval training,
00:36:39.240 | short-term super high-intensity training, weight training.
00:36:43.840 | So if you're a real nerd for this stuff
00:36:46.360 | and you want to get right down into how PGC1 alpha,
00:36:48.980 | P53 and pH 20 change the adaptation features
00:36:53.440 | of muscle and gene regulation,
00:36:54.960 | that is definitely the review for you.
00:36:56.700 | If you're like most people
00:36:58.080 | and you're not really interested in that level of detail,
00:37:00.760 | no reason to pick up the review
00:37:02.140 | unless you just want to check out
00:37:03.240 | some of the figures and pictures.
00:37:05.500 | But I do want to offer that as a resource.
00:37:07.800 | It's been, in addition to discussions with Dr. Andy Galpin,
00:37:11.360 | it's been a primary resource
00:37:12.960 | for the content of this episode.
00:37:15.660 | So let's talk about the four kinds of endurance
00:37:18.380 | and how to achieve those.
00:37:20.620 | I do believe that everybody should have
00:37:23.020 | some sort of endurance practice, regular endurance practice.
00:37:27.380 | It's clear that it's vital
00:37:28.880 | for the functioning of the body and the mind,
00:37:31.440 | and there are clear longevity benefits.
00:37:34.700 | There are a lot of reasons why that's true,
00:37:38.080 | but the main one is that
00:37:40.920 | if we have good energy utilization in our musculature
00:37:46.460 | and in our blood, in our vascular system,
00:37:50.000 | and in our oxygenating system, our lungs,
00:37:53.420 | the so-called cardiovascular system,
00:37:55.160 | respiratory system, and musculature,
00:37:57.660 | the body and brain function much better.
00:38:00.040 | There are so many papers now, so much data to support that.
00:38:04.140 | So I do believe everyone should either try
00:38:07.140 | to maintain the muscle that they have,
00:38:09.560 | provided they've already gone through puberty
00:38:11.220 | and development, and they should be engaged
00:38:14.960 | in regular endurance exercise.
00:38:16.760 | Now, for many people, they think endurance exercise,
00:38:19.620 | that means what, an hour long run,
00:38:22.460 | or I got to get on the StairMaster,
00:38:24.380 | or I have to treadmill for hours on end each week.
00:38:27.320 | It turns out that's not the case.
00:38:28.660 | There are four kinds of endurance,
00:38:30.300 | and you can train specifically for any one of those,
00:38:33.540 | and you can vary your training.
00:38:35.060 | So let's talk about those four kinds of endurance,
00:38:37.360 | because they're very interesting,
00:38:38.480 | and they each have very different protocols
00:38:41.740 | that you use in order to build and maximize them,
00:38:45.440 | and now you'll understand what fuel sources they use
00:38:49.400 | in order to build that thing we call endurance.
00:38:51.680 | So first of all, we have muscular endurance.
00:38:55.460 | Muscular endurance is the ability for our muscles
00:39:00.460 | to perform work over time,
00:39:04.200 | and our failure to continue to be able to perform that work
00:39:09.040 | is going to be due to muscular fatigue,
00:39:12.360 | not to cardiovascular fatigue.
00:39:15.080 | So not because we're breathing too hard,
00:39:16.800 | or we can't get enough blood to the muscles,
00:39:19.120 | or because we quit mentally,
00:39:21.200 | but because the muscles themselves give out, okay?
00:39:25.540 | One good example of this would be
00:39:28.200 | if you had to pick up a stone in the yard,
00:39:32.640 | and that stone is not extremely heavy for you,
00:39:36.380 | and you needed to do that anywhere from 50 to 100 times,
00:39:40.860 | and you were picking it up, and putting it down,
00:39:42.520 | and picking it up, and putting it down,
00:39:43.760 | and picking up, and putting it down,
00:39:45.440 | at some point, your muscles will fatigue.
00:39:48.560 | They will fail to endure.
00:39:50.720 | Muscular endurance is incredibly useful
00:39:53.840 | for a variety of physical pursuits,
00:39:57.180 | and we will talk about the mental pursuits
00:39:58.800 | that it supports as well.
00:40:00.520 | In terms of physical pursuits,
00:40:02.720 | the ability for a given muscle to perform repeated work
00:40:06.880 | is going to improve your golf swing.
00:40:09.340 | It's going to improve your tennis swing.
00:40:11.680 | It's going to improve your posture, your ability to dance,
00:40:14.800 | your ability to repeatedly engage in an activity
00:40:18.700 | that requires effort in a way that's very different
00:40:23.300 | from the kind of endurance that you will build
00:40:25.400 | simply by increasing your cardiovascular fitness,
00:40:28.220 | your ability to generate kind of easy repetition.
00:40:31.240 | So let's talk about muscular endurance and what it is.
00:40:33.960 | Muscular endurance is going to be something
00:40:36.720 | that you can perform for anywhere from 12 to 25,
00:40:41.720 | or even up to 100 repetitions,
00:40:44.720 | and that's actually how, if you like,
00:40:46.700 | you would train muscular endurance,
00:40:48.840 | and I will give the specific protocol in a few moments.
00:40:51.880 | So a good example is pushups, right?
00:40:54.900 | If you were to get on the floor and start doing pushups,
00:40:59.620 | even if you're somebody who has to do knees-down pushups,
00:41:02.800 | and you're doing your pushups,
00:41:04.120 | eventually you won't be able to do any more pushups,
00:41:06.540 | and that's not going to be
00:41:07.660 | because you couldn't get enough oxygen into your system
00:41:12.100 | or your heart wasn't pumping enough blood.
00:41:14.960 | It's going to be because the muscles fail, that's why.
00:41:18.400 | So if you want to be able to do more pushups
00:41:20.500 | or even more pull-ups,
00:41:22.140 | muscular endurance is really what it's about.
00:41:25.100 | It's actually no coincidence
00:41:26.380 | that a lot of military bootcamp-style training
00:41:29.640 | is not done with weights.
00:41:30.720 | It's done with things like pushups,
00:41:32.120 | pull-ups, sit-ups, and running,
00:41:34.000 | because what they're really building is muscular endurance,
00:41:36.200 | the ability to perform work repeatedly over time
00:41:39.520 | for a given set of muscles and neurons.
00:41:42.320 | So what's a good protocol to build muscular endurance?
00:41:44.520 | Let's just give that to you now
00:41:45.520 | and explain some of the underlying science as it follows.
00:41:50.520 | So a really good muscular endurance training protocol,
00:41:54.720 | according to the scientific literature,
00:41:56.280 | would be three to five sets
00:41:58.620 | of anywhere from 12 to 100 repetitions.
00:42:02.440 | That's a huge range.
00:42:04.120 | Now, 12 to 25 repetitions
00:42:06.500 | is going to be more reasonable for most people.
00:42:11.500 | And the rest periods are going to be anywhere
00:42:14.200 | from 30 to 180 seconds of rest.
00:42:17.440 | So anywhere from half a minute to three minutes of rest.
00:42:19.880 | So this might be five sets of pushups
00:42:22.960 | done getting your maximum pushups.
00:42:25.080 | For some people, that might be zero
00:42:26.480 | and you have to do it knees down.
00:42:27.840 | For some people, it might be 10 pushups.
00:42:29.340 | For some people, it might be 25,
00:42:30.500 | but you could go all the way up to 100,
00:42:32.160 | rest anywhere from 30 to 180 seconds,
00:42:35.020 | and then do your next set for a total of three to five sets.
00:42:38.380 | So it doesn't actually sound like a ton of work.
00:42:40.700 | The other thing you could do is something like a plank.
00:42:43.040 | A plank position is actually a way
00:42:46.500 | to build muscular endurance, not strength, okay?
00:42:51.500 | I'm sure it could be used to develop strength,
00:42:53.660 | but it's really about muscular endurance.
00:42:55.380 | So you would do three to five sets of planks.
00:42:57.940 | Those planks would probably,
00:42:59.420 | even because you're not doing repetitions,
00:43:00.820 | it's an isometric hold, as we say.
00:43:02.540 | It's kind of static hold or a wall sit
00:43:04.980 | would be another example.
00:43:06.220 | And you would do that probably for a minute or two minutes,
00:43:10.060 | take some rest of anywhere from 30 to 60 or 180 seconds,
00:43:13.780 | and then repeat.
00:43:14.980 | So things like pushing a sled, pushups, isometric planks,
00:43:19.700 | even pull-ups, those will all work.
00:43:23.420 | And as with other forms of training,
00:43:26.940 | you would want to do this until you approach failure
00:43:29.980 | or actually fail,
00:43:31.420 | and where you're unable to perform another repetition,
00:43:34.060 | that would mark the end of a set.
00:43:36.700 | The one critical feature of building muscular endurance
00:43:40.020 | is that it has no major eccentric loading component.
00:43:44.900 | Now, I haven't talked much
00:43:47.060 | about eccentric and concentric loading,
00:43:49.760 | but concentric loading is when you are shortening the muscle
00:43:53.540 | typically, or lifting a weight,
00:43:56.020 | and eccentric movements are when you are lengthening a muscle
00:43:59.360 | typically, or lowering a weight.
00:44:01.640 | So if you do a pull-up and you get your chin over the bar
00:44:04.780 | or a chin-up, that's the concentric portion of the effort.
00:44:08.180 | And then as you lower yourself, that's the eccentric portion.
00:44:11.460 | Eccentric portion of resistance training of any kind,
00:44:15.220 | whether or not it's for endurance or for strength,
00:44:17.260 | is one of the major causes of soreness.
00:44:20.160 | Some people will be more susceptible to this than others,
00:44:25.120 | but it does create more damage in muscle fibers.
00:44:28.920 | Muscular endurance and building muscular endurance
00:44:31.800 | should not include any movements
00:44:33.580 | that include major eccentric loads.
00:44:36.360 | So if you're going to do push-ups,
00:44:38.900 | it doesn't mean that you want to drop,
00:44:40.560 | smash your chest into the floor.
00:44:42.880 | And by the way, your chest should touch the ground
00:44:44.560 | on every push-up.
00:44:45.960 | That's a real push-up, okay?
00:44:47.880 | It's not about breaking 90 with the elbows.
00:44:49.660 | It's about pushing down till your chest touch the floor
00:44:52.180 | and straightening out.
00:44:53.020 | That's a proper push-up.
00:44:54.320 | And a pull-up is where you pull your chin above the bar.
00:44:57.680 | Neither of those should include a slow eccentric
00:45:00.660 | or lowering component if you are using those
00:45:03.680 | to train muscular endurance,
00:45:05.020 | the three to five sets of 12 to 25
00:45:07.660 | and maybe even up to 100 repetitions
00:45:09.740 | with 30 to 180 seconds of rest in between.
00:45:14.040 | That means that jumping also is going to be a very poor tool
00:45:18.760 | for building muscular endurance
00:45:21.480 | because jumping has a slowing down component as you land.
00:45:25.420 | So things like plyometrics or agility work
00:45:28.320 | where you're moving from side to side
00:45:29.680 | and you're decelerating,
00:45:30.760 | you're slowing yourself down a lot,
00:45:32.480 | not going to be good for muscular endurance.
00:45:34.620 | Terrific for cardiovascular training
00:45:37.000 | and conditioning of other kinds
00:45:38.280 | and skill training and agility and all that.
00:45:40.640 | But if you want to build muscular endurance,
00:45:43.600 | you want to make your muscles able
00:45:45.200 | to do more work for longer,
00:45:47.920 | it's going to be this three to five sets of 12 to 100 reps,
00:45:51.840 | 30 to 180 seconds of mainly concentric movement.
00:45:56.640 | Not a slow lowering phase or a heavy lowering phase.
00:46:01.640 | So that might be kettlebell swings and things of that sort.
00:46:05.280 | Isometrics, as I mentioned,
00:46:06.620 | things like plank and wall sits will work.
00:46:08.920 | Now what's interesting about this
00:46:11.000 | is that it doesn't seem at all like what people
00:46:13.880 | normally think of as endurance.
00:46:15.560 | And yet it's been shown
00:46:17.880 | in nice quality peer-reviewed studies,
00:46:20.040 | several of which are cited in the review I mentioned earlier
00:46:23.200 | that muscular endurance can improve our ability
00:46:27.640 | to engage in long bouts of what we call long duration,
00:46:31.580 | low intensity endurance work.
00:46:33.560 | So this can support long runs.
00:46:35.580 | It can support long swims and it can build also,
00:46:40.040 | it can build postural strength and endurance simultaneously.
00:46:45.040 | And that's mainly accomplished through isometric hold.
00:46:48.120 | So things like planks are actually quite good
00:46:51.720 | for building endurance of the spinal erector muscles
00:46:54.360 | that provide posture of the abdominal muscles
00:46:57.520 | that are helpful for posture for being upright,
00:47:00.220 | for the upper neck muscles and things of that sort.
00:47:03.440 | These days, everyone seems to have text neck.
00:47:05.480 | Everyone's basically staring at their toes all the time.
00:47:07.760 | It has a default towards their toes.
00:47:09.560 | So isometric holds can be very good
00:47:11.560 | for building muscular endurance.
00:47:13.760 | You can spot people, including yourself, perhaps,
00:47:17.620 | with poor muscular endurance in the postural muscles
00:47:20.920 | because anytime they stop moving,
00:47:22.640 | they have to lean against a wall
00:47:24.340 | or their hip will move to one side
00:47:26.560 | or they're always leaned to one side.
00:47:28.280 | I am guilty of this too.
00:47:29.860 | Some of you have actually pointed out,
00:47:31.560 | I like to think out of concern,
00:47:33.380 | that I often am rubbing my lower back
00:47:36.240 | and indeed I have some asymmetries in my postural muscles,
00:47:39.000 | some of which are probably genetic
00:47:40.400 | and some of which are probably just from excessive work
00:47:43.280 | or something of that sort,
00:47:44.480 | that have my right shoulder sit lower than my left
00:47:46.960 | and things of that sort.
