Essentials: How to Exercise for Strength Gains & Hormone Optimization

00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,

00:00:02.220 | where we revisit past episodes

00:00:04.040 | for the most potent and actionable science-based tools

00:00:07.220 | for mental health, physical health, and performance.

00:00:09.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:12.820 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:15.460 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:17.120 | And now, my conversation with Dr. Duncan French.

00:00:20.100 | Duncan French, great to see you again.

00:00:22.840 | Likewise, likewise, thank you.

00:00:24.540 | I don't often have many Stanford professors

00:00:26.960 | in the Performance Institute, so I'm really excited.

00:00:29.620 | Oh, well, this place is amazing,

00:00:31.100 | and you have a huge role in making it what it is.

00:00:35.220 | I found dozens of papers

00:00:37.140 | on how weight training impacts hormones,

00:00:39.920 | and your name's on all of them.

00:00:42.560 | What is it about engaging motor neurons under heavy loads

00:00:46.680 | sends a signal to the endocrine system,

00:00:48.980 | hey, release testosterone.

00:00:51.080 | I've never actually been able to find that in a textbook.

00:00:54.040 | Yeah, I mean, I think it's a stress response, right?

00:00:56.420 | It's mechanical stress and it's metabolic stress.

00:00:58.540 | And these are, you know, the downstream regulation

00:01:00.860 | of testosterone release at the gonads

00:01:03.180 | comes from many different areas.

00:01:05.500 | You know, my work primarily looked at, you know,

00:01:10.320 | catecholamines and sympathetic arousal.

00:01:13.240 | So things like epinephrine, adrenaline.

00:01:14.820 | Correct, yeah, epinephrine, adrenaline, you know, noradrenaline.

00:01:18.800 | How they were signaling, that signaling cascade using, you know,

00:01:23.080 | the HPA axis releasing cortisol, and then, you know, looking at how that also influenced

00:01:29.200 | the adrenal medulla to release, you know, androgens, and then signaling that at the gonads.

00:01:34.960 | That raises an interesting question.

00:01:36.660 | So in presumably weight training in women, people who don't have testes, also it increases

00:01:43.380 | testosterone.

00:01:44.180 | Yeah, yeah.

00:01:44.480 | And is that purely through the adrenals?

00:01:46.300 | When women lift weights, their adrenal glands release testosterone?

00:01:48.780 | Absolutely.

00:01:49.320 | I mean, that is the only area of testosterone release for females.

00:01:53.300 | And yes, it's the same downstream cascade.

00:01:55.560 | Obviously, the extent to which it happens is significantly less in females.

00:01:59.340 | But that's how you, there's good data out there that shows, you know, females can increase

00:02:03.960 | their anabolic environment, their internal anabolic milieu, using resistance training as

00:02:09.020 | a stressor.

00:02:09.560 | And then they get the consequent muscle tissue growth, you know, whether it's tendon, ligament,

00:02:14.180 | adaptations, you know, the beneficial consequences of resistance training, which is driven by anabolic

00:02:20.060 | stimuli.

00:02:20.800 | Yeah, I have two questions about that.

00:02:22.580 | The first one is something that you mentioned, which is that the, the androgens, the testosterone

00:02:27.380 | comes from the adrenals under resistance loads in women.

00:02:30.580 | Is the same true in men?

00:02:32.080 | I mean, we hear that the testes produce testosterone when we weight train, but do we know whether or

00:02:37.740 | not it's the adrenals or the testes in men that are increasing testosterone more, both a

00:02:42.020 | little bit from each?

00:02:42.700 | The field is divided presently.

00:02:44.660 | And as much as understanding the acute adrenergic response in terms of, you know, anabolic response

00:02:53.920 | to exercise in an acute phase and the exposure to, you know, a stimulus that is stress driven,

00:02:59.720 | which might be partly from the adrenal glands, partly from the gonads versus a longitudinal exposure

00:03:05.700 | exposure to anabolic environments, which is primarily driven by, obviously, the gonads and the release,

00:03:12.100 | the endocrine environment from testosterone release at the gonads.

00:03:15.200 | So the field is split in terms of how exercise is promoting hypertrophy, you know, muscle tissue

00:03:21.720 | growth, and whether that is very much an adrenal stimuli or if that's significant enough in these

00:03:28.720 | acute responses versus the longitudinal exposure, just elevated basal levels of anabolic testosterone

00:03:35.980 | habitual levels.

00:03:37.460 | And then you mentioned that testosterone can have enhancing effects, growth effects on tendon

00:03:43.460 | and ligament also, that you don't often hear about that.

00:03:46.000 | People always think, you know, testosterone muscle, but testosterone has a lot of effects on

00:03:50.740 | other tissues that are important for performance, it sounds like.

00:03:54.020 | And what's the story there?

00:03:54.980 | Yeah, absolutely.

00:03:55.580 | I mean, the testosterone hormone is, I mean, listen, there's androgen receptors on neural tissue,

00:04:01.300 | on neural axons.

