8__transcript.txt

[Music]
welcome to the huberman lab guest Series
where I and an expert guest discuss
science and science-based tools for
everyday life
I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a professor
of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at
Stanford School of Medicine today's
episode is the fifth in a six episode
series on fitness exercise and
performance and today's episode is all
about recovery that is how to maximize
your recovery to achieve your fitness
and exercise and performance goals and
how to avoid over training Dr Andy
Galpin
great to be back
today we're discussing recovery and I'm
very excited to have this discussion
because as we know despite the fact that
different types of exercise can be used
to trigger different types of adaptation
such as increased long distance
endurance
anaerobic capacity strength hypertrophy
Etc
the workouts themselves are not actually
when the progress occurs when the
adaptation occurs and this to me is
extremely interesting because it
parallels what we see with so-called
neuroplasticity which is the nervous
system's ability to change in response
to experience we sit down to learn
something
we experience something
and that is the trigger for rewiring of
the nervous system but the actual
rewiring occurs away from the experience
or the learning
so too in Fitness and in exercise
recovery is where the Real Results
actually emerge where we get better
so I'd love for you to explain what
recovery really is
and the different types of recovery
certainly different ways to enhance
recovery and I'd also love for you to
explain whether or not there are ways
that people can become better at
recovering because if indeed recovery is
when progress emerges when we get better
well then anything that supports our
recovery and gets us better at
recovering
ought to increase our rate and our
degree of progress absolutely you nailed
it in the description what people really
want is some sort of change whether you
are talking athletes or general
population this change is uh some sort
of improvement in muscle function
reduction in body fat
higher functioning metabolism whatever
the case is and the only way that
happens is
we talk about the equation of stress
causes adaptation but as you alluded to
the piece in the middle is only if you
can recover from it and so the game
we're playing here is we all agree we
want more adaptation that means we need
to bring more stress into the system but
we then have to ensure that our recovery
outpaces
the stress input or else no adaptation
will occur in fact what happens is you
will actually be in a negative spot and
start going backwards and so what I
would love to do is is talk about how
we've handled this and I've had a decent
amount of experience here I was
fortunate enough to do my master's
degree in the laboratory of a gentleman
named Andy Frye who's an nsca Lifetime
Achievement Award winner and he studied
in large part recovery over training
overuse overload in a lot of areas in
addition I've been fortunate enough to
work with individuals from high
functioning CEOs and Executives who have
little time for Recovery High job stress
to in to athletes uh and they think of
the example of pitchers in Major League
Baseball who have to recover in a matter
of four days that they can pitch again
at maximum velocity so I would love to
outline some of the tools and tactics
strategies that we use for all these
individuals give you some foundational
stuff and I would love to maybe actually
cover some things that most people have
never heard of some stuff you may not
have access to some technologies that we
use some biomarkers and then even a
whole bunch of things that are keeping
with the theme of your show here cost
free or extremely low cost so all those
strategies what I'd also like to do is
cover nutrition and supplementation and
fueling and hydration and things but
that's probably going to have to be
saved for an additional conversation
that we'll do in the next episode yes so
we will absolutely hold a conversation
about nutrition and supplementation
where you can educate us about all the
top Contour stuff all the way down to
the the fine details
I do have a question about recovery and
it's one that I think most people are
familiar with themselves
which is soreness
we think of it as a muscle soreness but
I was trained early on in my scientific
career to always question the
seemingly obvious so a couple of
questions about soreness first of all
what does soreness really reflect
is it really muscle soreness
it feels like it's in the muscles but
what other organ systems and tissues and
cell types does it involve and then I'm
particularly interested in this concept
or this experience that many of us
including myself
had which is delayed onset muscle
soreness why would it be that when we
are less in shape or when we perform a
movement that is extremely novel to us
the soreness seems to arrive after
a reasonable delay of maybe even a day
you know we're fine the next day but
then 48 hours later we are exceedingly
sore
and as we get more fit or more familiar
with the movement the soreness seems to
arrive earlier so I realized I just
asked you about three questions or more
first of all what is muscle soreness
at a seller level which sells which
organ systems and so forth what is it
mean if we are sore is something I know
we'll get into a little bit later and
then why the delayed onset muscle
soreness it's actually one question so
it's totally fine you answered all you
asked all three because I'm going to
actually answer number three which will
answer number two which will actually
answer number one
I'd love to tell you that I set it up
that way intentionally but uh I'm just
happy to hear that where I was unable to
be concise you are able to be concise
thank you
we are still learning a lot about this
area it's actually really difficult to
perform these studies anytime you ask a
question about something like pain
or soreness you're immediately talking
about perception
and there is obviously a physical
component to that and there's also
perception and so teasing those things
out is extraordinarily challenging that
said there has been a lot of work in
this area in fact probably um you may
have a show already out on pain or maybe
one's coming down the road we did an
episode on pain uh a while ago but it's
definitely time to revisit that
literature I also have some amazing
colleagues at Stanford who work on pain
both from the uh cellular molecular side
but also from the psychological side
about how our understanding of pain and
what we believe about pain shapes the
experience of pain and Pain Relief
amazing that's that stuff is incredibly
important and I'm glad we flagged that
and maybe we'll just call that good for
now they could come back later for
another one of your shows so that being
said
why does it happen uh 28 to 48 hours
after you exercise well that actually
should give you some Clues into what's
happening so the traditional dogma of
delayed onset muscle soreness is what
this is called is that it is a result of
quote unquote micro tears and the muscle
and so you can sort of think I challenge
the muscle there was some small tears in
there and I'm feeling the results of
that well in fact that certainly does
happen and it can happen that is not
what's explaining your muscle soreness
and in fact you can be quite sore
from exercise and have no measurable
amount of muscle damage
and so much like anything else when
we're in this idea of pain it's not a
one-to-one
explanation there are multiple factors
that are probably causing your
perception of pain muscle damage
can be one of them it is not the only
one and it is probably in my opinion
though this has yet to be shown
definitively
probably not even the leading cause of
it and so what's actually happening well
the reason is taking you 24 to 48 hours
is you can actually find various papers
literature reviews dating back in a
number of years now over a decade that
show these wonderful curves of an
inflammatory and immune response and we
don't need to necessarily go through the
entire physiology right now but
effectively what's happening is those
things have a little bit of a time delay
and so some of those steps happen
immediately like right when the exercise
is there and then some of them are
delayed six to 24 to 48 hours if you
know a little bit about this physiology
it's you have a combination of
neutrophils and macrophages and a bunch
of things happening and this has a Time
sequence so what happens is by the time
we get to this 28 to 48 hour window
now the muscle soreness kicks in
which wait a minute if I if this was a
result of my muscles being torn
and that happened immediately
wouldn't that pain start immediately
well the answer is it would and so that
that is your first clue that that's not
responsible for it when we look at that
immune response and we see that that is
actually Peak 24 to 48 hours later
and then that's the same time the pain
kicked in that's cooling you with the
problem so we have this immune response
happening in inflammation then all of a
sudden we start getting fluid
accumulation and now there are what are
called nociceptors and you're probably
very obviously you're very familiar with
these and these are pain receptors
what's actually interesting is we don't
necessarily know
a lot of information about how many pain
receptors are in muscle
they're not really in the belly in fact
this is why I can perform my muscle
biopsies and they don't really hurt you
mean in the belly of the muscle correct
yeah we do have pressure sensors though
and so if you change the volume of the
tissue you will respond to that very
very quickly so by enhancing swelling in
the actual muscle that is immediately
putting pressure
on those pressure receptors if you will
that's the signal so what's probably
happening here and I just I just hate to
give you another bone but a lot of
delayed on some muscle soreness is
probably just a neural feedback loop
rather than it is actual muscle damage
yeah it makes a lot of sense there's a
lot of interactions between the types of
neurons that control
touch sensation and pain sensation and
itch sensation in fact a lot of people
um kind of collapse itch and pain
together Bingo yeah you know that's
something it's painful and it itches is
a familiar thing for people mosquito
bites and such
um and of course there's the classic
gait theory of pain yeah which uh people
will be familiar with and then I'll
explain why I'm explaining this
um which is if you you something hurts
you know you Bonk your knee or you stub
your toe we tend to grab that body part
and try and rub it totally and that
rubbing is not a coincidental thing it
activates a set of uh touch sensors that
are that respond to kind of broad dull
touch
um and that actively inhibits through
the release of an inhibitory
neurotransmitter the fibers that control
the pain signal so anytime we rub a you
know like a charlie horse our leg or we
or we stub our toe and we you know we
wince and then we grab the tone we got
like squeezing it a little bit that's
actually deactivating or partially
inactivating the the pain mechanism so
the idea that uh a swelling response
would then trigger a neural response
that then would recruit the pain
receptor response here I'm using broad
broad brush
um Strokes here to explain this
um makes very good sense to me
um now and only now that you've
explained how this process works I can
actually even add more to that so
if you remember how muscles work so we
have to have some sort of signal from
the nervous system that has to actually
go in and tell the muscle to contract
well remember there are a few episodes
ago we covered the physiology here of
what's called a motor unit
okay well what I didn't explain to you
are called muscle spindles
and we have talked about proprioception
in an episode of before as well but we
never tied this picture together so let
me walk you through that really quickly
and it's going to tie this Loop into a
nice bow so what happens is
um this motor unit is is coming in from
what's called an alpha motor unit and
that's going to be innervating your
muscle fibers and that's going to tell
the muscle fibers to contract those are
typically spread out throughout the uh
all sides of the muscle in interior
exterior all over on the outside though
there is another type of muscle called a
muscle spindle now these are
non-contractiles so they don't have that
actin and myosin and they don't produce
Force they are responsive they are
proprioceptive so what that means is
they sense stretch and this is why for
example if you were to stretch a
hamstring and stretch any muscle group
it doesn't really matter or muscle
its innate response is to fire back to
close that distance and this is what
keeps you from say if you're leaning to
the right
you can imagine that the example we give
is if you're if you're standing on one
foot
and you start swaying to the right
all right let's say you're standing on
your right foot and this makes this
easier for folks and you start swaying
to the right like you're going to fall
on your right ear will hit the ground
the inside of your right calf muscle
will start being stretched the outside
will start being compressed right so the
stretch on the inside of the right calf
muscle will sense that stretch and it
will respond by Contracting that pulls
you back to the middle and stops you
from falling that's proprioception and
muscle spindles sense stretch and tell
you to contract the way that they work
is is through gamma motor neurons and so
these are sensory things so what's
happening is unlike when you tell your
muscle to contract it goes Alpha
to the muscle contract these muscle
spindles work such that it is oh I've
been stretched sends signal back to some
Central Point typically in the spinal
cord and we don't actually want to go
all the way up the brain we've got a
time delay this is why these are
subconscious autonomic right versus
somatic so the gamma is going to go back
to the central location and then come
back through the Alpha motor neurons
until it to contract so you have this
wonderful mechanism of sensing stretch
going back well one Theory that's been
put forward regarding muscle damage is
that the pressure is actually being
applied to those nerve endings of the
muscle spindles
and that's actually responsible for the
pain signal that's going back
and coming up to your brain and you're
registering that as pain rather than it
is actually in the the contractile units
so the muscle fibers that's a very
intriguing idea uh because
it would suggest that stretching muscles
in order to alleviate soreness might be
the exact incorrect thing to do yeah now
I'm not saying that's for sure for
certain I'm just building off the
mechanistic logic that we've laid out
here yeah really that you've laid out
here there's the more effective
principle based on exactly that which is
this is generally why low level movement
is effective at reducing acute soreness
because that's low-level contraction
with the muscles and you're going to
anti-stretch and get tissue out and get
fluid out
wow you're literally pumping it out of
the the cell yes and in our previous
episode where we were talking about
programming we're using the Wii but
let's be fair here where you were
educating us including me
um in the audience about different
structures for programming exercise
for specific adaptations Etc of the
month
week year scales Etc
we had a brief um discussion about the
fact that if one trains legs very hard
with resistance training you know some
heavy squatting or dead lifting it yeah
or and there's some soreness that
oftentimes doing some quote-unquote
lighter cardio or
um some uh low impact work the next day
or or any number of different things
that involve
um not high intensity
contractions of the muscles but that do
require contractions of the muscles that
it can alleviate soreness more quickly
than if one were to Simply lie around
and you know watch Netflix or something
yeah that's exactly right the um
to go back just a little bit as well the
if that's really the case
um the question is like where is this
inflammatory signal coming from and
while there's much to be learned there
there is a little bit of
information right now that suggests it's
potentially coming from free radicals
released from the mitochondria again
that may or may not hold up as more
research comes I'm not sure but if you
remember back to our uh conversation on
endurance so we talked about the
electron transport chain and aerobic
metabolism and regardless of whether or
not you're getting energy from
glycolysis
or carbohydrates remember they have to
be finished
through aerobic metabolism so even if
you're lifting weights
and you're using carbs for your fuel you
have got to finish that metabolism by
running it into the mitochondria and
Performing oxidative metabolism as a
result of that that electron transport
chain runs so theoretically if free
radicals which is which are
hyper-reactive oxygen species basically
they're oxygen molecules that are
missing in electrons so that they react
to a lot of things they're the opposite
of antioxidants by the way this is
the oxygen molecules with extra protons
so they can balance the charge if those
leak out that in and of itself is going
to be a massive inflammatory signal and
that's probably what signals the cause
of these neutrophils and macrophages and
kicks off this entire Cascade again I
believe we need more research there I
need to look into it maybe it's more
definitive than I that I know but that's
probably what's happening potentially
what's happening rather
causes that Cascade in Signal also
what you have is this combination of
well if that's the case why am I not
getting tremendous amount of muscle
damage when I do more aerobic based
exercise
well because you don't have the
mechanical tension pulling on the fibers
that's actually causing damage to the
cell wall that allows these free
radicals to escape the mitochondria and
the cell wall so that's the best we can
postulate at this moment as to why those
things are happening and then why again
low level exercise tends to enhance even
things like percussion so using either
instruments that put a low level of
vibration into your leg or like
pneumatic boots so you can massage all
these things are generally probably
helping because they're moving that
stuff out
a demon most specifically so pressure
comes off of those nerve endings and the
muscle spindles
and allows you to stop receiving that
signal of pain despite the fact that you
didn't actually regenerate tissue at all
yet
fascinating and I think
that beautifully frames where we're
headed next which is to talk about all
the different modes of recovery and how
to accelerate them and perhaps even how
to combine different forms of recovery
in order to become better at recovering
and in doing so make faster progress
with Fitness before we begin I'd like to
emphasize that this podcast is separate
from my teaching and research roles at
Stanford it is also separate from Dr
Andy galpin's teaching and research
roles at Cal State Fullerton it is
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150 at checkout so to kick off this
discussion about recovery
and with the understanding that recovery
is when the specific adaptations to
exercise actually occur
I'd love for you to share with us what
happens or needs to happen during
recovery in order for us to get better
at anything endurance strength Etc
but also how specific types of exercise
stimuli and specific types of
adaptations that we trigger so running a
bit further lifting a bit more weight
slowing the Cadence of a given movement
Etc how those specific types of triggers
for adaptation relate to the specific or
maybe similar types of recovery that are
required for us to make progress in one
of our previous episodes we were talking
about how the Harvard fatigue lab really
identified this idea of homeostasis or
at least sort of championed it for it
and that's important because
and all levels physiology wants to
return to homeostasis so what happens in
terms of adaptation is you've challenged
it to a level that it realizes if it
does not make a change it will not be
able to get back to the same level of
homeostasis that's fundamentally what's
happening that is recovery that process
of taking an insult being temporarily
reduced in functionality
causing a change so that now we come
back and get what we often call in
support performance super compensation
all that really is doing though is
bringing you to a new level of
homeostasis effectively
it is understanding if that same insult
comes again
I need to be able to make sure that that
doesn't cause the same level of
disruption and so we raise the bar
whether this is enhancing our ability to
take the same level of mechanical
tension on the muscle and not result in
micro damage whether this is being able
to take the same reduction in energy and
not have that compromise of sleep or
anything it's really fundamentally
changing so we can have a new level of
homeostasis because it's presuming it's
predicting that that same insult is
going to come again down the road
I wanted to clarify for people that when
Dr Galvin says insult
while he may actually insult me
um insult is the nerd speak terminology
for some sort of damage inflicted to a
tissue or system so
um he's speaking about the insult to the
muscle or insult to the neuromuscular
connection created by adding more weight
to the bar running a further distance
um
running a bit fast or or pedaling faster
that creates a micro insult or an insult
and now because everyone is familiar
with um psychological and verbal insults
you'll never forget that biological
concept it's important we tag another
thing here which is called hormesis it's
one of my favorite phenomenon and it
effectively means this that there is a
dosage or toxicity
responds to almost everything and if you
think about this in the context of say
drugs what this means is if I gave you
10 milligrams of something
that it would be okay but if I give you
20 it'd be a problem and eventually if I
go up and give you enough this thing
turns toxic this is the case of
everything from cyanide where it can
actually be in small dosages in nature
in fact it's in many of the fruits that
you eat but it's not a dosage that it
doesn't matter if that dosage gets
higher though that actually can cause
problems and if it is high enough it can
actually kill you instantaneously
the back end of that though is because
you introduce this micro insult as you
framed it for me perfectly your body
will then adapt to it and that's really
what's happening with exercise
adaptation is it is a hormetic stressor
and why that's important is
if you look at the immediate responses
to exercise you see an extremely large
increase in inflammation you see
oxidative stress you see a whole Cascade
of autophagy like all these problems
quote unquote happening it's what's
actually quite funny here is as a part
of my PhD the academic portion I had to
go through the medical side of the
school and so I was my physiology class
was in med school so I'm the only
non-medical doctor in that class right
I'm a PhD so I leave my lab I walk
across campus and I take physiology
class with these folks and I died the
whole time internally because every time
we would cover a new area
it was basically the the exact same
value or number
in a medical setting is like oh my gosh
they're going to die
and in performance setting is like this
person's in fantastic shape
is I I I've never it still amuses me to
this day obviously because it's just
simple things like total blood volume
right and you cover like okay if you
have a patient come in and their blood
volume is six liters you know I can
immediately get them on a diuretic of
some sort because they're going to have
a heart attack as blood pressure gets up
right now I'm immediately thinking damn
six leaders that that person is super
fit because that is actually a positive
