Essentials: Optimize Your Exercise Program with Science-Based Tools | Jeff Cavaliere

0:00 Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,

0:01 [music] where we revisit past episodes for the most

0:04 potent and actionable science-based [music] tools for mental health,

0:08 physical health, and performance.

0:11 I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor

0:13 of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

0:17 And now, for my discussion with Jeff Cavalier.

0:20 Jeff, such a pleasure for me to have you here.

0:23 I'm glad to be here.

0:24 It's amazing.

0:24 I'm a long-time consumer of your content.

0:28 I've learned a tremendous amount about fitness and both in the weight room,

0:33 cardio, nutrition, things that I've applied for over a decade.

0:37 One of your mantras is you know,

0:39 if you want to look like an athlete, train like an athlete.

0:41 And I think that's something really special that sets aside what

0:45 you do from what a lot of other very well-qualified people do.

0:50 What's the sort of contour of a basic program

0:53 that anybody could think about as a starting place?

0:56 I I think it's like a 60/40 split,

0:58 which would be leaning towards uh weight training,

1:01 you know, strength and and uh and then,

1:03 you know, the conditioning aspect be about 40%.

1:05 So, if you look at it over a course of a training week,

1:07 I mean, 5 days in a gym would be a great task.

1:10 And obviously not in the gym, it could be done at home,

1:12 but 3 days strength training, Monday, Wednesday,

1:15 Friday, conditioning, Tuesday, Thursday, you know, 2 days.

1:18 It's a it's a pretty easy roundabout way to split that up.

1:21 Of course, depending upon training goals and as you said,

1:24 the aesthetic goals, like that will shift dramatically.

1:27 But, if you want to see the benefits of both,

1:29 that's probably the the effective dose for strength training

1:33 and the effective dose for conditioning at the bare minimum level.

1:35 We try to keep our workouts to an hour or less, if possible.

1:38 Now, depending upon the split that you're following,

1:41 if you're on a total body split,

1:43 there's just going to be more that has to be done in a given amount of time.

1:46 But, in general, when you're not focused on that one aspect,

1:49 but the overall health picture,

1:50 then you can get the job done in in under in under an hour.

1:54 And again, I always say, on top of if if you want to look like an athlete,

1:58 train like an athlete, is you can either train long or you can train hard,

2:00 but you can't do both.

2:02 As you start to get older, it's the length of the workout that actually causes

2:06 more problems than the intensity of what you're doing.

2:09 Particularly if you're warmed up properly, like you said.

2:12 I have found personally that my warm-up has had to become more

2:14 of an integral part of my my workout than it ever has before.

2:17 In terms of splits, you mentioned splits.

2:19 And so for those who aren't familiar with this uh term splits,

2:22 it's really uh which body parts are you training on which days?

2:26 I've seen you discuss, you know, 3 days a week whole body workouts.

2:30 I've heard of splits like a pushing one day,

2:33 uh pulling another day, legs another day, a day off, repeat.

2:37 I mean, there's so many variations on this.

2:39 What's governing the the split?

2:41 Uh for me, the first rule is will you stick to it?

2:43 I don't particularly like full body splits.

2:46 I don't necessarily like to have to train everything.

2:49 Now, of course, the volumes will come down per muscle group,

2:52 but if you don't like to do

2:54 that, and you actually don't look forward to your workout

2:56 because you're dreading having to do everything and feeling

2:59 maybe too fatigued by the time your workout's over,

3:01 or the fact that those generally do take

3:03 a little bit longer and don't fit into your schedule,

3:05 I don't care how effective the split is, a split not done is not effective.

3:09 So, you need to find one that fits.

3:11 So, maybe you go into an alternative option

3:13 like uh um a push-pull legs like you mentioned.

3:16 That can be done either one cycle through the week uh on a Monday, Wednesday,

3:19 Friday split, or it could be twice in a week,

3:21 so you're actually training six times.

3:23 You know, where we where you repeat it, you know, pull,

3:25 push, legs, pull, push, legs, or or, you know, uh you know,

3:28 however you want to do it with with either a day off

3:30 in between the 3 days or at the end of the 6 days.

3:34 Um and again, that actually impacts your schedule.

3:36 I've broken that down before where it's, you know,

3:38 if you put it in between the 3 days,

3:40 it's good because you're giving yourself an extra rest day in between,

3:43 but it starts to shift that day off every week as we wrap around.

3:46 So, for those guys that were choosing

3:47 that 7-day schedule out of convenience in our heads,

3:50 you know, it starts to mess with that off day.

3:52 So, others like to just keep it predictably,

3:53 let's say on a Sunday, and train 6 days in a row.

3:57 Um But, that's a But, that's a a a better

3:59 way to maybe group similar muscle actions together,

4:03 which I think I I definitely prefer that because if I'm going to be training,

4:08 you know, pulling movements, at least there there's a synergy between them,

4:11 and I feel like I'm looking to achieve one goal that day.