00:04:02.140 | It's pretty much everywhere.

00:04:03.300 | Exactly.

00:04:03.860 | So, you know, the binding capacity of testosterone and influencing different tissues within the

00:04:08.840 | body, I touched on, you know, muscle tissue, but, you know, the ligaments, the tendons, even

00:04:14.020 | bone to some extent, you know, testosterone is potential to influence that in terms of removing

00:04:20.000 | osteopenic kind of characteristics, et cetera.

00:04:22.380 | So, yeah, it's a magic hormone, let's say, with many, many end impacts in terms of adaptation.

00:04:31.880 | Could you say that there's some general principles of training that favor testosterone production in

00:04:38.440 | terms of, that somebody who's not an elite athlete could use, who's trying to use weight

00:04:43.400 | training to build or maintain muscle, lose body fat, so body recomposition, and/or stay strong and healthy

00:04:51.240 | for sport of a different kind?

00:04:52.920 | Testosterone is really stimulated by an intensity factor and also a volume factor.

00:04:57.880 | Now, growth hormone is a little bit different.

00:04:59.560 | That's largely driven by an intensity factor alone.

00:05:02.360 | If you look at many of the exercise interventions that we use to try and investigate and interrogate

00:05:07.560 | testosterone, it was usually, you know, a six by 10 protocol.

00:05:13.160 | So, six sets of 10 repetitions, which is quite a large, you know, 60 repetitions is quite a large

00:05:19.240 | volume for a single exercise. And that was usually pitched at about 80% of a one repetition max intensity.

00:05:26.200 | Okay. So, 80% of the one rep max, six sets of 10 reps separated by rest of-

00:05:31.800 | Two minutes.

00:05:32.520 | Two minutes, which is actually pretty fast.

00:05:34.280 | Yes.

00:05:34.600 | At least to me.

00:05:35.240 | It is.

00:05:35.560 | Anytime you see these two to three minutes, when you're actually watching the clock,

00:05:38.760 | those two minute rest periods go by pretty fast.

00:05:40.760 | By the third, fourth set, you're dying for more.

00:05:43.000 | Yeah.

00:05:43.240 | Yeah.

00:05:43.560 | We formulated that kind of exercise protocol to really target, you know, the release of

00:05:49.320 | testosterone and try and drive up these anabolic environments to study the, you know,

00:05:53.160 | the endocrine, you know, consequences.

00:05:56.120 | But I think that's the type of protocol that is most advantageous for driving anabolic environments.

00:06:03.320 | And that was it for the workout?

00:06:05.080 | Yeah, we would do that in a back squat. So, you know, multi-joint, you know, challenging

00:06:10.360 | exercise, multi-muscle, multi-joint, 80% load of your one repetition max, and then six by 10.

00:06:16.760 | We did play around with, you know, your classic German volume type 10 by 10 kind of protocols,

00:06:22.600 | but they were just unsustainable at that 80%. The key to what we also did was we always adjusted

00:06:29.880 | the loads to make sure that it was 10 repetitions that were sustained.

00:06:34.360 | So if the load was too high and an athlete or a participant had to drop the weight on the sixth

00:06:41.480 | repetition, we would unload the bar and make sure they completed the 10 repetitions.

00:06:44.920 | I see.

00:06:45.400 | Bringing me back to the point of it's an intensity and a volume derivative that is going to be most

00:06:50.840 | advantageous for testosterone release.

00:06:52.840 | So that sort of hints at the possibility that the thresholds for going from a workout that increases

00:06:58.680 | testosterone to a workout that diminishes testosterone is actually a pretty narrow margin.

00:07:03.160 | Yeah. And I think it comes back to that intensity factor then, you know, what we saw with that 10

00:07:08.360 | by 10 protocol really sees pretty significant drop offs in the load. And again, we're trying to

00:07:14.040 | stimulate with intensity, with mechanical strain through intensity, as well as metabolic strain

00:07:19.720 | through volume. And I think that's the paradigm that you've got to look at is that the mechanical load

00:07:24.680 | has to come from, you know, the actual weight on the bar and the volume is the metabolic stimulus.

00:07:31.560 | How much are we driving lactate? How much are we driving, you know, glycogenolysis in terms of that

00:07:36.600 | type of energy system for, you know, executing a 10 by 10 protocol. And what we often saw was just

00:07:43.320 | a significant reduction in the intensity capabilities of an athlete to sustain that. So we shortened the

00:07:49.080 | volume and to try and maintain the intensity. Is there any evidence that training slowly can offset

00:07:55.560 | some of the negative effects of doing a lot of volume?

00:07:57.560 | The rest is often the consideration that's overlooked out there in general population and in many

00:08:04.360 | sporting environments. You know, that the rest is as important a programming variable as the load and

00:08:09.720 | the intensity, the load, the volume, etc. If you extend the duration of your rest periods, what you're

00:08:16.440 | ultimately doing is influencing that metabolic stimulus again. You're allowing the flushing of the body, the removal of

00:08:22.440 | waste products, you know, lactate to be, you know, removed from the body and then the metabolic

00:08:28.120 | environment is reduced.