00:47:47.960 | If I wanted to improve those,
00:47:49.680 | I could improve those by really focusing on symmetry
00:47:52.160 | and isometric, symmetry meaning holding my hands
00:47:55.240 | at equivalent positions in planks
00:47:56.880 | and doing isometric holds for building muscular endurance
00:48:01.160 | of the postural muscles.
00:48:03.080 | But this can also be done with, as I mentioned,
00:48:05.280 | kettlebell swings for the lower back
00:48:06.760 | and legs and posterior chain.
00:48:08.520 | So there are a number of different exercises
00:48:09.840 | you could do this with,
00:48:10.680 | but it should be compound exercises mainly.
00:48:14.200 | It's rare for people to do
00:48:15.980 | this kind of muscular endurance work
00:48:17.900 | specifically for things like bicep curls or triceps.
00:48:21.600 | And there aren't many activities that really rely
00:48:23.960 | on isolation of those muscles repeatedly.
00:48:26.960 | I'm sure there are some out there,
00:48:28.020 | but it's kind of hard to imagine.
00:48:30.180 | So you can do this with isometrics,
00:48:32.560 | you can do this with more standard
00:48:34.840 | non-isometric type movements,
00:48:36.160 | but make sure there isn't a strong eccentric load.
00:48:38.700 | So now let's talk about the science briefly
00:48:40.520 | of why this works.
00:48:42.460 | Well, that takes us back to this issue of fuel utilization
00:48:46.940 | and what fails.
00:48:48.640 | So if we were to say, okay,
00:48:50.640 | let's say you do a plank and you're planking for,
00:48:54.840 | maybe you're able to plank for a minute
00:48:56.340 | or two minutes or three minutes.
00:48:58.320 | At some point you will fail.
00:48:59.980 | You're not going to fail because the heart gives out.
00:49:02.300 | You're not going to fail because you can't get enough oxygen
00:49:05.640 | because you can breathe while you're doing that.
00:49:07.540 | You're going to fail because of local muscular failure,
00:49:10.160 | which means that as you do,
00:49:11.760 | if you choose to do this protocol of three to five sets,
00:49:15.220 | et cetera, et cetera, to build muscular endurance,
00:49:18.720 | mainly what you are going to be building
00:49:21.720 | is you're going to be building the ability
00:49:24.240 | of your mitochondria to use oxygen
00:49:27.400 | to generate energy locally.
00:49:29.240 | And that it's something called mitochondrial respiration,
00:49:32.560 | respiration because of the involvement of oxygen.
00:49:36.220 | And it's also going to be increasing the extent
00:49:41.160 | to which the neurons control the muscles
00:49:44.660 | and provide a stimulus for the muscles to contract.
00:49:48.320 | But this is independent of power and strength, okay?
00:49:51.520 | So even though the low sets like three to five sets
00:49:55.320 | and the fact that you're doing repetitions
00:49:57.300 | and you're going to failure,
00:49:59.040 | even though it seems to resemble power and strength
00:50:02.180 | and hypertrophy type training, it is distinctly different.
00:50:04.980 | It's not going to generate strength, hypertrophy, and power.
00:50:08.240 | It's going to mainly create this ability to endure,
00:50:11.640 | to continually contract muscles
00:50:13.720 | or repeatedly contract muscles, okay?
00:50:16.240 | Continually, if you're using isometric holds,
00:50:18.400 | repeatedly, excuse me,
00:50:20.160 | if you're using repetition type exercise
00:50:23.480 | where there's a contraction and an extension of the muscle,
00:50:27.680 | essentially concentric and an eccentric portion.
00:50:30.800 | But remember that you want the eccentric portion
00:50:33.100 | to be light and relatively fast,
00:50:36.320 | not so fast that you injure yourself,
00:50:37.620 | but certainly not deliberately slowed down.
00:50:40.740 | It was recommended, I should say, by Andy Galpin
00:50:45.740 | that you not use Olympic lifts for this
00:50:48.820 | because once you get past eight or 12 or 25 repetitions,
00:50:53.020 | especially form on those Olympic lifts
00:50:55.640 | is key for not getting injured.
00:50:57.960 | And while some people can perform those sorts of lifts
00:51:01.020 | like snatches and deadlifts and cleans and jerks
00:51:03.760 | and overhead presses, probably not a great idea
00:51:07.520 | if the goal is to push the body to points of fatigue
00:51:11.180 | because you do open yourself up to injury
00:51:12.920 | unless you're very skilled at doing that
00:51:14.480 | or you have a really good coach
00:51:15.580 | who can help you guide through those lifts.
00:51:17.880 | So that's one form of endurance,
00:51:19.760 | which is muscular endurance,
00:51:20.840 | and it's mainly going to rely on neural energy,
00:51:24.180 | so nerves and muscle.
00:51:26.880 | And it's not going to rely quite so much
00:51:28.880 | on what's available in your blood,
00:51:30.640 | your heart, or your lungs.
00:51:32.600 | So now let's talk about the other extreme of endurance,
00:51:35.640 | which is long duration endurance.
00:51:38.280 | This is the type that people typically think about
00:51:41.160 | when they think about endurance.
00:51:42.960 | You're talking about a long run, a long swim,
00:51:46.600 | a long bike ride.
00:51:47.920 | Well, how long?
00:51:49.080 | Well, anywhere from 12 minutes to several hours
00:51:53.600 | or maybe even an entire day,
00:51:55.020 | maybe eight or nine hours of hiking or running or biking.
00:51:58.500 | Some people are actually doing those kinds
00:51:59.740 | of really long events, marathons, for instance.
00:52:02.680 | So anything longer than 12 minutes.
00:52:05.400 | And this type of work builds on fuel utilization
00:52:10.400 | in the muscles.
00:52:12.360 | It builds on the activity of neurons in the brain
00:52:15.700 | that are involved in what we call central pattern generators.
00:52:18.720 | We talked about this in a previous episode
00:52:21.120 | or several previous episodes.
00:52:22.520 | These are groups of neurons that allow our body
00:52:24.740 | to engage in regular rhythmic effort
00:52:27.320 | without having to think about the movement too much.
00:52:29.700 | So running and stepping or swimming,
00:52:31.740 | if you already know how to swim or pedaling on a bike
00:52:34.400 | or walking up stairs and hiking,
00:52:36.000 | you're not thinking about right, left, right, left.
00:52:38.760 | It's all carried out by central pattern generators.
00:52:42.100 | This is going to be at less than 100%
00:52:45.440 | of your maximum oxygen uptake, your VO2 max.
00:52:48.760 | I'll talk about what VO2 max is,
00:52:50.520 | but I just want to give a sense of what the protocol is
00:52:52.700 | and the underlying science.
00:52:54.760 | How many sets?
00:52:56.600 | One.
00:52:57.480 | Long duration effort is one set of 12 minutes or longer.
00:53:02.480 | So you're not counting repetitions.
00:53:04.160 | I sure hope that if you're going out on a 30 minute run
00:53:06.320 | or even a 15 minute run, that you're not counting steps,
00:53:10.140 | that you're not counting pedal strokes,
00:53:11.760 | that you're not on the rower counting pulls on the rower.
00:53:15.660 | I suppose you could,
00:53:16.640 | but I think that would be pretty dreadful.
00:53:18.800 | Seems like a poor utilization of cognitive brain space.
00:53:22.460 | You're getting into regular repeated effort
00:53:25.920 | and your ability to continue that effort
00:53:29.680 | is going to be dependent mainly
00:53:31.800 | on the efficiency of the movement,
00:53:34.040 | on your ability to strike a balance
00:53:36.480 | between the movement itself,
00:53:40.020 | the generation of the muscular movements that are required
00:53:43.740 | and fuel utilization across the different sources
00:53:47.900 | of nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs.
00:53:50.240 | So let's ask the question,
00:53:51.160 | why would you fail on a long run?
00:53:53.120 | Why would you quit?
00:53:54.500 | Well, as you set out on that long run,
00:53:57.100 | assuming you have some glycogen in your liver
00:53:58.860 | and in your muscles, you're going to use that energy first,
00:54:01.360 | even if it's very low intensity.
00:54:03.200 | Okay, so we're not talking about sprinting,
00:54:04.420 | we're talking about heading out the door
00:54:06.760 | or starting off on a marathon.
00:54:09.280 | You're starting to, assuming you have some conditioning
00:54:11.340 | or even if you don't, you're going to burn carbohydrate.
00:54:13.600 | You're going to burn glucose in the bloodstream.
00:54:15.280 | You're going to burn carbohydrate
00:54:16.520 | as those muscles contract,
00:54:17.680 | those what we call slow twitch muscles.
00:54:19.060 | They're contracting, they start burning up fuel
00:54:21.360 | to make ATP to continue to contract.
00:54:23.920 | Your mind is going to use more or less energy
00:54:29.400 | depending on how much willpower,
00:54:32.000 | how much of a fight you have to get into with yourself
00:54:34.600 | in order to generate the effort.
00:54:36.120 | I really want to underscore this.
00:54:37.720 | If you're somebody that's thinking,
00:54:38.800 | maybe I go for the run, maybe I don't go for the run
00:54:40.600 | and I'll do it at two o'clock, okay, 2.05.
00:54:42.280 | No, I only want to go on the half hour
00:54:43.920 | or maybe on the main hour.
00:54:45.040 | And you're going through all that, guess what?
00:54:47.100 | You're burning up useful energy that you could use
00:54:50.840 | either for the run, for example, or for something else.
00:54:55.020 | When we think about something hard, when we ruminate,
00:54:58.260 | when we perseverate on an idea or on a decision,
00:55:02.800 | we are burning neural energy and neural energy is glucose
00:55:06.920 | and epinephrine and all the things we talked about before.
00:55:10.440 | So willpower in part is the ability to devote resources
00:55:16.720 | to things and part of that is making decisions
00:55:19.440 | to just either do it or not do it.
00:55:21.400 | I'm not of the just do it mindset.
00:55:23.380 | I think there's a right time and a place to train,
00:55:25.720 | but I also think that it is not good.
00:55:29.140 | In other words, it utilizes excessive resources
00:55:32.400 | to churn over decisions excessively.
00:55:35.420 | And you probably burn as much cognitive energy
00:55:39.280 | deciding about whether or not to do a given training or not
00:55:42.140 | as you do in the actual training, okay?
00:55:45.620 | So we'll talk more about how this long duration effort
00:55:47.980 | can relate to mental performance,
00:55:49.700 | but the long duration effort should be one set,
00:55:52.180 | 12 minutes or longer.
00:55:53.600 | It could go for 30 minutes or 60 minutes or an hour.
00:55:56.620 | We'll talk about programming later in the episode.
00:55:59.080 | This is going to be less than 100%
00:56:00.720 | of your maximum oxygen uptake.
00:56:03.460 | Your heart rate is not going to be through the ceiling
00:56:05.360 | or maxed out, but it's all about efficiency of movement.
00:56:09.560 | That's what you're building.
00:56:11.000 | When you go out for a run that's 30 minutes,
00:56:12.920 | you are building the capacity to repeat that performance
00:56:17.920 | the next time while being more efficient,
00:56:20.880 | actually burning less fuel.
00:56:23.360 | And that might seem a little bit counterintuitive,
00:56:25.740 | but every time you do that run,
00:56:28.360 | what you're doing is you're building up
00:56:30.240 | mitochondrial density.
00:56:32.080 | It's not so much about mitochondrial oxidation
00:56:35.500 | and respiration.
00:56:36.880 | You're building up mitochondrial density.
00:56:39.240 | You're actually increasing the amount of ATP
00:56:41.920 | that you can create for a given bout of effort.
00:56:45.140 | You're becoming more efficient, okay?
00:56:47.760 | You're burning less fuel overall, doing the same thing.
00:56:51.960 | That's really what these long slow distance
00:56:54.080 | or long bouts of effort are really all about.
00:56:56.580 | Now, why do this long duration effort?
00:56:58.620 | Why would you want to do it?
00:56:59.800 | Why is it good for you?
00:57:00.820 | Well, it does something very important,
00:57:04.500 | which is that it builds the capillary beds within muscles.
00:57:08.440 | So let's talk a little bit about vasculature.
00:57:10.280 | We haven't done this too much yet,
00:57:13.040 | but if you have seen the episode
00:57:15.540 | on supercharging performance,
00:57:16.900 | we talked about AVAs, these arteriovenous ostomoses,
00:57:21.560 | where blood moves from arteries directly into veins,
00:57:26.560 | but that's unusual.
00:57:28.660 | That only takes place in the so-called glabrous skin
00:57:33.160 | of the palms, the face, and the bottoms of the feet.
00:57:36.520 | Typically, for most all other areas of the body,
00:57:40.560 | what happens is arteries bring blood
00:57:44.280 | to a given tissue, like a muscle,
00:57:46.440 | and veins return that blood back to the heart.
00:57:50.720 | There are exceptions, but in general.
00:57:52.520 | And in between arteries and veins are these little tiny,
00:57:56.060 | what are called capillary beds or microcapillaries.
00:57:58.760 | So these are tiny little avenues,
00:58:00.600 | like little tiny streams and estuaries
00:58:02.880 | between the bigger arteries and veins.
00:58:05.440 | Now, those are actually contained within muscle,
00:58:10.160 | and what's amazing is that you can increase
00:58:12.600 | the number of them.
00:58:13.720 | You can literally build new capillaries.
00:58:15.680 | You can create new little streams within your muscles.
00:58:19.560 | And the type of long-duration effort
00:58:21.840 | that I was talking about before,
00:58:23.080 | 12 minutes or more of steady effort,
00:58:26.040 | is very useful for doing that,
00:58:29.160 | and is very useful for increasing the mitochondria,
00:58:32.720 | the energy-producing elements of the cells,
00:58:35.720 | the actual muscle cells.
00:58:37.880 | And the reason is when blood arrives to muscles,
00:58:42.880 | it has oxygen.
00:58:44.520 | The muscles are going to use some of that oxygen,
00:58:46.560 | and then some of the deoxygenated blood
00:58:48.480 | is going to be sent back to the heart and to the lungs.
00:58:51.880 | Now, the more capillaries that you build into those muscles,
00:58:55.960 | the more oxygen available to those muscles.
