Splitting the Split for Real Life

Longevity ultimately is being able to maintain function as you age because again, it's not the number of years but the quality of the years. So all muscles in your body serve a function. You're training these muscles to get stronger and you're training you're balance. these are all skills that can be learned and improved. They're all trainable. If it's trainable, it's fixable Welcome to the Hberan Lab podcast 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 Jeff Cavalier. Jeff Cavier is a Master of Science in phhysical theraappy and a certified strength and conditioning specialist He is considered one of the world's foremost experts in training for both men and women to increase the strength and size of their muscles, their overall health and longevity. Today we discuss some of the things that are not often discussed and considered the small things. that are actually the big things, because they allow you to do the big things for your health and fitness and longevity decade after decade after decade, and to do so pain free and while making continual progress. We also discuss the typical big things, the specific multi joint exercises and cardio workouts that create the greatest results Today you'll learn some simple exercises that will strengthen and protect your back, your shoulders, even improve your foot strength, which most people don't think about, but turns out to be foundational for everything, your pressing and pulling movements, leg training, and your cardio, and that will allow you to live your daily life with vigor and ease at any age I must say, I'm a long time fan of Jeff's work, which he's been publishing to YouTube and elsewhere as Athleen X As you'll soon realize from today's episode, Jeff is far more than just another fitness trainer deep knowledge of human physiology and kinesiology, and he really understands that everybody's situation and body is different and thus needs different tools to address and solve their specific problems and to achieve their desired results I should also mention that Jeff and I went to the legendary Glds gym in Venice, California, where he took me through an arm workout, so biceps and triceps and forearms, and he showed me what has become his kind of signature move, which is face polulls, which are essential for improving your posture, for your rear delts, and for general stability of the shoulders So you can find a link to those workouts in the show note captions. 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, today's episode does include sponsors And now for today's discussion with Jeff Cavalier Jeff Cavalier, welcome back. Thank you for having me. This time it's nice to come out to California Yeah. Doll work out in? Yeah, we have a studio this time. Last time I think we were in in a rented apartment in New York City. It worked I say it then, I'll say it again. You're the man. I've been watching your videos and following your training advice for many years. I would say Mike Menser Dorian Yeates and you That's have merged the principles and very high humbling praise for me for sure. You're fifty Never touched gear, that's a slang for steroids. You're not on TRT, you've never done it. And you look amazing. I know you're very disciplined with your diet, your training, but you know you're married, you have two kids. you put in the work all over life. and you you're a testament to what's possible if people do things right. So today I want to talk about a number of things Something that I believe is not discussed enough, which you discuss a lot and it's just been transformative for me because I also happen to be fifty is We both know that the big things like Do the regular compound multi joint lifts regularly. That's all critical. We know the big stuff is critical And people talk about the big stuff all the time But you talk about the small stuff that makes the big stuff possible for decade after decade. And I credit you for fixing my back pain. I credit you for the fact that I basically have no pain despite training very hard for you know more than three decades. So let's talk about the small stuff, which is not actually the small stuff. I think of it as the kind of hinges and bolts on the system that allow that system to work. So Low back. shoulders These are the pieces that nobody wants to train, no one wants to think about, no one wants to talk about. So let's start right there How can we keep our lower back strong and pain free while also doing things like deadlifts and squats, etceter. I'm glad you're talking about all of this. obbviously. It's like it's such music to my ears, but I think the background of being a physical therapist is what set the stage for my focus on these things because When I was younger pre physical therapy days. I did all the dumb stuff too, and I did all the things just the big things and realized that wasn't necessarily a path to longevity, but in the immediate and in my twenties, I was really breaking down then. Like I had knee pain then. I had back pain then, I had shoulder pain then So I think peopleople who are in their twenties these days have the luxury of having access to videos like this where they don't just say, oh, that's just Maybe a hard workout Now they start to