00:08:28.920 | So if I understand correctly, you want to create a metabolic stress.

00:08:33.800 | Absolutely.

00:08:34.440 | So I could, I could in theory do a 45 or 60 minute session where I pack in more, more work per unit

00:08:41.640 | time. I'm not going to be able to quote unquote perform as well. I won't be able to lift as much.

00:08:46.040 | Yeah. I'm going to have to, you know, unweight the bar between sets or maybe even during sets if I

00:08:50.360 | have someone who could do that, but it sounds like that's the way to go. So it's got to be,

00:08:54.920 | so this, the old adage of high intensity, short duration is probably the way to go.

00:08:59.160 | Correct. And, and, and, you know, in, in, in layman's terms, if the same objective,

00:09:03.800 | the same training goal is just muscle tissue growth, and we're not talking about maximal

00:09:07.960 | strength or any of those types of parameters. We're just talking about growing muscle.

00:09:11.720 | If there's an athlete A and they do six, six sets of 10 with two minutes rest, and there's athlete B

00:09:16.600 | that does six sets of 10 with three minutes left rest. Athlete A will likely see the highest

00:09:21.240 | muscle gains because of the metabolic stimulus that they're driving with the shorter rest periods.

00:09:26.120 | What about day-to-day recovery? I mean, can the workout that you described as intense,

00:09:29.880 | but short, how many days a week can the typical person do that and sustain progress?

00:09:35.160 | Yeah. I mean, I think that comes back to your training age and your training history. Obviously,

00:09:38.680 | there's a resilience and a robustness with, with an incremental training age. So a protocol like that,

00:09:44.040 | we would look at two, two times, you know, a week, something that's, that's pretty intensive

00:09:48.200 | like that. Because again, it comes back to the point you make is that you really need to be,

00:09:52.120 | for want of better terms, suffering a little bit through that type of protocol, both in terms of,

00:09:57.640 | of the challenge of the load, but also being able to tolerate the, the metabolic stress that you're

00:10:02.680 | exposed to. It's, it's a, it's a, you know, a bit of a sicko feeling, right? Because of the lactate

00:10:08.120 | that you're driving up. So, you know, I wouldn't promote as an athlete doing that type of modality,

00:10:13.640 | you know, multiple, multiple times, unless you're from the realms of bodybuilding. And then you really,

00:10:18.920 | that that's the sole purpose of, of what you're trying to achieve. If it's just somebody, you know,

00:10:23.320 | a weekend warrior that wants to keep in shape and look, and look good, I would say, you know,

00:10:27.880 | two times a week for a really challenging workout like that, and then flex the other types of workouts

00:10:32.680 | within the week to have more of a, a volume emphasis where you reduce the intensity and you

00:10:37.240 | might just look at, you know, larger rep ranges from 12 to 15 to 20, another workout where you're

00:10:42.760 | looking at, you know, reducing the volume, but increasing the intensity and really trying to drive,

00:10:47.320 | you know, different stimulus to, to give you more end points of, of, of success.

00:10:52.360 | Mm-hmm. Last time I was here at the UFC Performance Institute, we had a brief conversation and I,

00:10:57.480 | I want to make sure I got the details right, that in the short term, and a big increase

00:11:02.520 | in stress hormone can lead to an increase in testosterone, like a, like a parachute jump.

00:11:07.640 | Correct.

00:11:08.120 | Um, but, so stress can promote the release of testosterone.

00:11:13.800 | Yeah.

00:11:14.200 | That was news to me.

00:11:15.160 | Right.

00:11:15.560 | Um, we always hear about stress suppressing testosterone, stress suppressing the immune system,

00:11:20.120 | all these terrible things, but in the short term, you're saying it can actually increase the

00:11:24.760 | release of testosterone. Uh, so I have that right?

00:11:28.200 | Correct.

00:11:28.680 | Okay. And so then the second question is,

00:11:32.120 | does my cognitive interpretation of the stressor make a difference? In other words,

00:11:38.440 | if I voluntarily jump out of a plane with a parachute, does it have a different effect on my

00:11:44.120 | testosterone than if you shoved me out of the plane against my will? Well, presumably with a parachute.

00:11:48.680 | Right.

00:11:49.240 | I mean, so, so this was what all my PhD work was, was looking at was the, um, you know,

00:11:55.560 | the, the, uh, pre, um, the, the exposure to a stressor and the pre arousal of how your body

00:12:03.160 | essentially prepares for that stressor and then how it manages it throughout the exposure to the stress.

00:12:07.640 | We use the resistance training protocol that, that these athletes knew was going to be very,

00:12:12.680 | very challenging. It's going to be, there's going to have some anxiety to doing it. They knew there

00:12:17.080 | were going to be some physical distress from doing it. Um, and therefore, you know, them,

00:12:21.800 | their mindset of how they were going to approach that was already set. So what we saw prior,

00:12:25.960 | prior, 15 minutes prior to the, the start of an ex exposure to, to the workout, the, the epinephrine,

00:12:32.520 | the neuroadrenaline, the adrenaline was already starting to prepare the body sympathetically,

00:12:37.000 | um, to go into what it knew was going to be a very, very challenging workout.