4:16 Um and then, I mean, quite honestly, you can go back to the bro split days.

4:20 And this Those still work effectively.

4:23 There's a reason why they worked in the past.

4:25 Like I think that science shows that there's smarter ways to do them these days.

4:29 Like you can You can come back and hit a related muscle.

4:32 So, you could do, let's say, biceps on one day,

4:35 and then come back 2 days later and do back,

4:37 realizing again synergy between the the exercises there.

4:41 Your biceps are going to get restimulated again.

4:43 So, you could figure out ways to make that work.

4:45 But, the thing that I think is is effective there is that tends to be one

4:48 of the ones that people like the most

4:50 because they can go in, they get their pump,

4:52 they feel good, they it's it's pretty solely focused on one muscle group.

4:56 Is that the definition of a bro split?

4:58 One One group a day, yeah.

5:00 I see.

5:00 So, it's very much geared towards strength and aesthetics,

5:03 really maximizing Yeah.

5:05 So, probably probably more more aesthetics than strength, yeah.

5:07 In terms of the mixing up of cardiovascular training and resistance training.

5:15 Um same day, different day, which one should come first,

5:19 which one could should come second?

5:20 So, again, I I I think that the you know,

5:22 the bare minimum is probably twice a week in terms of cardiovascular if you want

5:26 to have some semblance of cardiovascular conditioning.

5:28 But, I think most people who actually need it more or want to pursue

5:32 it more than that are going to need more time to do that.

5:35 So, um at some point, it can't just be relegated to a day off

5:39 or a day off from the from the weight training workouts.

5:42 So, at some point, it has to occur on the same day, you know?

5:45 And in that case, I just like to put it at the end

5:47 of the workout cuz you don't want

5:49 to anyway compromise the weight training work workout.

5:52 The intensity of those workouts is important.

5:54 I just like to, you know, put that at at the end realizing that even

5:58 if my effort level is lower, my output is lower,

6:03 if it's still placing a demand on my cardiac

6:06 output to get that conditioning effect because I'm fatigued,

6:10 it still has a demand on my cardiac output.

6:12 So, it's still achieving its goal, but it didn't interfere with my main goal

6:15 of being able to increase my performance in the gym.

6:18 And in terms of the form of cardiovascular training,

6:20 I've seen you um do a number of I have to say uh very impressive uh

6:25 high-intensity interval type work rather than uh

6:29 on the treadmill or out jogging for 30-45 minutes.

6:31 Is that because you prefer higher intensity

6:34 um higher heart rate type um training?

6:37 If we could blend function across these realms and not have such

6:42 a delineation between this is my weight training and this is my conditioning,

6:46 but figure out a way to to blend them together.

6:49 I always think that you've got you've got

6:50 a better opportunity to get that more well-rounded result.

6:54 And I like to kind of mix up that straight

6:57 conditioning work and also some of the footwork, you know, drills.

7:00 Like we have we we have some high

7:02 expectations for guys that come into our programs.

7:04 Like to just do some footwork drills.

7:06 Like ladders.

7:07 Like ladders or or line drills or something.

7:09 And you know what happens?

7:10 People become intrigued and interested.

7:11 Like, I've never I've never tried this since uh high school, you know?

7:15 And they become interested in just the challenge of it.

7:18 And then as we become almost distracted by the challenge,

7:21 we're now like finding ourselves conditioning, you know?

7:23 And and I always think that's an important part that sometimes you got to draw

7:27 people in um to get to show them what they might be interested in.

7:31 And from the output or the effect of it,

7:34 I just think that when you're able to blend some of some you know,

7:36 still maintain some of that strength training into the exercise.

7:40 So, as you mentioned, let's say I'm doing some kind of a push-up or a burpee.

7:42 I mean, there is there is a um an anaerobic component to that that is

7:47 going to be helpful um that that rather than just walking or just jogging.

7:52 Um Not just not to say that that isn't

7:54 an effective means for strict cardiac conditioning.

7:58 It's a it's one of the ways that we've had for, you know,

8:01 centuries, you know, to do it.

8:02 But, I just think that if we can blend it,

8:05 then it becomes maybe a little bit more

8:06 interesting and you get some of those crossover

8:09 benefits and it doesn't become so segmented in terms of what we're trying to do.

8:12 One of the most important things I learned from you so over the years was

8:18 that if you can flex your biceps to the point where it hurts a little bit,

8:22 like it almost feels like a cramp or a cramp where you can

8:24 flex your calf to the point where it really cramps up a little bit,

8:26 almost feels like it's knotting up,

8:28 that's a pretty good indication that you're going to be able

8:30 to stimulate that muscle well under load if you're doing the movement properly.

8:36 Right.

8:36 How did you arrive at this kind of cramp test,

8:38 the Cavalier test as I'll call it?

