How to Balance Intensity & Recovery in Training | Dr. Kelly Starrett & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | Our good friend Kenny Kane taught me something, he's shaking his head, the best.

00:00:09.000 | He's a wonderful guy.

00:00:10.000 | You're not going to find him on social media because a few years ago he just decided to

00:00:13.400 | take his gym and himself off social media.

00:00:17.320 | He's a very, very talented trainer.

00:00:18.320 | So we're going to give you his phone number.

00:00:19.320 | We're going to have you call him because you can't DM him.

00:00:21.640 | Very talented athlete and wonderful person.

00:00:24.640 | He taught me something, I would say about eight years ago, that I've found oh so useful

00:00:30.120 | for my training longevity, my enjoyment of training, and it was this.

00:00:36.160 | Very simple.

00:00:37.160 | 80% of your workouts, Andrew, he said, are going to be at 80% of what you could do that

00:00:43.080 | day.

00:00:44.280 | Okay, that involves some humility.

00:00:46.840 | I like to sweat hard.

00:00:47.840 | I associate intensity with hard work, et cetera.

00:00:50.840 | He said 10% are going to be at 90% intensity, meaning 100% is the most you could give, possibly

00:00:58.020 | in whatever time is allotted on that day, given the sleep, given the nutrition, given

00:01:01.600 | the life circumstances on that day.

00:01:03.440 | The readiness for that day.

00:01:04.440 | Right.

00:01:05.440 | And then here's where it breaks down a little bit more, 5% are going to be at 95% and 5%

00:01:11.360 | across the year are going to be maximum 100% everything you can give, do or die workouts

00:01:17.600 | that day.

00:01:18.600 | One thing for me last year, I believe it was, was that was the rock carry, Cam Hands' podcast.

00:01:23.440 | I gave everything I had.

00:01:25.960 | Of course, had the mountain been a little bit higher, I'd like to think I would've gone

00:01:28.920 | a little bit further, but I gave everything I could because that rock was slippery and

00:01:32.840 | it was muddy and my hamstring was out the day when we started, you know, I was in pain

00:01:37.620 | when we started, anyway.

00:01:40.440 | I think that advice that Kenny gave me was some of the best advice I've ever heard because

00:01:47.120 | my tendency would have been and had been to come in and go at 90, 95 or a hundred percent

00:01:52.840 | every single workout.

00:01:53.840 | Sure.

00:01:54.840 | It got you a long way.

00:01:55.840 | Caffeine, pre-workout, et cetera.

00:01:56.840 | That got you a long way.

00:01:57.840 | Yep.

00:01:58.840 | And it also brought me to this place where after eight or 10 weeks of training, I would

00:02:01.780 | get a cold or I'd get some nagging thing, a little thing, not, you know, it wouldn't

00:02:05.680 | put me under, but then, or I need to take a week off.

00:02:09.280 | Normal accident theory.

00:02:10.280 | Right.

00:02:11.280 | So I think I'd love your thoughts on, on Kenny's recommendation.

00:02:14.440 | For me, it's one of the things that I pass along anytime, says, "How about some fitness

00:02:18.240 | advice?"

00:02:19.240 | I say, "Well, listen, I'm a neuroscientist, not a fitness guy, but I know a thing or two

00:02:21.080 | based on the mistakes I've made.

00:02:22.880 | Here's a great piece of advice that's really helped me.

00:02:25.120 | 80% of your workouts, 80% intensity, another 10% at 90%, then the 95, you know, 5% at 95

00:02:31.620 | and 5% across the year are the all out, everything you can give, leave it all on the mat type

00:02:37.040 | workouts."

00:02:38.040 | We could start with a simple idea.

00:02:39.800 | We say, let's be consistent before we're heroic.

00:02:42.320 | Right.

00:02:43.320 | If your intensity causes you to not be able to show up for the gym for three days, I'm

00:02:48.480 | like, "Sweet.

00:02:49.480 | That was sweet."

00:02:50.480 | And our adaptation response to that is sucky, right?

00:02:52.320 | I much rather you be getting more consistent and not blowing yourself out.

00:02:57.520 | Remember that there was a phase where we're like, "You shouldn't be sore when you leave

00:02:59.840 | the gym."

00:03:00.840 | Remember that?

00:03:01.840 | Like there were people would talk about, "Hey, leave some reps in reserve, like show up the

00:03:04.320 | next day, grease the groove.

00:03:06.160 | That's old Pavel Tsatsalin stuff."

00:03:08.560 | I think that's really good advice, especially since most people are not 20.

00:03:14.520 | Most people, and when you're 20, you need to go find out what the limits are.

00:03:17.560 | Touch the fence, the electric fence once in a while, right?

00:03:22.080 | Lick all the doorknobs.

00:03:23.080 | Let's just call it that way.

00:03:24.200 | But what ends up happening is there's a lot of things have to be in place for you to be

00:03:28.840 | able to go to the well that many times.

