The Correct Way to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age | Pavel Tsatsouline

**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. My guest today is Pavel Tsatsouline. Pavel Tsatsouline is considered one of the premier strength training and fitness coaches in the world. He has pioneered the development of various programs to improve strength, which he calls the mother of all fitness. Indeed, today you will learn about strength as a practice, as a skill that can be applied to sports, that can be applied to general fitness, to getting leaner, to getting faster, and to improving your endurance. As Pavel Tsatsouline explains, by building one's strength through body weight exercises, free weight exercises, and occasionally machines, one can develop incredible levels of fitness at any age. We discuss some of the spectacular examples of people in their 70s and 80s performing strength feats, like 100 pull-ups per week. And we emphasize that one does not have to be seeking hypertrophy. One does not have to be seeking getting larger muscles in order to get exceptionally strong. I myself these days am focusing primarily on trying to get stronger and build endurance for sake of health and for general life reasons. And because getting really strong turns out to be very beneficial in every aspect of life. Today, you're going to learn how to get extremely strong. You can add muscle if you want in parallel with that. Or as Pavel Tsatsouline explains, you can pursue strength and flexibility for their own sake. And there's tremendous value for doing so. So today's discussion pertains to women, to men, and frankly, to people of all ages. I do think that pursuing strength as its own thing, independent of muscle growth, right? Which we hear so much about these days. Everyone wants hypertrophy, grow muscle, this and that. Pursuing strength as its own thing is a tremendously valuable endeavor. Today, you're going to learn how from the world's premier expert in this topic. You're in for a very special episode with Pavel Tsatsouline. He is truly in a class all his own when it comes to fitness and strength training. 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 cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Pavel Tsatsouline. Pavel Tsatsouline, welcome.

**Pavel Tsatsouline** (2:31)
Andrew, pleasure to be on your podcast. I respect your work a lot.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:34)
Thank you. Likewise.

**Pavel Tsatsouline** (2:35)
Thank you.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:36)
I will say that you and perhaps one other person have truly changed the way that I think about fitness, the way that I train, and I'm super excited to talk to you today. So I'm withholding excitement. There are a bunch of different ways to think about this thing that we call fitness, strength, endurance, hypertrophy. And there's so much information out there now. How do you conceptualize fitness? Meaning, do you look at things through the lens of, are we focused on nervous system, bone, connective tissue, or muscle? Do you look at things through the lens of anterior chain, posterior chain, hypertrophy, strength? I would just like to get your sort of high level conceptualization of this thing that we call fitness with the idea in mind that most people would like to have some level of endurance, some level of strength, and feel healthy, and presumably look however they want to look. But let's set aesthetics aside for the moment. How do you think about this thing we call fitness?

**Pavel Tsatsouline** (3:36)
Well first of all, Andrew, is strength is the mother quality of all the other qualities. So this is again, it's a statement by Professor Matveev, Leonid Matveev, going way back. And without a foundation of strength, you cannot build anything. So any athletic event requires a base of strength. Of course, that shot putter is gonna need much more strength than triathlon athlete, but they all need strength. Speaking of which, in triathlon, in marathon running, in distance, in cycling, it's been proven that putting athletes on a heavy, low repetition strength regimen, the kind that doesn't really add muscle but just makes you stronger neurologically, and it makes them race faster. So once you're stronger, everything becomes easier. How much stronger you need to get, that will vary. In the Soviet Union, they had something called the model athlete. So they figured out that for every particular event, your odds of succeeding are gonna be much higher if you're able to, you know, squat this much or bench this much and jump this high and so on and so forth. And this is easy enough to find these numbers for your individual sport and talk to various coaches. For people who are not competitive athletes, who just want to enjoy life, you just need to think about having a reserve of strength for whatever it is that you might do. So look at some PT standards in, let's say, in the military or in law enforcement and possibly apply them to yourself. I don't want to impose my set of standards because there are many different, like I might prefer pull-ups and X and Y and Z, but if we're looking at strength as the foundation for general physical preparation, right? So there's such a thing as general strength preparation, that's part of that. There's also special strength, which is sport-specific work, that's different. There are different ways of getting this done. But as you and I know that certain exercises are going to have a great carryover outside these particular exercises. So, as long as you're mobile, as long as you're symmetrical, and those are the things you have to address first, you need to look into work of Greg Cook, for example, then strength has to be your priority. Once you have reached a certain level of strength that's appropriate for your sport, or appropriate for your lifestyle, at that point you can just maintain it and focus on other qualities. So, I will give you an example.