8:39 During my uh workouts even as a as a young kid just starting out,

8:44 I wanted to know what was supposed to be doing the work.

8:47 Once you do that and you start to seek that out and say,

8:50 "Okay, well, the bicep is what's supposed to be doing the work,

8:53 then I want to make sure the bicep's doing the work,

8:55 right?" So, I would seek out ways to make that happen better.

9:00 And when I was able to do that, I could feel the stronger contraction.

9:03 I was no visionary.

9:04 I just felt like I I knew that that was going to be better

9:06 for me if the muscle I was trying to grow was being stretched more.

9:10 When I was attempting to do this across different exercises,

9:14 I would notice that what I could do potentially

9:17 on a curl where my arm is up, you know,

9:19 where you asked me to flex my bicep, that position, I couldn't do if I was,

9:24 you know, doing a concentration curl or I couldn't carry over to a cable curl.

9:29 And that shouldn't really change, right?

9:31 Cuz the function is still largely the same.

9:33 There's still elbow flexion, there's still supination.

9:36 Like, why am I not able to do it there?

9:38 And that's when it sort of clued into me that like

9:41 you your mind-muscle connection on not just your mind with one muscle,

9:45 but on every exercise matters and it varies from exercise to exercise.

9:50 There's a term I like to call muscularity,

9:52 you know, which is a difference, right?

9:54 It's the level of sort of resting tone in the muscle.

9:56 That improves dramatically.

9:58 You know, if you can learn how to just start to engage that muscle better,

10:04 the muscularity, the the resting tone of that muscle is harder, it's more alive.

10:09 That's all driven from being able to connect better

10:11 neurologically with the muscle that you're trying to train.

10:14 When you're trying to go and create muscle

10:16 hypertrophy or even this muscularity that I talk about,

10:18 you need to seek ways to make it feel more uncomfortable, right?

10:21 If you don't feel the discomfort, then you're doing something wrong.

10:24 And I struggle to this day on certain muscle groups

10:27 to still do that even knowing what I'm trying to work.

10:30 It's very difficult for some muscles and for certain

10:32 people to do this on certain muscles, but as you mentioned, practice does help.

10:37 And the more you become, you know,

10:39 consistent and deliberate with what you're trying to do,

10:41 the more of an of a result you actually get.

10:44 How do you assess recovery at the local level,

10:47 meaning at the level of the muscles?

10:48 So, we'll talk about soreness and getting better,

10:51 stronger, more repetitions, etc.

10:53 And then at the systemic level, at the level of the nervous system.

10:55 Different muscles recover at different rates.

10:58 You might have a bicep that's able to be

10:59 trained that can be trained again the next day.

11:03 You know, and then the next day.

11:05 And then maybe you need a day off after that.

11:06 That can vary from person to person for sure and it can

11:09 vary from muscle to muscle in that person over the course of time.

11:13 As you mentioned, cuz the systemic recovery

11:15 is going to impact all those muscles anyway,

11:17 but let's say you're systemically recovering,

11:20 every muscle itself is going to have a recovery

11:22 rate and I think that using muscle soreness

11:25 as a guideline for that is is one of the only

11:28 tools we have in terms of the local level.

11:31 Well, that's the one that most people can relate to and easily identify

11:34 and then use that as a guideline and if you're training when you're really sore,

11:37 it's probably not a great idea.

11:39 But as far as the the the systemic, you know, recovery,

11:43 grip strength is very very much tied to performance and recovery.

11:48 And when I was at the Mets, we used to actually take grip strength measurements

11:52 as a baseline in spring training all the time.

11:54 Now, obviously, as a baseball player,

11:56 you're gripping a bat, you're pitcher, you're gripping a ball.

11:58 Like, you know, grip having good grip strength is important.

12:00 So, if we noticed somebody had a very weak grip, it's just a good focal point

12:03 of a specialized training component for the program.

12:06 day with those guys?

12:07 No, we would do in spring training we'd do sort of a baseline

12:10 entry level measurement and then we would

12:12 we would measure it throughout the season, maybe once every 2 weeks or 3 weeks.

12:15 And and and you know, the the idea there was to measure the recovery.

12:19 We have found that with with one of those scales,

12:21 those old-fashioned bathroom scales,

12:23 it's a great tool for just squeezing the the the the scale

12:27 with your hands and seeing what type of output you could get.

12:30 Imagine the last time you were sick or that when you or just try this, you know,

12:33 the next time you wake up in the morning.

12:34 When you first wake up in the morning, you're still groggy.

12:37 Try to squeeze your hand.

12:38 Try to make a fist as hard as you can.

12:40 You're going to sit there angry at your fist because

12:42 it won't contract as hard as you know it can.

12:44 You don't have the ability to just create the output

12:48 and that is because in that state you're still sleepy,

12:51 you're still fatigued, you know, you're you're not even awake at the you know,

12:55 the the whole level at this point.