00:12:41.400 | So what's the, what was the takeaway there? Is, is the stress good for performance or is it harmful?

00:12:46.360 | That's a great question. From my data, certainly the, the greater the arousal, the higher the

00:12:51.080 | performance was from a, from a physical exertion perspective. There's definitely a bio,

00:12:55.640 | an individual biokinetics to some of these, um, hormonal kind of releases in as much as

00:13:01.240 | those guys that had the highest, um, you know, adreneric response in terms of epinephrine release,

00:13:06.680 | norepinephrine release also sustained force output, um, through, for a longer period of the workout

00:13:13.640 | than those that didn't. So the, the, the individuals that had a lower, um, stimulus of, of the sympathetic

00:13:20.360 | arousal, let's say, um, certainly didn't perform as well throughout the workout.

00:13:24.200 | There's another side to this, um, that I want to ask about, which is, um, the use of cold, um,

00:13:30.840 | in particular things like ice baths, cold showers, in theory, that's stress also it's epinephrine.

00:13:36.760 | And so, um, how should one think about the use of cold for recovery?

00:13:41.800 | You know, throwing your body into, you know, a cold tub, an ice bath or whatever it may be, um, certainly

00:13:48.440 | is going to have a physiological stress response. Now people are using that for different end, end

00:13:54.280 | goals. And again, I think that's where the narrative has to be explained. Um, if you are using the stress

00:14:00.200 | specifically to manage the mindset, um, to use it as a specific stress stimulus, that's the same as me

00:14:07.640 | doing six by 10, 80%, you know, you, you're just trying to find something to disrupt the system,

00:14:12.920 | to do something that's very, um, if want a better term, painful, discomfort, whatever. Um, you're just

00:14:19.720 | finding a stressor and then being able to manage the mindset. But if you're using cold, um, specifically

00:14:25.880 | from a physiological perspective to promote, um, you know, redistribution of vascularity, you know,

00:14:33.160 | of blood flow, you know, to, to different vascular areas of, of muscle that, that you feel have gone

00:14:37.880 | through a workout that are damaged or whatever it may be. I think there's, we've got to understand what

00:14:42.680 | that stress mechanism is. Um, and you know, the, the data, the literature is certainly still out there

00:14:48.600 | with respect to cryotherapy and cold baths and some of these, um, you know, high, these, these cold

00:14:55.240 | exposures in terms of what they do at the, at the level of the muscle tissue. If that's, if that's the

00:15:00.120 | target, if you're trying to promote a flushing mechanism or you're trying to promote redistribution

00:15:05.800 | of, of the blood flow, what you've got to understand is that cold is going to clamp down every part of the

00:15:10.920 | vascular system. Um, and we've really got to understand how the muscle would be redistributed, um,

00:15:17.720 | two areas of interest. So, you know, I think the stress response is, is, is, is a real thing with

00:15:23.960 | respect to, you know, cold exposure. Um, but I think the narrative around what are you using the cold

00:15:30.280 | for has to precede the conversation. And cold I've heard can actually prevent

00:15:36.440 | some of the beneficial effects of training that it can actually get, get in the way of muscle growth,

00:15:43.400 | et cetera. Yeah. There's, there's, there's some pretty robust data out there now showing

00:15:47.400 | that it definitely has an influence on performance variables like strength and power in particular.

00:15:52.280 | Um, but absolutely in terms of muscle hypertrophy and there's a big kind of theme in, in the world

00:15:58.280 | of athletic performance right now, in terms of periodization of cold exposure as, as a recovery

00:16:04.840 | modality, you know, what, when do you use cold, you know, should you be using cold for recovery

00:16:11.080 | in periods of high training load when you're actually pursuing, you know, it might be general

00:16:14.680 | proprietary work. We actually trying to pursue muscle growth. Well, that's usually where you get the most

00:16:20.440 | sore. It's usually where, you know, you, you feel the most fatigued, but it's probably not the most

00:16:25.320 | beneficial approach to use an ice bath in that, in that scenario, because you're dampening, you're

00:16:30.040 | dulling the, you know, the mTOR pathway and, and the, the hyper, hypertrophic, um, signaling pathway.