00:58:59.800 | I don't want to get too much into the physics of fluid flow,
00:59:02.960 | but basically it's the difference between taking a hose
00:59:05.760 | and sticking it into some dirt just directly,
00:59:09.600 | and turning on the faucet at a given rate,
00:59:12.500 | the spigot, rather, or having a bunch of little hoses,
00:59:16.040 | like a sprinkler system,
00:59:17.120 | that go out and irrigate the whole yard.
00:59:19.260 | The irrigation is equivalent to this capillary bed system,
00:59:22.640 | and it's very good at using energy sources within blood.
00:59:27.420 | So the simple way to think about this is
00:59:29.820 | when you go out for a run,
00:59:31.080 | let's say it's the first run you've done for a while,
00:59:32.760 | and you go out for 12 or 15 minutes,
00:59:34.660 | and somewhere right around 20 minutes, you're like,
00:59:36.920 | "That's it, I just can't continue."
00:59:38.960 | Well, when you come back the next time to do that run,
00:59:42.140 | you've built endurance,
00:59:44.440 | largely because you've built these capillary beds.
00:59:48.220 | You've expanded these little streams
00:59:50.260 | in which blood can deliver oxygen to the muscles.
00:59:52.920 | And so it's going to feel relatively straightforward
00:59:55.680 | to either go a little bit quicker for the same duration,
00:59:58.800 | the same distance,
00:59:59.960 | or to extend that run for another five to 10 minutes.
01:00:04.220 | So this long duration work, unlike muscular endurance,
01:00:07.480 | like planks and everything that we were talking about before
01:00:10.580 | is really about building the capillary systems
01:00:13.300 | and the mitochondria, the energy utilization systems,
01:00:16.660 | within the muscles themselves.
01:00:18.920 | And that's very important to understand.
01:00:21.180 | It's distinctly different than, say,
01:00:23.080 | building the neurons that fire the muscles.
01:00:25.220 | The neurons are already there.
01:00:26.480 | They're going to fire those muscles just fine.
01:00:28.420 | In fact, if your life depended on it today,
01:00:30.640 | you could probably run a marathon.
01:00:32.340 | You'd probably get injured.
01:00:33.380 | It would be very psychologically and physically painful.
01:00:35.560 | I don't recommend you do that unless you're trained for it.
01:00:37.960 | But if you were to train properly for it,
01:00:39.900 | if you were to do long duration bouts of effort
01:00:42.620 | once or twice a week or three times a week,
01:00:44.960 | pretty soon it would become easy
01:00:46.420 | because you're building these vascular microbeds
01:00:49.080 | or microvascular beds, as they're called, okay?
01:00:51.800 | So you're able to bring more energy to the muscles,
01:00:54.660 | and they're able to utilize more energy.
01:00:56.940 | So that's long duration.
01:00:58.600 | So we've got muscular endurance
01:00:59.660 | and we've got long duration endurance.
01:01:01.380 | And then there are two kinds in between
01:01:04.340 | that in recent years have gotten a lot of attention
01:01:07.460 | and excitement, but most people are not distinguishing
01:01:10.240 | between these two kinds of endurance.
01:01:13.660 | And that's a shame because in failing to distinguish
01:01:17.020 | between the two kinds of what we call
01:01:18.500 | high intensity training,
01:01:20.220 | sometimes called high intensity interval training,
01:01:23.260 | most people, perhaps you,
01:01:25.340 | are not getting nearly as much physical and mental benefit
01:01:29.740 | out of high intensity training as you could.
01:01:32.100 | So I want to talk about the two kinds
01:01:33.700 | of high intensity interval training
01:01:36.020 | and what each of them does for your brain and body
01:01:38.840 | and what sorts of adaptations they cause.
01:01:41.520 | Because in doing that, you can really start
01:01:44.220 | to build up specific energy systems in your brain and body
01:01:48.020 | in ways that best serve you for your cognitive work
01:01:52.540 | and for other sorts of things like strength and speed
01:01:55.860 | or hypertrophy or for running marathons for that matter.
01:01:59.580 | So there are two kinds of high intensity training
01:02:02.660 | for endurance,
01:02:03.580 | sometimes called high intensity interval training.
01:02:06.200 | One is anaerobic, so-called anaerobic endurance,
01:02:11.380 | so no oxygen, and the other is aerobic endurance,
01:02:14.620 | both of which qualify as HIIT,
01:02:17.840 | high intensity interval training.
01:02:19.100 | So let's talk about anaerobic endurance first.
01:02:22.720 | Anaerobic endurance, from a protocol perspective,
01:02:26.600 | is going to be three to 12 sets, okay?
01:02:31.600 | And these repetitions,
01:02:34.680 | and I'll talk about what the repetitions are,
01:02:37.120 | are going to be performed at whatever speed allows you
01:02:41.000 | to complete the work in good, safe form, okay?
01:02:44.680 | So it could be fast, could be slow.
01:02:46.520 | As the work continues, your repetitions may slow down
01:02:50.440 | or it may speed up, chances are it's going to slow down.
01:02:52.960 | So what does this work?
01:02:54.740 | What do these sets look like?
01:02:56.160 | Remember, long, slow distance is one set.
01:02:59.020 | Muscular endurance is three to five sets.
01:03:01.000 | High intensity anaerobic endurance is going to be somewhere
01:03:04.420 | between three and 12 sets.
01:03:07.260 | And it's going to have a ratio of work to rest
01:03:11.540 | of anywhere from three to one to one to five, okay?
01:03:16.480 | So what would a three to one ratio set look like?
01:03:20.840 | Well, it's going to be 30 seconds of hard pedaling
01:03:24.160 | on the bike, for instance, or running or on the rower.
01:03:28.640 | These are just examples.
01:03:29.800 | It could be in the pool swimming.
01:03:31.240 | It could be any number of things or air squats
01:03:33.320 | or weighted squats, if you will,
01:03:35.760 | provided you can manage that.
01:03:38.480 | 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off.
01:03:41.400 | That's a very brief rest.
01:03:43.200 | So three to one is just a good example
01:03:45.360 | would be 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off.
01:03:47.440 | The opposite extreme on that ratio would be one to five,
01:03:52.440 | so 20 seconds on, 100 seconds off.
01:03:55.320 | So you do the work for 20 seconds,
01:03:57.440 | then you rest 100 seconds.
01:03:59.240 | Now, what's the difference?
01:04:01.200 | Should you do three to one ratio,
01:04:03.620 | so 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off?
01:04:05.960 | Or should you do one to five,
01:04:08.000 | 20 seconds on to 100 seconds off?
01:04:10.240 | Well, that will depend on whether or not
01:04:13.200 | the quality of the movement is important to you.
01:04:16.680 | So let's just take a look at the three to one ratio.
01:04:19.240 | So in the three to one ratio,
01:04:21.520 | if you're going to do 30 seconds of hard pedaling on a bike
01:04:25.140 | followed by 10 seconds,
01:04:26.200 | so maybe one of these, what they call assault bikes,
01:04:28.600 | and then you stop for 10 seconds and then repeat,
01:04:31.080 | chances are you will be able to do one, two, three, four,
01:04:36.080 | maybe even as many as 12 sets
01:04:39.160 | if you're really in good condition,
01:04:41.240 | that you'll be able to do all those
01:04:42.440 | because pedaling on the bike doesn't require a ton of skill.
01:04:45.480 | And if you do it incorrectly,
01:04:47.920 | if your elbow flares out a little bit or something,
01:04:49.800 | it's very unlikely that you'll get injured
01:04:51.520 | unless it's really extreme, okay?
01:04:54.120 | But the same movement done, for instance, with kettlebells,
01:04:57.200 | so 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off,
01:04:59.360 | the first set will probably be in good form.
01:05:02.160 | The second one will be in pretty good form.
01:05:03.900 | But let's say you're getting to the fifth and sixth set
01:05:05.640 | and you're going 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off,
01:05:07.740 | chances are the quality of your repetitions
01:05:10.560 | will degrade significantly
01:05:11.900 | and you increase the probability
01:05:13.220 | that you're going to get injured
01:05:15.020 | or that you're going to damage yourself in some way
01:05:18.040 | or that you can't complete the movement
01:05:20.060 | or that some smaller muscles
01:05:21.460 | like your grip muscles might give out, okay?
01:05:24.040 | So the quality of repetitions is going to drop considerably
01:05:28.380 | with the three to one approach.
01:05:30.040 | If you're just doing it for effort,
01:05:32.600 | and we'll talk about what this builds in your system
01:05:34.640 | in a moment, that's fine.
01:05:36.240 | But for most people, if quality of form is important,
01:05:41.300 | so maybe this is using weights, maybe you're doing squats,
01:05:44.640 | so you're going to do 20 seconds on
01:05:45.860 | and 100 seconds of rest.
01:05:47.540 | Maybe it's even a barbell-loaded squat.
01:05:49.280 | Maybe you're doing kettlebells.
01:05:50.800 | Maybe you've got some other resistance there
01:05:53.920 | that's allowing you to do this.
01:05:55.680 | What you'll find is that the longer rest,
01:05:57.580 | even though it's 20 seconds of intense effort
01:06:00.280 | followed by a longer rest of about 100 seconds
01:06:02.440 | will allow you to perform more quality repetitions
01:06:05.540 | safely over time.
01:06:07.760 | So what does building anaerobic endurance look like?
01:06:12.760 | And then I'll tell you what it's actually good for
01:06:15.340 | in the true practical sense.
01:06:17.680 | What anaerobic endurance exercise generally looks like
01:06:22.420 | is that if you decide to do this for the first week,
01:06:25.100 | you might do this two or three times a week,
01:06:27.100 | maybe even just once a week,
01:06:28.580 | depending on the other things you're doing.
01:06:29.860 | We'll talk about programming at the end.
01:06:31.820 | And you would generate just three sets.
01:06:34.080 | So it might be three sets of 20 seconds of hard effort
01:06:37.460 | followed by 100 seconds rest.
01:06:39.380 | Then you repeat 20 seconds of hard effort,
01:06:40.960 | 100 seconds rest, 20 seconds of effort, 100 seconds rest.
01:06:44.260 | And you might do that twice a week.
01:06:46.300 | And then each week you're adding one or two sets.
01:06:49.660 | In doing that,
01:06:51.800 | you will build up what we call anaerobic endurance.
01:06:54.780 | What is anaerobic endurance?
01:06:56.780 | Well, let's ask why we fail.
01:06:59.340 | Anaerobic endurance is going to be taking your system
01:07:03.880 | into greater than 100% of your VO2 max.
01:07:08.420 | It's going to be taking your heart rate up very high
01:07:11.360 | and it's going to maximize your oxygen utilization systems.
01:07:17.340 | That is going to have effects that are going to lead
01:07:22.420 | to fatigue at some point in the workout.
01:07:24.640 | And that fatigue will trigger an adaptation.
01:07:27.200 | So let's ask what adaptation it's triggering.
01:07:30.300 | Well, it's triggering both mitochondrial respiration,
01:07:35.080 | the ability of your mitochondria to generate more energy
01:07:38.200 | by using more oxygen because you're bringing so much,
01:07:40.800 | you're maxing out,
01:07:41.860 | literally you're getting above your VO2 max.
01:07:44.200 | You're hitting that threshold of how much oxygen
01:07:46.640 | you can use in your system.
01:07:48.000 | One of the adaptations will be that your mitochondria
01:07:50.680 | will shift such that they can use more oxygen.
01:07:55.340 | And you're going to also increase the capillary beds,
01:08:00.040 | but not as much as you're going to be able
01:08:02.900 | to increase the amount of neuron engagement of muscle.
01:08:07.580 | So normally when we start to hit fatigue,
01:08:09.980 | when we're exhausted, when we're breathing really hard,
01:08:12.760 | because the systems of the body are linked
01:08:14.380 | and there's a mental component to this as well,
01:08:16.460 | a kind of motivational component,
01:08:18.800 | after that third or fourth or sixth set
01:08:21.240 | of 20 seconds on, 100 seconds off,
01:08:23.580 | or if you're at the other extreme,
01:08:24.640 | 30 seconds on and 10 seconds off,
01:08:26.780 | there's going to be a component of you want to stop
01:08:29.840 | and by pushing through and repeating another set safely,
01:08:32.940 | of course, what you're doing is you're training the neurons
01:08:37.420 | to be able to access more energy,
01:08:40.540 | literally convert that into ATP
01:08:42.480 | and for the muscles therefore to access more energy in ATP.
01:08:45.920 | And the adaptation is in the mitochondria's ability
01:08:49.480 | to use oxygen.
01:08:50.920 | And this has tremendous carry over effects
01:08:53.480 | for other types of exercise.
01:08:55.720 | So while I know and appreciate that people
01:08:58.280 | are using high intensity interval training of this kind
01:09:00.840 | or similar in order to just like burn fat,
01:09:04.900 | do their workouts, quote unquote,
01:09:06.600 | it's very useful for building a capacity
01:09:11.020 | to engage in short bouts of effort repeatedly,
01:09:14.540 | to really lock in, I don't want to use the word focus
01:09:17.440 | because it's not strictly mental focus,
01:09:18.960 | but to be able to generate short bouts of very intense work.
01:09:23.960 | This can be beneficial in competitive sports or team sports
01:09:27.520 | where there's a sprinting component,
01:09:28.840 | where the field opens up and you need to dribble the ball
01:09:30.720 | down the field, for instance, and shoot on goal,
01:09:33.000 | or where you're playing tennis and it's a long rally
01:09:35.640 | and then all of a sudden somebody really starts,
01:09:38.560 | you know, putting you back on your heels
01:09:40.180 | and you have to really make the maximum amount of effort
01:09:42.880 | to run to the net and to get the ball across the net,
01:09:45.400 | things of that sort, okay?
01:09:48.200 | There are a variety of places where there's carry over
01:09:50.280 | from this type of training, but it does support endurance.
01:09:53.720 | It's about muscle endurance.
01:09:55.120 | It's about these muscles ability to generate a lot of force
01:09:58.820 | in the short term, but repeatedly, okay?
01:10:01.200 | So that's the way to conceptualize this.