adaptation to training it's one of the
most important if not the most important
adaptation to endurance training is
enhance total blood volume so you'll
store more blood in your body when
you're more fit than you are less fit so
I mean I could go on all these things
sodium concentrations potassium
concentrations are like you look at
these things on paper and you don't know
if that person is about to die because
they're 65 years old and out of shape or
if that person is going to break a world
record the marathon this brings up a
very important tangent which is uh for
instance if you go and take a blood test
and you are somebody who exercises very
intensely uh with resistance training
you're blood creatinine levels can be
way out of range and if your physician
doesn't know that you're doing certain
forms of exercise might say wow there's
a lot of muscle tissue damage occurring
in your body yeah as you mentioned
before your total blood volume is is
dangerously High when in fact you are
far healthier and and need much fitter
than the person who as numbers would be
in range that said obviously there are
um limits to these to these statements
whereby you would want to be cautious
and take action to ameliorate a very
elevated blood creatinine level or
something of that sort but the point
you're you're bringing up is is also one
about the field of medicine which is
that
many not all but many Physicians don't
take into consideration uh the outside
activities that people are doing and so
it becomes a kind of a plug-and-play
type um type way of looking at blood
charts yeah we've done many thousand
athletes blood chemistry and uh we we
don't use
first of all we never look at disease
stuff that's not what we do we take
people that are healthy and try to
optimize performance and blood chemistry
is one of the best tools if you really
understand what you're doing there you
can get some incredibly powerful
information out of blood chemistry that
actually relates to what we're going to
talk to today in terms of measuring
everything from acute to Chronic
dehydration to sleep deprivation can be
identified in in blood chemistry to
optimization improvements in nutrition
supplementation there's a lot you can
get there if people are interested in
that field I would Point them to a
gentleman named Dan Garner it was just
an absolute Juggernaut and wizard in
blood chemistry for high performance but
well you can get a ton of information
from that if you understand the
difference between exactly what you
talked about looking for signals of
increased risk of cardiovascular events
25 years down the road versus is this
the optimal value for high performance
in an athlete which is what our our
database and all of our software and
stuff does is only looking for those
things so I'm going to talk about some
of the biomarkers to look for a little
bit later salivary so some blood stuff
but we'll maybe save that part of the
conversation for down the road tell me
about different time scales of recovery
sure this is actually where I was trying
to answer your question for and then I
got myself way off track but the reason
I brought up the Hermetic thing is if
you understand that some things in the
acute say 24 to 40 hour period
look terrible
it's actually fine right so this is the
stimuli that's causing adaptation so the
reason I brought up the medical
exchange there is because you if you
looked at inflammatory markers and then
you mentioned some of them you would see
that they are highest acute within
seconds to minutes to hours after
exercise however that's exactly the
stimuli needed to bring them down
chronically
okay and so chronically meaning maybe in
that moment they are elevated and then
maybe they're coming down 24 hours later
in 48 hours however if you were to
compare your resting level say that
Monday before you worked out
to your resting level that Monday the
week following the week following that
what you would probably see is your
Baseline inflammation goes down
and so we got to be really careful are
we talking immediately post-exercise man
these markers look terrible maybe my
recovery score is awful
Etc that's not necessarily a bad thing
because what we're like looking to do is
to not only change what's happening
today but we're trying to cause
adaptation that may take us weeks or
months to actually
access
I love that you're highlighting this
principle because one of the more
obvious ones to me now that you've said
this is heart rate absolutely my heart
rate goes very very high during exercise
and I do that fairly consistently or
even semi-consistently my resting heart
rate will actually be quite a bit lower
that's a fantastic example really what
you're getting at here is this concept
where I think it's important to
differentiate between adaptation and
optimization
now we hear that word and I use it and
most scientists hate it but it's a good
communication tool optimization
if you're optimizing for the current
moment
you're almost surely compromising the
late adaptation
right if if I were to say do the thing
right now that makes you feel the
absolute best in the world and you're
like great you took a nap and you had a
donut like awesome you feel amazing but
you know it's causing long-term issues
the same can be said on the back end if
you're never choosing things that make
you better right now
you're never actually going to see an
adaptation so what we're really doing
with this recovery conversation is
playing this game of balancing immediate
gratification with the leg gratification
and how do we identify how much to do
now versus not how do I use a value or a
marker whether this is how tired I feel
today how sore I am today versus a score
on an app or a tracking metric but this
is a blood marker anything and
understand if that's what I need to
cause the adaptation I want a week a
month three months from now in the case
of
some of our other athletes it's even up
to four years right we're trying to
cause adaptations that will get us where
we want to get in the Olympics or World
Championships or World Cup or wherever
we're going to be so that's the
framework we have to think about
recovery we we maybe falsely think about
it as I need to maximize my recovery
today
and you could do something like
taken anti-inflammatory whether this is
a supplementation or a drug or maybe
this is ice
oh cool that's great that will enhance
your recovery in this moment that'll
make you feel better today probably
tomorrow but what we know is that blocks
the signal for adaptation so you're not
going to get the same results you know
four six eight weeks from now so when we
talk about recovery we have to
understand what tool am I using and why
and in order to do that we have to
understand what am I training for
and what am I trying to maximize if I am
in the middle of a season with an
athlete and we are competing tomorrow I
am going to head towards acute recovery
right because I have to actuate that
performance right now if I am starting
the off season
I'm not hedging towards recovery I'm
actually hedging towards adaptation so
we're not going to deploy any of these
especially things like
there's evidence that a combination of
vitamin C and vitamin E
will blunt hypertrophic adaptations
because they're anti-inflammatory with
antioxidants right other other Studies
have shown maybe they don't have
uh an inhibitory fact they may or may
not
point is conceptually
you want to be careful of what you're
trying to optimize for and you have to
have that forethought and that alone is
going to dictate your decision making
with whether or not again you get in the
eyes uh you do that now we will cover
some tools like massage
that are pretty fine to use you don't
have to worry about those blocking
long-term adaptation but others you're
going to want to be very careful about
so this principle that you've laid out
for us
which is that there's a set of events
that occur during exercise that trigger
the adaptation
and that sets in motion a number of
adaptations that occur during recovery
that then
give us the exact opposite response to
what the trigger was so I'll go back to
the heart rate example
um heart rate is close to maximal or
maximal you do that enough times within
a short you know a week or so or two
weeks and you're
resting heart rate goes down
as I recall a few episodes ago you said
that your maximum heart rate doesn't
really change that much is that correct
yes okay but your resting heart rate can
go down quite a bit yep
is that a general theme meaning
do we have a more or less set upper
limit or ceiling for things like
inflammatory markers for heart rate
maybe even things like stress and what
we do when we deliberately trigger
stress or a
dramatic increase in heart rate or
dramatic increase in inflammatory
markers is that we are lowering the
floor but that the ceiling Remains the
Same
it's very dependent upon the marker so
in the case of maximum heart rate it
will not change
with the exception of one thing which is
age
brings it down training will not change
it up in most circumstances if you look
at something like an inflammatory
response I suppose theoretically there
is a ceiling though I'm not aware of it
um I can tell you right now looking at
blood markers the things like creatine
kinase so remember the conversation
about
metabolism and with that we use the
phosphocreatine as one of our primary
fuel sources for explosive exercise well
if we're using phosphocreatine this
creatine kinase remember kinase are
enzymes that that function to break
things down for the most part so
creatine kinase is the enzyme you use to
break down creatine when you do that a
lot then that creatine kinase gets out
of muscle
and seeps into the blood myoglobin is
actually another fantastic marker by the
way myoglobin is if you think about
hemoglobin being in blood is the
molecule that carries oxygen around when
it's in the muscle tissue then it's
myoglobin mild meaning muscle and it's
the same globulin thing so there's a
bunch of markers you can look at muscle
breakdown and one of the things that you
can see is a creatine kinase level
that's elevated after say
um one bout of exercise and and you
might it might be up
you know five or six-fold I've actually
seen this number in offensive lineman in
the NFL be something like 500 plus fold
so even within just one category to the
next that number can get extraordinarily
high and if you know this is actually
one in an important Point here
if you're paying attention to any
mechanistic research or you use you're
using that to inform your decision
making you have to be extraordinarily
careful of magnitude
and what I mean by that is
if I were to be running a western blot
looking at a signaling protein
um and a muscle uh did this activation
of this protein turn on mitochondrial
biogenesis and I saw that whatever
intervention we gave it whether it was a
nutrition thing or a drug or an exercise
and I saw that that signaling protein
increased by 20 percent
I would basically assume that to be
totally physiologically irrelevant
because in order for that to be
important it totally depends on the
market you're looking at but
you some markers I might need to see
four or five six hundred fold increase
before I know that that will actually be
enough to be what we call
physiologically relevant others if
they're up one or two percent that is
relevant and so you really want to be
careful when you're either reading
papers or looking at Social Media stuff
if people are just talking about this
marker increase this much it may not
matter it may be totally irrelevant
physiologically and so you have to that
does also if you're wondering like how
the hell are the all these people well
that's how they can trick you a little
bit and intentionally or not it could be
just they're trying their best but they
don't really understand that area enough
and so that's an important point to pay
attention to so to answer your question
again fully
it would be hard to determine if there
was truly a maximum level
um some things don't want to move
like blood pH
it doesn't really want to move the range
that you're going to move from is you
know like 6.8 to 7.4 and if you get up
to like 7.9 like you're probably in big
big big trouble other things again can
go up 500 5 000 fold and so the markers
will really determine that answer
well at some point in the future I'd
love to continue this discussion around
the topic of stress specifically yeah um
and maybe we will get into that a little
bit later today when we um get into the
use of deliberate cold exposure
because that's certainly
um has effects related directly to
temperature on tissue but it certainly
has mental effects in terms of raising
one's level of perceived pain it's fun
um where some people love it and some
people love it for the feeling they get
during it
um deliberate cold exposure some people
only like it for the feeling that they
get after it not unlike exercise totally
I love to train I love exercise but I
know many people who uh um they loathe
exercise but they love the feeling
afterward so this will be a theme that
we will come back to
thank you for indulging my interest in
that semi-tangent I think it's a
relevant tangent if there is such a
thing if you can now return us to the
different time scales yeah and modes of
recovery because I think where we are
headed is how to get better at recovery
yep let's talk about the tools let's
talk about what to measure and identify
for all four of these distinct levels so
level one is what we call overload and
just very quickly what that means is I
did a workout today
the sign and symptom of overload is your
fatigued acute performance is down so I
worked out hard right now
if I were to go try to do a maximum
effort I would be reduced in my ability
the recovery period for acute overload
is minutes to days
right that's generally what we call
acute overload and that's what we're
looking for right so we systems should
theoretically see that hormetic stressor
come back in response come back bigger
better more efficient Etc
if you were to continue training in that
state like most of us do and say I did a
workout today I had a little bit of
acute overload gonna work out again
tomorrow a little more acute overload
can work out the next day a little more
acute overload even if you took a day in
between it's that doesn't matter right
you just continue these acute bouts of
insult
then you're going to be pushing into the
absolute golden Target
which is what we call functional
overreaching
so you have over reached
what you can currently do and it results
in a functional outcome and what we mean
functionally here is performance is
enhanced
and again performance being whatever you
deem it to be you're stronger
you've enhanced muscle size your
mitochondria has improved you've
whatever the thing is it's not just a
physical performance thing right
amazing
recovery time for functional
overreaching is typically a few days to
maybe even a week or so
and so typically what we see happen is
prior to a competition individuals will
do what we call a taper which is a
reduced training volume
for some short period of time and there
was the reason they do that is to again
actualize is the phrase We year is here
the adaptations and so you worked hard
for six weeks and you know theoretically
the workouts you did three four five six
weeks ago once you allow the system to
recover
will be actualized which means your
performance will be enhanced here so
functional overreaching is the golden
Target okay if you were to be at the
point of functional overreaching and you
continue to train so it intensified
whether this was through intensity this
through volume or really as we said
earlier you had something holding back
your recovery it doesn't really matter
right it's it's sort of two sides of the
same coin
then you would move into what we call
non-functional overreaching so you've
over reached again but now it is
non-functional as in you did not see a
positive benefit once recovery allowed
this typically means you have weeks it
takes weeks to come back from and you
basically just get back to Baseline and
this is where a lot of folks are who end
up in this vicious cycle and so you're
like man I'm not getting the results I
want I'm going to train harder I'm not
getting results I want I'm going to
train harder and harder but because
you've caught recovery isn't improved
you just end up in the same spot so then
you train more and you end up the same
spot and you end up then just either
blowing up or quitting and you're not
getting where you want
if you were to continue past that point
you may actually be in what we actually
call over training and that typically is
a considered to be over trained if it
takes months to recover from so most
people think they're over trained are
really not you're just probably
non-functionally overreached
and again classic distinction is if you
took three or four days off and you felt
better you weren't probably quote
unquote over trained you were probably
just in this area of non-functional
reaching you need a little bit of a back
off if you and this has been the case
I've had this happen with gymnasts and a
cheerleader and some other things where
they take a month off and we're barely
seeing them start to come back to their
Baseline numbers in any number of areas
mood desire to train testosterone
cortisol ratios biomarkers in a number
of areas physical performance vertical
jump height like all these things they
just start to get back to Baseline so
over true over training is actually
quite rare non-functional overreaching
is much more common
and it is a shorter time frame scale so
when we talk about recovery those are
the four pieces that we're really
thinking about and so if you are
concerned about oh I'm super sore how do
I get less sore how do I either not be a
sore
next time I do that same workout or I'm
super sorry now how do I recover those
are playing in that first category of
overload and we can certainly talk about
how to figure that out but the quick
answer is
you got to go back to our previous
episodes and just pay attention to the
volume intensity recommendations
if you're getting significantly uh more
damage or fatigue in a workout you
probably have increased your volume too
quickly
or something else is dragging your
stress bucket down but generally this is
a problem of training
um you either didn't warm up
sufficiently you're fueling strategy is
off which we'll talk about in The Next
Episode or you've violated one of our
principles of increasing intensity and
volume sort of too quickly
if it's past that and you're getting to
a stage where you're just like I'm
feeling beat up all the time my energy
is going down I'm just not feeling like
I'm recovered now we're in this
overreaching stage so the the story I
kind of tell here always is a few years
ago I was working
and my wife Natasha was in the garage
training and I'm doing something and
like she comes stumbling
and she has this look on her eyes and
they're like her eyeballs are giant
she's just like wobbling and she's like
I effed up I was like what do you mean
you like effed up and she's just like
I read the program wrong and she's like
Trump like what'd you do like she was
supposed to be doing 10 sets of three
every minute on the minute and she did
three sets of ten every minute on the
minute
and she was absolutely wrecked she
couldn't move for a few hours afterwards
and then for days she's just like you
have to handle the kids like I can't get
out of bed I can't move so that was like
a classic example of all right like we
don't need to fix recovery here you're
just a dummy and you did the dream way
too hard too long like this is not we
don't have a problem here so if it's a
situation like that it's generally you
just the program was way off if it's
constantly happening where you're just
like man like for whatever reason every
once in a while I'm getting really sore
or having a really bad performance in
these workouts then we need to go to our
other stress bucket take a look at our
allostatic load or allostasis and get
figured out what's happening there um so
those are the the easy ways to flag
acute overload problems
I'd like to take a brief break and
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huberman to claim the special offer I'm
happy that you pointed out the
distinction between functional
overreaching over training and being
over trained I think one one common
mistake that people make in thinking
about biology generally is that they
think in terms of nouns and adjectives
and not verbs amazing I love that so
much you know biology is a collection of
processes or processes depending on who
you are and where you live and who you
trained with
being over trained
is a state that in many ways is an
adjective you're over trained I'm over
trained
it's like saying uh you know I'm an
American I'm a you know Czechoslovakian
whatever it happens to be right and in
many ways people do start to associate
with an identity at least a transient
identity and they start making all sorts
of decisions it sounds like about what
sorts of verbs they will and will not
engage in whereas I think if we look at
things as processes and we
assign verbs to them then we can say
okay I'm
functionally overreaching
or I'm truly over training which is a
matter of degrees correct right or under
training for that matter I'm not I'm
reaching but I'm not
functionally reaching it's just it's
just performance and you know just as
with the nervous system won't change
unless you give it a reason to this is
the reason why if you can perform
something perfectly or speak a language
perfectly there's there's no rewiring of
the nervous system this myth that we've
all been told that every experience
rewires your nervous system it's
different now than it was two seconds
ago that's that's a ridiculous illogical
statement we know that's not true if
your nervous system can perform
something it has no reason to change and
it won't muscles the same way this is
why you have to progressively overload
you have to learn something new or
challenge your muscle to do something
new it's same thing so in the example
that you gave uh with your wife doing
this workout that turned out to be far
more strenuous she had functionally
overreach in some sense she might have
been over training or heading in the
direction of over training but the
mistake would be to assume that
she was over trained right as I kind of
it's almost becomes a bit of a state or
a character assignment
um as opposed to a verb and in any case
there's no perfect way to describe this
we're talking about nouns and adjectives
and and we're also um talking about
verbs but I think the verbs are really
anchored down in processes and things
that we do actions that we can take and
so um if I may I'd like to just
highlight this this idea of
shifting one sinking towards verb
actions
rather than labels on the state that we
happen to be in or the person that we
happen to be right sometimes it even
does become kind of character logical in
the way that people describe it and uh
so I have to believe that there is
something called over training that over
training is real in other words but that
we don't ever really know if we're over
trained
you nailed it there's there's no you
know it's not like a red flag uh you
know shoots up out of your shoulder and
say I'm over trained you know it's
um so in doing so I hope that we can
start thinking about some of the verbs
the actions that we can all take in
order to ensure that we stimulate
Progressive overload one way or another
and at the same time that we don't fall
into these bins of character assignment
where suddenly we decide that we need to
do X like take a month off or something
like that because I I'm beginning to
realize
um from our discussion that that's
exactly the wrong way to go those are
fantastic points I want to make sure it
is clear
that there is no clinical diagnosis for
over training there are no standards
there's no test or a blood panel you can