00:16:36.360 | Whereas in a competition phase where actually quality of exercise and quality of execution of

00:16:42.360 | skill and technical work has to be maintained, you want to throw the kitchen sink of recovery,

00:16:48.440 | uh, capabilities and recovery interventions in that scenario, because you now, you know, the,

00:16:53.640 | the muscle building activity should be in the bank. That should have been done in the,

00:16:56.840 | in the general preparatory work. And, um, now you're focusing on technical execution. So

00:17:02.520 | you're absolutely right. That's interesting. So if I, if I understand correctly, uh, if,

00:17:07.720 | if I want to maximize muscle growth or power or, you know, improvements and adaptations,

00:17:14.520 | then the inflammation response, the delayed onset muscle soreness, all the stuff that's uncomfortable

00:17:19.800 | and that we hear is so terrible is actually the stimulus for adaptation. And so using cold in that

00:17:25.240 | situation might short circuit my progress, but if I'm, uh, you know, I don't know that I'll ever do

00:17:30.920 | this, but if I were to do an Ironman or something or run a marathon under those conditions, I'm basically

00:17:36.600 | coming to the, to the race, so to speak with all the power and strength I'm going to have. And so they're

00:17:42.760 | reducing inflammation is good because it's going to allow me to perform more work essentially.

00:17:47.160 | Absolutely. Yeah. You have to be strategic about when you use some of these interventions and, you know,

00:17:52.920 | the, the time when you're preparing for a competition is the appropriate time when you

00:17:56.600 | want to drive recovery and make sure that your body is optimized. Um, you know, when you're far away from

00:18:02.440 | a, a, a competition, you know, dates or, you know, out of season or whatever it may be, and you're really

00:18:08.280 | trying to just tear up the body a little bit to allow it to its natural, um, you know, healing and

00:18:14.440 | adaptation processes to take place. Well, you don't want to negate that, you know, you want the body to

00:18:19.480 | optimize its internal recovery and that's how muscle growth is going to happen. So, so interesting that

00:18:24.440 | there's a time kind of consideration that you need to make with these interventions for sure.

00:18:28.600 | At the UFC performance center, are the, are the fighters periodizing their cold exposure or are they

00:18:33.640 | just you doing cold, cold at, at, at will?

00:18:37.160 | Well, it's not just the UFC. And again, I, I talk about my personal experiences with different sports. I think

00:18:43.080 | just education around where science is at and our understanding of, of concepts like the use of cold

00:18:49.880 | exposure for recovery, ice bath, you know, everyone wants to jump in an ice bath. But I think as we've,

00:18:54.920 | as we've stepped back and scientists have start to say, have started to figure out and look at some of the

00:19:00.040 | data, you know, we're now more intuitive about, well, actually that might not be the best or the most

00:19:05.720 | optimal approach. And I think that's, that's any given sport. So yes, certainly here at the, at the UFC,

00:19:10.760 | we're trying to educate our athletes around, you know, appropriate timing. And it's the same with

00:19:16.040 | nutrition. It's the same with an ice bath intervention. It's the same with lifting weights.

00:19:20.280 | It's the same with going for a run or working out on the bike. You know, the, the, there's, there's

00:19:24.360 | tactics to when, when you do things and when you don't do things. And I think, you know, stress and,

00:19:29.400 | and cold exposure, um, we have to have a consideration around that as well, but it's not just, you know,

00:19:34.520 | MMA fighters, that's any, any athlete. And I think it's the, the best, the best professionals,

00:19:41.240 | the most successful professionals do that really well. They understand, they listen, number one,

00:19:46.040 | they, they educate themselves and then they build structure. And I think, you know, at the most elite

00:19:51.480 | level, we, we always talk about it here at the UFC, but the most elite level, you're not necessarily

00:19:56.360 | training harder than anybody else. Everybody in the UFC trains hard. Like everyone is training

00:20:02.280 | super hard, but the best athletes, the, the true elite levels are the ones that can do it again and

00:20:07.880 | again and again on a daily basis and sustain a technical output for skill development. Therefore,

00:20:13.160 | their skills can improve or physical development, their physical attributes can improve. So that ability

00:20:18.200 | to reproduce on a day-to-day basis falls into a recovery conversation. Now, when is the right time to

00:20:25.000 | use something like an ice bath and when isn't, is part of the, the high performance conversation for

00:20:30.200 | sure. For somebody that wants to get better at sport, do you recommend a particularly long or short

00:20:37.880 | training session? It does intensity matter or is it just reps? No, it's, it's not a volume driven

00:20:44.840 | exercise. It's a quality driven exercise. It is about rehearsal of accurate movement, accurate movement

00:20:52.280 | mechanics. And the soon, as soon as that becomes impacted by fatigue or inaccurate movement, you're

00:20:59.720 | now losing the, the, the motor learning. You're losing the accuracy of the skill that, you know,

00:21:05.000 | people can call it muscle memory or whatever they want, right? But essentially you're grooving neural

00:21:09.800 | axons to, to create movement patterns and they're situational throughout sport, right? You know,

00:21:15.080 | whether it's a Cruyff turn in soccer or a jump shot in basketball or a forehand down the line,

00:21:19.480 | you can carve out that particular posture and position and skill, and you can isolate it and

00:21:25.720 | you can drill it again and again, again. Now, as soon as fatigue is, is influencing that repetition,

00:21:32.120 | it's time, it's time to stop. And the best coaches understand that it's shorter sessions that are very

00:21:38.280 | high quality. And I think the best athletes in my experience are the ones that consciously and

00:21:44.360 | cognitively are aware of it at every moment of the training session, a three hour session versus a 90

00:21:51.800 | minute session. You know, we'll, we'll take the 90 minute session any day when it comes to skill

00:21:56.360 | acquisition, because that's going to be driven by quality over quantity.