12:57 So, when you start to measure that on a daily basis,

12:59 you can get a pretty good sense of where you're at.

13:01 And I think when people start to see a drop off

13:03 of 10% or so or or even greater of of their grip output,

13:08 um you really should skip the gym that day because I don't think

13:11 there's much you're going to do there that's going to be that that beneficial.

13:14 Even if it is the day to train legs or whatever day it is.

13:18 I mean, there certainly are more sophisticated tools to as a as a PT, you know,

13:21 we have a hand grip dynamometers, you know,

13:24 we can we can measure one side at a time.

13:26 Tell me what that comes the cost of the pretty expensive devices,

13:29 but if it's Listen, if you're an athlete, you know,

13:31 the the 200 300 bucks it cost to have one of those would be well worth,

13:35 you know, the added investment.

13:37 When's the best time to stretch for particular types of results?

13:41 And maybe you could define some of the different types of stretching.

13:43 In general, the two basic forms

13:45 of stretching are active stretching and passive stretching.

13:48 And your passive stretching is done with the goal of trying

13:51 to create an increase in the flexibility of the muscle.

13:56 So, whether you're actually increasing the length

13:58 of that muscle, well, you know,

13:59 more so what you're doing is increasing the resist or decreasing the resistance

14:03 of that muscle to want to stay at a certain level of flexibility.

14:07 When we can sort of take the brakes off and allow

14:09 that muscle to to allow us more range of motion,

14:12 we're inherently in increasing flexibility without necessarily

14:15 having to increase the length of that muscle.

14:17 That is usually done at a time far

14:19 away from your workout because there is a period

14:22 of recalibration that is needed after doing this because

14:26 you're disrupting the length tension relationship of the muscle

14:29 that causes you to not necessarily be able

14:33 to rely on these I've talked about before stored motor

14:36 engrams in your mind in terms of this is

14:38 the pattern for how I swing a golf club,

14:40 say, you know, and now introducing a little bit of flexibility

14:44 or added flexibility or range because of the stretching I did before,

14:48 it takes maybe a hole or two or three to match up again Oh,

14:53 this is the this is what he's trying to do

14:54 that golf swing thing I that I remembered again.

14:56 Like it's not remembering that every component like I

14:59 have to bend my right wrist back 10° and then I have to bend my elbow and I have

15:03 to bring Like your body stores these patterns for motor efficiency.

15:07 So, and when I have to start matching up that stored

15:10 pattern with what's feeling new because of the increased range,

15:13 I can impair performance.

15:14 And again, it could happen even in a a gym

15:16 workout where you're talking about your first second set

15:18 third set um where it maybe the repercussions aren't

15:21 as big cuz I'll just do a few extra sets.

15:24 But in performance, if you screw up your first three rounds,

15:26 you play on a PGA tour and you shoot,

15:27 you know, you're you're you're six over after three,

15:29 you're you're you're done, you know?

15:30 So, we relegate that, as I mentioned,

15:32 sort of towards the end of the day, when it's not going to impact performance,

15:35 but even maybe have the additional benefit of creating the the feeling

15:41 of length or the increase or decrease in resistance to this length,

15:44 um at a time when I know my body is

15:46 going to try to tend to heal and heal shorter.

15:49 Never longer, but heal shorter.

15:51 So, if I can introduce a little bit of that extra

15:53 uh length or or decrease resistance to to that length,

15:56 it's a better time to do it.

15:57 So, I think it promotes a a better recovery.

16:00 I'm intrigued by this concept of heal shorter.

16:03 So, part of the healing and recovery process means a shortening of the muscles.

16:06 This is the tensing up in sleep.

16:07 Could you elaborate just a bit on that?

16:09 Basically, you know,

16:09 what what's been shown is that when I'm when the the repair process,

16:14 muscular repair from, let's say, strength training during the day,

16:17 the repair process usually results in a muscle

16:19 that is slightly shorter rather than increased in length.

16:23 You know, muscles prefer to sort of ratchet

16:25 their way down into that that uh contraction.

16:28 So, when you're sleeping,

16:30 it it tends to err on the side of shorter rather than longer,

16:33 when ideally we don't really want that.

16:35 We want to maintain as much of that length,

16:38 because with more length, we actually have more leverage.

16:41 So, again, it's just making it a conscious choice to do it

16:44 at a time of the day that makes a little bit more sense.

16:46 Dynamic stretching is really not done for that purpose of trying

16:49 to create any type of increasing the the potential length,

16:53 as you said, of the muscle, but more so the readiness of the muscle to perform.

16:57 And increasing, you know,

16:59 exploring the ends of that range of motion in a more dynamic way,

17:03 so you're not hanging out there and disrupting that length-tension relationship,

17:07 but just sort of touching the ends of those barriers,

17:10 so that you when you feel movement again, it feels looser, it feels more ready.