01:10:03.040 | And it is different than maximum power,
01:10:05.520 | even though it feels like maximum effort,
01:10:07.640 | it is not the same as building power and speed into muscles.
01:10:10.880 | Those are distinctly different protocols.
01:10:13.220 | So the key elements again,
01:10:15.440 | are that you're bringing your breathing
01:10:18.280 | and your oxygen utilization way up above your max.
01:10:22.280 | It's not quite hitting failure,
01:10:24.460 | but you're really pushing the system
01:10:26.680 | to the point where you are not ready to do another set
01:10:29.760 | and yet you begin another set.
01:10:31.280 | You're not necessarily psychologically ready.
01:10:33.800 | I'll talk more about some of the adaptations
01:10:35.620 | that this causes in terms of stroke volume in a few minutes.
01:10:39.000 | When we talk about how it is that work of this sort
01:10:42.140 | can increase our heart's ability to deliver blood and oxygen
01:10:45.740 | to our lungs and other tissues.
01:10:47.160 | I'm going to get very specific about how to breathe
01:10:50.060 | during these different types of protocols
01:10:51.840 | and what's happening at the level of the heart,
01:10:53.360 | but I want to make sure I touch on the fourth protocol,
01:10:55.820 | which is high-intensity aerobic conditioning.
01:10:59.080 | So HIIT has these two forms, anaerobic and aerobic,
01:11:02.160 | and you just heard about anaerobic.
01:11:04.880 | High-intensity aerobic conditioning
01:11:07.360 | also involves about three to 12 sets,
01:11:10.100 | starting off of course with fewer sets
01:11:13.580 | as you're getting into this training
01:11:14.780 | and then extending into more sets
01:11:17.040 | as one parameter you could expand,
01:11:19.420 | has again the same ratio of three to one,
01:11:22.400 | so 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off, or one to five,
01:11:24.920 | 20 seconds on, 100 seconds off,
01:11:26.720 | or a very powerful tool for building up aerobic conditioning
01:11:30.080 | is a one-to-one ratio.
01:11:32.820 | A one-to-one ratio is powerful for building on average
01:11:37.820 | most of the energy systems involving,
01:11:42.000 | remember we had these nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs.
01:11:46.240 | A one-to-one ratio might be you run a mile
01:11:50.800 | and however long that takes, let's say it takes you
01:11:52.880 | six minutes or seven minutes,
01:11:54.240 | then you rest for an equivalent amount of time,
01:11:56.660 | then you repeat and then you rest
01:12:00.300 | for an equivalent amount of time.
01:12:01.400 | So you might run first miles, let's say seven minutes,
01:12:04.360 | then you rest for seven minutes, then you run a mile again,
01:12:06.480 | and it might take eight minutes
01:12:08.440 | and you rest for eight minutes.
01:12:09.360 | And you continue that for a total of four miles of work,
01:12:13.200 | for four miles of running work, I should say,
01:12:16.440 | or seven miles of work.
01:12:17.880 | You can build this up.
01:12:19.020 | Many people find that using this type of training
01:12:22.540 | allows them to do things like go run half marathons
01:12:26.100 | and marathons, even though prior to the race date,
01:12:29.560 | they've never actually run a half marathon or marathon.
01:12:32.720 | Now that might seem incredible.
01:12:34.760 | It's like, how could it be that running a mile on
01:12:37.280 | and then resting for, running a mile
01:12:39.600 | and then resting for an equivalent amount of time,
01:12:41.500 | running a mile, resting for equivalent amount of time
01:12:43.620 | for seven miles allows you to run continuously
01:12:46.900 | for 13 miles or for 26 miles.
01:12:50.400 | Well, I'm not discouraging people
01:12:52.200 | from ever doing the long duration endurance.
01:12:54.660 | I think that is very important,
01:12:56.420 | but it's because it builds up
01:12:58.840 | so many of these energy utilization systems.
01:13:01.760 | It really teaches you to engage, excuse me,
01:13:04.620 | the nerve to muscle firing.
01:13:06.780 | It improves ATP and mitochondrial function in muscle.
01:13:11.780 | It allows the blood to deliver more oxygen
01:13:15.360 | to the muscle and to your brain.
01:13:17.900 | And I'll explain how that is.
01:13:19.820 | And it allows your heart to deliver more oxygen overall.
01:13:24.420 | And it builds a tremendous lung capacity.
01:13:26.620 | And we will talk about exactly how to breathe
01:13:28.520 | and how to build lung capacity,
01:13:30.380 | both for sake of warming up and for performance.
01:13:32.680 | So what would this look like and when should you do this?
01:13:35.920 | Well, it's really a question for these workouts
01:13:39.500 | of asking how much work can one do in eight to 12 minutes?
01:13:43.820 | And then rest and then repeat.
01:13:45.540 | How much work can you do for eight to 12 minutes,
01:13:47.260 | then rest and then repeat?
01:13:48.200 | And how many times should you do this?
01:13:50.120 | Well, this is the sort of thing, it's pretty intense.
01:13:53.060 | And so you would probably only want to do this
01:13:55.360 | two, maybe three times a week
01:13:57.240 | if you're not doing many other things.
01:13:58.780 | I will talk about how this program
01:14:00.380 | can be moved in with other forms of training,
01:14:02.620 | but I'll just give you a little hint now.
01:14:04.480 | It's very clear and it's described
01:14:07.680 | in the review article referred to,
01:14:09.860 | and we will link another article as well,
01:14:12.300 | that concurrent training, doing strength training
01:14:14.860 | and the endurance training of any of the four kinds
01:14:17.280 | that I'm describing today can be done.
01:14:19.740 | You can program those in the same week,
01:14:21.700 | but you want to get four and ideally six
01:14:24.940 | or even better 24 hours between these workouts,
01:14:28.260 | because it is very hard for instance,
01:14:30.700 | to do a one-to-one mile repeats,
01:14:33.380 | like run a mile, rest for equivalent time,
01:14:35.200 | run a mile, rest for equivalent time,
01:14:36.840 | to do that two or three times a week
01:14:38.540 | and also do weight training before
01:14:40.380 | or do a long run afterwards.
01:14:42.340 | That would quickly lead to breakdown for most people,
01:14:45.080 | unless you have very, very good energy utilization systems,
01:14:48.940 | you're a really kind of advanced or elite athlete
01:14:52.060 | and or dare I say you're using tools
01:14:55.460 | to enhance your performance at the level of blood
01:14:57.680 | or hormones and I'm actually going to talk about those
01:14:59.620 | at the end and why they work.
01:15:01.540 | So we have four kinds of endurance, muscular endurance,
01:15:04.340 | we have long duration endurance,
01:15:05.940 | we have high intensity interval training of two kinds,
01:15:08.100 | anaerobic and aerobic and this last type,
01:15:10.940 | the aerobic one works best it seems
01:15:13.780 | if you kind of do this one-to-one ratio.
01:15:15.500 | So how would you use these and what are they actually doing?
01:15:18.300 | Let's talk about the heart and the lungs and oxygen,
01:15:21.840 | because that's something that we can all benefit
01:15:24.500 | from understanding and it will become very clear
01:15:27.940 | in that discussion why this type of training is very useful,
01:15:31.260 | even for non-athletes in order to improve oxygenation
01:15:34.780 | and energy utilization of the brain and the heart.
01:15:38.500 | The brain and the heart
01:15:39.540 | are probably the two most important systems
01:15:41.420 | that you need to take care of in your life.
01:15:43.300 | Yes, your musculature needs to be maintained,
01:15:46.120 | if you want to build it, that's up to you,
01:15:47.940 | but you should try and maintain your musculature,
01:15:50.020 | but maintaining or enhancing a brain function
01:15:52.980 | and cardiovascular function,
01:15:54.740 | it's absolutely clear our key for health and longevity
01:15:58.100 | in the short and long term
01:15:59.260 | and the sorts of training I talked about today
01:16:01.180 | has been shown again and again and again
01:16:03.180 | to be very useful for enhancing the strength of the mind,
01:16:07.640 | yes, I'll talk about that,
01:16:09.220 | as well as the health of the brain and the body.
01:16:12.540 | So let's talk about the sorts of adaptations
01:16:14.500 | that are happening in your brain and body
01:16:16.080 | that are so beneficial in these different forms of training.
01:16:19.940 | If you are breathing hard and your heart is beating hard,
01:16:23.120 | so this would be certainly in the high intensity anaerobic
01:16:27.540 | and aerobic conditioning,
01:16:28.660 | 'cause you're getting up near your VO2 max
01:16:30.820 | in high intensity aerobic conditioning
01:16:32.940 | and you're exceeding your VO2 max
01:16:34.820 | in high intensity anaerobic conditioning,
01:16:38.700 | what's going to happen is,
01:16:39.780 | as of course your heart beats faster,
01:16:42.320 | your blood is going to be circulating faster in principle,
01:16:46.140 | oxygen utilization in muscles is going to go up
01:16:50.220 | and over time, not long, very quickly what will happen
01:16:55.500 | when those capillary beds start to expand,
01:16:57.820 | we talked about that,
01:17:00.340 | but in addition, because of the amount of blood
01:17:05.300 | that's being returned to the heart
01:17:07.220 | when you engage in these really intense bouts of effort,
01:17:10.560 | repeatedly, the amount of blood being returned to the heart
01:17:14.840 | actually causes an eccentric loading
01:17:18.140 | of one of the muscular walls of the heart.
01:17:21.500 | So your heart is muscle, it's cardiac muscle,
01:17:23.880 | we have skeletal muscle attached to our bones
01:17:25.380 | and we have cardiac muscle, which is our heart.
01:17:28.340 | When more blood is being returned to the heart
01:17:31.100 | because of the additional work
01:17:32.700 | that your muscles and nerves are doing,
01:17:35.840 | it actually has the effect of creating an eccentric loading,
01:17:40.740 | a kind of pushing of the wall, the left wall,
01:17:45.740 | I realize I'm not using the strict anatomy here,
01:17:48.000 | but I don't want to get into all the features
01:17:49.960 | of the structural features of the heart,
01:17:52.540 | but the left ventricle essentially getting slammed back
01:17:58.000 | and then having to push back
01:18:00.540 | in a kind of eccentric loading of the cardiac muscle
01:18:03.180 | and the muscle thickens,
01:18:05.160 | but not because the heart thickens overall,
01:18:09.020 | it's actually a strengthening of the cardiac muscle
01:18:11.980 | in a way that increases what we call stroke volume,
01:18:15.100 | meaning as more blood is returned to the heart,
01:18:18.000 | there's an adaptation
01:18:19.060 | where the heart muscle actually gets stronger
01:18:21.980 | and therefore can pump more blood per stroke, per beat.
01:18:26.340 | And as it does that, it delivers,
01:18:29.860 | because blood contains glucose and oxygen and other things,
01:18:34.080 | it delivers more fuel to your muscles,
01:18:36.420 | which allows you to do yet more work per unit time, okay?
01:18:40.320 | So when we hear that, oh, so-and-so has a,
01:18:43.620 | or maybe you have a nice low heart rate
01:18:46.780 | that maybe you're one of these really extreme folks
01:18:48.980 | like 30 or 40 beats per minute,
01:18:50.600 | although most people are sitting at 50, 60, 70, 80,
01:18:53.080 | that's your resting heart rate.
01:18:54.680 | If you exercise regularly
01:18:56.160 | and you do long duration aerobic work,
01:18:59.000 | your heart rate will start to go down,
01:19:01.780 | your resting heart rate,
01:19:02.860 | it will increase the stroke volume of your heart.
01:19:05.380 | If you do this high intensity type training
01:19:07.560 | where your heart is beating very hard,
01:19:09.340 | so maybe the one-to-one ratio mile run repeats
01:19:12.760 | that I described a minute ago,
01:19:14.060 | let's say you do that twice a week for three or four,
01:19:17.220 | and I said it could go all the way up to 12 sets,
01:19:20.100 | which is a lot, I don't recommend people start there,
01:19:22.520 | pretty soon the stroke volume of your heart
01:19:25.180 | will really increase,
01:19:26.240 | and as a consequence, you can deliver more fuel
01:19:28.860 | to your muscles and to your brain,
01:19:31.440 | and you will notice that you can do more work,
01:19:35.440 | meaning you can do the same work you were doing a few days
01:19:37.600 | or weeks ago with relative ease,
01:19:40.200 | your cognitive functioning will improve.
01:19:42.880 | This has been shown again and again
01:19:44.780 | because there's an increase in vasculature,
01:19:46.960 | literally capillary beds within the brain,
01:19:48.840 | the hippocampus areas that support memory,
01:19:51.480 | but also areas of the brain that support respiration,
01:19:54.640 | that support focus, that support effort.
01:19:57.320 | This isn't often discussed,
01:19:58.640 | but the ability to deliver more blood
01:20:00.800 | and therefore more glucose,
01:20:02.260 | remember neurons run on glucose and oxygen to the brain,
01:20:05.660 | is a big feature of why exercise of the kind I'm describing
01:20:09.560 | helps with brain function.
01:20:11.800 | Now, weight training does have some positive effects
01:20:15.640 | on brain function also.
01:20:16.960 | When I say weight training, I'm really,
01:20:18.940 | I should be more specific,
01:20:20.160 | I really am referring to strength and hypertrophy training.
01:20:23.400 | Strength and hypertrophy training,
01:20:25.600 | especially if it's of the sort where you get into the burn,
01:20:28.360 | as we talked about last episode,
01:20:29.640 | and you start generating lactate as a hormonal signal
01:20:32.080 | that can benefit your brain, et cetera,
01:20:33.960 | it can have positive effects on the brain.
01:20:36.600 | And frankly, there haven't been as many studies
01:20:38.880 | of resistance training,
01:20:40.480 | strength and hypertrophy training on brain function,
01:20:43.020 | mainly because most of those experiments are done in mice
01:20:45.840 | or primates, non-human primates, I should say,
01:20:49.440 | and it's hard to get mice to do resistance training, okay?
01:20:53.280 | It's hard to get humans to do resistance training.
01:20:55.200 | It's definitely hard to get mice to do resistance training.