say, well, maybe I'm actually doing some damage here, right? Maybe I do need to pay attention to the smaller things And when we have enough videos out there that showcase these small things, For instance, you mentioned back pain, we talk about a major cause of back pain, not being structural back pain Right A lot of the times, The back pain that we suffer from in our lives is not surgical that doesn't need surgical treatment It just seems the right addressing of the muscles that contribute to that or how we allow muscles to get tight that That shouldn't get tight if we did four r inch of motion on certain exercises, right? So in particular, I mentioned the glute medius,? And the glute medius is a muscle that is going to control hip position, hip movement. So if it's controlling the position of our hips, that means it's controlling our pelvis. And if our pelvis is tilted or twisted or forward or backward, obviously the spine is literally adapting position of the pelvis beneath it because it's connected through the sacrum. How is that not important? right? So all these muscles that connect to the pelvis that change its position are inadvertently going to change the position of the low back, directly the lumbar spine that is going to likely cause dysfunction down the road if you don't address that. So it is these little tiny muscles and these little tiny exercises. So I made a video years ago about an exercise that you could do to help to loosen up If there was a knot in the glute medius, an area of spasm, a localized area of spasm. Be when the spasm is there you adjust the way you move,? You're in pain, so you're trying to move around that spasm Something as simple as this leg raise down and back while holding down that pressure point on the glute medias helps to alleviate some of that discomfort and that spasm to the point where you could restore normal motion again because you're not avoiding pain and all of a sudden that pain goes away. There's nothing structurally there Fine. That's a great video. It helped, I think fifty million people have seen it. We'll put a link to it. This is the one where people should everyone you should watch the video this literally erased my back pain what I thought was going to require surgery. You lie on your side, you know, one leg is in front of the other, toe down on the ground, you put it up and back. Jeff provides a beautiful description of what is essentially a very simple movement But if you do it properly Pain ates It's wild. and I thought it was a back issue, but It was a glute medius issue. Yeah, again, you feel you you can feel referred pain anywhere what happens next is Great, you solve that area of spasm. Why do we get spasm? Oftentimes it's because we're providing artificial stability to an area of weakness Spasm is basically the muscles holding on and saying, I need to protect this area And so if the muscles around the low back are protecting that area, there's a reason for it. It's probably because the muscles are supposed to be stronger are not strong enough So that doesn't mean that you do this one thing, you're done. Yes, you might have no back pain that day you might have relieved that episode But it means that there's an area of weakness that could benefit from strengthening it So you come back and you start to do glute media strengthening. I demonstrate an exercise where you Put yourself up against a wall. Right? And you stand on the leg outside the wall, furthest away from the wall. And you let yourself drop, just let your hips drop R they get lazy. when they drop like that You're The only way you can get them level again is to slide yourself back towards the wall. And that's abduction of the hip that way to get you back to level again. That is the gluteusis function to get you back to that level position Well, ironically, every time you lift a foot off the ground to walk, you're getting a pelvis that drops side to side.? Every time you go in single leg stance, the pelvis is going to drop a little bit. people that have less control of that have more of what they call a Trendelenberurg gait where the pelvis rock side to side as they wk. If you were looking at them from behind the back, you know, pick your preferred opposite gender folks and then the butt swinging from side. I look on Instagram but it not it's not going to do good for your back, right? So you go back and forth. Well all that uncontrolled motion starts to wre havoc and eventually, those muscles start to say, I got to provide this artificial stability. So what do I do? I spasm. And so If you don't extend the plan beyond the fix How do you then build that strength up to prevent it from coming back. And so I'm all about not just the fixes, but really about the preventative things you can do to stave this off long term So we'll talk about the structure of a really good basic program. And many people talk about that, you know, sets, reps, splits, et cetera But let's just assume for a second that Somebody listening to this is traraining their lower body Tice a week They're doing compound exercises and some isolation exercises. But they're dealing with some back pain or they're not twies, they're in their twenties or thirties or structurally they're blessed and they're not dealing with it. some