17:14 And at obviously at same time, warming up, blood flow,

17:18 all the benefits we get from just warming up in general.

17:21 So like, you know, that's that's the series you probably seen a bunch of times,

17:24 but like, you know, leg swings and butt kicks and, you know,

17:28 lunge walking lunges and those are the drills that people will do prior

17:32 to training that are both excitatory in terms of just the nervous system,

17:36 but also helpful for just the general warm up the body cuz of the blood flow,

17:40 but from a muscle readiness standpoint, not impairing the performance while

17:45 at the same time exploring the increased ranges.

17:48 When I was working with Antonio Brown,

17:50 I remember like he would spend 20 minutes, 30 minutes on all dynamic work.

17:55 And I've never seen anybody spend that long on their dynamic work,

17:58 but like he said he just didn't feel right

18:01 and ready to go unless he did a lot of that.

18:05 And I mean, you know,

18:06 his his dynamic stretching routine would be a workout for most everybody.

18:10 There's one exercise and one particular motion that I'd like to discuss

18:15 for a moment because I believe that learning about this cautionary

18:20 note from you is one of the reasons that I've maintained

18:25 steady training for 30 years with no major injury, knock on wood.

18:29 And that's the upright row.

18:31 I learned from you that the upright

18:32 road compromises some important aspects of our shoulder

18:36 mechanics and could be actually sort of a dangerous movement in some ways.

18:40 But so I've always made it a point now

18:43 on the basis of this advice to really strive for external rotation.

18:49 Please tell us about internal external rotation,

18:52 why this is so important, not just for weight training,

18:55 but as in terms of posture and mechanics and and not

18:59 looking like a melted candle or partially melted candle.

19:02 The shoulder has the most mobility in the body of any of any joint,

19:06 but it's also got the least stability, right?

19:08 There's always that trade-off of mobility and stability.

19:11 So your stability comes from, you know, a certain muscle groups.

19:16 And one of the ones that the only muscle group that actually

19:19 externally rotates the shoulder is going to be the rotator cuff, okay?

19:22 And unless you are devoted to training through external rotation

19:26 and exercises that are going to externally rotate the shoulder,

19:30 you're not training that function.

19:32 And it's so easy for us in everyday life, especially those that aren't training,

19:37 to not ever really undergo any of those stresses

19:40 that could be beneficial to counteracting what happens freely and naturally,

19:44 which is internal rotation.

19:46 So, when you think about the imbalance created

19:48 just by nature and how we live our lives,

19:50 internal rotation far, far, far outweighs external rotation.

19:54 So, you need to address it.

19:56 And the reason why you need to address it is because you need

19:58 to normalize those biomechanics of the shoulder

20:01 if you want their long-term health.

20:02 And one of the functions of the shoulder is to raise our arm up over our head.

20:06 And if we do that from an internally rotated position,

20:09 we're going to have a higher likelihood of creating stress inside that joint.

20:14 In order to get normal mechanics and free up the joint maximally inside,

20:19 you need to externally rotate as you raise the arm up.

20:22 So, if your muscles aren't firing and they're not necessarily, um,

20:27 as strong as the internal rotation bias that pulls them

20:30 in, you're asking for trouble every time you do that.

20:33 Well, this exercise is literally putting you in elevation and internal rotation.

20:38 And if you were to walk into a PT office and someone said,

20:41 "I think he's got impingement.

20:43 Will you diagnose him?" There's a test called the Hawkins Kennedy test,

20:45 and I would put you in the position I

20:47 know we're not visible at this point through the podcast,

20:50 but I'll put you in this position here,

20:52 where I have your arm elevated and your hand pretty much under your chin,

20:56 pushing downward on that to create that internal shoulder rotation.

20:59 Pretty much the exact position that we're in when

21:01 we're holding a bar in in an upright row.

21:04 Some will say, "Well, just don't go so high.

21:05 Go only up to the level of the chest,

21:07 but you're still in this internally rotated position.

21:10 The The thing that I think frustrates me the most

21:12 about the exercise is that I have an alternative,

21:15 and the alternative does the same thing

21:17 in terms of helping the muscles grow by simply

21:19 fixing the biomechanics of the exercise but just

21:21 allowing the hands to go higher than the elbows.

21:24 So, instead of the elbows being higher than the hand,

21:26 which drives you into internal rotation, if the elbow is lower than the hand,

21:30 the hand being higher here, I'm in external rotation.

21:33 And I could do something called a high pull and still get the same

21:37 abduction of the arm and still get the same benefits of the shoulders,

21:40 the delts, and the traps without having to undergo any of the stresses

21:44 that would come from the somewhat awkward movement of an upright row.

21:48 Now, people will argue, this is the way they argue,

21:50 that "I've done this for 30 years and I've

21:52 never hurt myself." And I always say, "Yet." Yet.