00:21:59.720 | Yeah. Training and skill learning is incredibly mentally fatiguing. You hit a really hard workout

00:22:06.920 | or run early in the day. What leads to the mental fatigue after physical performance?

00:22:12.440 | If you have an amazing coach who is setting up training in a particular way, it's challenging.

00:22:16.760 | There's a strain related to it. And I'm not talking physical strain, I'm talking

00:22:20.120 | figuring things out, you know, figuring out the skill. And I think that can be stressful. Like,

00:22:25.560 | you know, if they hit the right technique, you know, that reward center in the brain,

00:22:29.480 | that dopamine shot is going to fly up there. And there's only so many times that we can get

00:22:34.680 | that before that becomes dampened. And I think there's an energetic piece to it. You know, there's

00:22:39.240 | the fueling of the brain. There's the carbohydrate fueling exercise that actually the strategy around

00:22:46.920 | how you fuel for learning and fuel for physical training is actually pretty similar.

00:22:52.680 | Yeah, it's glucose. It's sugar at the end of the day, right?

00:22:56.600 | Do you think that nutrition that doesn't include a lot of glucose, doesn't include a lot of carbohydrates,

00:23:03.240 | is a problem?

00:23:05.480 | Yeah. Again, disclaimer, I'm not a dietitian. But I think it comes down to metabolic efficiency. You know,

00:23:12.920 | we rarely advocate a high performance athlete in a high intensity intermittent sport like MMA,

00:23:19.720 | being totally ketogenic. Because at the end of the day, some of those high intensity

00:23:23.720 | efforts usually require, you know, carbohydrate fueling for the high and the energy,

00:23:30.840 | the energy is produced at those high intensities.

00:23:33.960 | Can I interrupt you real quick? What about ketones for people that are ingesting carbohydrates?

00:23:39.560 | This is an interesting area because people always hear ketones and they think, oh, I have to be ketogenic

00:23:43.640 | to benefit from taking ketones. But there are a number of athletes and recreational athletes now,

00:23:49.640 | as well, taking liquid or powder based ketones, even though they do eat rice and oatmeal and bread and

00:23:57.400 | other things. So are there any known benefits of ketones, even if one is not in a state of ketosis?

00:24:04.680 | The use of ketones that I'm primarily aware of is in our sport is after the event, you know,

00:24:10.440 | in terms of the brain health with athletes that take, you know, potentially taking trauma to the brain,

00:24:15.080 | et cetera, and looking to maintain the fueling and the energy supply to the brain. But yes,

00:24:20.680 | it's probably a little bit out of my remit. So I don't want to talk on that because I'm not,

00:24:24.680 | I'm not fully familiar with that. And to come back to the original question, if it's a,

00:24:28.680 | you know, general population, then yes, I think there's, there's a place to argue that actually

00:24:33.080 | being on a ketogenic diet at times, and maybe that's a cycling exercise, maybe not, you know,

00:24:37.800 | I don't mean cycling a bike, I mean cycling ketosis is beneficial because I think it's going to lead

00:24:44.280 | to better metabolic management and metabolic efficiency. Those lower intensities where we should

00:24:50.120 | be fueling our, our metabolism with lipids and fats. Clearly the, the Western diet and, you know,

00:24:57.400 | the modern day diet is heavily driven by processed foods and carbohydrates that, you know, people

00:25:02.840 | become predisposed to utilization of that fuel source, um, above lipids use, fat use, um, intensities

00:25:11.000 | that are very low. So, you know, some of our data with the fighters shows that as well. Um, but I think

00:25:16.120 | the challenge for us is that we're working with a clientele that require high intensity bouts of effort.

00:25:21.880 | Um, so, you know, fueling appropriately, um, is very important for that.

00:25:26.120 | Now we use, we use tactics here where we essentially have athletes on what you would

00:25:31.720 | say kind of a, is it a largely a ketogenic diet, but then we will fuel carbohydrates around

00:25:38.520 | training sessions. So we'll do very timed exposure to carbohydrates. So it's not post-training,

00:25:44.120 | post-training, immediately pre during, and then immediately post. And then the rest of their diets,

00:25:49.640 | you know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, uh, what would look like ketogenic type approaches. So we're

00:25:55.320 | trying to be very tactical in the exposure to maximize the intensity for the training, um,

00:26:00.920 | and then return to a metabolically efficient diet, which is heavily reduced in carbohydrate

00:26:06.920 | because we've fueled the, the, the sessions that need it.