pull that would actually identify you in
that state so your your distinction Here
Andrew of these are verbs and rather
than nouns is is so wonderful because
that is exactly the case the only way we
could really come retroactively diagnose
one with over training is if again we
had you did weeks
of recovery and you only got back to
Baseline so we can't do it in the moment
I can't take a single test
there's no subjective marker or anything
that says you are over trained it is
simply you are probably over training
and we need to reverse that quickly or
in the case of the step before you are
probably non-functionally overreaching
and if you continue to do this you will
probably enter a new stage where this is
you're over training and we need to come
back so that's an important thing to let
people know is there's no one thing we
could actually point to that says you
are here you are not a noun this is a
verb so what are some tools that we can
use to enhance our recovery yep let's
start off with that acute overload phase
so in other words I just did a workout
and I'm feeling awful or I just did one
two days ago and I'm super sore how do I
get rid of that right now well there's a
couple of things you can do immediately
after your workout and then others that
are maybe more actionable a day later or
two days later and we'll just cover
handful of them we'll do some nutrition
and hydration and supplementation in the
next episode I'm going to cover
everything else not in that category
right now so a couple of things number
one
you can actually start Kickstart that
recovery process at the end of your
current training session and I guess I
should say it this way
I strongly suggest you start this
recovery process immediately after the
workout you mentioned earlier about this
idea of
you got to get a really high peak of
stress to cause adaptation but I
actually didn't explain that correctly
because what has to happen is you need
that extremely high peak but you then
you have to be met with an extremely
sharp recovery back down and so you know
you've talked about this before in some
of your neuroplasticity stuff and in
terms of what has to happen that caused
the insult and then you immediately need
to be able to recover to make sure that
that causes changes in the brains same
thing happens here so we need a really
sharp and high inflammatory response and
then if you do not meet it with an
immediate recovery period
the signal won't be there to maximize
your results so what's that mean you can
actually do a couple of things number
one is actually listening to slow paced
music
there's evidence to suggest fast-paced
music may slow down your recovery and
slow pace when actually enhance it so if
you just change from you know your
maximum get you up and get going music
during the workout to a slower lower
Cadence that will help you kick start
the idea of a similar note you can also
use what we call down regulation
breathing you could do them in
conjunction or one or the other
whichever is up to you so my personal
favorite method here is somewhere
between three to ten minutes of
finishing your training session laying
down I'd like to be in that position you
could certainly do it in the Lotus
position but I think laying on your back
is generally more effective personal
preference there no science I like the
items being covered getting into this
dark quiet sort of area
and then just breathing through your
nose in a structured Cadence there's a
lot of different things you can try an
easy example is just box breathing so
and you can imagine box having four
squares so what you're going to do is
inhale for somewhere between like three
to eight seconds and whatever number you
choose you keep that same tempo and so
let's say you chose to do a five second
inhale
that's going to take you up vertically
and then horizontally for your box is a
five second hold
and then a five second exhale
and then a five second hold and you just
need to repeat that for the time domain
now I typically honestly don't use a
timer
you'll actually notice a lot of people
will like fall asleep or get really
close to falling asleep in this period
you can do a triangle version of that
where you do an inhale
hold exhale and then go right back into
your inhale or up there's a bunch of
different tricks you can try here you
need to play around and see what
actually works best for you
um 10 minutes is probably better but if
you can just at least give me three
that'll work if you're really really
resistant you can actually do that just
in the shower and so if you're gonna
finish your workout get in the shower
again just close your eyes in the shower
give me three minutes of focused
relaxation breathing and that will
accelerate the recovery process I love
it and I particularly love it because my
laboratory works on stress and
respiration okay breathing and the
interactions between the two
and I'll just mention a result that was
just accepted for publication so should
be out by time this day so there's uh
thank you uh this is the beautiful work
of uh not me directly although it took
place in my lab but as we know it's the
students at both doctors of
um Dr Melise uh balbon uh in my lab it's
a phenomenal researcher
that showed that a short period of five
minutes of box breathing of exactly the
type that you described
or cyclic sign so two inhales followed
by an extended exhale to lungs empty
ideally the inhales are done through the
nose the exhales are done uh through the
mouth although it could all be done
through the nose
um or the mouth for that matter but
probably nose nose for inhale inhale
mouth for exhale or
um uh in inhales through the nose and
and exhale through the nose cyclic
sighing as we refer to it done for five
minutes both of those produce very
significant decreases in resting heart
rate
the over time will increase things like
heart rate variability and so on and so
forth
um so provided that there are extended
exhales it seems like the calming
response and the reduction in overall
stress occurs the only thing that really
sends things in the other direction
would be something like cyclic
hyperventilation I'm sure you've
observed that
um and interestingly uh when we had
people just do five minutes of
meditation which during which of course
they are breathing but they're just
allowing their breathing to progress
however it happens to be in that moment
um or moments across the five minutes uh
there were reductions in the same sorts
of markers of stress that I described
but not as significant as breathing so I
love the Brock's breathing tool post
workout
um and there's some other Alternatives
there too that I just mentioned but I
think people greatly underestimate the
potency of breathing for shifting one's
nervous system function away from stress
or if one wants toward more alertness
and stress I actually have a couple
questions for you on that sure I think
the audience would appreciate this uh
how long were those boxes was it just
user selected great question so we use
the carbon dioxide tolerance test
amazing in order for people to determine
how long the different sides of the Box
should be and you cover carbon dioxide
tolerance tests in a previous episode we
can provide a link to that clip um in
the show note captions but as you point
out it involves a long extended exhale
to lungs empty
um and of course people could sit with
lungs empty but they have to accurately
Faithfully as we say report how long it
took them to empty their lungs we use
that as a as a gauge typically if it
takes if people go to lungs empty in 20
seconds or less I believe I have to go
back to the paper and look but I believe
that the duration for each of the sides
of the boxes as it were was somewhere
between
um two and three seconds if they had a
CO2 discard time of anywhere from uh 20
seconds up to about 40 45 seconds we use
it the sides of the box where I believe
between four and six seconds and then
for people longer than them who could
discard their Arrow over a period of a
minute or more we used a box duration
that is inhale hold exhale hold duration
of somewhere between
I believe it was
[Music]
um
seven or maybe it was eight and as long
as 11 or 12 seconds yeah those will get
your kind of free diver types who can
really do this who are really well
trained for this sort of thing the don't
quote me exactly on those numbers but
that that was approximate those line up
exactly with what what we've done so I
believe it's it's going to be close
within seconds of non-important
Distinction is it's going to be close
enough so that's great and that was uh
it took them what six weeks so this
study was done over the period of a
month and then when they were swapped
into a new pattern of breathing
um condition or meditation condition and
this was all done in the natural world
as we say um they were wearing whoop
bands they were getting heart rate heart
rate variability sleep data subjective
data about mood Etc so there are a lot
of measures but this was
um more than 100 subjects out in the
wild of life
um and we tried as best we could to
track life stress events and exercise
and things like that that was harder to
control outside the laboratory really
all those results speak to exactly
exactly what you're describing here
which is that deliberate respiration
that involves controlled holds and
exhales really has a dramatic and very
immediate impact on reducing our levels
of stress that's wonderful I'm not
surprised at all with your findings and
what's really interesting about that is
you mentioned how the exhalation portion
is primarily responsible for the down
regulation and that's actually goes back
to our previous endurance conversation
which is that in general at rest at
non-altitude increases in CO2 are the
primary driver for ventilation and so
what that generally means is inhales are
associated with an uptick and
sympathetic State and exhales are
associated with a uptick of
parasympathetic State this is generally
why folks will do things like exhale and
finish that exhale right before they
perform a very high
Precision neurological tasks so if
you're going to say aim at a Target and
shoot you're going to Exhale fully and
then almost always execute that movement
at the end of the exhale because that's
when you're in your highest
parasympathetic State and lowest drive
for ventilation I have to say I'm not
surprised at all that you guys found
that there's actually other data that
point to individuals particularly after
endurance training that can get back
down to Baseline heart rate
is going to be correlated with who gets
the most actual results of their
training said that if you take a bunch
of individuals and put them through an
endurance training program and if you
measure how quickly they can get back
down to Baseline after each workout in
general those folks that are better at
that are going to see greater
improvements in performance at the end
of your say four or six or eight week
training block and so there's a little
bit of causation and correlation there
that we have to untie but I think it's
enough to say hey
if you invest these three and in your
case your your study was five minutes
it's only going to enhance recovery
you have a likelihood
of increasing the results from your
training and now we also have additional
benefits like being able to transition
more appropriately into our next task
going to work going to see family
whatever the thing is and it's it's a
nice close
to I asked you to be in a high
sympathetic State body and I asked you
to perform and to be under stress I gave
you recovery and now we're ready to
transition in our next thing so that we
don't take that exercise energy if you
will
into our next
task which may or may not want me in a
sympathetic Drive state so if somebody
is sore following a workout either
locally sore in a muscle group or group
of muscles maybe in their legs or chest
or torso or maybe their whole body is
sore
as it sometimes is the case
what are some tools that they can
Implement in order to accelerate the I
want to call it moving out of that
soreness but it's really as we know the
alleviation of the soreness through a
bunch of different processes what are
the most effective tools to push back on
that soreness and dissipate it yeah
absolutely
first of all it's not lactate that's
just a really important thing that we
still hear people talk about is you know
you're sore 24 hours later you got to do
this thing to get the lactate out of
there as we talked about in the
metabolism uh conversation and episode
that that is not the cause of fatigue
and it's certainly not the cause of
soreness so not an actionable tip there
but just a pet peeve of mine when I hear
people say that that I get irritated so
we can maybe end that conversation
um strategies tools
here's what you can do you can actually
wear compression gear that will help a
little bit there's a decent amount of
evidence suggesting if you just were to
you know put some tighter fitting
clothes on Leisure wear or compression
gear if you have it that can actually
prevent a little bit of soreness from
occurring so if you're in the case of
poor Natasha and you realize you've just
done way way too much or you went and
hung out with your bow hunting friend
and you trained way too hard and you
realize oh my goodness I'm going to be
very sore here you can immediately put
on compression gear and weigh that
really for as long as possible what are
some examples of compression gear I've
seen people on the plane with those high
high socks
um I mean anything that you wear
compression gear for what you do for
exercise so whether these are just you
know compression pants and leggings and
tight fitting leggings uh whether this
is a long sleeve shirt that's like a
rash guard you would wear in you know
Jiu Jitsu or surfing or something like
that as long as it's tight fitting it
doesn't have to be much more than that
you can wear I suppose you could get the
socks it would be great but we generally
just tell our leads them they've put on
a long sleeve compression shirts that
they would wear for their training and
then long compression leggings and
that'd be fine can people apply these
compression
um Garb after training and still get
some of the positive effects yeah I have
not seen any evidence to suggest that
that would block adaptation that may be
the case I I am not aware of those
studies if that happens but I certainly
know that the information suggests it
can hands a little bit of Muscle
Recovery but ideally one knows if they
are about to do a workout that could
trigger a lot of soreness yeah and then
where's compression gear of some sort to
offset that and if so
does it have to be local to the muscle
groups that you're working on the reason
I asked about the socks is my
understanding the socks uh the the
compression socks people were on the
plane is that it's going to shift the
patterns of blood flow not just in the
lower legs but all over the body yeah
you're probably going to want to focus
it on the actual exercising tissue
though actually that's a really good
question I don't know the answer of
whether or not you did an upper body
workout only or lower body compression
gear if that would actually help that's
a great question it may have been done I
don't know but I don't know the answer
to that in general we just
tell people like where where the whole
thing as much as you can um I actually
am not concerned that you're wearing it
during your workout
it is something you could put on
afterwards or even wear just a little
bit of compression the other day um
we've actually did a really fun study uh
I collaborated with
um Bill Kramer who's uh you know Sports
scientist of the Year award is the bill
Cramer award if that gives you an
indication out of uh University of
Connecticut as well as with Lee Brown so
two Lifetime Achievement Award winners
and we we put people on a plane in
stores Connecticut and flew them to Cal
State Fullerton so a cross-country
flight and some of them got to wear
compression gear during the flight and
others did not and then they landed in
California did a training bout put them
back on the plane went back to stores
and I think they did another training
bout when they got back there
there was a lot of data that came out of
that paper but one of the things that
was clear is the compression group was
effective
at handling some of the blood related
coagulation and other issues associated
with long flights and particularly
athletic performance so that's actually
a sneaky little Insider trick that I'll
use a lot with people particularly with
athletes that are traveling is just wear
that compression gear on the plane so
you talked about that and that sort of
rung that study to mind that as another
effective strategy so compression gear
in general as well as particularly on a
plane basically the tighter you can get
it the better without obviously making
your hands purple and being
uncomfortable and things like that so it
doesn't have to be overly tight anything
will work and probably help so I'm also
doing that personally anytime I'm taking
a flight like that as much as I can just
to feel a little better when I get there
so what are some other methods that we
can use to alleviate acute soreness well
if we continue down the same theme which
is saying okay we'll use some sort of
pressure manipulation to enhance
recovery
if compression is one strategy you can
also use things like compression boots
or garments and these are nomadic
devices that will you know pump uh air
outside you and compress back and forth
there's any number of devices that will
do this you can also use the physical
hand so this would be massage and body
work they're all really working as best
we can tell on the same mechanisms which
are effectively moving fluid in and out
of the tissue as well as potentially
enhancing blood flow increasing
capitalization and which is going to
only get nutrients in and waste products
out so you can kind of pick and choose
based upon your budget preferences
availability timing things like that so
those are all effective strategies
outside of that really is the next
largest category
which is now thermal and uh and so far
in this discussion we've mentioned cold
water immersion and I talked about in
the hypertrophy section how you would
not want to do that immediately post
exercise which would be getting into
cold water or an ice bath if you're
trying to grow muscle mass having said
that there is good evidence showing that
cold water immersion specifically is
effective at reducing muscle soreness
so it is a fair consideration and it's a
classic example of how there are no free
passes in physiology nothing is always
good or always bad it's always about
what are you willing to give up and
versus what you're willing to get and
the case of like cold water immersion
you may be thinking yeah I might want
some of the hypertrophic adaptations but
if you're in that phase of training
where you're actually trying to push
more towards optimization in that moment
rather than long-term adaptation then a
an ice bath might be a great choice in
addition if you fall into a scenario
like Natasha did and you realize like
I'm just so unbelievably sore this might
cost me three or four or five or six
days of training it might be worth it
for you to accelerate that recovery
process by a couple of days so that you
don't miss so much training so it's just
a it's an algorithm it's an equation
what am I looking for again if I'm in
season or trying to compete or if I have
just done way way too much exercise and
I am really in significant pain you
would probably be willing to give up
some small percentage of eventual muscle
growth after a single session to get out
of pain so of the cold strategies cold
water immersion is clearly the best
approach rather than cold air or some
other tactics so a cold shower is
probably not enough here you really do
want to be either in moderately cold
this is maybe 40 to 50 degree water for
probably north of 15 minutes or you can
be in sub 40 for as little as maybe five
minutes to get some of the fact there
and there's been a number of studies
um so I'm sort of summarizing a bunch of
that kind of into one rather than going
through them Point by point
the numbers you just threw out uh which
I'm assuming are um uh Fahrenheit
um seem seem really cold to me right
uncomfortably cold absolutely so I
always recommend that people ease into
it as a protocol overall that they not
immediately go to 35 degree uh cold
water if they've never done it before uh
that said once people are comfortable
being uncomfortable because I always
answer the question how cold should it
be exactly would you agree that it
should be very very cold so much so that
you really really want to get out but
that you're able to stay in safely
whatever that value happens to be you
absolutely need to be safe having said
that we have actually in our xbt
Retreats put dozens if not hundreds of
people at this point uh immediately in
the sub 35 degree water their first time
ever and done you know three minutes
multiple rounds in a session so they can
handle it but you don't need to go that
crazy if you don't want you kind of have
to play a game right do you want to be
really really cold for a short amount of
time or do you want to be like kind of
cold for a longer amount of time I
really the only mistake you can make is
doing something like you know 65 degree
water
which for most people is not very
comfortable and doing you know five or
ten minutes it's just not going to be
it's probably not going to be effective
so if you're like man 35 is is
absolutely crazy and you want to do 55
degree water and there's literature in
that area but it's going to say you need
to probably be there somewhere almost
really north of 10 minutes and some of
it will actually show you need to be in
there like well north of 20 to 30
minutes so for my money I would rather
go really really cold and get it done in
five minutes but um personal preference
on this one you can also make it a
little bit easier on yourself
there is not nearly as much evidence but
there is some on contrast stuff so uh
this is when you go cold hot and sort of
back and forth there are no really good
rules in terms of how much should you go
how many rounds how long and cold how
long and hot again there have been a
couple of studies but
and obviously those studies use numbers
but that doesn't mean those have been
tested to see what are optimal which is
a very big difference so you can really
just kind of play that by feel
hot is good for Recovery you just have
to be careful because you are going to
put more blood flow in the area and so
you may walk out of there with some
additional acute swelling which isn't
going to put greater pressure on there
so you have to kind of play with that I
personally
really like hot for Recovery I will feel
maybe not great in that moment but the
next day I tend to feel really really
good in addition if I wake up the next
morning and I'm really really hurting
and I'm super stiff a hot bath will help
that
um quite a bit so you can play with some
of those protocols again you don't have
to do nice there's absolutely no
requirement to do so it is just an
option if you're interested the studies
of Dr Susanna soberg sure yeah are not
directly aimed at alleviating soreness
or recovery they're more about
increasing thermal capacity by a storage
of uh Brown adipose tissue not the
blubbery fat but the stuff around the
clavicles and around the heart that help
you generate body heat at rest and
metabolism and so on and the numbers
there that
um she's come up with again have not
been tested against all the possible
derivations just like with breathing we
did five minute sessions but who knows
maybe a minute would have been equally
effective we just there are constraints
on these sorts of studies but the values
that she's come up with which seem to be
good thresholds for making sure that an
adaptation response is triggered by heat
and cold is it ends up being 57 minutes
per week total of uncomfortable but safe