additional things that we would call small things that make the big things possible for much longer and also make people stronger at the big things that people can do. Would you say back hyper extensions? wouldould you say watch your video on med glute medius training? What would be the exercise to insert and how many times per week to do it and when It's a good question. So yeah, reverse hypers are an amazing exercise. I like doing them because they're very easy to do anywhere. You don't have to have resistance on them. they make a great machine that actually provides resistance straps over your legs that you can put additional weight on The challenge for most people remember, they're chronically weak in these areas. So even just the body weight lifting of their own legs is going to be a significant enough challenge to get overload But you can literally do it on like your bed in the morning. You can get up, you lay enough of your torso on top of the bed so that you're not falling off the bed, but you can just have your legs hanging off, your bed and your body up on top of the bed and do a reverse hyper. So raising the heels, Rising the heels They're parallel with the floor. As level as you can get them. You know, again, the bed's a a little soft so sometimes you kind of down as you're lifting your legs, but it' stdy enough that you can get to almost a parallel position to the floor I like to make sure We'll talk about this, but like you're moving, the muscles are doing the work and not momentum, right? So you want to hold that contraction briefly at the top to convince yourself that you actually were able to perform the movement. So you get up, hold it for a second. And I think what's important on that too is peopleeople who don't have the strength in their glutes because it really is a glute weakness issue, not necessarily a low back issue lot of times it's weakness in the glutes that's transfering the load. to the low back that can't handle it And people get the symptoms in the back But it's the weakness somewhere else that's causing that. So I like to focus first and foremost on the glut glute max, glute me is to make sure that they're strong enough. And again, if you test even big time athletes, we would test their rotational strength of their hips Some of the strongest athletes, some of the biggest squatterters, some of the best lungers, right? Theyre lunging over two hundred pounds. They you put them in a position You try to bend their their their hip into internal or external rotation of their bent knee They can't resist it at all So they it just goes to show you that all the squatting, all the big lifts aren't enough to counteract the smaller muscles, right? There are different functions. A rotational muscle of the hip is not a sagittal plane muscle of the hip. It has a different function. So they all have to be strengthened. So along that line We will do the the reverse hyper as a good sagittal plane exercise focusing on the glute. When they get to the top and I tell you to contract it, squeeze so you know that's the glute that's squeezing and doing the work, notot that you're arching at the low back. that you're using the muscles that are already overworked in the first place. So get that up there, squeeze, reinforce that's the glute that did the work It's a great exercise. The glute medius, like I said, the hip bump, suuper easy exercise. You could do it anywhere in w wall to the wall against the wall. He could dowhere against the wall. Anything It is like a bump. Youically raise the leg that's closer to the wall, like ninety degrees outer one you're standing. It's almost like you're trying to slide that hip along the that's closer to the wall up the wall. So it's like, yeah, it's like a kind of like side booty bump to the wall but sliding it up. Yeah. ye. And this is sometimes where you have to invest and this is the small things, but you know they're also small investments A little mini hip band, you know, the little elastic bands, they're just loops, the little fit loop, they're called. putut it around your heels Lay on your belly Bend your knees to ninety degrees And then just try to open your feet apart Right? Spread your feet apart. So now you're strengthening rotation of the hip or hold one steady, let one leg, it's a little hard to show here, but let one leg come a little bit in front of the other and then try to cross it over the other one. So now you're getting external rotation of that hip. So you're working extraal rotation against resistance, internal rotation against resistance suuper easy things to do. You can you can attach a band around you're around your ankle and then you can do lateral hip swings, but with a component of rotating against the resistance of the band too. So I'm moving my leg out and rotating out at the same time. How do you do that? Just focus on your toe. If your toe is turning out, your hip is turning out. If your toe is turning in, your hip is turning in. So you don't have to focus so much on how do I move that, Just focus on what the foot is doing and you turn as long as the knee iss going with the foot, right? You're not just spinning the foot. The knee and the foot go together. So there's simple things. and again, you might need a band or a mini band