21:56 Like I listen, [clears throat] the goal is to not hurt yourself ever.

22:00 So, even if you It's sort of like, you know, the championship game.

22:05 You know, you might play the game of your life, but if you lose, you lost.

22:08 And when you get into the end of the you know,

22:09 the record books, you're still lost.

22:11 So, even if you had the game of your life, you lost.

22:13 I don't care if you do it for 30 years,

22:15 no pain, you're still doing it and there's no pain.

22:17 I'm giving you an option that's going to give

22:19 you the same results in the exercise that you're seeking.

22:22 That's why you're doing the exercise.

22:24 Without the the possibility of having the you know,

22:26 the the the bad outcome come from it.

22:28 The body is like a mirror image.

22:29 The hip is like the shoulder, right?

22:31 The ankle is the wrist.

22:32 The foot is the hand.

22:34 Like they're they're they function The knee is the elbow.

22:36 They're two hinge joints.

22:37 They function that way.

22:38 Well, with the shoulder,

22:39 you've got that mobility that comes from having all that freedom of motion,

22:43 but the stability is lacking.

22:45 Well, the same thing with the hip.

22:46 Like you've got mobility,

22:48 but if you don't fully stabilize it by training all of the muscles of the hip,

22:52 and if you don't strengthen the external rotation of the hip,

22:56 then, you know, you've you're you're going to have issues.

22:59 Like it's not biomechanically going to work the same way.

23:01 If you think of the body as a series of, you know, bands,

23:05 you know, pulling in different directions

23:07 at different levels of tension, you know,

23:09 you're being pulled into one direction or the other just by the balance

23:13 of tension from one weak area to one dominantly tight area,

23:18 and you need to make sure that you can sort of balance

23:20 this out in order to eliminate some

23:22 of the adaptations and compensations that happen.

23:25 One of the great uh tools that I I I picked up from your content,

23:28 which has benefited uh I know a a huge number

23:31 of people is I think I used to hold uh weights

23:33 sometimes in the in the tips of my fingers as opposed

23:36 to in the meat of the palm of my hands, and I had elbow pain.

23:39 Turns out towards the end of my pull-ups or my bicep work,

23:41 I was letting the weight or the bar drift into my fingertips.

23:44 And the mere um shift to making sure that my knuckles

23:48 were well over the bar or that the weight was really in the meat of my palms has

23:53 completely ameliorated that for reasons that you point out,

23:56 and maybe you could just share with us why that is.

23:59 When you grip a bar, whether it be through a curl or whether

24:02 it be through And and this is mostly pulling

24:03 exercises because the tendency for the bar is

24:06 going to be to fall out of your hand,

24:08 not like with a pushing exercise where it's kind of, you know,

24:10 you're you're pushing your hand into the bar.

24:11 So, on a bench press, say.

24:13 Um that bar can drift just by gravity, you know, doing its thing,

24:18 or fatigue of the the hand grip strength,

24:22 can start to drift further away towards the the distal digits, right?

24:26 Through those through those last couple knuckles that we have on our hands.

24:30 Though our hand can still hold it there,

24:32 the muscles are not equipped to handle those types of loads.

24:36 And it could start at dumbbell weight, you know, 40 lb, 30 lb,

24:40 you know, even 25 lb for some, depending upon their overall strength levels.

24:44 But then when you start to apply it

24:45 to something like your body weight with a chin-up, right?

24:49 Cuz that's natural for the bar to somewhat

24:51 kind of float down towards your fingertips.

24:54 And it actually is a little bit easier

24:56 to perform the exercise with that sort of like false

24:59 grip little hook grip at the end of because

25:01 you're not going to engage the forearms into the exercise.

25:04 You're not going to start pulling down.

25:07 But at the same time, while it could help you to perform

25:10 them better by getting the back more activated,

25:13 if you have weakness in these muscles cuz

25:15 it's not a it's not a thing that happens

25:16 to every It's not one of those upright row

25:18 type things where I think this is happening to everybody.

25:21 This is happening to people that have

25:22 these inherent weaknesses in in this these muscles.

25:25 You or or haven't done enough of the gripping

25:27 in the four in in the meat of the hand, you know, for long enough.

25:31 But it starts [clears throat] to put

25:34 that stress on these muscles that are ill equipped to do this and it to handle

25:37 this and it starts to particularly on that fourth finger,

25:41 you know, which is part of the muscle we call the FDS,

25:43 the flexor digitorum, that is just too much for it to handle.

25:47 And that comes all the way down and meets right at the medial elbow,

25:50 right on that spot that you can say feels like

25:52 someone's knifing you right in the middle in that medial elbow.

25:55 And and medial epicondylitis or they call it golfer's elbow is

25:58 something that a lot of us deal with in the gym.