00:26:09.800 | The way I understand metabolic efficiency is that you're, you teach the body to use

00:26:15.240 | fats by maybe doing long, long bouts of cardio, maybe lowering carbohydrates a bit. So teaching

00:26:22.200 | the body to tap into its fat stores for certain periods of training. And then you also teach the

00:26:27.560 | body to utilize carbohydrates by supplying carbohydrates immediately after training and before training. You

00:26:32.840 | teach the body to use ketones, and then you use them at the appropriate time, as opposed to just

00:26:37.000 | deciding that one of these fuel sources is good and all the others are bad or dispensable. Do I have

00:26:41.880 | that correct? Yes, you're absolutely right. I mean, at low intensities of exercise or just day-to-day

00:26:47.960 | living, we shouldn't be tapping into our, um, carbohydrate fuel sources extensively. That that's,

00:26:54.200 | that's for higher intensity work or, you know, the fight or flight needs of, of stress, you know? Um,

00:27:00.840 | if, you know, athletes or any individual has a, you know, a high carbohydrate diet, they're going to

00:27:07.240 | start to become predisposed to utilizing that fuel source preferentially. Now, at low intensity,

00:27:13.160 | that can be problematic, certainly for an athlete, because if they preferentially use carbohydrate at

00:27:19.240 | lower intensities, when the, when the exercise demand goes to a higher intensity, they've already

00:27:24.200 | exhausted their fuel stores. You know, they can't draw upon fat because the oxidization of that,

00:27:29.000 | that fat is just too slow. So they're essentially now become fatigued, um, because they've already

00:27:34.200 | utilized the carbohydrate stores. So what we tried to do, yes, through diet manipulation and a little

00:27:39.400 | bit of exercise manipulation is, as you say, teach the body or train the body to preferentially use a

00:27:44.760 | specific fuel source, fat, obviously at lower intensities and carbohydrate at high intensities.

00:27:49.400 | And we look at specifically the crossover point between the two tells a lot in terms of how an

00:27:54.600 | athlete is, is ultimately, um, you know, how their metabolism is working.

00:27:58.520 | I think most people are looking for that one pattern of eating, that one pattern of exercising,

00:28:03.800 | that's going to be best for them or sustain them. And they often look back to the time when they felt

00:28:10.200 | so much better switching from one thing to the next, but the adaptation process itself is also key,

00:28:15.240 | right? Teaching the body. And I, um, so if we were to, um, just riff on this just a little bit further,

00:28:22.200 | if somebody is eating in a particular way and they want to try this kind of periodization

00:28:26.920 | of nutrition, um, could one say, okay, for a few weeks, I'm going to do more high intensity interval

00:28:32.520 | training and weight training, and I'm going to eat a bit more carbohydrate because I'm depleting more

00:28:35.800 | glycogen. Then if I switch to a phase of my training where I'm doing some longer runs, maybe I'm not, maybe I'm

00:28:42.520 | training less, maybe I'm just working at my desk a little bit more, then I might switch to a lower

00:28:47.000 | carbohydrate diet. Do I have that right? And then if I'm going to enter a competition of some sort,

00:28:51.800 | certainly not UFC or MMA of any kind to be clear, uh, not because it isn't a wonderful sport, but because

00:28:59.000 | it's a, that wouldn't be good for my other profession. But, um, if I were going to do that, then I would think about

00:29:04.920 | stacking carbohydrates, ketones and, and fats. Is that, do I have that more or less right?

00:29:10.360 | I mean, I think, yeah, you said it eloquently. At the end of the day, you're consciously

00:29:14.360 | understanding what the, um, the exposure to, to physical exertion is, and you're flexing your diet

00:29:21.960 | accordingly. A couple more questions. I, I can't help myself. I know we talked about temperature earlier.

00:29:26.920 | I have to ask you about heat. One of the reasons to deliberately expose oneself to heat is for things like

00:29:33.320 | growth hormone release, et cetera. We can talk about this, but how does one get better at heat

00:29:38.680 | adaptation? Or at least what are you doing with the fighters to get them better at dealing with heat,

00:29:42.840 | barring like hyperthermia and death? Like, I mean, obviously you heat up the brain too much. People

00:29:46.840 | will have seizures and die, but, um, you lose neurons, but, uh, what's the right way to acclimate heat?

00:29:53.400 | Yeah. So we, we, we normally start with about 15 minutes of exposure. Now, if someone's really lacking

00:29:59.240 | acclimation to heat, you know, you can do that in three, five minute efforts. Do you know what I

00:30:03.480 | mean? And actually take this hot, hot sauna. Yeah. Hot sauna. Take time to step out.

00:30:07.240 | 200 degrees or something. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. 200 Fahrenheit. Yes. Um, and we, we, we try to work

00:30:12.840 | up to 30 to 40 minutes to 45 minutes in the sauna continuous. Now we, we have to understand, you know,

00:30:19.640 | what, what's the advantage of heat acclimation for our athletes? Ultimately their ability to sweat and to lose,

00:30:26.600 | you know, body fluids is going to be advantageous to their weight cut process. So their ability to

00:30:32.680 | make weight, it is a technique that these guys, some of these guys adopt. So if you don't have,

00:30:37.560 | you know, high sweat rates, it means you're going to have to sit in the sauna for longer and longer and

00:30:42.440 | longer to get the same delta in sweat release. Um, so the more acclimated you are, the more your body

00:30:49.160 | is thermogenic genetically adapted, the more sweat glands you have. So, you know, we start with 15 minutes

00:30:54.600 | and then we just try to add on and add on across the time. And now, now for us, we kind of found

00:30:59.320 | about 14, um, sauna exposures starts to really then drive the adaptations that we're looking for.