heat in that case sauna and that can be
all in one session or breaking it up
into a couple of sessions on the same
day or different days and then 11
minutes per week of cold either in one
single session or multiple sessions
again one could do more
um one could break that up over you know
multiple days or do it all in one day or
do it all in one you know an hour in the
sauna and then 11 minutes in the colder
vice versa although that seems a little
bit extreme especially for the
uninitiated but those are the numbers
that have been studied but as you point
out there are not a lot of really
thorough studies examining different
cold protocols according to temperature
by time requirements so there is a bit
of subjective feel required to establish
a routine and I would actually say this
is another time to re-emphasize
something we talked about at the
beginning of our conversation which is
that pain itself is not a defined
outcome it's heavily influenced by your
perception and so if you don't feel like
they work for you they won't work if you
feel like they work fantastic they do so
it's a challenging field to get really
objective data on so there's always
going to be a little bit of
subjective nature to some of these
things I can tell you anecdotally we've
used hot and cold contrast for a long
time with athletes some love it some
don't care for it and everything in
between so it's one of those things
where
I never mandate it of course I can't
mandate anything for anyone I work with
but I'm never you know like hey are you
interested great you're struggling this
area do you want to try this you did and
you liked it great you're struggling in
this area and you tried it you didn't
love it okay fine I'm not we'll find
other routes as we will get into there's
a lot of ways to enhance recovery
um this is only one and it hasn't even
really come down to stopping the problem
in the first place we're not we're just
treating symptoms
which is first line of defense but you
really need to go back and figure out
why it's happening to begin with as a
solution these are just different again
acute symptom management tactics
one final point about uh deliberate cold
exposure I think worth mentioning is one
of the reasons the shower is effective
but not nearly as effective as cold
water immersion or immersion in ice up
to the neck is simply because of the
reason you stated before which is that
most showers are not going to get that
cold you're not going to get down you
know into the sub 40s also
cold showers haven't really been studied
that much they have but not nearly as
much as immersion and people always ask
why just think about the challenges of
studying cold water exposure in the
shower where you can't really control
for mango how much of the body is
covered whether or not the head stays
under different size bodies
Etc whereas when people come into a
laboratory they can get into a cold
large and we know where the neck is we
know where the chin is and we can make
sure that people's arms and um legs are
underneath but with cold shower sure you
can make everyone face away or toward
the shower but it's really tricky and
um for all the variations that were
described that said would you agree that
if one wants to use deliberate cold
exposure that cold shower is better than
nothing and cold immersion in
circulating cold water or ice bath is
better than um than cold shower yeah
what I'd actually say if you're looking
for recovery for muscle soreness I would
say cold shower is probably doing very
little because you're not going to be
able to get enough cold water onto any
muscle besides basically your head
so maybe you could try a cold bath
and so you'd at least get some surface
area coverage
but yeah if you want to use cold shower
for all the other awesome reasons to
cold shower that's totally great but if
you're trying to use that to recover
your low back and glutes from being sore
from training in a good way it's
probably not going to do much the the
immersion would be there you actually
also hit a sneaky other point which is
if you can't get your water super cold
just make the water move so if you have
Jets and stuff you can turn on and
anyone who's tried this and be like okay
I can do a 40 degree bath awesome try 60
when the water is moving right because
you break up the thermal layer normally
you have a little thin layer of water
that you're heating up you break that up
it's a whole new world yeah absolutely
so being very still in the cold water is
actually the weaker way to go correct
that you can make your face stoic but
make your body circulate some water
around you as long as we're on this
maybe just one more point about heat
uh I've certainly used sauna wet sauna
dry sauna steam saunas excuse me
jacuzzis can work pretty well yep um uh
males if you are looking to conceive in
the 60 days following uh uh following
sauna or
um hot tub do realize that it that both
those approaches do severely limit the
number of motile sperm um substantially
so for people that are not trying to
conceive uh don't think that this works
reliably enough that you could use it as
a form of contraception yeah but but for
people that are trying to conceive it
really is detrimental to sperm Health
right and so for that reason some people
bring an ice pack and put it on the
groin or near the groin when they go in
but um which is hard to do in a hot tub
than a sauna so here we're getting into
the fine points
um or crude points if you will pun
intended but um but the idea is that we
we wouldn't want anyone to approach
these techniques and compromise their
other life goals certainly not allowed
anywhere near these things when uh we
were at that stage of Life I'll just say
the Natasha put an x on me hanging out
with Laird so
for those reasons she's like you're not
going in you're not going none of this
stuff and I just had to wait right heat
um heat and sperm have have a
relationship but it's not one that's
positive for the sperm I'd like to take
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get 20 off are there ways to combine
the various types of stimuli that you
described for inducing recovery you
talked about breathing based tools which
while they could adjust and indeed do
adjust oxygen and carbon dioxide ratios
and
Etc I'm guessing the major effect of
those on recovery is going to be neural
it's going to be deliberate calm of the
nervous system more sympathetic based uh
as you mentioned yeah most definitely
and then you talked about some movement
based and touch-based approaches
um which will uh movement circulate
certainly will circulate blood but also
will generate contractions of the
muscles yep right which maybe if indeed
again it still speculates you if indeed
some of the soreness is due to excessive
stretch or swelling at the stretch ends
of the of the muscles
that would make sense so movement and
touch and then thermal are there ways to
to combine these
um that are more effective or maybe even
synergistic yeah I suppose you could
throw on uh
some compression garments put on a
Pneumatic compression device and sit in
the sauna while you down regulate your
breath like that would be fine
quite honestly though you probably don't
need
to maximize all of them we were joking
you could probably go for a light swim
while regulating your breathing in cold
water you get the compression from the
cold water and and you'd be in a good
spot so you could certainly do that the
reality of it is I generally look for
some physical
approach and then some holistic approach
of the breath work basically so I want
breath and then something else if you
knock those two things out you're in a
good spot so that could be breath while
you're in thermal stress so just
controlling and doing the unregulation
stuff you have to also remember ice is a
stressor
and I'll actually show you some data
here in a second about
how that actually can enhance
systemic recovery although it won't
happen in the in the acute minutes in
fact it's going to take at least 30 to
60 minutes and then you'll eventually
see a rebound effect but acutely it's
going to make you actually more
sympathetic which is going the other
direction he can do the opposite or it
can actually drive you up so it's a
little bit dependent upon how you
respond what time of day and how you're
using so in general I guess combining
them is
if you need it
um
depending on what you have what's
available so perhaps you don't have a
sauna but you can take a hot bath great
maybe you have some percussion device
some tool and you can use that but you
don't have a sauna amazing I don't have
ice bath these things so I think rather
than thinking about an optimal
combination of them I would say just use
a couple of the tactics based on what
you have and what is
easily available in your situation I'd
love for you to teach us about some of
the methods for longer form recovery as
it relates to overreaching and over
training sure you want to think about
this in a couple of phases phase one is
to try to prevent it from happening in
the first place
uh in terms of training load you're
going to just go back to our previous
episodes where we talk give you specific
instructions for how much to increase
your volume and intensity per week Etc
the other thing you can do then is do
some monitoring and I'll go over some
different tools some cost free ones as
well as some some higher technologically
demanding ones to monitor to see if it's
actually happening and then the third
approach here is what if this has
already occurred I figured it out I'm so
how do I get back out of that hole so I
would like to just sort of tackle these
one by one in order and talk about
what's happening what tools you can use
and why they're going to work all right
so anytime we're talking about fatigue
management here
most people are aware of these terms
because if you have any sort of
Technology you're probably getting some
sort of Readiness score or recovery
score or strain depending on which app
or watch or Tech you have you have a
little bit of vernacular change if
you're in the sport performance world
you might be looking at things again
like load or a GPS tracking and
monitoring and really all of it is is
doing the same thing
it's trying to either one
predict
a problem is going to happen in a future
and then placing restrictions upon you
so that you don't run into that
situation
the other thing is possibly doing is
identifying a drop in physiology or
performance and then saying we need to
get you out of this hole that's really
what's happening and so when we think of
the first one just imagine a scenario
like a mileage limitation uh pitch count
in baseball and what has happened there
is is you know individuals in those
fields have looked and said hey what we
notice is people who throw say more than
100 pitches in a game
tend to start losing Effectiveness and
increase injury rate therefore we're
predicting the next time you go to play
if you cross that threshold we start
having an increased risk of negative
consequences so therefore we're going to
cap your in this case pitching volume at
that hundred pitches per game or
whatever the case same thing with
running etc etc so you could just simply
do that and there's actually really cool
data coming out now on sport performance
stuff looking at things like I am using
GPS trackers and trying to identify even
position by position specific
recommendations for how much distance
you should cover in a practice in a
trending session
um so that you can say hey these
positions don't cross this threshold
these positions don't cross this
threshold in basketball and tennis and
all kinds of things like that that's not
probably extremely applicable to many of
the listeners right now but it is still
conveying the idea that if we understand
where we break then we can stop
ourselves from getting there in the
first place
the functional example here is just
thinking about basic things like where
do I start my training program and then
how do I progress it and we've already
covered those numbers in either case
though you want to have three markers
that you're paying attention to if
you're concerned you're getting into an
overreaching phase or potentially going
to lead to over training or you want to
get out as three unique things number
one
we're going to look for some sort of
performance metric right so this could
be your times are going down your your
squat numbers your your power is going
down any of these things so it's got to
be an actual performance number two some
sort of physiology and so I want to see
something happening with resting heart
rate some biomarker is moving heart rate
variability some other measure that is
not influenced by you and the beauty of
using biological markers are if we
contrast that to like performance
and I said okay here's our performance
test every day you come in you're going
to do a vertical jump
and if one day you come in all of a
sudden your vertical jump is super low
I might think oh man maybe we're
starting to overreach
you also could be feeling lazy that day
and just not have jumped very high on
purpose because you didn't want to work
out
the beauty of biomarkers are you don't
get to manipulate them like that they
don't care there's a downside to it
which is maybe they're just indirect
markers right and so
I'm not telling you biological markers
are better than performance markers what
I'm saying is you want to look at both
all right in fact you want to look at
our third category as well
which is some sort of symptomology
and so am I am I having a symptom of
overreaching
am I seeing a performance Sacrament and
then am I saying a biological marker as
well if you see all three of these
popping up you have reason to believe
you've reached some overt reaching
now what you have not identified yet is
if that is functional overreaching
non-functional overreaching or true over
training and remember you shouldn't be
feeling great after every training
session you're trying to cause
adaptation and until you back off maybe
even weeks or months later to actualize
the adaptation and get that super
compensation and performance increase
you're going to have to invest a little
bit so you're going to go in the hole
any sport performance coach is going to
look at numbers throughout the year and
say yeah when we first start training in
preparation for the season we are going
to see a drop in performance that day
that week that's part of the plan though
right that's the stress you're trying to
accumulate so you want to see all three
of those markers you just want to pay
attention to a couple of things how long
are they down for
a day three days seven days 15 days
Etc if you're seeing a performance drop
in a day
and I am far away from from performance
uh so the day that I want to Peak for
I'm not going to do anything different
if I see two days in a row drop
performance
I'm not worried if I see more than
probably in my opinion five days in a
row of decrement then I might start
paying attention
if you're in season though or close to
competition or whatever that thing means
to you
and you see more than a couple of days
in a row of dropping then you might
actually want to take some some steps to
mitigate that so it really is important
you understand again what are we trying
to do are we trying to cause adaptation
are we trying to cause adaptation and I
I have a very specific example of all
this we can run through uh here in a
second and then of course a bunch of
tools to to pull you out of those phases
but that's that's fundamentally what
we're trying to do here I would
encourage you again
don't be too reactive and responsive to
any one measure I'm going to cover a
whole bunch of them in a second
but you can get lost in in different
things because they all have pros and
cons and so
I know it's simple to just look at one
score in your watch and make your
decisions because of that or check your
app but you really want to be careful of
doing that you're going to probably lead
yourself in the wrong direction more
often than you're going to help yourself
I'm curious as to why when we overreach
too much or too often where we are over
training
that performance is diminished because
on the face of it it's kind of obvious
you're overreaching you're over training
so performance is diminished but that's
completely circular
you hear about things like adrenal
fatigue and adrenal burnout well it
turns out adrenal burnout doesn't even
really exist absolutely not there is a
such a thing as adrenal insufficiency
syndrome but of course you know these
phrases like burn out adrenal burnout
over training
um they're thrown around it you know as
much as words like gaslighting and
obsessive compulsive you know are
without any real clinical definition
um or there are clinical definitions but
people aren't obeying them when they use
the language I do want to acknowledge
however what is absolutely true which is
that overreaching too much too often
over training these can degrade
performance
but mechanistically speaking what's
going on because I think if once we
understand what's going on
mechanistically then I think we can all
look at tools whether or not it's
breathing movement compression thermal
psychological motivational
Etc and have a much clearer sense as to
what's going to work best and what
likely won't work
I love this question so much because as
I mentioned at the beginning I I was
fortunate to spend my some of my
graduate work in Andy Fry's Lab at the
University of Memphis and we did a lot
in this area and so we in fact this is
how I learned how to do assays and run
Western blots and measure signaling
proteins and things like this so this
stuff is near and dear to my heart we
also did a bunch of really wild studies
and he had done some before I got there
so
I'm gonna combine kind of antifrey's
entire career and just highlight some of
the big pictures of what he found there
um he was very interested in exercise
particularly strength training and
trying to figure out this entire
question right which is like why is this
actually happening when I work out too
much when I lift too much
that all of a sudden I can't sleep
what's happening like why is my energy
down why is my mood my motivation
reduced if I squat too much so we did a
whole series of studies across this
career and again I'll just sort of
highlight some of the the
some of the themes that ran through them
so the first one that jumps out to mind
is early in his career he did this
really awesome protocol
um where he had people squat 100 of
their back squat Max every day for two
weeks
so you're coming to the gym and I think
this first one was on a machine and you
did a one rep max and you came back in
every single day for two weeks so these
are what we would generally call kind of
like that short to moderate range
overreaching and by definition some of
them end up actually being true over
training because it would take the
individuals sometimes two to up to eight
weeks to return back to their one rep
max at the end of these protocols
um so some of them were non-functional
overreaching or some combination of that
well along with that he took a lot of
blood samples as well as muscle biopsies
to try to look at what's happening
endocrinologically
neurologically muscle physiology wise to
pay attention what's happened so a
couple of things that jump out there one
of his initial studies actually I think
the very first one he did when they ran
that first
squat everyday protocol
what they found is catecholamine levels
change quite significantly and depending
on kind of what you wanted to pay
attention to there whether it was
epinephrine or norepinephrine or even
some other markers they basically
increased by somewhere between two to
threefold and so a little bit of
understanding of sleep physiology if
adrenaline is extremely high epinephrine
you're going to have a hard time
sleeping so that alone was was first
indication this is like wait a minute
something's actually happening here
that's just beyond muscle soreness
there's some sort of systemic fatigue
happening and as you rightfully pointed
out is not the adrenal glands becoming
fatigued that's sort of a bit of
tongue-in-cheek at pedantics it is
cortisol dysregulation and general
stress syndrome
but it's really can be noted in in blood
in terms of epinephrine and
norepinephrine another study he had done
of a similar realm was over the course
of seven and a half days that people
came in and did 15 training sessions so
it was really cool these are these
really short bouts of just ridiculous
training and they said okay like
something's happening with
with epinephrine and norepinephrine
something hap something's happening with
testosterone what's it look like inside
the cell so now muscle biopsies came on
board
and they started looking at things like
map kinases which are these signaling
proteins that are tend to be associated
with an anabolic response say upregulate
muscle protein synthesis and they do
many other things but that's like a big
factor of them they looked at various
androgens and glucocorticoid receptors
and they wanted to say like well maybe
receptor density or and or sensitivity
is changing and in fact surprise
surprise that's exactly what they found
so they found both Androgen and
glucocorticoid receptor concentrations
were reduced and so you can start to see
a picture forming which is like hmm
very similar to the insulin type 2
diabetes story where you've you've
really put yourself in a very high
stress situation so presumably
epinephrine
Etc testosterone releases are extremely
high in response to that to try to reach
back to some level of homeostasis you
start down regulating The receptors for
them and so it's like the signal can
only get so high if you're going to keep
that gas on we're going to pull back the
throttle and the receptor so that the
total signal stays the same if that
makes a little bit of sense
well that becomes obviously problematic
um so then like a final follow-up study
here that is important to note is they
did another protocol which was really
really cool and they said the first ones
weren't enough so how about this we're
going to come in every day for two weeks
and we're going to do 10 sets
of a one rep max every day
so they were coming in and they would do
10 one rep Maxes every day for two weeks
and what's really cool about that study
if they didn't complete
any other repetitions they had to repeat
it until they had 10 successful one rep
Maxes on that given day
um absolutely brutal brutal protocol I
wasn't there at the time
um they had finished that right before I
got on campus but I was actually able to
be around when they were doing some of
the final analyzes there of the tissue
um what they want to look at in this
particular study was beta adrenergic
receptors which are those receptors were
that are going to be epinephrine and
such are going to be binding for so
again similar story here
um perhaps are we losing overall
sensitivity because of this extreme
sympathetic stimulation now actually
thinking back what would have been
pretty cool is if they had another group
that did it and then did some down
regulation breathing post to see if that
can ameliorate some of the problems but
no of course this was 20. plus years ago
or something like that so
a couple of things that happened is the
one rep Maxes dropped by I think around
like eight kilos by the end of the two
weeks if I remember right like the group
average was something in the
neighborhood of 151 kilos so these were
pretty well trained individuals and it
went from rather I think actually it was
about 160 kilos and they dropped to like
152 kilos it's something close to that
what was more significant though was
their power dropped by 35 percent
which is really really interesting
because if if you pay attention to
declines in physical performance over
time and I mean that like through aging
what you'll see is people can hold on to
muscle mass pretty well
it will go down by about you know one
percent or so after the age of 40.