01:20:57.120 | There are ways to do it, but it's hard to get them to do,
01:20:59.400 | say, three sets of eight on the deadlift
01:21:02.420 | and then do some curls and then do some chin ups
01:21:04.560 | and this kind of thing, okay?
01:21:05.680 | It's pretty easy to get a mouse to run on a treadmill
01:21:08.480 | and you can set the tension on that treadmill
01:21:10.940 | to make it so that it's easier or harder
01:21:13.220 | for the mouse to turn that wheel.
01:21:15.500 | So that's one of the reasons.
01:21:17.440 | However, it's very clear
01:21:19.520 | and you should now understand intuitively
01:21:21.560 | why the kind of standard strength
01:21:23.800 | and hypertrophy type workouts
01:21:25.280 | are not going to activate the blood oxygenation
01:21:29.880 | and the stroke volume increases for the heart
01:21:32.660 | that the sorts of training I'm talking about today will,
01:21:35.360 | it just doesn't have the same positive effects.
01:21:38.680 | Now, that isn't to say that if you just weight train
01:21:41.040 | that you'll be dumb
01:21:41.880 | or that you'll lose your memory over time, you might,
01:21:45.320 | but it is to say that endurance work,
01:21:48.560 | in particular, the high intensity and long duration work
01:21:52.160 | that I've talked about today,
01:21:53.080 | the two high intensity protocols
01:21:54.440 | and the long duration work
01:21:56.320 | has been shown again and again and again
01:21:58.520 | to have positive effects on brain function,
01:22:00.780 | not through the addition of new neurons,
01:22:02.540 | sorry to break it to you,
01:22:04.020 | but that's not a major event
01:22:06.160 | in the exercised or non-exercised human brain
01:22:10.080 | for reasons we can talk about in a future episode,
01:22:12.600 | but it still has many positive effects
01:22:15.040 | through the delivery of things like IGF-1,
01:22:17.800 | but also just through plain oxygenation of the brain
01:22:21.660 | and the way it promotes the development of microvasculature
01:22:25.680 | to develop, excuse me, to deliver neurons more nutrients.
01:22:30.000 | If neurons don't get oxygen and glucose, they do die,
01:22:33.440 | unless there's another fuel source like ketones,
01:22:36.180 | which can replace the glucose.
01:22:37.680 | If you don't give oxygen to neurons,
01:22:41.280 | if you don't deliver enough to them,
01:22:43.200 | you get what's called ischemia,
01:22:44.500 | you get little microstrokes.
01:22:45.980 | So the type of exercise I'm talking about today
01:22:48.880 | in generating intense heart rate increases,
01:22:52.000 | provided that's safe for you to do,
01:22:54.000 | breathing hard, that's going to deliver oxygen and blood,
01:22:56.660 | increase stroke volume of the heart,
01:22:59.260 | and is going to improve brain function.
01:23:01.860 | This has been supported by many,
01:23:03.160 | many quality peer-reviewed studies.
01:23:05.560 | So that's one form of positive adaptation.
01:23:08.800 | I also talked about just sort of performance adaptations,
01:23:11.140 | how doing high intensity aerobic conditioning
01:23:13.640 | of the, you know, mile repeats type training
01:23:16.320 | can actually improve your ability
01:23:18.020 | to do long bouts of intense work.
01:23:20.800 | It also seems like it dovetails
01:23:23.440 | or is compatible with resistance training
01:23:26.040 | that's aimed towards strength and hypertrophy.
01:23:28.400 | Now in full disclosure, the data seem to indicate
01:23:31.320 | that if people just weight train or train for strength,
01:23:33.960 | so three reps, rest five minutes,
01:23:37.000 | three reps of heavy weights, et cetera,
01:23:38.560 | yeah, you'll get much stronger than you would
01:23:40.960 | if you're doing things like, you know, five repetitions
01:23:43.840 | up to 12 or 12 to 25 reps and you're, you know,
01:23:46.920 | and you're going out for long jogs.
01:23:48.340 | There's always going to be a compromise
01:23:49.980 | in adaptations, unfortunately.
01:23:51.900 | It does seem like you can do concurrent training,
01:23:53.960 | as I mentioned before, if you allow anywhere from four to six
01:23:56.680 | or ideally 24 hours between workouts.
01:23:59.560 | As I mentioned in the previous episode,
01:24:01.200 | if you want to know if you are recovered from a workout,
01:24:04.300 | a great way to do that is to apply
01:24:05.860 | the carbon dioxide tolerance test,
01:24:08.040 | which is four breaths in and out,
01:24:09.620 | inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale
01:24:12.380 | then a big inhale and then a slow controlled exhale.
01:24:16.020 | If that slow controlled exhale is 60 seconds or longer,
01:24:20.400 | it means that your parasympathetic,
01:24:22.080 | your calming nervous system is under your control
01:24:24.700 | and it's likely, I should say likely
01:24:26.560 | that systemically your whole nervous system has recovered
01:24:29.320 | from whatever it is that you've been doing
01:24:30.760 | and experiencing in life, including work and relationships.
01:24:33.440 | If not, you might want to take a rest day, dare I say,
01:24:37.740 | or Costello is on his, what?
01:24:40.320 | He's 10 now, I think he's on his 12,000th rest day.
01:24:44.620 | Most people need, I should say,
01:24:46.740 | one to two full rest days per week.
01:24:48.960 | I know there are people going to say that's ridiculous
01:24:50.920 | and okay, maybe you have amazing recovery abilities,
01:24:54.960 | also depends on training intensity.
01:24:56.460 | Many people benefit from having one or two
01:24:58.240 | full rest days per week, at least one.
01:25:00.920 | Some people don't need to,
01:25:02.260 | but if you are not able to extend that exhale
01:25:06.280 | on the carbon dioxide tolerance test
01:25:08.680 | past 60 seconds or so, 45 seconds, 60 seconds,
01:25:12.620 | chances are your so-called sympathetic nervous system,
01:25:16.080 | your stress system is chronically elevated
01:25:18.240 | and you're not really putting the brake
01:25:20.300 | on that system enough and that's a subconscious thing.
01:25:23.160 | There are ways that you can accelerate recovery,
01:25:25.700 | but I would encourage you to listen to the previous episode,
01:25:28.100 | it's timestamped for how to assess recovery.
01:25:30.840 | So how often to program these things
01:25:32.440 | will depend on the other things you're doing.
01:25:34.640 | I think it's perfectly reasonable to do
01:25:37.240 | this type of training with other types of training
01:25:39.340 | and I'll talk about a variety of combinations of those
01:25:41.920 | toward the end of the episode.
01:25:44.200 | I do want to talk about how to deliver
01:25:46.240 | more energy and oxygen.
01:25:48.640 | These are tools that are extremely useful, I believe,
01:25:51.880 | and that are grounded in physiology.
01:25:54.400 | The three things I'd like to talk about are how to breathe,
01:25:59.200 | what to do immediately after training, and hydration.
01:26:03.860 | And I promise I will get back into programming
01:26:06.420 | and sort of protocols, but these are vitally important
01:26:09.380 | to your ability to perform endurance work in particular,
01:26:13.620 | and they are grounded in how neurons and blood and oxygen
01:26:18.260 | and your heart work together.
01:26:19.620 | So let's first talk about breathing or respiration.
01:26:22.800 | We breathe a couple of different ways,
01:26:25.540 | but let's just remind ourselves why we breathe.
01:26:27.360 | We breathe to bring oxygen into our system
01:26:29.920 | and we breathe to get rid of carbon dioxide
01:26:32.460 | and we need both oxygen and carbon dioxide
01:26:35.400 | in order to utilize fuel and for our brain and body to work.
01:26:39.000 | It's not that oxygen is good and carbon dioxide is bad.
01:26:42.360 | They have to be present in the appropriate ratios.
01:26:45.240 | So one thing that is very clear is our ability
01:26:49.040 | to deliver oxygen to working muscles and to our brain
01:26:52.980 | is going to be important for our ability
01:26:55.680 | to generate muscular effort,
01:26:57.320 | especially of the kind I was talking about today,
01:26:59.480 | but also weight training and other forms
01:27:01.240 | of skill-based effort, et cetera,
01:27:03.040 | and our ability to think.
01:27:04.840 | If you're holding your breath for too long,
01:27:06.320 | if you're breathing too much,
01:27:07.940 | if you're what they call over-breathing or under-breathing,
01:27:10.120 | if you're shallow breathing, if you're mouth breathing,
01:27:12.040 | these are all things that can really impede mental
01:27:15.260 | and physical performance.
01:27:16.160 | So let's make it really simple
01:27:17.780 | and then I promise to do a future episode
01:27:19.580 | all about respiration.
01:27:21.180 | There are two main sources of air for your body
01:27:24.860 | and it's air coming in through your nose
01:27:26.280 | and air coming in through your mouth.
01:27:27.640 | In general, nasal breathing is better.
01:27:30.760 | It scrubs the air of bacteria and viruses.
01:27:34.540 | You have a microbiome in your nose that benefits.
01:27:37.600 | There are a number of reasons.
01:27:38.840 | It's also just a more efficient system, believe it or not.
01:27:41.280 | Even though it feels like you can gulp more air
01:27:42.880 | with your mouth, getting good at nasal breathing is useful.
01:27:47.880 | A gear system of the type that Brian McKenzie
01:27:50.240 | and colleagues have developed,
01:27:51.320 | I think is a good way to conceptualize this.
01:27:52.920 | If you're doing long duration work,
01:27:54.840 | try and do it all nasal breathing.
01:27:56.440 | If you have deviated septum,
01:27:58.040 | it's probably 'cause you don't nasal breathe enough.
01:28:01.380 | Mouth breathing is something that many people suffer from.
01:28:06.000 | You're more prone to infections.
01:28:07.720 | It's not as efficient, et cetera.
01:28:09.520 | There is a place for mouth breathing.
01:28:10.880 | However, it's usually if you need to do a strong exhale,
01:28:15.880 | oftentimes you can discard more volume through the mouth
01:28:19.540 | unless you're very trained at nasal breathing.
01:28:21.960 | So if you're doing high intensity training,
01:28:23.820 | a good way to conceptualize this
01:28:25.680 | is to exhale on the max effort
01:28:28.720 | and then to inhale on the less intense part.
01:28:32.860 | So that might be as you're generating the movement,
01:28:36.360 | in the concentric part of the movement, you exhale, right?
01:28:39.440 | Just like on a bat swing or something like that,
01:28:41.680 | or fighters and martial artists do this differently
01:28:44.800 | depending on how they were trained
01:28:46.160 | and the different purposes,
01:28:47.120 | but the kind of like, ah, or shh,
01:28:49.000 | the kind of exhaling during the effort
01:28:51.400 | and then inhaling on the portion of the repetition
01:28:54.820 | that is not the highest effort portion.
01:28:57.360 | Usually that's the eccentric phase
01:28:59.600 | of anything involving weights or rowing
01:29:01.800 | and things of that sort.
01:29:03.040 | So nasal breathing is great,
01:29:07.000 | but as you increase the intensity of your endurance work,
01:29:09.460 | you will need to incorporate the mouth.
01:29:10.760 | So a gear system would look something like,
01:29:12.220 | first gear would be just nasal breathing
01:29:14.220 | or second gear would also be just nasal breathing,
01:29:16.360 | but with more effort.
01:29:17.380 | Third gear, again, Power Speed Endurance
01:29:19.520 | has a lot more about this.
01:29:20.440 | You can go to their website.
01:29:21.840 | I think it's a very intelligent way to conceptualize this.
01:29:24.840 | As you go into more max effort,
01:29:28.160 | then you're going into third and fourth and fifth gear,
01:29:30.460 | and at some point you're not thinking about nose or mouth.
01:29:32.740 | You're just trying to hang on for dear life
01:29:34.380 | and complete the work safely.
01:29:36.220 | And that means breathe through whatever orifice
01:29:40.460 | works for you.
01:29:41.700 | So that's one aspect, nose versus mouth.
01:29:45.220 | The other aspect is whether or not you're using your ribs,
01:29:48.660 | the intercostal muscles are these muscles
01:29:50.620 | that the Bruce Lee had these remarkable intercostal muscles
01:29:54.320 | that allow you to lift the rib cage or the diaphragm,
01:29:58.660 | which is a skeletal muscle that sits below the lungs.
01:30:00.760 | Just to remind you, when you inhale, the diaphragm moves down.
01:30:03.160 | When you exhale, the diaphragm moves up.
01:30:06.880 | Here's something that most people don't do
01:30:11.340 | and would benefit tremendously from,
01:30:12.880 | and I can say this because Andy Galpin's lab
01:30:14.800 | has done work on this,
01:30:16.800 | exploring how warming up the intercostals
01:30:19.840 | and the nerve to diaphragm pathways
01:30:21.660 | before any kind of endurance work,
01:30:24.100 | or in the first few minutes of endurance work,
01:30:26.380 | can allow you to breathe more deeply
01:30:28.940 | and to deliver more oxygen to the blood and, excuse me,
01:30:33.100 | and to the muscles,
01:30:34.780 | and to be able to do more work more efficiently.
01:30:37.860 | So what that involves is sometimes sitting,
01:30:40.340 | sometimes standing,
01:30:41.160 | and just really concentrating on two things.
01:30:43.540 | We always hear about how we should diaphragmatic breathe,
01:30:46.140 | and that means our belly moves out when we inhale.
01:30:48.960 | So our stomach expands,
01:30:51.340 | but also expanding the intercostals,
01:30:54.200 | which means actually raising the ribs, chest breathing.
01:30:56.660 | We're all told that in yoga class,
01:30:58.340 | don't breathe with your chest this,
01:31:00.580 | but actually that is warming up the intercostal muscles.
01:31:04.460 | So this is also a great way to generate adrenaline
01:31:07.220 | if you do it a little bit intensely.
01:31:09.380 | So let's say you're feeling unmotivated to train.
01:31:12.260 | I don't particularly like doing endurance training
01:31:14.820 | until I'm actually doing it.
