Essentials: Optimal Protocols to Build Strength & Grow Muscles | Dr. Andy Galpin

Andrew Huberman (0:00)

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health and performance.

I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. And now for my discussion with Dr. Andy Galpin. Today, we're talking about strength and hypertrophy. And so right out the gate, I just want to ask you, why should people think about and train for strength and hypertrophy, not just for people that want to get bigger biceps, et cetera, but that have other goals, longevity goals, and health goals unrelated to what most people associate with hypertrophy? So what are the benefits of training for strength and hypertrophy for the everyday person, for the athlete, for the recreational exerciser, and so on?

Andy Galpin (0:51)

One of the major disservices we've done in this field is convince people that things like strength training are for athletes or for growing bigger muscles. And cardiovascular training are for things like fat loss and heart health.

And that is a tremendous disservice because it puts a lot of unnecessary barriers and leads to a lot of assumptions and therefore poor actions. We could do a hundred episodes on the benefits of exercise. And we could run all the way from mood and focus, cognitive tasks to a better immune function. You'll get less colds. You'll be, you'll fight them off more effectively to mortality, right? So some of the strongest predictors of how long and how well you will live or exercise. However, there are independent benefits that come from just endurance training. And there are independent benefits that come from strength training. And so to just give you one categorically, the way that you want to think about this is resistance exercise and strength training is the number one tool to combat neuromuscular aging.

You cannot get that through any other form of exercise besides heavy overload strength training. If you want to be alive and you want to live by yourself, you have to be able to engage in human movement.

If you have any dysfunction in the neuromuscular system there, then you're not going to be able to do that. And again, as I mentioned, the only way to preserve that or fight that loss of aging is to strength train. So people will tend to hear numbers like you lose about 1% of muscle size per year after age about 40 And that's true. However, what they don't realize is you lose about 2% to 4% of your strength per year. So the loss of strength is almost double that the loss of muscle mass with aging. Muscle power is more like 8% to 10% per year.

And so we can very clearly see the problem you're going to have with aging is not going to be preservation of muscle, although that is incredibly important. It's going to be very specifically preservation of muscle power and strength. And why that really matters is your ability to, again, stand up and move, your ability to catch yourself from a fall, your ability to feel confident doing a movement. That is a function of muscle power more than it is muscle size. And so functionality is really what we want to be, right? You want to be able to do whatever you want to do physically and feel confident in doing that as you age. That's going to only be obtained through strength training.

Andrew Huberman (3:16)

So is it appropriate to say that training for strength and hypertrophy is also a way to keep your nervous system healthy and young?

Andy Galpin (3:24)

Yeah, absolutely. It is the only exercise route we have for that. The wonderful thing about strength training is you don't actually have to start at a young age. In fact, I was reading a paper this morning because of our previous conversation. It was in over age 90

So these are folks 90 plus, and they saw improvements like 30 to 170% in things like muscle size and hypertrophy over a very short period of time. I think it was 12 weeks. The reason I like to mention that is because if you are listening and you are 50 and you're like, oh, shit, I haven't been strength training, you're not toast. You should absolutely start now. You're going to be able to get to a fantastic spot very quickly.

Andrew Huberman (4:04)

If you would, please remind us what strength and hypertrophy are in terms of the specific adaptation they represent. What I mean by that is when somebody is training for strength, what are they really training for?

Obviously, it means the ability to move more weight, but I know that it includes a number of other things as well. And when one is training for hypertrophy, for the growth of muscle fibers, what does that represent? Because I think if people understand that, they will far better understand the methods and protocols that are going to be best for strength and hypertrophy.