however strength will go down at like
two to four percent and then Power by
eight to ten percent and if you look at
actually World Records across strength
Sports by age you'll see that they will
decline
by age but not that much however if you
look at Speed Sports
by age they fall off the planet so it's
very challenging to preserve fast
Through Time whether this is fatigue or
because of age that's really important
because that'll then tell you hey a
little bit of a canary in the coal mine
is not necessarily your strength but
your speed
and so a lot of different techniques
that we use
to measure performance remember that's
our Triad right symptomology physiology
and performance you're generally better
looking at speed based performance tests
rather than strength based performance
tests to get an earlier indication of
potential overreaching or over training
so anyways back to the the individual
study there
um in that same group again we have the
same problem where it took some of them
two to eight weeks to come back so what
they had to do is I can't remember the
exact time frame I probably should have
thought through this but they had they
had to come back something like every
week or every couple of days even after
the study finished until they got back
to their Baseline one rep max and some
of them it took them up to eight weeks
before they finally got back so they
probably were in a classic uh over
training State at that place which is
was done in as little as two weeks and
this is also another point that
people always ask like how uh like how
long does it take is this something that
has to happen over the course of months
or like if I were to go do two days or
this intense training camp for two or
three weeks could I actually cause over
training and the answer is if it is
actually truly enough volume and enough
intensity you probably can do some
significant damage in as little as two
weeks probably doesn't happen that often
most likely you you're probably going to
be reaching a state of non-functional
overreaching but you may actually be
able to put yourself in a position where
it might take three or four weeks or
more to get back to Baseline after a
truly intense and again think about this
protocol it's like totally unrealistic
for the most part 10 sets of one of a
one rep max squat every day for two
straight weeks um some folks
if you're extremely highly trained
weightlifter you might do something like
that when you're very close to say World
Championships but outside of that really
specific scenario it's a totally absurd
training protocol but that was the point
right we were trying to ensure
uh ensure that over training was met or
close it's similar to when we've done
and we've actually done I think three
studies in the center for support
performance on Dom's muscle soreness and
in all those cases you do just like
ridiculous leg extension protocols
because you're just trying to ensure you
cause super soreness if you don't then
you have nothing to study so
um absurd training protocols but but
that's the point so nonetheless
um as a result sure enough the beta
adrenergic receptors were down regulated
by something like 37 percent
um what's probably even more significant
though was the sensitivity in those
receptors was reduced by like two and a
half fold and so it's like okay wait a
minute we're becoming desensitized in
this timeline and we're also actually
now starting to reduce our total
concentration
similar which is actually an interesting
it was a very sneaky smart thing to do
is they looked at nocturnal urinary
epinephrine and guess what that was also
up by like 50 percent
15 one five five zero five zero yeah and
so now you're seeing this tie-in where
it's like
um
I'm seeing a response at the tissue
level I'm seeing a response probably
although they didn't actually look at
pituitary anything like that I'm seeing
adrenal and other endocrinological
problems and then I'm also seeing this
increase in concentration of Ben
epinephrine when I'm supposed to be
sleeping and surprise surprise I'm
having a hard time
sleeping symptomology that's a very
interesting finding about nocturnal
epinephrine epinephrine of course is
adrenaline it's released from the
adrenals no surprise there but also from
this brain area called Locus ceruleus
and the brain and the Brain tends to be
called epinephrine in the body
adrenaline just to complicate everyone's
understanding but that nomenclature did
not come from us so don't blame us
the point is that
rapid eye movements lead so called REM
sleep
is more abundant in the second half of
the night we know that the dreams
associated with rapid eye movement sleep
are more emotionally Laden and that
those dreams and those emotional states
are actually important for discarding
the emotional load of previous day's
experiences it's a sort of a natural
trauma therapy if you will because in
the normal healthy state
those dreams are associated within the
inability to release epinephrine at
night so for me what you just described
first of all it's the first time I've
ever heard of it
um
but it ties together something really
quite clear from the Sleep Neuroscience
literature which is that
when people are stressed they tend to
get less rapid eye movement sleep
that rapid eye movement sleep normally
is associated with low levels of
epinephrine so whether or not it's
causal or not isn't clear but sort of
doesn't matter for sake of this
discussion but what I'm wondering and I
suppose one could test for but maybe
observed is whether or not people who
are over in over training too much over
reaching too much because of this
elevated nocturnal epinephrine
diminished REM sleep whether or not
their emotional state is also
um disrupted because one thing we know
for sure is if you want to disrupt
somebody's emotional state you deprive
them of sleep and rap and eye movement
sleep in particular the one caveat to
that is
for those of you out there that have
heard that rapid eye movement sleep
deprivation deliberate rapid eye
movement sleep deprivation
is a treatment for depression that is
true but it's coupled with a next night
enhanced rapid eye movement sleep so one
of the major takeaways from all of this
uh that I'm realizing is that
no surprise daytime activities impact
nighttime endocrine function impact
quality of sleep impact daytime
activities yeah actually there's so many
fun things I want to do here now um this
is actually why measuring eye movement
is a very fantastic tool for
understanding total stress load and you
can actually differentiate different
types of stress so caffeine use versus
alcohol use versus sleep deprivation by
actually measuring eye movements that's
actually what we do in our absolute rest
sleep company is in addition to getting
a full PSD sleep study done in your
bedroom you're going to get an eye
tracking assessment which we're going to
be able to figure out why you're getting
there so
um nonetheless
yeah if you actually look at the classic
signs and symptoms of over training or
over training syndrome it's going to be
everything from performance decrements
like we talked about
um heart resting heart rate is going to
increase you're going to see things like
HRV drop by generally 20 or so percent
that would be a very large disruption in
HRV
decreased body weight and then all the
stuff Andrew you just talked about so
motivation adherence appetite mood
all of this stuff are classically known
associations with with overtrain and
that's for the exact reasons you're
talking about sleep disturbances and
disruptions
wanting to train motivation all of this
stuff uh goes part and parcel with
non-functional overreaching and or over
training you can actually tie this back
in a little bit more to some other
biomarkers and this is this is great
because this is the stuff we look for
this is the physiology stuff we look for
um you've probably talked about shpg
before which is a sex hormone binding
globulin so it's this protein that
that'll float in your body that's
going to bind up sex hormones in
particular testosterone so what happens
with
um over training is you can actually
take this serially like week by week and
you will actually see this number rise
and so if you see this like say you're
using a a service like inside tracker
and you're getting your your blood
measured every so often and you see this
number start ticking up
this is actually associated with that
because what's actually happening is
it's binding up all your free
testosterone and that's just leading
back to the circle we're talking about
and you can actually see the same thing
happen with calorie restriction
does not eat enough calories but in this
particular case because it actually
happens in both scenarios you know it's
not an issue simply of being under
caloried it's clearly an issue of the
training load being too high so just to
give another little tool there's I can
get the link for it but there's a
website that was created by which
Journal uh I'm slipping but I'll get it
to you you can link it up where you can
actually go in and plug in
a number of values for mud chemistry so
if you got your blood work done and you
can plug in your pre-number and your
post number so say you got it done and
then maybe 10 weeks later you got it
done again and you're wondering and you
notice hey my free testosterone's down
or my shpg is up
is it actually a meaningful number and
you it will actually tell you whether or
not the change prediposed is
physiologically Meaningful or not or
just within the error margin of the
measure and you can actually change like
right there on the website you can
change your confidence interval so it's
really really cool if you know if you
just have your own blood and you want to
know like hey I had any level this year
and now it's you know here over there
it's a totally free resource created
gone through peer review all that stuff
and I'll give the link to that so that's
a pretty cool
measure in addition to that like
probably one of the more powerful and
easy metrics uh biologically is to take
your cortisol and DHEA ratio so this is
known to be associated with a lot of
things you want to be really careful you
don't want this number to be too high or
too low something like 0.09
it is about cortisol to DHEA DHA to
cortisol ratio DHEA to cortisol I'd love
to tell you I said it backwards on
purpose just to make sure everyone
understood but I got it backwards yeah I
mean this ratio has been associated with
so many things you have to do you do
have to be careful with Association
right not being causation but everything
from risk of infections the metabolic
health and and like other disease States
as well as more what we're talking about
which is hey Mike am I am I getting sort
of cortisolous Regulation which is what
a lot of folks would call
you know again adrenal fatigue and no
that's not really what's happening but
if adrenaline and epinephrine are off
and testosterone cortisol is going to be
along the right and so you can also look
at things like testosterone to cortisol
ratios so there's a lot of things you
can glean here to give you some insights
into where you're going if that if that
ratio is too high that's going to be
associated with metabolic syndrome and a
bunch of other stuff if it's too low
that's going to be associated with a lot
of cognitive problems like aggression
and mood and a bunch of things like that
so
again you want to keep it right around
that 0.09 ratio and most the time
actually in some blood chemistry stuff
you'll get a you'll get a report of that
or you can calculate it pretty quickly
I'm sure we'll get into this in the
episode that comes next on uh nutrition
and supplementation totally
what about compounds that lower cortisol
such as ashwagandha
um I can see now based on the logic
you're spelling out that during phases
of
a lot of intense overreaching or
frequent overreaching
given that those compounds can indeed
lower cortisol radoli rodolia rosacea
rhodiola rhodiola rosacea
um one word to say
um two words but the first one more fun
to say rhodiola Rhodesia rhodiola rosea
rhodiola rosea folks and ashwagandha
um I've been
uh
trying rhodiola recently
um and mainly as a buffer to Output
um it does seem to have some good data
attached to it related to lowering uh
one's perceived threshold of how hard
they're working so in other words you
can work harder and not feel as if
you're working really hard which allows
you to do more work that's sort of the
subjective description of how it works
but you told me that it um Can blunt
cortisol and ashwagandha we know
blonde's cortisol both of these things
of course can do other things but are
these
um compounds that you sometimes will
incorporate into a training regimen uh
I've been using rhodiola for probably
six or more years like pretty
consistently not personally but using it
with the individual you work with you do
need to be a little bit careful I
wouldn't say that it blunts cortisol it
is probably more purpley described as a
cortisol modulator
uh which means sort of if it's too high
or too low it'll help kind of keep it
within normative range
um there's also there is important to
note
there have been a handful of studies at
two of I know specifically
showed that uh rhodiola use kind of
hands strength gains
however it may reduce muscular endurance
so we need more human data on this stuff
and it may turn out that's not a concern
it may also turn out to be a concern so
nothing is nothing is perfect and free
there's no supplement that is a Panacea
and um I have used again really in a lot
of situations because the other thing
you kind of have to pay attention to the
cortisol is is you ha it's supposed to
be modulated throughout the day it's not
supposed to be at this normal now in
fact if you look at the normative values
um it's typically uh described in uh
micrograms per deciliter and depending
on literally what company used to draw
your blood if you're getting it through
the blood depending on what which method
they use to analyze it the normative
values are like frankly embarrassingly
all over the place
um they're mostly going to be like 5 to
25 as a quote unquote normative value
but that's outrageous we also know
those numbers vary massively by age
by sex and throughout the day and so if
you only are taking a single point let's
assume you're doing a fasted blood draw
which is what most folks do it's really
only going to tell you a lot about
what's happening in that moment we need
to know well like maybe let's say my
cortisol was if I'm a say 38 year old
woman and my 7am cortisol was
15 milligrams per deciliter that's
pretty good but if it's 15 milligrams
per deciliter at 3 pm oh boy I'm I'm
probably having some issues right so
there's a change throughout the day and
you need to be able to plot that curve
so you can actually well pretty standard
practice that we do is we look at
cortisol throughout the day we're going
to take multiple markers because I don't
want to just see your Baseline cortisol
I want to see this curve throughout the
day that's going to tell me a ton about
again as your sleep being caused by this
regulation is it your training is it
something else so I would like take a
single Baseline blood marker of cortisol
with a lot of grain of salt we would
typically measured at least three times
throughout the day so something like six
to nine a.m twelve to three and then
something like closer to the evening
oftentimes we do much more we'll do like
seven points or something like that
throughout the day depending on the
situation so you want to be careful of
that
um just since we're here you can also
get cortisol in uh through saliva and
now the sort of pros and cons to that
because the the pro of doing it in your
blood
is it's it it's much more stable
um saliva is extremely responsive to
whatever happened these seconds before
you took that test the upside of it
though is you can do a bunch of real
world life experiments so for example we
will do this sometimes if we want to see
how an individual is responding to a
given stressor let's take it right let's
take it take it in the you know spin
into the tube we're going to take it and
we're going to go do this workout or
this cold exposure whatever we're going
to do take it at the end we know that
it's responsive to what just happened
but that's the point
um so you can actually there's sort of
pros and cons so you'll use the
appropriate measure for the appropriate
uh question you're trying to answer a
couple of points and Reflections about
cortisol my first uh laboratory Duty was
an undergraduate was in a was actually
in a biopsychology lab at the time they
didn't have the field of Neuroscience as
it's now called it was called
biopsychology or psychobiology I didn't
know that no there was used to be
neurochemistry neurobiology they had all
collapsed into what we call now called
Neuroscience which was only some years
ago but my job was to collect cortisol
samples which means I I was collecting
um spit which means I was collecting
saliva and the advantage of saliva based
cortisol is free cortisol it's the
active form as you mentioned it's
reflective of what happened in the
seconds or minutes
um just prior a couple of things about
the regular cortisol pattern across the
day because I realized that while it
would be wonderful for everybody to get
their cortisol measured in detail
multiple times in Blood and and saliva
and so on some people just won't do that
for whatever reason or can't do that
yeah and the basic Contour of a healthy
pattern of cortisol secretion is uh to
have highest levels of cortisol in the
morning
um is actually part of the mechanism
that's associated with waking you up
viewing bright light ideally from
sunlight but other forms of bright light
early in the day actually can lead to a
50 percent five zero percent increase in
that cortisol Spike which is a good
thing people hear elevated cortisol oh
no but this sets in motion a Cascade of
things related to enhanced mood and
alertness immune system function Etc
what I think it can be useful for people
to understand is that many things will
Spike cortisol throughout the day stress
cold water exercise but the idea is that
it comes down to baseline or near
Baseline
um rather quickly
one of the worst situations as you
pointed out is when the highest level of
cortisol is consistently shifted to the
afternoon period in fact that's a pretty
reliable signature of certain forms of
depression this is worked by my
colleague David Spiegel at Stanford
Psychiatry and the the great Bob
sapolski Robert sapolsky of uh why
zebras don't get ulcers behave Etc and
fame lots of lots of popular books there
um I think that if people are trying to
regulate their cortisol and they're just
under and they just understand that
basic Contour that the Baseline should
be you know rise pretty quickly after
one rises in the morning so it's easy to
remember rise rise rise out of bed and
Rise cortisol with light bright light
with exercise
um with caffeine these things will all
increase cortisol and then across the
day it's normal for cortisol to spike
but then to use some of the down
regulation methods that you described in
particular the breathing methods and
exercise itself as the case may be but
then to really pay attention to how much
psychological and physical stress is
occurring in the six hours or so or
eight hours prior to sleep um does that
seem like a a good sort of broad Contour
of how to have a healthy pattern of
cortisol release because you actually
want the cortisol to reduce inflammation
and initiate or participate in the
recovery process you will not see any
progress
from exercise training without a large
spike in cortisol
it is critically important when we think
of phrases like cortisol inflammation
stress
this is not bad right physiology is not
personified right there things don't
like ate you in the body right it is all
is not good and bad they just are
um the more you try to suppress cortisol
the more you suppress adaptation what
you want is exactly what you mentioned
large spikes met with large quick
recovery and you want to do that
throughout the day and get that hormetic
stressor this is so going back to your
ashwagandha and Rhodiola issue um it I
think it would be very short-sighted for
people that do that as this is a
prophylactic okay because you if you
blunt cortisol you're going to cause
immunosuppressant especially early in
the day totally taking ashwagandha
before going to train is is
counterproductive yeah we do not just
this is not a baseline part of our
foundational package right if you go
look at the athlete foundations or the
athlete resilience protocols that put
together you're not going to see these
things in there for that specific reason
um any form of cortisol regulation needs
to be done strategically if you are
excessively high and we're bringing you
back down to normative values at the
right time then great if you're normal
though
then taking you down lower than that is
actually problematic the same thing is
actually true since we're here for
oxidative stress for information
antioxidant use we mentioned I think
earlier about taking vitamin C and
vitamin E post exercise will actually
blunt adaptations or at least has the
potential to do so same thing right if
you're modulating this response
just because and you have not done so
because
of actually biological testing that