01:31:17.540 | So I use and benefit from having a practice
01:31:20.420 | where I'll just sit there and for about three minutes,
01:31:22.200 | I'll just breathe very deeply,
01:31:23.280 | trying to raise my chest as much as I can
01:31:25.700 | for maybe a minute,
01:31:26.540 | and then contracting my diaphragm
01:31:29.900 | and expanding my stomach outward when I inhale.
01:31:32.360 | By the end of that,
01:31:33.200 | you're actually delivering more oxygen to your system.
01:31:36.000 | My lab has looked at this in a totally different context.
01:31:39.620 | Andy's lab has looked at it
01:31:40.560 | in the context of physical performance.
01:31:43.700 | So warming up the breathing muscles should make sense
01:31:47.280 | given that you now know that muscles and neurons
01:31:50.240 | need glucose and they need oxygen in order to function.
01:31:53.840 | And so that's a great warmup.
01:31:54.880 | You can also do this while walking
01:31:56.700 | or while getting on the bike and starting to pedal,
01:31:59.100 | really starting to think about
01:32:00.580 | warming up the breathing system.
01:32:03.020 | And then you can decide if you want to do pure nasal
01:32:05.060 | or a combination of nasal and mouth breathing and so on.
01:32:08.820 | So that's something that we don't often hear about.
01:32:10.380 | The other one,
01:32:11.680 | the other tool rather that I've talked about
01:32:13.800 | in a previous episode, I'll just mention again,
01:32:15.300 | is some people when they do endurance type work,
01:32:17.620 | they get a stitch in their side.
01:32:19.320 | They feel like they've got a side cramp.
01:32:21.520 | Very rarely is it actually a skeletal muscular cramp.
01:32:26.520 | It's oftentimes it's a referenced pain of the phrenic nerve
01:32:31.740 | that innervates the liver.
01:32:32.860 | So the phrenic nerve is responsible
01:32:34.260 | for the movement of the diaphragm.
01:32:36.240 | It is a very important system,
01:32:39.040 | but it has a number of what we call collateral.
01:32:41.280 | So it branches to other organs, runs over other organs.
01:32:44.800 | Sometimes when we're breathing shallow
01:32:46.760 | and we are in physical motion
01:32:48.540 | and we're engaging in physical effort,
01:32:50.340 | we'll feel that side stitch and we think,
01:32:51.980 | oh, I've got a cramp, or maybe I'm dehydrated,
01:32:54.060 | or maybe I need to run with my hands over my head.
01:32:56.980 | Excuse me.
01:32:57.940 | Typically you can relieve that side cramp,
01:33:00.460 | which isn't a cramp at all,
01:33:01.660 | that side stitch by doing the double inhale, exhale,
01:33:04.580 | really breathing deeply,
01:33:06.680 | and then sneaking a little bit more air in.
01:33:09.800 | That's a double kind of firing
01:33:12.300 | or what we call volley of action potential,
01:33:14.440 | sent from the phrenic nerve to the diaphragm,
01:33:18.040 | which will also activate that collateral,
01:33:20.560 | that branch literally of the nerve that innervates the liver.
01:33:23.940 | And then when you exhale,
01:33:26.280 | you offload a bunch of carbon dioxide.
01:33:28.140 | But if you repeat that a few times,
01:33:30.500 | often, in fact for me every time,
01:33:33.020 | but often what'll happen is that side stitch
01:33:35.080 | will just naturally disappear.
01:33:36.280 | It just means you're not breathing properly.
01:33:38.320 | The phrenic nerve is firing in a way
01:33:40.800 | that's kind of aggravating that referenced pain.
01:33:43.440 | There's nothing kind of voodoo or mysterious about this.
01:33:46.080 | It just has to do with the way
01:33:47.100 | that the different nerves travel in the body.
01:33:50.220 | So as you set out on your run,
01:33:52.040 | or maybe you're going to do some muscular endurance work
01:33:54.840 | or high intensity work, warming up the intercostals,
01:33:58.580 | warming up the diaphragm is good.
01:34:01.120 | And there are exercises,
01:34:03.280 | there is work that you can do
01:34:04.340 | to strengthen the intercostals
01:34:06.340 | and to strengthen the diaphragm
01:34:08.440 | during bouts of this kind of effort.
01:34:10.080 | And I would say that one of the ways
01:34:12.040 | that you can do that best is by really focusing
01:34:15.160 | on getting the maximum diaphragmatic expansion
01:34:19.160 | and chest lifting, what we're all told now not to do.
01:34:21.960 | Don't chest breathe, belly breathe.
01:34:23.800 | The intercostals are there for a reason,
01:34:25.600 | and they are perfectly good at filling your lungs.
01:34:27.640 | They work best when they collaborate with your diaphragm.
01:34:30.200 | But when you are starting to fatigue,
01:34:32.760 | to start to really inhale deeply
01:34:35.060 | and try and really expand those
01:34:36.320 | to deliver more oxygen to your system.
01:34:39.280 | While we're talking about delivering more oxygen
01:34:41.200 | to your system, I want to share with you a useful tool
01:34:44.040 | that will now make total sense mechanistically why it works,
01:34:47.040 | which is oftentimes when we are on a long run
01:34:51.020 | or in long duration bouts of effort,
01:34:53.400 | we will hit the so-called wall, right?
01:34:57.040 | We will bonk, I think they used to call it,
01:34:58.800 | or maybe do they still call it that Costello?
01:35:00.760 | He's asleep.
01:35:02.360 | We bonk, we just rethink, no, we can't continue.
01:35:05.800 | It's a curious thing as to whether or not that's neural
01:35:08.700 | or whether or not it's fuel-based.
01:35:10.720 | There's certainly going to be a psychological
01:35:12.900 | or motivational component.
01:35:14.440 | But one way that you can reveal this kind of extra gear,
01:35:17.800 | the capacity to push on is by understanding the way
01:35:20.160 | that different muscle fibers use energy differently.
01:35:24.420 | Remember the fast twitch phosphocreatine system
01:35:27.120 | and the slow twitch system that relies mainly
01:35:28.880 | on lipids and glucose.
01:35:30.420 | Okay, well, even if you don't remember all that,
01:35:32.360 | if you've been running steadily for a long time
01:35:34.280 | and you're starting to fatigue
01:35:35.400 | and you feel like it's time to quit,
01:35:38.480 | you may have not tapped into an alternative fuel source.
01:35:41.700 | One thing that you can do
01:35:42.800 | is you can actually increase your speed.
01:35:45.160 | This is also true of work where you're doing repetitions
01:35:48.840 | with kettlebells or something.
01:35:49.900 | You can start to increase your speed.
01:35:51.660 | So run faster, pedal faster, row faster, swim faster,
01:35:55.760 | not all out sprint.
01:35:57.640 | But in doing that, you're shifting the muscles
01:36:00.520 | and the nerves over towards utilizing a separate fuel source
01:36:03.760 | or a distinct fuel source.
01:36:05.700 | Maybe the phosphocreatine system,
01:36:07.160 | if it's a quick bout of intense acceleration,
01:36:10.400 | or maybe it's a combination of lipids and carbohydrates
01:36:14.000 | in your system that weren't available to you prior.
01:36:17.060 | Now, of course,
01:36:17.900 | if you completely deplete your liver glycogen,
01:36:19.320 | you completely deplete everything,
01:36:21.360 | you're only going to be running on stored fuel and fats
01:36:24.160 | and eventually you'll start metabolizing protein,
01:36:27.240 | muscles themselves.
01:36:28.780 | But this is a kind of a unique way to realize that,
01:36:33.560 | oh, you weren't out of energy at all.
01:36:36.540 | You were just over relying on one fuel source.
01:36:39.000 | And this is the reason why especially elite athletes
01:36:41.660 | are starting to both rely on carbohydrates.
01:36:43.980 | So they're doing the whole carb depletion
01:36:45.680 | then carb loading thing.
01:36:46.740 | They're loading up their liver and their muscles
01:36:48.300 | with plenty of glycogen by eating pastas and rice
01:36:51.260 | and stuff before races.
01:36:52.180 | But they are also ingesting ketones during races,
01:36:56.880 | during long bouts of effort
01:36:58.440 | because ketones can be a quick form of energy.
01:37:00.660 | There's no reason why you can't use ketones
01:37:02.600 | if they are taking exogenous ketones and carbohydrate
01:37:06.080 | and in combination.
01:37:06.960 | Remember the body is accustomed
01:37:08.700 | to using multiple fuel sources,
01:37:10.260 | fatty acids, carbohydrates, all these things.
01:37:12.940 | It's only in the kind of internet age
01:37:15.740 | that we think in terms of,
01:37:17.140 | oh, well, you're either keto or you're burning sugar
01:37:20.700 | or you're fat adapted or fat fasting or fast fasting
01:37:25.700 | or fat fadding.
01:37:27.100 | Costello woke up when I said fat fadding.
01:37:28.740 | I'm not talking about you Costello.
01:37:30.260 | So the point is that your body
01:37:32.140 | is used to using multiple fuel sources.
01:37:33.740 | So if you're kind of hitting that wall,
01:37:35.660 | sometimes accelerating can actually allow you
01:37:38.180 | to tap into a new fuel source
01:37:39.740 | or combination of fuel sources
01:37:41.040 | just based on the way that muscles use fuel.
01:37:43.740 | So that's another tool.
01:37:45.480 | The other thing that's really important to think about
01:37:47.160 | in terms of endurance type work is hydration.
01:37:50.500 | And I think hydration is important
01:37:52.240 | for all forms of physical work and exercise,
01:37:54.560 | not just endurance.
01:37:56.160 | The deal with hydration is that we've been taught
01:38:00.520 | about hydration all wrong,
01:38:01.960 | but let's remember what neurons work on.
01:38:05.020 | What do they use in order to fire?
01:38:06.900 | Well, they certainly need water, right?
01:38:10.640 | We need water in our system, I should say,
01:38:12.880 | but remember they use electrolytes,
01:38:14.660 | sodium and potassium to generate those action potentials
01:38:17.020 | to actually get neurons to contract,
01:38:18.820 | to be able, excuse me, muscles to contract
01:38:20.760 | and for our brain to function and to be able to think.
01:38:23.680 | Typically, typically we're going to lose
01:38:27.580 | anywhere from one to five pounds of water
01:38:30.860 | per hour of exercise.
01:38:32.180 | And that's going to vary tremendously.
01:38:33.660 | It's going to vary on weather.
01:38:35.460 | It's going to vary on intensity,
01:38:37.360 | probably more like five pounds.
01:38:38.980 | If it's hot day and you're exercising very intensely.
01:38:43.060 | So about one to five pounds per hour.
01:38:46.180 | Now, you know how much you weigh.
01:38:48.640 | So if you think about your weight in pounds,
01:38:52.580 | once you lose about one to 4% of your body weight in water,
01:38:57.580 | you're going to experience about a 20 to 30% reduction
01:39:01.820 | in work capacity in your ability to generate effort
01:39:06.380 | of any kind, strength, endurance, et cetera.
01:39:09.820 | You are also going to experience a significant drop
01:39:12.420 | in your ability to think and perform mental operations.
01:39:15.540 | So hydration is key.
01:39:17.100 | Now, many people have been told,
01:39:18.500 | well, if you urinate and your urine is clear,
01:39:21.760 | well, then you're hydrated enough.
01:39:23.500 | Sometimes that's true, sometimes that's not true.
01:39:26.300 | Also, and this is a topic I enjoy discussing,
01:39:29.660 | but urine is a biological phenomenon.
01:39:33.020 | It's actually filtered blood.
01:39:34.460 | Like every once in a while,
01:39:36.740 | and if there's a kid and it's a family friend, I'll say,
01:39:38.680 | did you know that your pee is actually filtered blood?
01:39:41.260 | And they usually kind of go wide-eyed,
01:39:42.680 | but then they go, oh, that's kind of cool.
01:39:44.020 | Like kids have this natural curiosity about blood and pee
01:39:47.140 | and stuff that's not contaminated by our preconceived notions
01:39:51.460 | of those things being gross.
01:39:53.520 | Because urine being filtered blood
01:39:56.360 | can give you some indication as to whether or not
01:39:58.640 | you're hydrated enough or not.
01:40:01.000 | And in order to really assess that,
01:40:03.520 | it's not going to be sufficient to urinate
01:40:06.400 | into another volume of water and assess whether or not
01:40:08.840 | your urine is very dark or very light.
01:40:10.240 | It actually requires urinating into a small volume
01:40:12.500 | and saying, well, is it darker or lighter than before?
01:40:15.000 | It's not something you really want to do most places.
01:40:18.080 | The etiquette of most gyms and environments
01:40:22.240 | is not suitable for that.
01:40:23.760 | But one of the things that you can just do
01:40:26.660 | is you can figure, well, I'm going to lose one to five pounds
01:40:29.120 | of water per hour.
01:40:30.820 | You can show up to exercise reasonably hydrated
01:40:35.720 | with electrolytes.
01:40:36.880 | So potassium, sodium, and magnesium are really key.
01:40:39.260 | Yes, it's true.
01:40:40.100 | You can die from drinking too much water in particular
01:40:42.880 | because it forces you, if you drink too much water,
01:40:45.660 | you'll excrete too many electrolytes
01:40:47.360 | and your brain will shut off.
01:40:49.040 | You'll actually, your heart will stop functioning properly.
01:40:51.500 | So you don't want to over-consume water
01:40:53.140 | to the extreme either.
01:40:54.760 | But there are a number of equations
01:40:57.240 | that go into figuring out how much water you need
01:40:59.560 | based on how intense your training, et cetera,
01:41:02.000 | body size, et cetera.
01:41:02.940 | Just remember, you burn, you lose, excuse me,
01:41:05.520 | about one to five pounds of water per hour,
01:41:08.540 | depending on how hot it is
01:41:09.580 | and how intensely you're exercising.
01:41:11.300 | Once your body weight drops by one to 4%,
01:41:14.420 | so you can just figure it well,
01:41:15.740 | if you lose five pounds per hour,
01:41:17.780 | you exercise for two hours,
01:41:20.080 | let's say you're about 200 pounds, that's about 10%, okay?