or something to get these smaller muscles more specifically, but It's ten dollars, fifteen dollars for a band. It's well worth the investment if you can get rid of these long term recurrent issues that could come, you know back causing agony every two, three months is a reminder of what you're not doing I'd like to take a quick break to acknowledge one of our sponsors, David David makes protein bars unlike any other Their newest bar, the Bronze bar, has twenty grams of protein, only one hundred and fifty calories and zero grams of sugar I have to say, these are the best tasting protein bars I've ever had and I've tried a lot of protein bars over the years These new David bars have a marshmallow base and they're covered in chocolate coating, and they're absolutely incredible. I of course eat regular whole foods. 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The reverse hyper. and then the one that you put in a video and again, we'll put links to these that I found a little bit more of a setup but seems really useful is where you take some sort of rope or dog leash and you put it around your waist and then you actually have a weight between your your legs hanging a couple inches off the floor. and then the goal is to walk It makes you kind of have to kind of monster walker And the idea is to not let the weight swing and hit your feet. I know that sounds really awkward. But it really works and I know it works for a number of reasons. And by the way, all this strengthen other lifts for me dramatically, I was kind of a sticking point with a number of lower body lifts and upper body lifts. and it really seems like it helped create a real stability in the lower back glute area What is that dog leash thing doing? It's very simple, right? Just tie a weight between your legs and then you're trying to walk but not let it swing. Why does that work Anytime you could take these smaller exercises and bring them a little closer to actual function. I think it's better, it's better carryover. So if you're talking about actually being on your feet and walking, that's a step towards function. that's You're going to be more useful, I think But what you're doing is, as I mentioned before every time you pick up a foot off the ground, you're in single leg stance. So When when you're in single leg stance, if you're not contracting the glute media is on the side that you're standing on. Your pelvis is going to drop And drop in the side because you you're not balanced anymore. You're going to drop towards the up leg. You may not drop if you're consciously trying to stay level because you're firing the glute medius. But for someone that has a weak glute You just have them stand on that one leg and you're going to see that pelvis drop So when you're doing this test and you're adding the weight to the equation here, the weight is really to create a pendulum effect, right? Because when you start to move anything, that weight's going to want to go in an exaggerated way So What what we're trying to reinforce is, okay, can you do this and take these slow steps in these single alternating single leg stance and prevent that that weight from shifting so much. i. e. because you're dropping too much that it would hit or bang into the other leg. So you have to be able to walk slowly through single leg stance and not allow enough of a drop having good contraction and control of the glute medius so that it would minimize the weight itself. It would quiet the motion of the weight itself. So you're reinforcing how hard can I keep this thing engaged as I walk? And you know, if you could do this, the faster you could move yourself and still have minimal displacement of the weight will be a good indicor that wow, you're really starting to get good control and strength in those in that glute medius. Another thing I like to do is we call it a suitcase lunch Right? So you do a lunge where you offset the weight on one side. So you carry it in The If I'm going to lunge forward, put it on the opposite leg, right? Hold on the opposite side What that's going to theoretically do is obviously when I lunge forward, I'm going to want to fall to the side of the weight. Picture having even like a fifty pound weight or a sixty pound weight in your hand. It's going to want to go that direction. in this lunge position, if I can straighten my self out and keep my torso rigidly in place the whole time, then I can really strengthen that glute medi' on the opposite side. And what's cool about that is it's also done in conjunction with a sagittal ple lunch. So now I'm starting to train in multiple dimensions and planes at one time So a lunge in this direction, suitcase carry offset only one dumbbell, not on the other side, obviously. You're going to get that. desire for the body to fall towards the side of the offset weight. and again, that starts to shift the pelvis up. The only way we'll keep it down is by keeping the hip in and level and that pelvis stays level. So we'll do that with a lot of our athletes and work up to some pretty heavy weights there too. And again, it is a kill two burs of one stone type exercise because You still get the benefits of the lunge, which I love as an exercise. So let's say somebody is going to do some hip slide up the wall or