indicated you needed to do such then you
actually may be making things worse and
so we see this constantly with people
who take a number of
supplements and substances for sleep
and then they wake up the next morning
groggy and your your cortisol suppressed
okay great so then they take something
for stimulation and then the rest of the
day they're trying to reduce and then I
need this nasty cycle instead of just
getting out of the way and letting
cortisol do what it's supposed to do and
then making sure again you're teaching
it so this is actually a coachable
response you can coach your own body
to go down in the later part of the day
and go up in the earlier part of the day
you want to make sure that you are
driving that train with intent and so
again to reiterate if you don't need
that you shouldn't do it right if you
don't need to lower cortisol you
shouldn't walk around doing it you're
just going to suppress the state even
far and this is what's needed this is
needed for anabolic responses like
you're not going to grow muscle if
cortisol is not spiked it's going to
compromise it rather so you want to be
intentional with these practices
especially in the form of of
supplementation be very very intentional
I've heard it said that carbohydrates in
particular starchy carbohydrates can
inhibit cortisol definitely and this
could be through the uh tryptophan amino
acid related pathway that ratchets up to
uh serotonin release probably some other
things too I mean the idea that
carbohydrates just stimulate serotonin
is a little bit uh overly similarious
cellular mechanisms ampk going up and
immediately turning on there yeah right
so um you know I think we've all
experienced this uh you know we're
stressed we're stressed we doesn't
necessarily even have to be highly
processed you know uh fat associ you
know fatty carbohydrates
um you know like potato chips and and
potato chips and dip or these kinds of
things it can also be uh polarizable
oatmeal Bowl pasta
um which here I'm not trying to demonize
um carbohydrates I I do ingest
carbohydrates
um minimally or non-processed
carbohydrates um most of the time but
not all the time and they have a fairly
potent effect on on lowering stress and
perceived stress and even quality of
sleep which is not to say that somebody
has to load up on them like crazy unless
their glycogen is really depleted talked
a lot about this in the endurance
episode I know we'll touch on it more in
the nutrition supplementation episode
but
um in thinking about the relationship
between carbohydrates and cortisol and
what we've just been talking about in
terms of cortisol as being vitally
important for the adaptation Trigger or
triggering adaptation it's probably a
better way to put it
but that it can blunt cortisol
taken post training or um maybe in the
evening before sleep what are some of
the basic ways that one can think about
and maybe use carbohydrates in specific
ways in order to let's say control
cortisol rather than uh quash cortisol
uh you actually have alluded to it a
number of times already so we oftentimes
will give people a lot of carbohydrates
at night
for some of these reasons you're going
to feel fantastic a lot of people it
helps you sleep both get to sleep and
stay asleep Sleep Quality you talked
about specifically remember think about
it this way cortisol at its core is an
energy signaling molecule it says we are
in the need for energy
great
um epinephrine's the same way you you'll
start seeing for example cortisol will
liberate
free fatty acids put them in the
bloodstream get you prepared to do
something the problem is if it's
continually elevated throughout the day
with no down regulation we start running
into issues right so again this is the
differentiation between oh my cortisol
is slightly elevated all day versus I
had a really big big spike after
training I had a really big spike after
a breath protocol Etc and then it went
back down
so that being said if you then ingest
carbohydrates you are telling it is
quick to see the signal we have
nutrients we have energy again
specifically carbohydrates therefore
cortisol can sort of go back down we
don't need to be liberating free fatty
acids and preparing uh the need for fuel
so you can help yourself go to sleep for
many as you pointed out many mechanisms
actually of why carbohydrates will help
you sleep at night
um for some not all people but some
that would be one of the relationships
it has with cortisol great I look
forward to hearing more about how the
various macronutrients and
micronutrients and so-called adaptogens
this very mysterious group of yeah yeah
compounds you know the word adaptogen
gets thrown around so much nowadays but
as long as we're talking about
adaptation I think that'll be fair play
for the uh discussion in the next
episode about nutrition and
supplementation in my laboratory when we
study stress we use a number of
different markers subjective reports of
how stressed people feel uh heart rate
morning heart rate heart rate
variability
cortisol free cortisol and on and on
what are some of the other markers of
stress as it relates to exercise
adaptations and Recovery because once
again I think we're seeing a lot of
parallels between the study of
psychological stress and the study of
physical stress as it relates to
exercise adaptation remember
in terms of physiology stress is stress
this is why we have this cool term of
valastatic load or allostasis such that
it really doesn't matter which system
you test for it will reflect overall
stress you know you mentioned several of
them we've got done talking about some
biomarkers
HRV and heart rate are another great
example because what you're trying to do
is this when we were talking about the
muscle soreness thing what we were
really getting at was
a marker of how do I fix the overuse in
that particular muscle now we've really
transitioned into Global markers of
overuse and why these are problematic
or important to pay attention to rather
is
again these are the indicators that you
didn't just work a muscle out too hard
but you have actually done something
where you've compromised all of your
physiology to a level where you've
influenced a circulating catecholamine
or something that's going to influence
multiple markers now like your sleep and
your mood and your behavior so that's
why these things are problematic that
said
you could look at resting heart rate not
a bad thing to do however that does have
multiple downsides one thing we do know
is your resting heart rate will Elevate
with excessive stress load this actually
doesn't matter if it is physical stress
or psychological stress or a combination
so you will see that number drift up
over time here's the downside though
it's not tremendously sensitive to
smaller stressors uh in other words if
you were to do something like alcohol is
a very good example you will see your
resting heart rate Elevate with alcohol
use excessive tobacco use and
psychological stress however if you do
something smaller like hard training
sessions resting heart rate's not
sensitive enough to pick that up it will
actually probably stay the same so for
those reasons we don't actually use
resting heart rate that much we will
take it but it's not our primary
indicator that being said HRV is a
better use so just wear the quickly for
those that are not familiar uh your
heart rate let's say for example you
your resting heart rate is 60 beats per
minute that means every second it's
beating it doesn't actually happen on a
consistent Rhythm such that it would
beat on second one beat on second two
beat on second three Etc the rate is
more variable so it might go beat
beat
beat
there's a variation in the heart rate
and at the end of that 60 seconds in
this example you would have still
completed 60 beats they just aren't on
the exact same pattern well one thing
that's actually quite interesting is
the amount of variation in your heart
rate is actually associated with your
overall sympathetic or parasympathetic
State such that
a large variation so an arithmic pattern
is generally more representative of
being more rested and recovered and
being more parasympathetic you'll notice
during times of extremely high stress
you will be very rhythmic beat beat beat
b b and so this is a little bit of a of
a confusing idea but a high HRV
is there indicated of a lot of variation
meaning you're pretty recovered a low
HRV meaning there's not a lot of
variation means you're probably pretty
stressed and wired so it's it's uh
related to heart rate but in my opinion
it is a significantly better marker
of that now one thing you want to pay
attention to if you do this a couple of
things there are some accuracy issues
with many of the devices basically
everybody at this point probably has
some device
that's telling them their hrb what you
do not want to do is simply compare your
number to somebody else
for a lot of reasons not all of these
Technologies are actually even measuring
the same thing again some of them are
actually combining with other metrics
and calling it your overall Readiness or
your recovery and so now we've what
we've actually done is made a couple of
assumptions and then stacked them on a
whole host of other assumptions and then
giving you a number and you don't know
what that sort of black box score
actually even represents so I would
caution one against taking too much
information from that if you are
actually measuring HRV even within that
there's a lot of ways to calculate it
that are not important here so
don't necessarily worry about the score
and then come compare it to yourself but
not to others what you will see is if
you use similar devices and techniques
me is hard to find data here but in
general people that are overweight might
have a little bit of a of a lower score
as in a worse score
we need more information on that to be
clear so
in large part the best way to use
something like HRV is to measure it
under the exact same circumstances
every day so whether you're going to use
just a device on your watch or your
phone or your bed or anything else or
are you going to buy a special HRV on it
it's fine just take that measure at the
same time
mostly this means first thing in the
morning
so you wake up you go to the bathroom
you come back down and take your measure
or something like that you don't uh wait
sometimes you took it before food then
after
look at your phone like all these other
things that can influence stress so so
take I didn't usually take somewhere
between seconds to minutes to record so
you want to pay attention to that now
one of the things you'll notice is there
is a natural change in your HIV that
just happens and so what you kind of
really want to pay attention to is
I guess answering the question of how
much of a change in HRV has to happen
for before I should care and it's hard
to answer right so let's just say your
HRV was a hundred I just made that
number up
what if you wake up tomorrow and it's
99.
what's that mean
well I don't know if you wake up
tomorrow when it's 20. that's probably a
bad thing well where's that line it's
hard one thing I would recommend doing
is taking your HRV for at least a month
before you start using that value to
make any changes and you recommend
taking it first thing in the morning yep
always roughly the same time basically
under the same circumstances it doesn't
have to be technical in the morning but
because your day
will change on most days what you get
into that's the most stable
thing in your life so I would take it
then and I would collect it for at least
a day at least a month rather maybe even
six weeks and then give yourself
basically a running average so what we
all quite honestly do is uh we will
actually track it for forever and then
what we always look at is
what does it look like today relative to
the last week on average and then what
does that look like to our historical
average and we always compare those
things and you also want to make sure
you compare like to like so in other
words
I generally will not going to worry
about today's HRV score relative to
tomorrow's what I want to look at is
today's relative to this exact same day
last week
not for athletes but for non-athletes
this is very important so imagine don't
worry about the difference between HRV
score and Monday compared to Tuesday
pay attention to Monday compared to last
Monday and the Monday before that
that's because you typically have the
same sort of weekly schedule
and what you don't want to do is say
look at Monday's HRV score which is a
reflection of what happens Sunday
and compare that to Tuesdays which is
actually a reflection of what happened
Monday you probably didn't do the same
stressors on Sundays Monday so you're
not actually comparing the same thing
but if you have a General weekly
schedule you're likely to compare this
Mondays relative to last Mondays because
they're both comparing what happened on
the previous day so did that sort of
Distinction make sense absolutely I do
the same thing with body weight by the
way if you're trying to track body mass
gain or fat loss or something compare
like the like you can look at the daily
changes but you need to pay attention to
what that normal distribution is so if
you kind of do that you know Monday to
Monday thing that'll give you a rough
area of saying okay my normal weekly
variation is say five so my average is
100 but I will fluctuate between 95 to
105. that's my standard deviation is
sort of a science dorks would call that
if you start very changing more than
five percent
outside of your normal standard
deviation then I'm going to start paying
attention a little bit and I'm going to
actually run a little bit of an
algorithm on this one
and so here is my thinking process when
I get HIV really any metric but HRV is
the example we're using first step
did I collect good data and what that I
mean again did I measure it the same way
I measured every single day or did I get
up and look at my phone first and I
realized oh crap I forgot to take my HRV
and then I went back and got there so
say I had a 15 derivation from my normal
number and then I realized oh yeah
that's right I was up super late last
night
doing whatever okay great I'm going to
consider that bad data
you didn't good
if it's bad day then I'm not doing
anything
ignore and bad data and you throw it out
you don't use it if you decide for the
most part let's assume it was good data
okay great then I'm going on in my next
question which is
it acute in other words is it just today
right or is it chronic as this is a is
this pattern happening for more than
five days or at least three out of the
last four or something like that three
minimum is what I like honestly I
generally look at five or more days
that's a very big distinction if it is
something that just happened today and
the next question I'm going to ask
myself is
and I am that adaptation phase
am I trying to be in a phase where I'm
trying to cause insults of the body that
it needs to respond with if that is the
case I'm just going to ignore it right
in fact it's almost sometimes a good
sign hey we are stressing the body and
it is stressed what we're doing is
working
amazing in fact if you don't see that
it's sort of like maybe we're not doing
enough to push the pace all right so
we're great
if the answer is no we're in a peeking
phase
then we're actually going to use what I
call acute State shifters so this is a
whole host of little tricks that I have
that can change HRV or any recovery
metric within seconds
again these are not chronic fixes this
is just I'm having a bad day today I
feel like crap can I make myself feel
better right now and so I kind of call
these parlor tricks a lot of the times
and there's a thousand of them we're
certainly not going to go over them but
I'll give you some examples
um you can pull out first of all
physical movement we'll do it you'd be
stunned I'll just
doing some yoga moving around doing some
jumping jacks starting your workout I
mean you've probably experienced this
it's sort of cliche in our world at this
point but
um if you ever do any serious lifting
over a serious amount of time there will
be days in which you walk in the gym and
you feel awful
and somehow that day you said a lifetime
PR
oud yeah that's a strange
strange phenomena yeah I uh
I
I've experienced that more than a few
times
um it's rare the inverse is rare however
you feel great you have a horrible
workout it happens yeah um and it can
happen for any number of different
reasons but yeah I think the the former
when when isn't feeling very good and
then somehow is a terrific workout does
set a kind of a seed of Doubt as to how
good our subjective assessments really
are which I guess is why we're talking
about
um objective assessments yep like HRV
and remember if it's a single day here
uh you can even do hard training uh
people sort of have this idea like well
if you get up and your recovery scores
down do a lighter day
that's probably I can probably never
making that choice to be honest not in
this situation remember this is one bad
day
and we are in a phase of even trying to
improve performance right now like we're
probably still training hard you will
again often see I felt terrible when I
trained super hard and it totally
changed my day around this is all can
happen
so exercise is my first love here I'm
absolutely breathing any sort of
upregulation breathing so we talked a
lot about down regulation breathing
just do the opposite right and so this
is when hyperventilation strategies can
work instead of accentuating the exhale
you accentuate the inhale or you
restrict the exhales this is working on
the exact opposite situation you can
also play little this is where things
like music
motivational quotes if you're the type
that follows people on Instagram that
motivate you or can work with these
things
um coaching tactics these can be things
like
finding out or talking about that
person's why
um
you sort of shared something that a
mantra you use when you're training hard
to keep you go better I'm not going to
ask you to share that now but some
people have this sometimes right or you
may have this conversation with your
athlete we call this finding out your
why right so finding out like why are
you really here what are we doing here
and a lot of times you'll hear things
like
it's because I grew up poor and I don't
ever want to be poor again okay great
this is for my children or like any
number of things and you can pull that
out on these days you need to be really
careful that's why I call these parlor
tricks because when you play that card
too often it starts to lose effect right
and you can only dig to a whole so often
before it's sort of like a um the same
thing as with music right if you every
time you go to the weight room it's
blasting death metal at level 10. well
eventually it's not it's no longer
motivating right it's no longer helpful
so you want to deploy these things
strategically yeah the the phrase that
comes to mind is signal the noise you
know the nervous system especially the
dopamine system and the adrenaline
system which are part of this larger
system called the catecholamine system
so that's dopamine epinephrine
norepinephrine the the get up and go
focus on external goals movement
Associated it's and on and on that that
system
responds best to high signal relative to
noise so if you're as you point out
um listening music every time drinking a
ton of caffeine energy drinks
pre-workout nootropics and then you know
stacking all those things uh sometimes
refer this as dopamine stacking
informally referred to as dopamine
stacking you're doing all those things
and then you know first of all then
you're wondering why later that
afternoon or the next day you're feeling
like you're you're under a cloud it's
obvious you're you're kind of combine
system crashed but it's also that
um you don't necessarily become
dependent on it it's just that you start
to wonder whether or not you have the
internal mechanisms and motivation to
train without those things and someone
tends to use them more and more and then
they have a diminishing effect over time
the rule that I've been
um sort of applying has been I never do
two workouts in a row where I'm stacking
in stimulants loud music and any kind of
uh sort of high potency inspiration
however every set in the gym or when I
run I really try and be diligent about
form and attention to what I'm doing the
one exception would be the long duration
endurance work
part of the reason I do that work is to
let my mind go into states of drifting
I'm not trying to think in complete
sentences or even close to it just let
my my brain kind of idle at a low hum uh
and for that reason generally listen to
something that's more of a story or
don't listen to anything at all and just
let my thoughts kind of spool through
anyway I don't want to take us too far
off track but I think this idea of
signal to noise will resonate with the
engineers out there but since most
people are likely not Engineers it is
the way that the nervous system works
evidenced by the fact that whatever area
of your body right now is in contact
with a chair or any other surface that's
been in contact with for more than a few
seconds you forget that it's in contact
with it because there's low signal to
noise at that point a similar note you
actually mentioned stimulants basically