01:41:23.540 | Well, you want to replace that very quickly
01:41:26.900 | or you want to replace that all along
01:41:29.100 | before you start experiencing this massive 20 or 30% reduction
01:41:32.540 | in work capacity of muscles and the brain.
01:41:34.660 | A simple formula, what I call the Galpin equation,
01:41:38.100 | hereafter referred to as the Galpin equation,
01:41:41.220 | is a formula that gets you close to the exact amount
01:41:44.560 | that you would want that Dr. Andy Galpin came up with,
01:41:47.460 | which is your body weight in pounds
01:41:50.100 | divided by the number 30.
01:41:52.180 | And that is how many ounces you should drink
01:41:54.180 | for every 15 minutes of exercise.
01:41:57.260 | So once again, the Galpin equation,
01:41:59.580 | your body weight in pounds divided by 30,
01:42:03.460 | that's the amount of fluid to drink in ounces, right?
01:42:08.460 | Every 15 minutes of exercise.
01:42:12.380 | Now, if you are sweating a lot, you may need more, okay?
01:42:15.580 | If you're already very well hydrated, you may need less,
01:42:19.080 | but that's a good rule of thumb to begin
01:42:22.300 | and to start to understand the relationship
01:42:24.760 | between hydration and performance.
01:42:27.460 | There is a phenomenon in which gastric emptying,
01:42:32.220 | the ability to move stuff out of your gut,
01:42:34.400 | including water and electrolytes out of your gut
01:42:37.400 | and into the bloodstream and for delivery
01:42:39.860 | to the tissues of your body for effort,
01:42:41.880 | is hindered when you get above 70% of your VO2 max.
01:42:45.520 | In other words, when you're doing high intensity training,
01:42:48.440 | sometimes people experience that ingesting water
01:42:51.240 | during intense training is difficult.
01:42:54.900 | It is something that can be actually trained up.
01:42:57.880 | It's a matter of learning to kind of relax
01:43:00.800 | your abdominal muscles.
01:43:02.700 | And there's some other aspects of adaptation
01:43:05.640 | that will allow you to drink during higher intensity work.
01:43:09.340 | As Galpin says, don't try and ingest fluids
01:43:14.340 | when you're working out or competing at higher
01:43:17.300 | than 70% of VO2 max, if you've never done it before,
01:43:19.820 | you want to train up this capacity.
01:43:21.900 | People can learn how to consume fluids during a race
01:43:24.340 | or consume fluids during bouts of exercise
01:43:27.020 | that are very intense.
01:43:28.760 | And a lot of people don't want to do that
01:43:30.380 | 'cause they don't want to have to stop to urinate, et cetera.
01:43:32.700 | But given the crucial role of hydration
01:43:35.460 | for muscular performance and for brain performance,
01:43:38.600 | it seems that if you're going to be doing
01:43:40.400 | a lot of high intensity interval training
01:43:42.760 | of the various kinds I talked about today
01:43:45.140 | or high intensity training of any kind,
01:43:46.920 | that hydration is key and learning,
01:43:49.000 | or in other words, getting your system to adapt
01:43:51.140 | to ingesting fluids in the middle of these workouts
01:43:53.600 | is something that seems beneficial, at least to me,
01:43:56.520 | in terms of the trade-off between being dehydrated
01:44:00.080 | and the somewhat discomfort of maybe drinking some fluids.
01:44:02.440 | So you sip small amounts of fluid initially,
01:44:04.640 | and then you're able to take bigger and bigger gulps
01:44:06.560 | as time goes on.
01:44:07.400 | And pretty soon you're able to drink mid-set
01:44:11.000 | or be, excuse me, not mid-set, please don't do that,
01:44:13.680 | between sets in your workout
01:44:15.080 | or while you're still breathing hard after a mile repeat
01:44:17.380 | or something of that sort without much disruption
01:44:19.960 | or any at all to your performance.
01:44:22.020 | Last episode, we talked about how to assess recovery
01:44:25.220 | and things that you might want to do to improve recovery,
01:44:28.180 | how exposure to ice baths and cold showers
01:44:30.480 | can reduce inflammation, which can be great for recovery,
01:44:33.520 | but can inhibit some of the adaptations
01:44:36.660 | for strength and hypertrophy
01:44:37.920 | because inflammation isn't good or bad.
01:44:40.520 | Inflammation isn't like a nice person or a mean person,
01:44:43.920 | it's both.
01:44:44.840 | It's a great thing for stimulating adaptations,
01:44:48.560 | but you don't want it around too long.
01:44:50.300 | And so we suggested that you not do ice baths
01:44:52.420 | within probably six hours of any training
01:44:55.620 | where the goal was hypertrophy or strength training.
01:44:58.720 | There is some evidence that getting yourself
01:45:00.860 | into an ice bath or cold shower after endurance training
01:45:04.900 | can actually improve the mitochondrial aspects
01:45:09.900 | of endurance exercise,
01:45:11.200 | that you can get improvements in mitochondrial density
01:45:14.760 | and you can get improvements in mitochondrial respiration
01:45:18.720 | by doing that afterwards
01:45:20.040 | and that it can facilitate recovery.
01:45:22.080 | That's still a bit of a controversial area.
01:45:24.800 | I do think that what I mentioned earlier,
01:45:26.360 | that waiting at least six hours
01:45:27.720 | and probably more like 24 hours between workouts
01:45:30.600 | is a good idea that getting at least one full day of rest
01:45:33.740 | each week, for some people, that'll be two.
01:45:35.560 | I have to say, I'm one of these people
01:45:37.160 | that after two days of absolutely no exercise,
01:45:40.060 | I do perform better consistently
01:45:42.120 | across all aspects of physical performance
01:45:44.260 | and mentally, I feel better as well.
01:45:46.760 | Even though I loathe to take those days off,
01:45:49.100 | unless I'm really exhausted,
01:45:51.160 | it does seem to help my training.
01:45:53.200 | Some people can train seven days a week and they're fine.
01:45:55.200 | I think there's a lot of individual variation.
01:45:57.820 | You want to work on sleep and maximizing sleep for recovery,
01:46:00.400 | nutrition, of course, as well.
01:46:01.920 | I talked about sleep in the first four episodes
01:46:06.340 | of the podcast.
01:46:07.180 | So if you have trouble with sleep,
01:46:08.720 | definitely check out those episodes.
01:46:11.080 | It's very clear and a number of sports teams,
01:46:14.700 | even some folks that I work with,
01:46:16.780 | and Andy Galpin and others are starting to incorporate
01:46:20.060 | a what's called a parasympathetic down regulation
01:46:22.580 | after training of any kind as a way to accelerate recovery
01:46:25.500 | and enable you to do more work.
01:46:27.420 | In other words, get back to workout sooner.
01:46:29.500 | What is parasympathetic down regulation?
01:46:31.300 | It means finishing your training
01:46:33.620 | and instead of just hopping on the phone
01:46:35.840 | or hopping into your car and heading off
01:46:38.560 | to take five minutes minimum, maybe ideally more like 10
01:46:42.280 | or 20, but for sake of time, five minutes minimum
01:46:45.180 | and doing just some slow, pure nasal, long exhale,
01:46:49.060 | devoted breathing, or lying down
01:46:51.180 | and just kind of zoning out.
01:46:53.060 | That it seems can accelerate recovery
01:46:55.820 | and allow you to get back into other types of work,
01:46:59.000 | mental work or physical work more quickly,
01:47:01.220 | which makes total sense because remember your nervous system
01:47:05.380 | and recovery and work is a local phenomenon.
01:47:08.540 | Which muscles were you using?
01:47:10.100 | Were you using your glutes, your hams and your back,
01:47:13.080 | or were you using your shoulders, et cetera,
01:47:14.680 | but it's also a systemic thing.
01:47:16.480 | It's also about those neurons in the locus coeruleus
01:47:18.660 | that are releasing epinephrine.
01:47:19.700 | You want to quiet all that down after training.
01:47:22.200 | You want to really just zone out.
01:47:23.960 | Think Costello, channel your inner Costello
01:47:26.660 | and just mellow out for five to 20 minutes
01:47:29.740 | and then move into the rest of your day.
01:47:31.860 | Five minutes should be manageable,
01:47:33.620 | even if it's just sitting in the car with your eyes closed,
01:47:35.500 | doing that down regulation breathing.
01:47:37.540 | I think you'll see big benefits
01:47:39.340 | in terms of allowing yourself to come back sooner,
01:47:42.540 | do more work over time and just perform
01:47:45.780 | and feel better generally,
01:47:47.300 | as well as be able to think about other things
01:47:49.100 | besides just how much the previous workout
01:47:51.640 | kind of beat you up.
01:47:52.700 | A couple more things I think are going to be useful
01:47:55.980 | and I do want to just pack these in
01:47:57.780 | 'cause we are closing out the month on physical performance
01:48:01.140 | and that's about programming
01:48:03.220 | and about pacing and the kind of mental aspects
01:48:06.940 | of endurance.
01:48:08.300 | So let's start with pacing and mental aspects of endurance.
01:48:12.660 | I learned from a friend and colleague here at the podcast
01:48:17.300 | that who's very active in triathlon and marathon
01:48:20.140 | and other knows a lot about that whole world
01:48:22.260 | and the competitive landscape there,
01:48:24.100 | that pacing and literally physical pacers
01:48:28.140 | of a laser on the ground or visualizing
01:48:31.100 | or having a pace car or a pace runner in front
01:48:34.340 | is actually not allowed in many competitions.
01:48:37.100 | And if those are present,
01:48:39.060 | doesn't allow the race times to qualify
01:48:42.920 | as legitimate record holding times.
01:48:45.640 | And that's very interesting to me
01:48:47.380 | because what we know is that the visual system
01:48:51.740 | has this capacity to switch back and forth
01:48:54.580 | between what we call panoramic vision
01:48:56.180 | where we're not really focused on anything,
01:48:57.940 | things are just flowing past us
01:48:59.760 | or our eyes are just kind of zoned out.
01:49:02.300 | So I can do this right now and you won't be able to tell,
01:49:04.620 | but I'm looking at the corners of the room.
01:49:06.180 | I see Costello down there on the floor.
01:49:07.820 | I see my podcast team here
01:49:10.320 | and I can also see the microphone.
01:49:12.580 | I can see myself in this environment.
01:49:14.780 | That's panoramic vision.
01:49:16.120 | Whereas if I draw my eyes to one location,
01:49:18.260 | like right there in the center of the camera,
01:49:20.000 | it's what's called a vergence eye movement.
01:49:21.580 | So I'm contracting my visual window.
01:49:23.820 | The contraction of the visual window when that's done
01:49:27.140 | is the same thing that would happen
01:49:28.340 | if I was tracking say a pace car or a pace runner
01:49:31.320 | or a laser on the ground.
01:49:33.280 | The mirror bringing our eyes together
01:49:35.280 | to what we call a vergence point
01:49:37.580 | has the impact of triggering the activation
01:49:40.780 | of neural circuits in the thalamus,
01:49:43.040 | things like zona and serta,
01:49:44.500 | if you really want to know what their names are
01:49:46.080 | of these brain areas,
01:49:46.920 | as well as in the brainstem that activate
01:49:49.660 | the so-called alertness system, things like locus coeruleus.
01:49:52.400 | Whereas panoramic vision tends to bring us
01:49:55.400 | into states of relaxation.
01:49:56.940 | You can actually leverage this during your runs.
01:49:59.720 | Let's say you're out for a long run or you're swimming
01:50:03.200 | or you're cycling.
01:50:04.040 | This is probably easiest to imagine out of the water,
01:50:06.440 | but you could probably do in the water as well.
01:50:08.420 | If you focus your attention on a landmark
01:50:10.600 | that you're going to run to,
01:50:12.320 | you'll find that it's much easier
01:50:14.040 | than if you don't actually have a set milestone
01:50:17.280 | or landmark that you're going to run to.
01:50:19.280 | However, if you were to continue that repeatedly,
01:50:21.600 | just going milestone after milestone after milestone,
01:50:24.240 | you would feel more mentally fatigued
01:50:26.500 | and you would actually be able to degenerate
01:50:28.600 | less work overall.
01:50:30.520 | One thing that can be useful is focusing on a milestone,
01:50:35.120 | running to that milestone or biking,
01:50:37.160 | whatever it is the activity happens to be,
01:50:38.660 | and then dilating your field of view to relax the system
01:50:42.160 | and then continuing again.
01:50:43.600 | So it's this kind of active contraction
01:50:46.160 | or of the visual window
01:50:47.800 | and then dilation of the visual window.
01:50:49.660 | Contraction of the visual window allows you
01:50:51.240 | to generate more effort,
01:50:52.240 | but there's a cost to doing that
01:50:53.520 | because neurons consume energy
01:50:54.980 | and now you know how they do that.
01:50:56.760 | Whereas dilation allows you
01:50:58.420 | to essentially be more efficient, right?
01:51:01.680 | Now, pacing is not allowed
01:51:03.920 | or having a pacer, a visual pacer,
01:51:06.340 | because it does allow you to access systems
01:51:08.680 | in the brain and body
01:51:09.920 | that allow you to create more energy, more effort.
01:51:13.720 | And so I find it interesting
01:51:14.920 | that I think in a kind of subconscious genius,
01:51:17.240 | the race officials and the governing bodies of these races
01:51:21.360 | have said, okay, sure, having a pacer there
01:51:23.480 | or someone in front, you can draft off of them.
01:51:25.360 | There's actually a kind of a aerodynamic effect
01:51:28.460 | of having someone in front of you
01:51:29.360 | that makes it easier to run
01:51:31.160 | in the wake of their Airstream, so to speak.
01:51:34.400 | Same is true in cycling.
01:51:36.240 | This is why the cycling teams
01:51:37.420 | are so good at maneuvering in packs in very specific ways.
01:51:40.220 | You can go faster with less effort
01:51:42.280 | if you're drafting, as it's called, behind somebody.
01:51:45.180 | But as well, where you place your vision
01:51:48.120 | will allow you to generate more effort.
01:51:50.260 | And so it's interesting that they've taken out
01:51:52.060 | this kind of, if you will, performance enhancing tool.