and or reverse hypers or if they're lucky enough to have a gym with a reverse hyper machine or even a just a h h bench hyper extension machine. Right cllassic hyper extensions. go face in again the upper body moves and for classic hyper heels, whichich I like too, by the way. L that's more direct low back strengthening which is always good. L we can always strengthen our low backs. So those muscles need to be strengthened. But again, I would say more often the times the source of The low back pain is coming from the muscles beneath them that are weak, chronically weak like the glutes Okay, so reverse hypers, the hips sliding up the wall approach maybe the dog leash with weight between legs doesn't have to be a dog leash, folks, but you get the idea to try and minimize the hip sway Should those be done end of a lower body workout when the lower backac and glutes are partially fatigued or very fatigued or done separately at a time when they're really fresh. Two times. I think I think you could do them on a dedicated day at a dedicated time So I approach my ab training as ab training and I always keep it separate. I just like to focus on I'm going to do five to ten minutes of core strengthening right now here and now, separate from my workout. because I don't want it to be an afterthought. I think it should be it's a key component of what I do to keep a strong core. So I want to focus it and I don't want to add it to the end of my workout when I'm already mentally checked out Right, So I do that. I think when you start to have these issues that require special programming, right? then you should own that special programming because it's yours, It's what you need specifically. Others might need things for their shoulders or for the rotator cuff But like whatever special programming is, do it as a small routine on its own day at its own time, or even it could be on a workout day, but a separate time that you just go through as a routine Five minutes to seven minutes Three times a week or so. that's it If you want to put it on a training day It's actually not a bad idea to put these smaller muscle exercises or smaller focused exercises after your bigger training Be A, you're not going to compromise your big training and the goals that you have for for that, but you also are pre fatiguing some of those bigger muscles that are going to want to dominate these small movements anyway. The compensations that you're going to see on these small movements are always going to be the big muscles trying to kick in and do what they've always done which is take over. And you're trying to get them to not. So if you can pre fatigue them a little bit Prior to doing these small exercises, you're actually setting the smaller muscles up for more success Yeah, if I could travel back to my te and I started lifting when I was sixteen and twenties and thirties, I would have started doing all of these things a couple of times a week or even just once a week. even before there was any pain. Be I had the same I don't know if it's arrogance or just ignorance that o, you know, pain, like that's what old guys talk about. L I have no pain. I feel fine. like you know. I think by training a certain way without pain for a very long time, it's almost like the spring is getting compressed because It means that unless someone has perfect mechanics and they're covering all their bases through other sports and things of that sort. It's almost like The stronger, stronger, stronger you get, you're just setting yourself up for one of these things to go. And in my case, it was this lower back thing. and for some people it's their shoulder. When you're young, those things that up here as post workout soreness even can be masquerading for long term pain problems and dysfunction down the road Right? Be you're again, when we're young, we just feel, hey, well, I'm sore. I had a hard workout yesterday. I'm a little stiff Again, we get through it, we manage it. It's not that interruptive of our life at that point. So we move on. But I believe that those are many examples of what is potentially happening beneath the surface that if you continue down that road that normal workout soreness becomes more chronic joint pain, discomfort, movement limitations. and we also lose range of motion as we get older. So if we're not focusing on actually trying to maintain that, It just starts to pile up And it's one of those things where you look back back years later and go, wow, I can't believe I've lost this much range of motion or I can't believe I've gotten to this state when it really was just accumulation of many, many of those days of doing things where you weren't paying attention to all the little things So it doesn't really creep up on anybody. It's like it's happening, you know, and it's happening every day. It's not like you can't intervene. You just have to be aware of what you need to do to intervene. You have a post really humbled me and people are going to laugh. They're going to be like, I can't believe you can't do that. Well, now I can do it. I'll explain what it is in a moment. but a longevity test. Oh boy, that includes Test of balance. strength And um inner fortitude. And that's the put your shoes and socks on standanding on one foot, obviously one