there whether you're talking caffeine or
any other stimulant any other cortisol
modulators or adaptogens any of these
things fall in the category if you're
not using them consistently and you're
having a rough day and all of a sudden
you throw down 200 mL grams of caffeine
it's going to change real fast strong
performance enhancing effect yeah
absolutely and for these reasons right
so we mentioned a couple of them breath
work
um
food
more calories just eating some food
sometimes we'll give people like what we
call Comfort Foods
so this is just like hey you're uh you
know you're from Georgia and we know you
love grits so we're having grits for
breakfast oh my great like just
something to change your mood acute
State shifters
um to alter it
the other couple of Tricks here are
light so if we know that maybe say
multiple people are struggling that day
maybe we'll put on the lights extra
bright we'll bring in some extra things
and just get it more light in there and
not it doesn't even count actually going
outside and seeing the Sun but perhaps
we'll do that
um and then other little tricks that
I've learned over the years is uh one
particular thing I love is literally
drawing a line a physical line in the
ground and
you look at that line and you say like
I'm going to train today and I'm going
to accomplish
this effort
I'm not going to walk past this line and
into that training space
until I'm ready to give that effort
and that may take a minute or 10 or
whatever but it's the physical barrier
is very important to saying like I'm not
just going to get through it I'm going
to actually perform the way I want to
perform
or I'm not going to do it and I'm not
going to cross this line until I'm ready
to make that happen all right I really
like that tool it also brings to mind
the importance of at least thinking
about how your relationship with your
phone during training
um Can perhaps help but also impede
workout motivation and performance in an
earlier episode you mentioned that if
people are using their phone to play
music during their workout that they
establish the complete playlist
prior to initiating the workout and then
not deviate from that playlist as
opposed to changing it in the middle
because there's just too much of a uh of
an Impulse to also check social media
check email check text messages I mean
the way I think about the phone actually
is it's a bunch of little brain areas
it's got a memory system for you it's
got look up tables for lookup tables
it's got websites to look things up on
the Internet it's got photos I mean it
is so rich with sensory data and it's so
closely linked to our own brain
architecture the algorithms are designed
for those to be that way that I always
think about it as bringing in a second
person with me but that person is my
twin that um has severe attention issues
and for those that already have
attention issues just think about this
as a twin that would then compound You
by tapping on your shoulder talking to
you all the time interrupting you uh
somebody that you like a lot but that
frankly is um is a little bit irritating
in that they're they're interrupting
your ability to really show up and also
your ability to show up for them so I
started to think about the phone as um
an entire individual and that it
represents me and and certainly not the
better version of me great exactly you
actually mentioned something else that
will use uh occasionally which uh what
we call Brain Games or puzzles
whether this is a crossword puzzle or
something where you actually lose
your thought of self for a second and
your brain gets engaged in a task that
you weren't regretting or even thinking
about these can be stupid little games
uh it could be little challenges
especially if you're in like a group or
a team setting all right like we're
gonna play one round of dodgeball or
we're gonna play one round of of Thumb
Wars so you do encourage this yeah I see
so you would play like a thing instead
of warming up like all right get in
everyone get going we're gonna you know
get your foam roller your diamond
whatever thing this is like all right
everyone line up and we're gonna play
Thumb Wars to see who wins right just
like whatever right all of a sudden
you've snapped into a new mental shift
um or literally playing brain games
playing Tetris on your phone like any of
these things
um can work in this acute setting can I
ask you a question it's not directly
related to recovery uh per se but I
think it's worth mentioning
um or asking about rather which is the
use of mirrors or no mirrors while
training
um you know the experience of seeing
oneself and observing one's form in the
mirror I suppose has some utility you
can get some sense of progress that you
might trigger
um you're almost specifically referring
to resistance training I suppose it
could be cardio if you're running on a
treadmill or pushing a sled or something
but um you can see form
um you can get a sense of um what your
face looks like when you Grimace uh but
in all seriousness
um you are without question
a person not you Andy but
um one is in a less
interoceptive mode when looking at
themselves in the mirror so extra
reception perception of things beyond
the confines of our skin even if it's a
picture of us interception perception of
everything from the skin inward
um and so if we're looking at ourselves
we're diverting some allocation of our
attention let's say there's a hundred
these are arbitrary units and you can I
think put 50 of your attention on the
feeling in your body or the muscles
you're training and 50 on how it appears
in the mirror or it could be 100 on the
mirror 100 internally which you best
accomplish probably by closing your eyes
so obviously there are constraints here
certain movements you wouldn't want to
close your eyes Etc in general
what are your thoughts on mirrors or no
mirrors for resistance training
specifically it depends on the metric
that you find most important and what I
mean by this is if you're training for
say muscle hypertrophy there's emerging
evidence that suggests uh actually
looking at yourself in the mirror and
even flexing in between sets can
actually be advantageous or it can
augment muscle gains oh my there's uh
support for all the the uh mirror
flexors absolutely not not making fun of
you I just uh it is sort of interesting
to be on the observing side of that but
Hey listen results are what people are
after yeah having said that if you're
trying to enhance movement learning then
it may be detrimental so if you're doing
an exercise that is explosive and fast
it's probably not the best thing to be
looking into a mirror if you were to
walk into any Olympic weightlifting
Arena and you had any thoughts of using
a mirror you would probably run out of
the gym very very quickly you can't see
yourself in time to make an adjustment
with the movement that's happening that
fast and also we'll do exactly what you
mentioned which is it will remove your
ability
to understand and feel the movement and
so this is a big component to using
technology for exercise at all is you
have to make sure that the end point
is you understanding you and your
physiology more not less
when you Outsource learning to
technology in this case even if the
technology is the mirror
you remove your ability to gain and
truly understand that learning process
so you need to be very very careful
whether you're using a mirror or whether
you're using any number of apps where
you can record say a movement and then
watch it afterwards and it will give you
a breakdown if your hand was in the
right spot or if it was in the right
spot these are all great
but you need to then take the next step
which is to say I need to be able to
feel that position
all right so in the case of performance
if you can imagine trying to learn a new
technique say running technique and you
have to be able to watch yourself in the
mirror to understand your stride in the
right position if you don't take the
next step of saying okay now I don't
have to look in the mirror and I can
feel when I'm getting out of rhythm or
whatever the case is then you'll never
be able to actually then use that in
your race and so it's very very
important that people again pay
attention to what is the dependent
variable that you're actually interested
in doing if you're trying to get better
at something the tech is okay as a
starting place it just cannot be the
finishing place thank you for those
Reflections I'm curious as to what
happens or what one should do if their
HRV is reduced for maybe three or four
or more days in a row absolutely the
next question that I'm going to ask is
in am I in that adaptation phase if so
I'm gonna still ignore it just like I
did if it was a single bad day
but I'm gonna start watching it very
carefully I may actually now introduce
some other tests so I may use a
performance test uh we may look at
something else maybe ask questions maybe
have some communication either with
myself or somebody else so I'm going to
start paying more attention but I'm
still really not going to take much
action until that crosses more than
seven days of consistent problems if it
does do that or we're in a peaking phase
then I'm going to go to another set of
solutions that are truly going to pull
me out of the hole rather than just be
those acute State shifters these are
more what I call chronic stage shifters
now some of these are actually very
similar to the ones we've used before
for example
thermal stress so
I can promise you if your recovery score
is in the tanks
and you walk outside and you jump in
your 35 degree water and you get back
out what's going to happen is your HRV
score immediately afterwards I'm talking
within seconds is going to be
significantly compromised
right in other words think about that
remember a low HRV means High
sympathetic I promise you cold water
will put you in a high sympathetic Drive
however and we've tested this pretty
extensively looking at HRV zero
15 30 60 90 all the way up to 180
minutes post and on average you will see
your HRV score continue to rise after
that and so well you'll have this
immediate sympathetic response
you will immediately then respond you
know about 30 minutes on most people
depends on the person though and that
score will be improved for several hours
afterwards so heat can kind of have a
similar effect
that actually again isn't is sort of an
acute fix but over time as we've
described earlier I can also have a
little bit of a chronic effect
we can also then get into areas like
sleep and so now we're going to start
playing and exploring why are you
sleeping poor as well or was your sleep
score fine but your HRV was low that's a
little bit of a different answer if your
sleep is getting compromised then we're
going to start going into and making
sure we're improving our sleep in terms
of like brain stuff
instead of maybe playing a game or
having music or some of these other
tricks those aren't going to really have
a chronic effect but you can do things
like work on social connection that's
actually been shown to improve uh
recovery over time you can do things
like journaling or meditation and those
have an acute effect as well as a
chronic effect so again if you go
Journal right now you probably feel
better but also we know that over time
that will gradually improve things so
um adaptogens and things like that also
can have a chronic effect so can things
like electrolytes or food or hydration
if those things were were off so we're
going to go to a whole number of areas
but those are the primary ones
outstanding of all that of course it may
be simply a time to go back and reassess
our training program and that's truly
the case so that's where we're at if so
we're probably going to either
completely remove training
or drop it to like 50 or so uh until we
start rebounding back to Baseline and
that's generally the numbers we use
for many people who are not training for
a competitive sport
and maybe aren't pushing themselves
really hard you know maybe uh
they're they consider themselves
somebody who exercises in order to
maintain Health um and Aesthetics and
Longevity Etc uh
and they never really finish any workout
completely exhausted
they're sleeping okay their appetite's
okay
can we assume that they are recovering
well
um or maybe they're not creating enough
of a
adaptation response like there's no
Progressive overreaching and so there's
really no stimulus for Recovery what I'm
saying here is on the on the face of it
I think is obvious right if you don't
train hard there's nothing to recover
from
what I'm really saying is
is the ability to recover itself
something that we need to train in other
words can we get better at recovering
and the uh analogy here would be
something like focus in order to perform
work of any kind but certainly mental
work
and physical work we need to be able to
focus
the ability to focus is the reflection
of a bunch of neural circuits and
chemicals and hormones Etc but we know
roughly what those are and we know that
if you are poor at focusing for every
small bit of time that you can focus a
little bit longer even if it's a matter
of seconds those circuits themselves get
better at focusing
and so on and so forth so in other words
is the recovery system however broad
neurotransmitter hormones neural
muscular immune based Etc can that
system or set of systems
become better can we get better at
recovering meaning can it become faster
and uh more effective can we think of
the recovery system as kind of a blade
that gets sharper by engaging recovery
because if so then there's strong reason
for people who are not pushing really
hard to push at least a little bit
harder than is comfortable for them
every once in a while to make sure that
that system doesn't start to slide back
remember physiology is listening to
everything you do and it is always
responding so the analogy that I will
meet your analogy with that I use here
is the bowling alley so you've probably
been bowling before and you've used the
bumper Lanes right
the bumper Lanes I've gone bowling
before and I've spent time in the gutter
and I've spent time on the pins okay
um so it's been a while we used to have
a bowling alley in the town where I went
to and um it was fun we used to slide
around on those shoes and like it all
the kids would hang out there and I feel
like do they still have bowling alleys I
don't even know it feels like something
that may have gone the way of the the
mid-2000s I don't care if no one bills
anymore you're not going to ruin my good
analogy okay what my intent wasn't to
ruin your analogy um okay tell us about
bowling all the bowlers are going to
come after me with with um bowling balls
or something right you're gonna get
blasted with all the stats on elevations
cool so in if would one were to go
bowling and they didn't want to put
their ball in the gutter yeah you could
put these little bumpers in those Lanes
all right and these little foam pads
that go in the gutter that if your ball
is going towards the gutter it hits
those and bounces off and goes back in
the lane right okay so in this entire
conversation and this is actually true
of a lot of the way people approach
their fitness and health
people are very concerned oftentimes
with optimizing meaning I want to make
sure I don't go in the gutter I don't
want to hit the walls so therefore I'm
going to try to improve the accuracy
in which I throw the ball so I want to
make sure that I'm throwing it down the
center of the lane more often and I want
to get my disc my standard deviation
Tighter and Tighter so that I don't get
anywhere close to hitting the wall
however what they're not realizing is
if you do that the body will start
shrinking the size of the lane because
what it basically says is huh we haven't
had a ball touch Us in years we don't
need to be this wide let's get smaller
and smaller and smaller so it's not that
you actually
are having a reduced
ability to recover but you start
becoming incredibly sensitive to that
so your two strategies for enhancing
recovery are to practice getting closer
of throwing that ball down the middle
lane or to widen
to widen the alley and that's exactly
what you're referring to and you
absolutely should do that and so what
happens is you don't have to be so
precise with what you're doing because
your ability to handle so many things is
widened so if you're off now by four or
five inches to the right no problem
because you've just tripled the size of
your alley that's exactly what you want
to do so paying attention to two things
number one is getting better at accuracy
maybe staying really tight with your
progressions
using nutrition and sleep to optimize
your recovery and
push your resilience is what we call
this in fact there's actually a
biological way to measure resilience we
do that in all of our folks this is
scientifically validated stuff
I didn't just make it up you can
actually measure resilience and there's
more and more coming out on this but
that's exactly what that term meant so
how well can you handle and bang things
off the stressful so when you see a
reduction in say 10 of your HRV
today for you that might make you feel
terrible for me
I might not feel anything because I'm
well adapted to large fluctuations and
therefore I'm okay the less and less you
do that the more and more responsive you
will be to those slight deviations so
that is exactly the target that's kind
of what I allude to and I say you got to
understand what are we optimizing for
we optimizing for making sure I don't
feel any different today are we
optimizing to make sure when I do feel
different I still am able to perform so
this is why you want to do things like
maybe use some caffeine today
and feel great but if I have to use it
every day all I'm doing is shrinking my
sensitivity there so now if I have to go
a day without it
I can't train at all right caffeine is
the easy example because people
understand how that whole system works
but this is really true of everything
else so yeah you need to practice this
and the way to do that is to give
yourself more stress
to continue to bring in the stress from
nutrition from training from breath work
you mentioned earlier about Focus
the exact same thing right it's not just
about getting better right now it's
about training a system and you can
clearly train that right
um we will often say breath work is a
practice
that's exactly what we're talking about
right so you're practicing getting
better at these things you're practicing
returning your focus you're practicing
recovering and quite literally
physiologically you can up regulate
whether we're talking enzymes whether
we're talking about Regulators these
will be up regulated so then the next
time that insult comes in it's not as
big as it's not as damaging so yeah
absolutely you can and you should strive
for that
throughout all the episodes where we've
been talking about exercise
at the core of that is this word
adaptations and I love that you
mentioned that breath work
can also create adaptations the way I'm
visualizing all of this now is that
resistance training with weights
machines body weight otherwise
cardiovascular training running jogging
sprinting jumping and so on
thermal training exposure to heat
exposure to cold in a dedicated way and
deliberate respiration AKA breathing or
breath work as a practice all of those
can be viewed as ways to trigger
adaptations
and in the context of recovery the
specific adaptations you're trying to
engage are opposite to stress in fact
with the exception of
perhaps
deliberate cold exposure
maybe you deliberate heat exposure
because if the sauna is really hot you
can get the dinorphine release which is
kind of uncomfortable
but still in both those cases the
rebound from that in other words when
you get out you shower you go to bed the
next morning you do have this kind of
blissed out feeling we know why that is
that is the rebound to that
uncomfortable situation
so it seems it doesn't really matter
whether or not you're using resistance
you're doing cardiovascular training
using thermal approaches or you're using
respiration based approaches
all of these are really ways of both
triggering adaptations and if applied
properly to actually help you recover
from the stress and create the
the literal result that you're that
you're trying to achieve for some people
that might have been obvious but I think
for many people including myself
this set of conversations that we've
been having over the series
these episodes It's really the first
time that I've ever thought about
exercise in these ways in any event it's
just a reflection but it's one that at
least for me
um is tremendously useful because it has
a lot of um organizational logic to it
uh which at least appeals to to my brain
because the more that things have a
logic the more for me that they become
simplified and the more that the vast
array of tools
uh becomes uh becomes visible to me as
you said earlier what is it let me make
sure I get this right it's um concepts
are a few methods or many pretty close
Okay how would you remind us how you
state it methods are many Concepts a few
ah okay either way the directionality
probably it doesn't matter no let's keep
it right the the methods are many uh
concepts are few
um galpin's law i i in science you're
not allowed to name things after
yourself
um but you can name uh things after