01:51:57.060 | I imagine, and I have to imagine,
01:51:59.680 | it's the appropriate word here,
01:52:00.980 | that good runners, good cyclists have the ability
01:52:05.980 | to create a kind of pacer in their mind's eye.
01:52:10.360 | I have to imagine that they're not just completely allowing
01:52:12.720 | their attention to drift,
01:52:13.780 | although they do that when they want to be
01:52:15.280 | in highly efficient mode, generating effort
01:52:17.560 | without having to tax their mental capacity.
01:52:19.740 | And remember, mental capacity is neural energy
01:52:22.680 | and consumes glucose, energy that they could devote
01:52:25.440 | to the functioning of their body.
01:52:26.960 | But that when needed, that they can focus their energy in
01:52:30.600 | and actually kind of chase a mental pacer or pick milestones.
01:52:34.280 | So this is a mental game that you can play as well.
01:52:37.380 | It's a little bit hard to do
01:52:38.480 | in the context of weightlifting in the gym.
01:52:40.200 | It's more of a moving through space kind of thing.
01:52:42.660 | But some people do this by counting reps, et cetera.
01:52:45.960 | I think it's especially suitable for endurance type
01:52:49.780 | of exercise, especially done outside.
01:52:52.140 | One of the reasons I hate running on a treadmill
01:52:53.980 | is it just feels like it's never ending.
01:52:55.960 | And I've never tried one of these Peloton things.
01:52:58.040 | I try and avoid looking at screens as much
01:52:59.720 | as I possibly can.
01:53:01.160 | But if you try this next time you're out for a run or a swim,
01:53:03.760 | what you'll find is that you have a capacity
01:53:05.680 | to engage a system of higher energy output
01:53:09.700 | when you focus your eyes on a particular location,
01:53:11.640 | but you want to use that judiciously
01:53:13.280 | because your goal of course is to become efficient
01:53:15.940 | at moving through space over time
01:53:17.620 | and not taxing your brain and body
01:53:19.360 | to the point where you arrive at the end of that,
01:53:22.480 | unless it's race day, just completely tapped out.
01:53:25.640 | So that's a kind of interesting aspect of running.
01:53:29.400 | If you're a fan of running, which I am,
01:53:31.980 | and you get the chance to look at any of the documentaries
01:53:34.680 | or docudramas made about, excuse me,
01:53:37.640 | about Steve Prefontaine,
01:53:39.240 | it was clear that he was mostly in a battle with himself,
01:53:42.100 | but that he was also a highly competitive individual.
01:53:44.400 | And you'll see this in some of his races.
01:53:46.240 | I do encourage you to look some of those up on YouTube
01:53:48.580 | or see the docudramas.
01:53:49.620 | They're quite good.
01:53:50.680 | Where he ran the, essentially it was 12 laps on a track.
01:53:55.440 | It's essentially the 5,000 meter race,
01:53:57.800 | which is essentially three miles.
01:53:59.640 | And he essentially tried to sprint the whole thing,
01:54:01.900 | which is ridiculous.
01:54:02.740 | Actually knowing what you know today,
01:54:04.000 | you'll realize that Steve Prefontaine basically was pulling
01:54:07.320 | from strength, speed, power, muscular endurance,
01:54:10.680 | long duration effort, high intensity, aerobic, anaerobic,
01:54:13.540 | is he sort of tried to maximize every fuel system.
01:54:16.040 | And you'll see that in the races that he runs,
01:54:18.660 | but that when runners are nearing the final laps,
01:54:22.700 | the so-called bell lap of a race,
01:54:24.240 | they'll often look to one another to see where somebody is,
01:54:27.060 | obviously to assess their progress
01:54:28.940 | and how close somebody is.
01:54:30.440 | But when somebody gets past,
01:54:32.860 | oftentimes you'll see someone access this mysterious kick,
01:54:37.260 | this ability to tap into some additional gear
01:54:40.240 | that allows them to run forward or faster
01:54:43.060 | when they themselves actually thought
01:54:45.160 | that they were maxed out.
01:54:46.640 | So someone could be running for the finish line,
01:54:48.800 | they're convinced they're going to win,
01:54:49.940 | they're going max effort,
01:54:51.120 | or at least they perceive max effort, someone passes them.
01:54:53.520 | And all of a sudden max effort has changed.
01:54:56.200 | Because of that visual target,
01:54:57.920 | they are able to access higher levels of speed and output
01:55:01.800 | and effort and performance.
01:55:03.020 | They don't always catch up to that person and win,
01:55:05.220 | but having a target, a milestone,
01:55:07.980 | is a powerful way that we can generate more force
01:55:11.460 | and energy in anything.
01:55:12.980 | And the visual system is the way
01:55:15.160 | that we bring those milestones into our brain,
01:55:18.500 | which then brings about epinephrine,
01:55:20.500 | which brings about neural firing,
01:55:22.300 | which allows us to access whatever resources
01:55:24.720 | happen to be available to us.
01:55:26.520 | So I find this fascinating because people often wonder,
01:55:30.600 | like, where does the kick come from?
01:55:32.300 | Where is this kind of gift of an additional gear?
01:55:35.340 | Where is that deeper resource?
01:55:36.980 | And we often express it and talk about it
01:55:39.300 | in kind of psychological terms like heart or willpower,
01:55:42.660 | or that something kind of got transplanted into us
01:55:45.520 | or descended into us,
01:55:46.740 | and not to remove any of the spiritual aspects of sport
01:55:50.300 | or running or effort or the human heart.
01:55:54.500 | But it's very clear that the nervous system,
01:55:57.220 | when it has a specific visual target,
01:55:59.540 | can generate the sorts of intense effort
01:56:02.740 | that it couldn't otherwise.
01:56:04.140 | And it sometimes even comes as a surprise
01:56:05.760 | to the person generating the effort.
01:56:08.060 | I promised that I would talk about programming,
01:56:10.360 | meaning when and how many times a week
01:56:14.260 | to do the various workouts related to endurance
01:56:16.780 | and how to merge those with other types of exercise
01:56:19.420 | that you might be doing for strength or yoga
01:56:21.620 | or other things that you might be doing like work
01:56:23.900 | and other things unrelated to exercise.
01:56:26.420 | Since that's a vast space with many different parameters
01:56:30.580 | and you all have different lives and lifestyles
01:56:32.500 | and backgrounds with fitness, et cetera,
01:56:35.140 | what I'm going to do is I'm going to put
01:56:37.180 | three different levels, if you will,
01:56:39.780 | or protocols that one could adopt
01:56:42.920 | in a link on the show notes or in the caption on YouTube.
01:56:47.800 | If you click on that link,
01:56:48.900 | you'll be able to see three possible combinations
01:56:52.600 | of endurance work, strength and hypertrophy work,
01:56:55.040 | or endurance work, flexibility and hypertrophy work
01:56:58.200 | that are grounded in many of the major publications
01:57:00.900 | that Dr. Andy Galpin and colleagues and other people
01:57:03.460 | have described, including this review
01:57:05.840 | that's also linked there on concurrent training
01:57:08.440 | and how one can use concurrent training,
01:57:10.740 | meaning training for endurance, training for strength,
01:57:12.980 | training for hypertrophy,
01:57:14.180 | training for all these different things
01:57:15.460 | without having to train constantly every day,
01:57:17.240 | twice a day, et cetera.
01:57:18.920 | So if you are interested in taking the protocols
01:57:21.780 | that you learned about in this episode
01:57:23.620 | and in previous episodes and combining those,
01:57:26.180 | we've placed them there for you
01:57:27.740 | as a completely zero cost resource.
01:57:29.860 | Please understand they are not wholly,
01:57:32.700 | Costello agrees they are not wholly.
01:57:34.580 | There will be variation in terms of what people can tolerate
01:57:38.460 | and what they have time for,
01:57:39.700 | but I think they'll serve as a useful guideline
01:57:42.160 | in getting started or in continuing with
01:57:45.220 | and expanding on existing endurance work,
01:57:48.320 | strength work, hypertrophy work, and so forth.
01:57:51.220 | Just really quickly,
01:57:52.060 | we didn't talk about supplements much today.
01:57:54.280 | In the previous episodes,
01:57:55.320 | I talked about the phosphocreatine system
01:57:57.220 | and supplementing with creatine,
01:57:58.740 | talked about beta-alanine for kind of moderate duration work.
01:58:02.900 | Really the only things that have been shown
01:58:05.940 | to really improve endurance work
01:58:08.780 | across the four varieties of endurance work
01:58:12.420 | I described today, they have essentially two forms.
01:58:16.520 | One are stimulants, so things like caffeine
01:58:19.060 | will definitely improve endurance work and power output.
01:58:22.260 | There's a little bit of evidence that caffeine intake
01:58:24.940 | can actually inhibit the function of the creatine system,
01:58:27.700 | but it's just one study, but that's interesting.
01:58:31.580 | If you want to read that study,
01:58:32.540 | you can put caffeine into examine.com
01:58:35.380 | and it will take you to that study.
01:58:37.380 | Many people get sore after workouts,
01:58:39.380 | in particular workouts that involve
01:58:41.220 | a lot of eccentric loading or workouts that are very novel
01:58:45.140 | where they've kind of pushed it
01:58:46.400 | instead of moving gradually, as I suggest,
01:58:49.420 | into say high-intensity anaerobic endurance work
01:58:52.020 | of three sets of 20 seconds on, 100 second rest.
01:58:55.060 | Maybe you get over-ambitious and you do eight sets,
01:58:58.060 | in which case you are extremely sore.
01:59:00.500 | Certain forms of magnesium,
01:59:01.780 | in particular magnesium malate, M-A-L-A-T-E,
01:59:05.240 | have been shown to be useful for removing
01:59:09.220 | or reducing the amount of delayed onset muscle soreness.
01:59:12.820 | That form of magnesium is distinctly different
01:59:14.920 | than the sorts of magnesium
01:59:16.000 | that are good for getting us into sleep,
01:59:17.540 | things like magnesium threonate and biglycinate.
01:59:19.940 | And then there's this whole thing about beet powder
01:59:24.060 | and beet juices and things that increase nitric oxide
01:59:28.240 | and allow for more vasodilation
01:59:30.140 | and therefore delivery of blood to muscle and neurons
01:59:32.700 | and other tissues for long bouts of endurance work.
01:59:34.940 | Some people like beet juice and the related compounds
01:59:39.100 | that increase arginine and vasodilation.
01:59:41.220 | Some people don't.
01:59:42.580 | Some people don't feel good when they take those.
01:59:45.300 | Some people also don't feel good when they take beta-alanine
01:59:47.820 | because it can give them this feeling
01:59:49.340 | of kind of like itchy, creepy crawlies under the skin,
01:59:52.680 | kind of the niacin phenomenon, the niacin flush.
01:59:55.280 | Some people don't mind that
01:59:56.460 | or some people don't experience that.
01:59:58.140 | So when it comes to supplementation,
01:59:59.380 | there's a lot of variety,
02:00:00.300 | but magnesium malate has been shown to reduce soreness.
02:00:04.180 | So sometimes that's good.
02:00:05.620 | Cold and hot contrast therapy for soreness,
02:00:08.040 | things of that sort.
02:00:09.160 | But in general, we focused mainly today on behavioral tools.
02:00:14.160 | You'll notice that all of the tools are accessible
02:00:17.880 | without the need for lots of equipment.
02:00:20.340 | So I didn't say you need a rower or you need a kettlebell,
02:00:22.420 | though those will work.
02:00:23.860 | And I hope I was able to illustrate for you
02:00:26.320 | that endurance isn't just one thing.
02:00:28.220 | It's not just the ability to go for long bouts
02:00:31.440 | of exercise of different kinds,
02:00:33.420 | that there's also this mental component
02:00:34.980 | because of the way that neurons work.
02:00:36.660 | And also that there are these different forms of endurance,
02:00:39.700 | of muscular endurance where you're going to fail
02:00:41.640 | 'cause of the muscles and muscle energy utilization
02:00:45.020 | and the nerves that innervate those muscles locally,
02:00:47.060 | not because of a failure to bring in oxygen or blood,
02:00:50.640 | whereas long duration effort, it's going to be more about
02:00:54.180 | being below your VO2 max and your ability to be efficient
02:00:57.220 | for long bouts of more than 12 minutes of exercise.
02:01:00.180 | One set, as I say, of 12 minutes to maybe several hours.
02:01:04.600 | I should just mention with long duration type work,
02:01:07.480 | you could even imagine raking in the yard or mowing a lawn,
02:01:10.060 | depending on how big that lawn is.
02:01:11.340 | I used to have a job when I was a kid mowing lawns.
02:01:13.880 | And I'll tell you,
02:01:15.440 | we didn't have many neighbors with very big lawns,
02:01:17.460 | but there are a few of them felt huge
02:01:19.500 | 'cause they were really convoluted.
02:01:20.940 | And if you're pushing that mower
02:01:22.180 | and these were the old fashioned mowers,
02:01:23.360 | not electric mowers, it's work.
02:01:24.740 | That's also of the sort that we call
02:01:26.540 | long duration endurance work.
02:01:28.400 | High intensity training will tap into yet other fuel sources
02:01:31.640 | and mechanisms as we learned today.
02:01:34.600 | So if you are enjoying this podcast
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02:04:50.780 | with links out to those.
02:04:51.900 | It's searchable by keywords that you're interested in,
02:04:54.480 | so sleep or exercise, weight, training, strength,
02:04:56.740 | fat loss, et cetera.
02:04:58.500 | And you can subscribe to our newsletter, The Neural Network,
02:05:01.560 | which will allow you to get zero cost updates
02:05:04.100 | about speaking events, about any book releases
02:05:07.620 | or exciting things that I'm reading
02:05:09.500 | that I think you would enjoy reading as well,
02:05:11.700 | as well as protocols related to science
02:05:13.420 | and some summary and important notes from the podcast.
02:05:16.260 | And last but not least, on behalf of myself and Costello,
02:05:20.180 | who's finally waking up for, oh no, he went back to sleep.
02:05:24.020 | Thank you for your interest in science.
02:05:25.580 | [upbeat music]
02:05:28.160 | (upbeat music)