Science-Supported Tools to Accelerate Your Fitness Goals

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we 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, we are discussing ways to improve your fitness. In particular, we are going to discuss tools that you can incorporate into your existing fitness routine that will allow you to make significant improvement without having to invest a lot of extra time. Most all of the tools we are going to discuss today were gleaned from the six episodes that we did with Dr. Andy Galpin. We provide a link to those full episodes in the show note captions, of course. Now, those episodes included a very large number of protocols. Everything from how to build a fitness routine, how to enhance recovery, nutrition and supplementation, exercises and routines aimed specifically at strength or hypertrophy or endurance or building anaerobic capacity. What I've done is to select key protocols from those episodes that I myself have started to incorporate into my existing fitness routine and that I think will be especially beneficial and frankly, fun for you to incorporate into your fitness routine. Now, a little bit later in this episode, I review the key components of any fitness program. That is the number and type of cardiovascular training sessions and resistance training sessions that are essential for everyone to include as a template or a foundation for their overall fitness program. Now, a little bit later in the episode, I will be sure to review what are the essential components of any fitness program. So the number and type of resistance training sessions, the number and type of cardiovascular training sessions, as well as some of the elements of how those are arranged to ensure proper and adequate recovery between sessions so that you can continue to make ongoing progress. However, the bulk of today's discussion is going to focus on tools that you can use again, very easily, very quickly, in some cases, even saving you time during your fitness regimen, in order to improve all aspects of your fitness, your endurance, your muscular endurance, your anaerobic capacity, your recovery, your strength, your hypertrophy. And in describing these tools to improve your fitness, it also provides an opportunity for each and all of us to step back from our existing fitness routine and ask whether or not it's really checking off all the boxes that are necessary, as well as where we can be more economical with our time and our efforts in order to reach our specific goals related to exercise and performance. So by the end of today's episode, you can be sure that you have at least one and as many as 12 tools that you can incorporate into your existing fitness routine, again, without adding much additional time or effort that are sure to accelerate your progress. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero costs to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of salt, sodium, magnesium and potassium, the electrolytes, but no sugar. Having adequate electrolytes is absolutely critical to cellular function, in particular the function of neurons. In order for your neurons to function properly, you need electrolytes in your system and you need to be well hydrated. There's a lot of research to support the fact that if you are even mildly dehydrated, that your cognition suffers, your physical performance suffers, and your sleep can also suffer. So getting adequate electrolytes in hydration is key and element allows you to do that. I typically mix element into 16 to 32 ounces of water and drink that first thing in the morning. I'll also drink another one during exercise. And sometimes another one after exercise as well, especially if I've been sweating a lot or it's a particularly hot day. If you'd like to try element, you can go to drinklmnt.com/huberman. And that's spelled lmnt.com/huberman.
And you can claim a free sample pack with your purchase. Again, that's drinkelement, lmnt.com/huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are the absolute highest quality. I've talked many times before on this podcast about the fact that sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health and performance. And I say that because when we are not sleeping well or enough, all of those things suffer. Conversely, when we are sleeping well and we're sleeping enough, all of those things improve. One of the key elements to getting a great night's sleep is to have the proper mattress. Helix mattresses are different because they are customized to your unique sleep needs. So if you go to their website and take a brief two-minute quiz, they will match you to a mattress that's ideal for your sleep needs. The quiz asks questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side of your stomach? Perhaps you don't know, that's fine too. Or do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort that allow them to match you to a mattress that will give you the best possible night's sleep. I started sleeping on a Helix mattress a few years ago and it has vastly improved my sleep. If you're interested in upgrading your mattress, you can go to helixsleep.com/huberman to take that two minute sleep quiz and they'll match you to a customized mattress. You can also get up to $350 off any mattress order and two free pillows. Again, if you're interested, you can go to helixsleep.com/huberman for up to $350 off and two free pillows. Let's talk about tools to improve your fitness. Before we do that, however, I just want to briefly remind everybody what constitutes a core or a foundational fitness program. Now, what I'm about to describe is not for the athlete that's trying to just improve one aspect of fitness or sports performance. So for instance, if you are a powerlifter and your main goal is to move more weight on the core powerlifting movements, or if you are somebody training for a marathon, it's likely that your core fitness program will differ substantially from what I'm about to describe. However, the vast majority of you are almost certainly trying to have some level of cardiovascular fitness. So the ability perhaps to run a mile or more, certainly to be able to walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded. You almost certainly want some degree of strength, the ability to perhaps pick up a heavy load of groceries and carry it in one arm as you carry something else in the other arm. You want the ability to help move furniture. You want the ability certainly to not injure yourself when performing daily tasks. And perhaps you also want to be able to go out and play a pickup game of basketball or soccer, or to go out on a long hike with the family without feeling so sore that you have to rest in bed the next day. An optimal fitness program of the sort that was covered in the optimal fitness protocols episode that I did is therefore one that checks off the major boxes that science tells us are important for health span and for lifespan and that can also help us improve various aspects of performance and improve various aspects of aesthetics, whether it's fat loss or muscle growth if we choose. So without going into that program in a lot of detail, the core elements of it are that it include at least 150 minutes and ideally more like 200 minutes per week of so-called zone to cardio. I'll talk a little bit more about zone to cardio a little bit later in the episode, but zone to cardio is for those of you that don't know the type of cardiovascular exercise that you can do while maintaining a conversation without getting winded, but that if you were to push a little bit harder, that you would find it hard to complete your sentences. In general, zone to cardio is the sort that you can do while purely nasal breathing, unless you need to talk, of course, it's perfectly fine to talk while doing zone to cardio. And again, the scientific research tells us that we should all be getting at least 150 minutes and probably more like 200 minutes of zone to cardio per week.