other people so uh it's a galpin's law
because I'm definitely the one who
created that idea right absolutely that
was extreme and tremendous sarcasm to
sword Ultra right regardless uh here we
go galpin's law there you go one thing
that's in my head right now is
we've thrown out a lot of options for
folks and maybe what we can do is try to
simplify a little bit so what I can kind
of walk you through is how we
measure recovery if you will and how
often and some tools and what I would
recommend people do is not use
everything I said
you want to pick one or two things per
category that are most important to you
that are at your cost that are at your
availability that are interesting and
important relevant to you
and do that the reason I kind of wanted
to cover a a large number of things was
to give them evokes options but again
I want to emphasize the point is to not
measure all of them in fact you don't
need to we um I've ran this before with
professional athletes where we've taken
blood urine every single day we've done
performance measures uh vertical jumps
on a force plate a whole bunch of things
every day for years on end and what I
can tell you is there's tremendous
redundancy in physiology all right
Everything is Everything so you don't
need to do them and don't feel like
you're missing out if you aren't doing
them one or two metrics is probably fine
I generally recommend one subjective
measure this could be as simple as
what's your mood
how do you feel today
great and one objective measure
HRV
a resting heart rate anything else right
so if you even literally just did that
you'd probably have pretty good insight
as to what you're doing so
maybe in fact I'll go more detail here
um maybe I'll give you a couple of
examples of things to measure every day
some things that you should measure
maybe quarterly monthly and then maybe
even some annually and then you can
maybe just pick a couple from each of
these categories and have yourself a
pretty good monitoring system for what
to do and I'll include some that are a
little bit of Technology based and then
others that are totally cost free and
require nothing
okay to start off I would recommend
taking something like HRV every day or
or most days if you don't have a device
like that you could also use honestly
the CO2 tolerance test and we've talked
about that a number of times and we
probably have plenty of resources to go
find that but that doesn't require
anything it typically takes about a
minute or so and you can do that under
the same circumstances in which HRV in
other words do at the same time every
day have the same standardization stuff
and that is actually been in our
coaching experience
um while admittedly there's no
peer-reviewed research on this yet just
in our experience this tends to track
extremely closely with HRV and other
metrics of recovery
in fact we actually did do a a pilot
trial in my lab and it attracted
decently well with both state and trade
anxiety
so it's a nice metric I'm not perfect
but you you could take that so if you
wanted you could do both but again
remember you're trying to capture
systemic stress and so you're really
just showing you're measuring one thing
two ways so you don't necessarily have
to have them both I will do both just
because
I'm super interested in small
differences but globally they're going
to tell you basically the same thing so
those are two things where we use again
basically daily year round or or close
to it if you want to go past that a
little bit
um you can look at you can use an actual
a a pretty old commonly used survey
called a dalda
d-a-l-d-a I forget the exact acronym but
it is a fairly lengthy questionnaire and
it accounts for things like how do you
feel today how did you sleep
um any stressors going on in your life
how you've been eating and this is like
fairly comprehensive lengthy survey that
came out I mean Jesus it's probably been
around for 30 years or something is it's
nothing new and been used extensively I
you would not want to do that every day
if you wanted to take some subjective
measures every day we typically stick
with like I said mood motivation
something like that you would you could
perform this to all the test though
something more like monthly or at the
end of each training phase you know
every couple of months and probably
worth looking at it's not going to tell
you if you're in a bad spot today or
tomorrow but you would pick that up with
the HRV or suit autonomous test it would
though tell you information especially
if you're working with another
individual
about major life changes and if anything
it just facilitates that conversation
right I noticed you reported X happening
um let's let's talk about that and can I
help et cetera
so another kind of sneaky helpful one is
is simply body fat like I said
um non-functional overreaching and over
training are associated with the number
of things like energy appetite
suppression changes and and body weight
or body composition so you can measure
that monthly or even really quarterly uh
depending on what kind of athlete or
individual you're working at or if
you're trying to especially if you're
not trying to lose weight or if you're
trying to be at maintenance and that'll
give you some insights as well so moving
past that now actually we're going to
move into the realm of things that we
call Hidden stressors so those are all
visible stressors
um so hidden stressors the most common
ones we've sort of mentioned and I would
probably do this
um well you're gonna have to do these
ones through serum so this is blood work
cortisol like we talked about and
testosterone and then of course
testosterone a cortisone ratio and then
the other ones I mentioned you can do
those quarterly it's not bad there are
some blood markers that there's really
no sense to do them that soon and there
are other markers I mean in our system
our individuals are getting pretty
extensive blood work saliva work urine
and stool and so there's plenty of those
things you just do not need to measure
you know every 10 weeks or so in this
case
you know cortisol as you know sort of
changes rapidly
testosterone can change pretty quickly
but if you're really trying to notice a
large Trend you know certainly a
quarterly or so is is an appropriate
time frame I'm doing it every four or
five weeks is probably unnecessary so
you can save yourself some money and do
that other stuff you can look at
actually more like semi-annually in
plasma like glutamine and glutamine to
glutamate ratio and it can maybe save
the why you want to look at those for
another conversation but those are
important
um we always look at something from the
oxidative stress
thing so this could be something like
tnf alpha or interleukin-6 something
like that again we're looking at that in
serum and we're looking at that you know
like semi-annually and then another
sneaky actually one um that I love to
look at is uh the neutrophil lymphocyte
ratio which will give you some pretty
good insight and again you could look at
that like fairly quarterly if that
number starts to get really high
certainly like more than nine to one you
got a pretty good Insight that something
gnarly is going on with your immune
system so we will actually take action
much lower than that number but that's
like a nice cutoff you'll see it's like
that's very very high number so those
are some things you can use most folks
have the ability hopefully to get some
basic blood work done get a basic what's
called a CBC and CMP
um if you have a great physician and you
can get insurance to cover that and you
just go on and ask for a CBC and CMP
they'll know what that means you can
Google that and they'll order it and
you'll get all the information typically
that I just described or close enough
and you'll get some insights and then
again you can just use that free service
I mentioned earlier to check to see
whether or not the changes are just a
matter of testing quality or actually
physiologically relevant what you just
described is an amazingly powerful array
of tools
I'm hoping that you can also mention a
few tools that are either lower cost
truly low cost or zero cost that while
they may not have the accuracy or give
the complete picture that some of the
biomarkers and other tools that you
mentioned do that they can still provide
reasonably reliable metrics that people
can use in order to assess their level
of recovery absolutely the CO2 tolerance
test would be the first one and you can
just take that metric anytime you'd like
the other ones we've talked about so far
are things like your mood we haven't
mentioned libido but that's another
assessment that people also tend to have
a pretty good grip on and they know what
feels normal so when things go out of
whack it tends to be a pretty good
signal that people will recognize yeah
and one note about that
um something that came up in an episode
on uh on hormones both for male and
female Health that at some point it will
Air which is that
you know there's no objective measure
for people in terms of libido across the
board meaning people vary tremendously
um age life circumstances
um uh and on and on and so um this is
one of those subjective measures that I
think people need to
uh have some sense of what their
critical Baseline really is and I'm
guessing that the time to assess that
might best be when initiating or Midway
through a relatively low intensity
training phase
um maybe during the time of year in
which all the other factors
um that can influence libido are not
um at their maximum so if you think
about you know light and dopamine and
the relationship between those and the
testosterone estrogen systems we know
that libido uh testosterone estrogen men
and women tends to peak in the summer
months so if that's your Baseline that
you're comparing to I don't know that
that's as reliable as
um thinking something like the the fall
or the spring yeah um and so anyway this
again is very subjective but would just
encourage people to recognize that
there's no standard numbers for this no
lookup table and there's no equivalent
of the libido BMI the LMI um no
disrespect to the the acronym that
probably is LMI um so I think that
it's just something to keep in mind as
people
um do comparisons or subjective
comparisons is
don't pick a comparison to an extreme
try and pick a comparison to a average
as you know it to be that actually sort
of reminded me one issue that we have
seen a lot lately is people
if they're having libido issues or just
even slightly noticing a drop they just
assume that then therefore means their
testosterone is crashing and those
things are certainly connected but that
is not necessarily the case and where
that becomes a problem is then people
then go on things like trt Etc with no
true oversight and then all kinds of
other problems so make sure that if
you're going to take that step that you
actually get testosterone measured and
you're working with a qualified person
to guide you through that process don't
just assume because you're having low
energy or your libido is a little bit
down it could be simply training related
it could be sleep related could be any
number of things
um so that's like a little bit of a word
of caution there two quick points along
the lines of what you just said one
interesting thing that I learned when
researching our episode on testosterone
and estrogen optimization this was an
episode that we've done some time ago
but is still available in our
hubertlab.com all formats Etc
is that many people actually increase
their libido and even their levels of
testosterone and estrogen as they
progress from their 20s into their 40s
if
they take excellent care of themselves
including the correct exercise
adaptations correct body fat to lean
lean muscle uh ratios but of course they
can go the other way too A lot of people
can be training to achieve such low body
fat stores that libido can suffer so it
you know the age depend age-related
declines in libido are not necessarily
written into the script of life in fact
there are some data points from a really
interesting paper I talk about in that
episode of uh individuals this was a
study focused on males in their 80s and
90s who maintained total and free
testosterone as high as
individuals in their 20s but then when
you look at the lifestyle factors of
those people in their 80s and 90s they
were doing a lot to create that that
scenario the second point is one related
to what you just said
um which is very true which is people
generally tend to assume that a drop in
libido is related to a drop in
testosterone
um and then assume that they need to
increase their testosterone and in some
cases that is true absolutely but it's
also often the case that people who take
estrogen or aromatase blockers that is
enzyme Inhibitors that prevent the
conversion of testosterone to estrogen
experience severe deficits in libido
because of estrogen totally low so
estrogen blockers are as much an issue
here as um low testosterone then the
final point is also one that many people
now men and women are um I think need to
be aware of which is that
dihydrotestosterone DHT is among the
more powerful androgens for
power output physical power output but
also for libido and DHT is strongly
inhibited by certain things like
turmeric so a lot of people who are
taking high doses of turmeric uh can
experience drops in libido so there and
who are taking
um various compounds to prevent hair
loss things like finasteride so there's
a whole catalog of things that can
reduce libido that are not directly in
the testosterone pathway it can be DHC
related estrogen related and this I
think points to the importance of yes
take a subjective measure of your libido
pay attention essentially be aware don't
you know don't obsess but be but be
aware and try and figure out what
factors
um are involved for you but don't
immediately assume that it what's needed
is more testosterone and oftentimes um
the opposite is the case yeah yeah try
to put on a lot of muscle with no
estrogen
good luck right and indeed a lot of um
athletes in particular uh you know
competitive bodybuilders that have that
you know Saran Wrap thin skin if you get
to know some of those people when you
talk to them they they can look like the
sort of comic book archetype of what
um someone might might want to be I mean
that's not what this discussion or these
episodes have been about but oftentimes
they can have um serious libido issues I
mentioned earlier and I will emphasize
it once more you need to be very
cautious when you're taking antioxidants
anti-inflammatories cortisol reducers
for all those reasons right I didn't
really sort of get in examples but you
just nailed another fantastic reason of
it we do not give those things
prophylactically I I strongly discourage
people from just walking around taking
supplementation of antioxidants
especially powerful ones for no reason
if you have done some testing and you
have a good reason to do so I'm fine or
if you're in a very specific take
training phase or something like that
cool but if you're just walking around
doing that you are oftentimes not always
but you're oftentimes causing problems
that then you then try to solve by
taking more of those
anti-inflammatories I feel terrible low
energy a little libido blah blah blah
blah I'm too inflamed
Etc so yeah antioxidants in the form of
food
are fantastic
almost no issue there is a good evidence
actually there
so don't worry about man I shouldn't eat
High antioxidant rich foods you're going
to be fine what we're talking about here
is Pharmaceuticals and supplementation
where you can take orders of magnitude
higher dosages very quickly than you
could in the presence of food so that
distinction is also very important
antioxidant rich foods are generally
fine and thus consumed in totally absurd
concentrations supplementations powders
creams drugs Etc is where you can get
into problems so yeah you want to be
very careful of doing that unless you
have a reason we don't do that unless uh
we see a reason to do so in someone's
markers yeah and herbal compounds
despite the fact that their herbal can
be quite potent modulators of of
hormones um ashwagandha being an example
two herbal compounds that we've talked a
lot about on our podcast before and and
repeatedly including in that
testosterone estrogen and optimization
episode uh Tonga Ali and fedogi agrestis
Tonga Ali is now taken by a large number
of men and women
um
Tonga Ali and fedoja typically men I'm
not sure that there are any good studies
about the effects of fedocia in women
those are herbal compounds that can have
potent effects in increasing
testosterone and luteinizing hormone do
they work yeah they work to varying
degrees in in most everybody not
certainly not in everybody
um but they do work but they they work
because they're potent they have effects
so the idea that herbal compounds are
not powerful
um is wrong and it's important to
remember that that can cut both ways
hence my mention of this uh observation
related to turmeric which is not to say
that some people can't take turmeric and
feel perfectly fine maintain or even
increase their libido that I sure that
can happen it's just that for people
that are very DHT sensitive
this tends to be an issue so
unfortunately for many of these
compounds the only way to find out is
really to try them or to just completely
avoid them and decide you don't want to
try them as fine too but there really
aren't ways to predict who will respond
who won't and who will be hyper
responders and
um in that case it's a bit of a it's a
little bit of a wild west I'm also sort
of remembering what the point of this
conversation was supposed to be and
maybe I'll return back to that which
were some cost free or low cost metrics
that was a very fun tangent but
nonetheless uh another couple of ones
you can do are uh grip strength testing
so if you can buy a you know fairly
cheap hand grip dynamometer on any
number of places these are typically
able to be purchased for 20 to 40 or
something like that right
um You can actually just test that every
day I've done that uh in a number of
athletes for a decent amount of time uh
admittedly I don't do it anymore
and that's not because I disagree with
it but because we just we're getting the
information
already and it was just too redundant
but if that's the only option it is a
great one to do I mentioned Also earlier
how I actually like speed tests over
strength tests as an earlier indication
of overreaching and so because of that I
like a vertical jump test if you have
access to a force plate that's great and
then you can get more in-depth
characteristics of the force velocity
curve and acceleration and things like
that used a lot in high performance
situations if not simply looking at you
know your performance and so you can
kind of go back to one of our earlier
episodes when I described coloring my
fingertips with highlighters earlier in
my life you could do the same thing and
go out in your garage and every day jump
up and touch that marker and see where
you're at
um so a system like that could be done
you can also use tools like uh Force
transducer and do a standard movement I
can say a vertical jump or a high pull
or something like that and measure the
velocity and just compare that
day-to-day of a standard load right so
you do it every single time with the
same load
um same similar thing could be done with
like a medicine ball throw so you have
the same ball you throw the same thing
and just sort of where you're at today
you want to do a little bit of warm-up
but not excessive here you want to kind
of get an idea of where your Baseline is
and you don't want to influence it by
the veracity of the warm-up every single
day because that alone again changes
same thing with stretching acute static
stretching
directly influences power production so
you don't want to go out there and one
day do a 20 minute stretch before then
the other day you didn't stretch at all
because that alone will will cause
deviations in your performance so try to
keep everything you can think of
standardized
and that'll give you a little bit better
data remembering all of these values
the biomarkers the performance stuff
they have normal variations
you just want to figure out first and
foremost what those normal variations
are for you so you have your normal
number
you have your standard deviation
when you start getting outside of that
standard deviation you start paying
attention and so that's kind of like
what we typically call that the gray
Zone and so if it is in the gray Zone
we're fine we're not adjusting but if
it's outside of that whatever that is
for you recognizing that the grave zone
is smaller for some folks and larger for
others but what is normal for you and
your situation and then you can make
your decisions outside of that when you
see numbers that are consistently or
more than three to five days
in a row or close for the last five days
for the last six something like that
then you maybe have some cause for
action well that was an incredible
description of the various tools and
modes for recovery and I realized I
jumped the gun a bit during our
discussion about food and supplements
but I like to think that it serves as a
nice precursor to the next episode which
is going to be all about nutrition and
supplementation
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[Music]