26:01 It's one of the most common inflammatory conditions

26:04 people get from the gym and it all

26:05 comes from this positioning of the dumbbell or barbell

26:09 or hand on a pull-up bar over time.

26:12 So, the easiest thing to do is just grip deeper

26:15 so that what you're doing is you're using you know,

26:17 more leverage from the palm to encapsulate the bar

26:21 or the dumbbell or whatever and you're not putting

26:23 that pressure really distally right on that last digit

26:27 because that's where the that FDS muscle is most strained.

26:31 So, you you're just almost eliminating that from the equation.

26:35 And And And it's one of those exercises

26:37 that the load can exceed its capacity pretty quickly.

26:40 So, that like, you know,

26:42 maybe it's only capable of handling 30 lb and then when you're doing

26:45 a chin-up and it goes and it drifts so far that it's Now,

26:49 you have to say you're a 200-lb guy,

26:51 you've got let's say 100 lb through one arm and 100 lb

26:54 this is simple simplified math that obviously is offset by other muscles,

26:57 but 100 lb through one arm, 100 lb through the other one,

26:59 100 lb off of a muscle that can handle 30 is not going

27:03 to take many repetitions to strain it and you're going to feel that maybe

27:06 by the time that set's over or certainly by the time that workout's over

27:09 or the next day you wake up and you've got that notable stabbing pain.

27:13 Whenever someone feels that, the best thing would be to determine, okay,

27:17 what exercises was I doing that were pulling and where

27:20 the bar could have drifted deeper there into further

27:23 from the meat of my palm into my fingers

27:26 and figure out a way to deepen that grip.

27:28 When that happens though,

27:29 the best thing to do with most of these inflammatory conditions

27:32 is not do any of that stuff for a little while.

27:34 There's so many other options that you can do that will train

27:37 similar muscles or even the same motion and not cause that stress.

27:41 So, I mean a cable curl would be much

27:43 easier to do that on than let's say a chin-up

27:46 where you don't have the control over the weight

27:48 like you do by moving a pin on a stack.

27:50 I do have a question about precision of record keeping.

27:54 Do you keep a training journal?

27:56 Uh do you recommend people keep training journals?

27:58 I think that anything you can do to increase your awareness

28:02 of your performance and also give yourself some objective goal.

28:07 Whenever we have an objective goal, it's a lot easier to actually obtain it.

28:10 When you're just there to get a pump and you're

28:12 just there to lift how you feel that day,

28:15 um you have to be incredibly disciplined in all other

28:18 aspects of your workout in order to make that effective.

28:21 Anything you can do to increase your awareness of it

28:23 and keep you on track with that is like I'm endorsing fully.

28:27 If we could talk about principles around nutrition.

28:30 What tends to work?

28:31 What tends not to work?

28:32 And um yeah, how should we think about nutrition?

28:35 My approach is like I've always been sort of a low sugar lower fat guy.

28:39 That is the best approach for I believe, again,

28:43 in my opinion personally for the overall big picture because though the people

28:48 can take exclusionary approaches to nutrition and taking carbs out or you know,

28:53 you know, eating only fats and proteins or again,

28:56 I'm not saying it doesn't work for you

28:58 and if it's the first thing that actually allowed you

29:00 to gain control of your nutrition to the point where

29:01 you actually saw results and got to a healthier weight,

29:04 then I always say then do it.

29:05 Then do it, but just make sure it's something

29:07 you can do forever and doesn't bring upon other repercussions.

29:11 I think that non-exclusionary approaches to diets are

29:15 the the most sustainable for the rest of your life.

29:19 And when I and all I'm interested

29:20 in from a nutrition standpoint is something that's sustainable.

29:22 In terms of what you do eat,

29:24 how do you structure that um in terms of when you look down at a plate,

29:28 you've done these described this before,

29:30 but I think it's just a beautifully simple description cuz I think

29:32 a lot of people don't want to do calorie counting and all

29:35 this and I have what I like what I call plate

29:37 method and it's just it's just simple cuz it works for me.

29:39 When you have your plate,

29:40 you just simply look at it as like a like a clock, right?

29:45 And um if you just make a 9:20 on the clock,

29:49 so one arm goes over to the nine and one of the arms goes over to 20.

29:53 Cuz you're going to make a line towards 12:00, too.

29:56 And the largest portion is going to be your fibrous carbohydrates.

29:59 So that's the the you know, the green vegetables, all right?

30:02 So whether it be broccoli or Brussels sprouts or asparagus.

30:06 Those are the ones that give us a lot of the micronutrients we need.

30:09 They're the ones that are generally, you know, accepted as more healthy.

30:12 Um and they're also going to provide

30:14 the fiber that's going to be both beneficial

30:16 in terms of its impact on insulin and also just through filling you up, right?

30:21 And then I take the next largest portion

30:24 of that and I devote that towards protein.

30:26 And I think it's really important, especially for anybody active.