00:03:31.080 | And what we know now, because we have all of this data, is that we can make better progress

00:03:38.360 | not burning it to the ground every single time.

00:03:42.480 | And it's difficult for us because if I'm just fitnessing, how do I quantify that, right?

00:03:48.240 | It's easy for us to quantify another kilo or another watt.

00:03:51.480 | That's makes it a lot easier.

00:03:53.080 | And what you'll see is the best practices of these athletes, we do spend a lot of 70-80%

00:03:59.240 | heart rate.

00:04:00.240 | That's what we call recovery.

00:04:01.240 | In Joel Jameson language, 80 to 90, we're calling that conditioning, 90 and above, overload.

00:04:07.400 | But what I think is nice is that that gives me a lot of – there are some days where

00:04:10.800 | I touch 78 or 80% and it's hard because I'm sleep deprived, stressed out, my nutrition

00:04:17.320 | hasn't been great, I'm sleeping in a strange bed, you know, traveling, whatever.

00:04:21.720 | So I think what you're seeing is something that one of my early coaches talked about,

00:04:28.840 | Mike Bergner.

00:04:29.840 | He says, "When the frying pan's hot, let's cook."

00:04:32.040 | And that means I need to know myself and as a coach, I need to know you.

00:04:35.160 | And I'm like, "Andrew, you look great today.

00:04:37.120 | How do you feel?"

00:04:38.120 | "Great.

00:04:39.120 | Let's go.

00:04:40.120 | Let's go chase something."

00:04:41.120 | Right?

00:04:42.120 | And when the frying pan's hot, we cook.

00:04:43.120 | But the frying pan is not always hot.

00:04:44.280 | And if you pour in bang energy and jack 3D, you can't even hear inputs and outputs.

00:04:50.200 | So I think that's such solid, reasonable advice.

00:04:54.280 | And really what we're looking at is how can we get you to train much more consistently

00:04:58.520 | longer and longer and longer.

00:05:00.120 | You can only go to the well a few times.

00:05:02.440 | And what I'll tell you is that as I still love to power clean, it's my favorite thing.

00:05:07.200 | And that 100 kilo power clean is heavier than it was when I was 40, you know?

00:05:12.600 | And I want to pretend like that 100 kilo power clean is not a problem, but I actually have

00:05:17.680 | to progress and get myself there.

00:05:19.720 | And there are days where I'm like, "Oh, 80 kilos is my jam today."

00:05:23.200 | So I think that's really good advice.

00:05:25.920 | And difficult for us to say, "How are we measuring success in our training?"

00:05:32.000 | Positive experience?

00:05:33.000 | "Oh, no problem.

00:05:34.000 | Let me give you a baby, keep this newborn alive, and then let's go see how hard your

00:05:37.080 | training is the next day.

00:05:38.080 | You're going to be terrible.

00:05:39.080 | You haven't slept all night, you're stressed," right?

00:05:41.880 | So I think what's nice is having some objective measurements around, maybe body composition

00:05:47.840 | is one of them, if that's important to you, but are you getting faster over the course

00:05:51.480 | of a week?

00:05:52.800 | What are your testing?

00:05:53.800 | How do we know inputs and outputs?

00:05:55.560 | And right now we're just doing, we're baking a lot, we're making a lot of suicides, right?

00:06:00.600 | The old fountain drink where you just mix all the things, they always taste the same

00:06:05.160 | at the end like crap, but that suicide where you mix all the fountain drinks is a little

00:06:08.880 | bit of what we're seeing in that.

00:06:11.120 | And one way of protecting ourselves is saying, "Hey, let's make sure you can train tomorrow."

00:06:15.120 | Suicides.

00:06:16.120 | I was reflecting on that the other day for some reason, why at a wedding or a party,

00:06:20.760 | typically it's a Y-chromosome-associated disorder to feel like you had to mix a bunch of stuff

00:06:25.480 | and then get someone to drink it.

00:06:27.200 | You're not wrong.

00:06:28.200 | I've never done alcoholic drinks for young kids, by the way, but mixing all the sodas,

00:06:31.520 | putting M&M's in, just something like, "Oh, my male friends are wicked."

00:06:34.880 | And I think that's what we see a little bit.

00:06:37.320 | And if you, I am a deep coach nerd, I love fitness, I love fitnessing, I'll jump into

00:06:43.920 | any class, any time like, "Sure, let's go, let's see."

00:06:48.720 | It's so fun, but I need to see, I do get to watch trends come and go.

00:06:55.080 | Things get very hot, they get very popular.

00:06:58.040 | And again, fitness has become a hobby.

00:07:00.160 | It's an amuse.

00:07:01.340 | And that's okay.

00:07:02.340 | It's totally okay that gym is a hobby, but that doesn't hint about what's the best way

00:07:07.640 | to develop capacity, elite capacity, long-term longevity capacity.

00:07:12.820 | Those things almost don't go together.

00:07:14.240 | [Music]

How to Balance Intensity & Recovery in Training | Dr. Kelly Starrett & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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