foot then the other. notot sitting down But doing that in the morning, every day, and I'll tell you If you're training hard, that lower back iss going to ache a little bit when you first, you know, first thing in the morning. This is a very cool test. and I force myself to do it now And I have to say a lot of morning, I'm like, I just want to sit down and put my shoes on, you know. And I got this puppy now and he's grabbing shoelaces, which makes it even more dynamic In all seriousness, it's a very interesting, very simple test. If you could just explain what it is, folks, trust me, you want to do this every single day. So they call the old man test is gender neutral though it could be a woman test. Everybody is fair game. The goal here is to simply put your Sock in your shoe on the floor on both sides, lam down in front of you. on tie shoes make them sure they're loose enough that you could get them on your foot Stand on one foot to begin the test Lean over, pick up that shoe or pick up that sock, put the sock on Pick up that shoe, put it on, tie it and then put the foot down. only after you've tied the shoe can you put it down and then go and do the other side. and It is difficult. It is very, very difficult. It happens to be one of the tests that I do a little bit better than other tests, but we were joking before I told you that aboutbout twice a year, I still get back pain every now and then and mine came from leaning over to put my sock on the other day and my whole back felt like it was gonna blow up on me like that. So there's a lot going on inside the body when you're doing this, right? Why would my back all of a sudden seize up on me when I'm going toick put on my sock? becausecause you don't realize the responsibility that those lumbar parispinal muscles have in trying to control even just leaning forward. And they're trying to make sure that you're doing it at a pace that's safe for your spine So Doing this every day is a little mini worked out for those muscles. And again, we I think we tend to get so lazy as we get older and complacent and so that Once you start sitting down, you're just going to sit down when you put on your socks and shoes What's the need to get up in this every day if I'm comfortable putting it you doing this sitting down. O wow, this was easier because I sat down today You can't be seeking easy. If you seek easy, you're going to get old a lot faster. So this test is testing your balance. It is testing against some of the M dynamic control from those muscles in the low back It's it's testing your ankle mobility in a way because you're going to get a lot of this going on the perturbation through your ankles in your knees and it's testing your hip strength because again, once you go on one leg You're now talking about pelvic control the same way we did before. So you have to have good strength there. It's not uncommon for people to not be able to pass this test. But with practice, like anything else You're training these muscles to get stronger and you're training you're balanced these are all skills that can be learned and improved. They're all trainable. I actually put a a video out not long ago about different measures of of longevity and one of them was that test. Another one was pull ups. anotherother one was the number of pushups you could do. we could talk about these afterward the number one was like going back to your glute media strengthen. Can you lay? in a sid lying plank position. top leg up About forty five degrees You could keep it stacked, it's a lot easier to stay in a plank position. You raise that leg off of the other, now it's all relying on that lateral pillar strength of the underside hip, the one closest to the floor. So one arm down. one stack on the elbow. Okay, heels stacked at first. Yeah at first. Okay on your side. So side plank, not just lying on your side. sideide plank. It's not typically the picnic date stance.' G ling on yourry side plank and then you're going to raise the top leg to make a forty five forty five trees and see if you could hold that even for just thirty seconds And it's difficult. You'll feel a lot of shaking, you'll feel a lot of of u sagging of that bottom hip because you're asking your glutedus on that underside leg to hold you up into that position. So the beauty about That series of tests, though is that they're all trainable And So if it's trainable, it's fixable You can improve as you have, right? You're now much better at the test old manest. Oh yeah, O manantest. Yeahah, definitely. There are mornings when I want to cross one leg over the other. kind of go into like what do they call that like kind of pseudo crow pose they talk about in yoga to like rest the ankle and they was like, ye, yeah yeah. And sometimes People are probably laughing at this. Go try it.es. Some people might do it just right away It is very easy. Many people will find this diffic Like to the point where're like, I don't think I can do this, and quickly get good at it. Yeah, strength is not even like a determining factor or predictor here either. You could be very, very strong and do incredibly poorly on this test because you're not strong in these areas or you could just have Fab. vestibular balance, right? It could be that alone. Once you