30:30 Um the more active you are, the more you embark on trying to build muscle,

30:33 you're going to need to have protein in every meal.

30:35 So I have that.

30:36 And again, you know, we're talking cleaner sources of protein.

30:39 But like I I am you'll never find like boiled chicken on my plate.

30:42 I'll have some sort of fish or chicken and but I they'll it

30:46 will be it will be cooked in a way that's that's like, you know,

30:49 it's got maybe some sauce on it or it's

30:51 got some maybe it's tomato sauce or it's anything

30:53 to just make it a little bit more palatable

30:55 and interesting without blowing the value of the meal.

30:57 And then that last portion is where I put my starchy carbohydrates.

31:00 And again, that's the part that some people will say exclude them entirely

31:03 cuz they're not healthy or they don't work for you or they're not,

31:05 you know, beneficial long-term.

31:07 For me, like most people, my body craves those carbohydrates.

31:11 I choose things like sweet potatoes, which is my favorite,

31:15 you know, or I'll have rice or I'll have pasta.

31:19 I will have those things.

31:19 I'm not excluding them,

31:20 but I don't put them in the portions that you would generally find.

31:23 No plan is going to work if you're eating stuff you don't like.

31:25 It's not going to work forever.

31:26 Nothing will.

31:27 You have to really enjoy what you're eating.

31:29 As long as these these uh variations of this meal are

31:33 something that you really enjoy and there are limited versions of them,

31:38 the reproducibility of that is simple.

31:40 If everyone listening to this podcast can figure out their nutrition issues,

31:44 this whole world would be different.

31:45 That is like one of the largest sources of disease

31:48 and and pain and discomfort because people really struggle with nutrition.

31:52 What are your thoughts in terms of the the nutrition science,

31:55 the train the training-related effects of um the post-training meal?

31:59 Is it something you think people should pay attention to?

32:02 I'm not very dogmatic about what specifically

32:05 to eat pre or post, you know, workout,

32:08 but I do think you should have protein um surrounding your your training,

32:12 whether that be ahead of time or after.

32:14 Protein could be a little bit hard to digest for some people.

32:18 So, if you do that pre-workout and then you're

32:20 finding your workouts slogging because you don't feel good,

32:23 then suddenly you put that after your meal.

32:25 But, this whole concept of the urgency of time has thankfully been removed

32:31 and we can just learn to eat a little bit more uh you know,

32:35 responsibly and even as far as pre-workout supplements.

32:38 a lot of people don't take them.

32:39 A lot of people don't like them, they don't take them,

32:41 they don't like they're not necessarily even being

32:43 used as the new nutritive side of the pre-workout,

32:47 they're just more new used to fuel the workout.

32:50 Um, for me it's water and some form of caffeine.

32:54 Yeah, I mean it's whatever, you know, again, I think it's important,

32:57 I do think it's important to maintain a high level of output.

33:00 So, if your pre-workout nutrition requires a stimulant in order

33:04 to help you do that, or if your pre-workout nutrition

33:07 is causing you to have a harder time to train

33:10 because you're feeling full or stomach ache or something else,

33:13 then then that that's not achieving what you're trying to do.

33:15 The ultimate goal is to still be able to perform at the highest level.

33:19 So, whatever your nutrition is required to allow you to still do

33:22 that, that is probably the most important factor of all of it.

33:24 I hate to say but it's a lot less scientific than we want to make it,

33:29 and as it seems to be coming back often times like

33:32 the thing that works for you is really the most important

33:35 thing because ultimately getting your ass in there and doing what

33:37 you do is is really the thing that provides the best benefit.

33:40 I think when you hear things like this that like, "Hey,

33:43 that will work and that will work too and that this will work too." You know,

33:47 rather than the dogmatic one way only approach,

33:51 um, which could be become discouraging for people.

33:53 Um, then I think it becomes a little bit uplifting like,

33:56 "Well, I've never tried that.

33:57 I've actually never tried a total body split or I've never tried,

34:00 you know, that style of eating." Like,

34:02 it becomes encouraging that you might want to explore

34:05 and then you might finally get locked in and say,

34:06 "I really like this." And then you're off and running.

34:09 On behalf of myself and all the listeners, I really want to thank you.

34:12 And what I love about all of this knowledge that you've given

34:16 us is that there's a there's a backbone of logic, you know,

34:20 and and some consistent themes indeed about consistency

34:22 and but the the the logical backbone I think is what,

34:25 um, will enable people to really show up to the table and stay there,

34:30 uh, for training consistently over time.

34:32 I'm happy I was able to make it work cuz I really have been

34:34 watching your stuff for a while and I really I love the science of it.

34:37 I like the way you think.

34:38 I'm just really fortunate I was able to do it.

34:40 Well, I feel very gratified in hearing that and and honored to have you here.

34:44 So, thank you [music] so much.

34:45 Thank you.