Improve Workouts & Training With a Specific Breathing Practice | Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | [Silence]
00:00:02.460 | Now, breathing and respiration is an enormous topic
00:00:05.380 | in and of itself.
00:00:06.220 | And in fact, I did an entire episode
00:00:08.460 | on breathing and respiration.
00:00:09.780 | And this is a topic that my laboratory works on extensively
00:00:12.720 | as it relates to anxiety control
00:00:14.960 | and some other aspects of mental health,
00:00:17.060 | as well as to physical performance.
00:00:19.220 | For today's discussion,
00:00:20.120 | I want to just review a few tools that one can incorporate
00:00:23.460 | both into workouts and around workouts
00:00:26.540 | that can greatly enhance fitness and recovery.
00:00:29.900 | The first one is the type of respiration tool
00:00:32.320 | that you use between sets of exercise.
00:00:35.540 | And again, here, we're talking about resistance training,
00:00:37.480 | but we could just as easily be talking about
00:00:40.220 | rest between rounds of say high-intensity interval training.
00:00:44.540 | So for instance, between bouts of sprinting on the track
00:00:47.400 | or the bike or the treadmill or the rower.
00:00:49.620 | A great pattern of breathing to incorporate
00:00:51.860 | during rest between sets
00:00:53.780 | is something that I've talked about before in other contexts,
00:00:56.220 | which is the physiological side.
00:00:57.780 | The physiological side is a deep inhale through the nose
00:01:02.100 | to maximally or near maximally inflate your lungs.
00:01:06.180 | And then a second, very brief inhale,
00:01:08.980 | and it's necessarily brief
00:01:10.540 | 'cause your lungs are already pretty full,
00:01:12.600 | to maximally inflate your lungs
00:01:15.140 | and to make sure that any of the little sacks,
00:01:17.100 | the little alveoli of your lungs that have collapsed
00:01:19.260 | during the exercise exertion will reinflate.
00:01:23.180 | And then a long exhale until lungs empty.
00:01:26.520 | So I'll demonstrate it right now
00:01:28.140 | as I've done many times before,
00:01:29.340 | but if you haven't seen it or heard it before,
00:01:31.340 | it's two inhales followed by an extended exhale
00:01:34.100 | and it goes like this.
00:01:35.260 | [inhales and exhales]
00:01:38.420 | You'll notice that the inhales were through the nose
00:01:45.860 | and the exhale was through the mouth.
00:01:47.660 | That's the ideal way to do it for a number of reasons.
00:01:50.300 | Check out the episode that I did on respiration physiology,
00:01:52.700 | aka breathing, if you want more details on why that is.
00:01:56.840 | But two inhales through the nose
00:01:58.280 | and a long extended exhale through the mouth,
00:02:00.320 | the so-called physiological side, not named by me,
00:02:02.880 | but rather named by physiologists in the 1930s,
00:02:06.760 | is as far as we know, the fastest way
00:02:10.120 | to shift your nervous system from so-called sympathetic drive
00:02:14.360 | to more parasympathetic drive,
00:02:16.220 | from a state of greater alertness
00:02:17.820 | to a state of greater calm.
00:02:19.920 | Now, the reason to do this between sets of resistance
00:02:21.920 | training is that the more that you can shift yourself
00:02:24.840 | from sympathetic drive to parasympathetic drive,
00:02:27.040 | that is from alert to calm in between sets,
00:02:29.720 | the more energy and focus you can devote to exertion
00:02:32.560 | during your work sets.
00:02:34.160 | Okay, so one way to do this that's very convenient
00:02:37.000 | and very effective is to consider the last repetition
00:02:40.960 | of your set, a physiological side, which is not to say,
00:02:44.880 | okay, I want to be very clear,
00:02:45.840 | which is not to say that you should do
00:02:47.060 | the physiological side during your set.
00:02:48.880 | In fact, I recommend you do not do that,
00:02:51.520 | but rather if you're doing six repetitions
00:02:53.720 | of a given exercise, and you, let's say, fail on the sixth,
00:02:57.460 | or you do that sixth repetition,
00:02:59.880 | and you're just close to failure, 'cause again,
00:03:01.480 | your work set should be to failure or close to it
00:03:03.720 | most of the time, then set down the weight,
00:03:06.200 | and then you're going to do the next repetition
00:03:08.040 | as the physiological side,
00:03:09.720 | meaning you're not going to do the movement,
00:03:11.480 | you're going to think of doing a physiological side
00:03:14.120 | as the last repetition of every set,
00:03:15.880 | not during the last repetition
00:03:17.760 | of the resistance training movement, okay?
00:03:19.880 | So the physiological side is something you do
00:03:21.520 | at the beginning of the rest period,
00:03:22.800 | immediately following a set.
00:03:24.180 | If you'd rather think about it that way,
00:03:25.360 | because it's more convenient than thinking about it
00:03:26.920 | as the last rep of a set, be my guest,
00:03:28.960 | whatever works for you, but what you'll quickly find
00:03:31.740 | is that if you do a physiological side
00:03:33.340 | right after completing your last repetition,
00:03:35.580 | you'll calm down much more quickly,
00:03:37.980 | your heart rate will come down more quickly,
00:03:39.960 | and you'll recover more completely
00:03:41.680 | in whatever designated rest period you've allowed yourself,
00:03:44.560 | whether or not it's 30 seconds,
00:03:45.840 | which would be very short, frankly,
00:03:47.440 | or it's a five-minute period of rest between sets.
00:03:51.040 | If you do one, truly, just one physiological side
00:03:54.360 | at the beginning of the rest period,
00:03:55.480 | you are going to effectively shift your nervous system
00:03:57.600 | in the direction you want it to go
00:03:59.120 | during those rest periods.
00:04:00.600 | And of course, if you're training hard
00:04:01.960 | during your work sets, you run zero risk whatsoever
00:04:05.260 | of feeling so calm that you don't feel motivated
00:04:07.480 | to do your next set.
00:04:08.720 | I promise you that it will allow you to relax more
00:04:11.400 | at the beginning of the rest period
00:04:13.140 | than you ordinarily would.
00:04:14.600 | To shift into a state of rest,
00:04:16.720 | there are differing opinions about whether or not
00:04:18.800 | you should walk around or stay still
00:04:20.600 | during your rest periods.
00:04:21.480 | I like to walk around a bit and stay standing.
00:04:24.240 | I'm not one of these people that kind of collapses
00:04:26.000 | into a C-shape on the bench in between sets.
00:04:28.240 | I like to stand up and, you know, breathe normally,
00:04:30.520 | walk around, drink a little water, et cetera.
00:04:33.200 | In any case, doing a physiological side
00:04:35.400 | at the beginning of each rest interval
00:04:37.380 | between work sets of resistance training
00:04:40.040 | is a very effective way to enhance your focus
00:04:42.960 | and your output during your work sets.
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