How to Build Your Weekly Workout Program | Jeff Cavaliere & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | One of your mantras is, you know, if you want to look like an athlete, train like an athlete.
00:00:08.480 | And I think that's something really special that sets aside what you do from what a lot
00:00:12.880 | of other very well qualified people do.
00:00:17.320 | And in terms of the use of weights and resistance, whether or not it's body weight or weights
00:00:23.120 | in the gym or pulleys versus cardio, you know, in terms of overall health, aesthetics and
00:00:30.040 | athleticism, is there a way that you could point to, you know, the idea that maybe people
00:00:34.240 | should be doing, you know, 50% resistance training and 50% cardio, maybe it's 70/30,
00:00:41.240 | maybe it's 30/70.
00:00:42.240 | And, and here I'm talking about the typical person who would like to maintain or maybe
00:00:46.840 | even add some muscle mass, probably in particular areas for most people, as opposed to just
00:00:52.620 | overall mass.
00:00:53.620 | Although we'll talk about that later.
00:00:54.960 | And people want to maintain a relatively low body fat percentage and being good cardiovascular
00:00:59.040 | health.
00:01:00.040 | What's the sort of contour of a basic program that anybody could think about as a starting
00:01:04.920 | place?
00:01:06.680 | I think it's like a 60/40 split, which would be leaning towards weight training, you know,
00:01:11.760 | strength and, and, and then, you know, the conditioning aspect be about 40%.
00:01:15.960 | So if you look at it over a course of a training week, I mean, five days in a gym would be
00:01:19.520 | a great task.
00:01:20.520 | And obviously not in the gym, it could be done at home, but three days strength training,
00:01:24.840 | Monday, Wednesday, Friday, conditioning, Tuesday, Thursday, you know, two days, it's a, it's
00:01:28.900 | a pretty easy roundabout way to split that up, of course, depending upon training goals.
00:01:34.000 | And as you said, the aesthetic goals like that will shift dramatically.
00:01:37.560 | But if you want to see the benefits of both, that's probably the, the effective dose for
00:01:42.680 | strength training and the effective dose for conditioning at the bare minimum level, again,
00:01:46.600 | being a much better performer conditioning wise, you're gonna want to do more than that.
00:01:50.720 | And in terms of the duration of those workouts, what's your suggestion?
00:01:54.480 | I've been weight training for about 30 years, running for about 30 years, and mainly for
00:02:00.640 | health and have found that if I work hard in the gym or at resistance training for more
00:02:07.000 | than 60 minutes or so, it's very hard for me to recover, I start getting colds, I start
00:02:11.720 | getting weaker from workout to workout.
00:02:13.800 | But amazingly, at least to me, if I keep those workouts to about 10 minutes, 10 minutes of
00:02:18.120 | warm up and 50, five, zero minutes or so of really hard work for resistance training,
00:02:24.800 | and I keep the cardiovascular work to about 30 to 45 minutes, I feel great.
00:02:30.360 | And I seem to make some progress at least some place in the workout from workout to
00:02:34.100 | workout.
00:02:35.100 | Yeah, I mean, it's those are good numbers, because those are kind of numbers that we
00:02:38.320 | usually preach, we try to keep our workouts to an hour or less if possible.
00:02:41.920 | Now, depending upon the split that you're following, if you're on a total body split,
00:02:46.360 | there's just gonna be more that has to be done in a given amount of time that and again,
00:02:51.080 | if you're training primarily for strength, that could prolong the workout because the
00:02:53.960 | longer rest times in between sets, but in general, when you're not focused on that one
00:02:58.480 | aspect, but the overall health picture, then you can get the job done in under an under
00:03:03.560 | an hour.
00:03:04.560 | And again, I always say, on top of if you want to look like an athlete train like an
00:03:07.760 | athlete is you can either train longer, you can train hard, but you can't do both.
00:03:11.360 | And I really believe that the focus for me, I have a busy life, I have a lot of other
00:03:15.400 | things that I do, believe it or not, and it's like, I want to go hard, and I want to go
00:03:19.360 | get out.
00:03:20.640 | And I find that my body also responds to that I think a lot of guys bodies respond to that.
00:03:24.840 | And particularly, as you start to get older, I think it's the it's the length of the workout
00:03:31.000 | that actually causes more problems than the intensity of what you're doing, particularly
00:03:35.560 | if you're warmed up properly.
00:03:36.780 | Like you said, I found personally that my warm up has had to become more of an integral
00:03:40.840 | part of my workout than it ever has before.
00:03:43.480 | I never I could get in the gym when I was 20.
00:03:46.360 | And I'm going right over, I'm doing the one set, two sets, I'm in, I'm ready to go, you
00:03:50.280 | know, and I never do another workout warm up set for any of the other exercises I do
00:03:53.680 | the rest of the day.
00:03:55.580 | That's not that's not true anymore, you know, and I found that as long as I'm willing to
00:03:59.160 | sort of give myself a little bit of a warm up, the intensity is not what bothers me,
00:04:03.480 | you know, I'm very much in control of the weights I use, and it doesn't bother me.
00:04:07.680 | But if I start to go pretty long, I start to feel achy or I start to have problems.
00:04:11.840 | So again, depending upon age, that also plays a factor in the length.
00:04:15.940 | But again, I think everybody can achieve on a standard program can achieve the results
00:04:21.240 | that they want within an hour.
00:04:22.480 | [Music]