00:31:05.560 | So it's not a quick fix, you know, a heat acclimation strategy has to happen long before

00:31:11.160 | fight week or long before the fights. You know, this is a, this is a process that has to begin,

00:31:15.640 | you know, eight to 10 weeks before the fight so that we can actually get that adaptation and that

00:31:20.440 | tolerance to the stressor, to the exposure of heat.

00:31:23.560 | This is interesting. I, until today, when we were talking about this earlier and again, now,

00:31:27.320 | I didn't realize that, um, but it makes perfect sense now that I hear it, that heat adaptation is

00:31:34.440 | possible, that you're basically can train the body to become better at cooling itself,

00:31:38.280 | which is what, what sweating is.

00:31:39.160 | The body is, uh, you know, as an organism, as an organic system, it's, it's hugely adaptable.

00:31:45.720 | It's hugely plastic. But I think the skill is understanding the whens, the whys and the where

00:31:51.080 | ofs in terms of changing the overload, changing the stimulus to drive specific adaptation. And

00:31:57.720 | philosophically, that's, that's how we go about our work here. We talk about adaptation led programming.

00:32:03.640 | Now adaptation led programming fits into every single category, not just lifting weights or

00:32:09.240 | running track. It fits into nutrition. It fits into sitting in the sauna. It fits into being in

00:32:14.360 | a cold bath or not. It fits into so many different things because we're driven by scientific insights.

00:32:20.040 | And that's how we really want to go about our business.

00:32:22.760 | If someone wanted to experiment with heat adaptation or experiment with cold adaptation or change up their

00:32:28.040 | training regimen or, or diet and look at metabolic efficiency, do you think, um, 12 weeks is a good

00:32:34.680 | period of time to really give something a thorough go and get and gain an understanding of how well or how

00:32:40.360 | poorly something works for oneself? Or would you say eight is enough for three?

00:32:44.040 | For 99% of things that change within the body that physiologically adapt to a training stimulus or an overload

00:32:50.920 | stimulus, you're going to start to see either regression or progression, um, you know,

00:32:55.720 | beneficial or detrimental effects within three months. Absolutely.

00:32:59.000 | I would say, and I think, you know, the individual interpretation is always has to be considered.

00:33:04.040 | And I think that's where it comes back to, to be a thinking man's athlete or be a thinking man's

00:33:09.160 | trainer, like someone that's going through exercise. Don't you have to cognitive consciously

00:33:15.800 | understand where your body's at any moment in time. You know, you've got to be real with yourself.

00:33:19.480 | You create a journal, create a log of your training, create a log of your feelings, your subjective

00:33:23.880 | feedback of, um, you know, how you felt, your mood, your sleep, your athletes do that.

00:33:28.520 | Yeah. Yeah. We, we, we try to promote that because again, that's, that's part of this,

00:33:32.760 | this process, you know, um, maybe 12 weeks for you, but I might get the same responses in eight,

00:33:37.720 | eight weeks. You know, we could put 15 guys on the mat and give them the same workout. And there's

00:33:44.680 | going to be 15 different responses to that same workout because the human organism is so complex

00:33:51.640 | and in nature that it's going to adapt differently. You know, some people will tolerate it. Some people

00:33:56.520 | are going to be challenged by it. Some people have got a metabolic makeup that's going to promote it. Some

00:34:00.920 | people are meta metabolically challenged by it. You know, there's, there's just so many different

00:34:05.240 | things that we have to consider. And that's what we try to do here. It's the cross we bear is that we try to

00:34:10.600 | understand on an individual level, how to optimize athletic performance.

00:34:14.840 | Duncan, when you speak, I learn so much. I I'm going to take the protocols that I've heard

00:34:20.920 | about today. I'm going to think about how I'm training and how I could train differently and

00:34:24.200 | better how I'm eating, how I could eat different differently and better for sake of performance.

00:34:30.040 | And just in, in general, um, thank you so much for your time, your scientific expertise,

00:34:36.040 | the stuff you're doing in the practical realm. It's, it's immense. So, uh, hopefully, uh, we can do

00:34:40.920 | it again. Yes. Thank you. This has been a blast. I appreciate it. And, uh, yeah, keep doing what

00:34:45.080 | you're doing because I know there's a lot of people out there that love the platform. So thanks for the

00:34:48.760 | invite. It's been awesome. Oh, thank you. Thanks so much. All right.

Essentials: How to Exercise for Strength Gains & Hormone Optimization | Dr. Duncan French

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