start to lean forward or look down, you don't have good control. But it is testing a variety of things. and if you do poorly on it, you can look a little deeper and investigate a little deeper through additional tests to try to find out exactly where your weakness is. but it's a good broad spectrum test to see how good your functional balances Yeah, some people people might wonder, how do you work up to it? There's something called Velcro shoes. No, I'm just kidding or slippers like there it's easier, right? It's going be quicker right Right. Yeah. I think It's definitely worth trying. And I think identifying these weak points, I think is just so critical. I'm probably gonna to say this twenty times during today's recording, but for the young guys in gas who are thinking, oh, like that thing is so easy. Trust me, with time, it's the gradual creep of little things that you stop doing I'm to add the side plank in I just haven't been doing much planking, not much isometric stuff. and I'm sure that I've got a weakness somewhere along the chain of muscles that's required to do that properly. Yeah. And what I love about these sorts of small things that support doing the big things for much, much longer, hopefully forever, is that don't have to be done as part of the standard workout and they can be incorporated into Like you're watching something on Netflix and you just kind of move some furniture out of the way and you just do these at that time, which is really cool and important because it's not just about like an additional workout because people are slammed. They've got so much to do. and like, how am I supposed to do all this stuff and beiew with sunlight and this and that. But it it's straightforward. Yeah. that look, I think the thing that you've done better than anybody is practical implementation of the things that are going to benefit people that are not time consuming or overly time consuming, they're easily implemented. A lot of what I focus on is when we're talking about these drills or exercises to do. A lot of them are body weeight or a lot of them are done in minimal space because the more elaborate it becomes, the more time consuming it is or whatever it is, There's just so many reasons for people not to do them. And they are going to be viewed as the extra stuff until they become adopted and they realize how much they're helping them It's always going to be viewed as the extra stuff originally. So to get someone to buy into the concept O up the time frame where they can do them. Let them do it during watching Netflix. Let them do it while me while I'm on the floor doing some crunches after I've already done my workout. like open up the restrictions so that you're still getting the effect, but you're minimizing the the prescription of it so it's so demanding people don't want to do it. So one thing that I don't think we've ever talked about on this podcast is that many of people don't just work out. They also play a sport. mayaybe they do golf or maybe baseball or softball, maybe they swim. in every sport there' obbviously, dominant patterns of movement. And there's a lot that's out there about how to train to improve those patterns of movement I'd like to ask the opposite question. Let's say somebody played baseball or golfed or Whatever their sport was. and now they have imbalances that are the consequence of having done some activity like a golf swing over and over and over, standing in a particular way and they have pain and they are thinking about longevity, not just of their golf game, but of everything else tennis, whatever. just pick your sport. I think this is very common and not commonly discussed What can people do to compensate for these unilateral movements or for these, you know, always left foot forward type stance things that won't compromise their game? also overcome any pain and imbalances. I've always been curious about this That brings up the point of like, how sport specific training has evolved over the years. There was a time when Sport specific training meant doing everything that you could to replicate the motions of the sport and trying to strengthen those movement patterns I think gladly we've moved past that stage of training because You can get better at that movement pattern by simply doing that movement pattern You can increase the strength of your entire body by increasing the strength of your entire body. So the focus of the weight room can be to do your general strengthing bilaterally, regardless of what movement pattern, direction your sport favors and improve the strength there and the function there because The carryover to your movement pattern is there. L when you get stronger and then you go back to swing a back. You're going to still have the increased strength that you built in the weight room. in your swing of the baseball bag. and you can throw harder if you're a pitcher or you can throw further if you're a quarterback. if you improve your overall arm strength and your upper body strength A lot of upper body throwing strength has nothing to do with your arm. It has to do with the stability of your core. So if you're getting much stronger in your core, you can have more torque generation to throw the ball further without having to do anything to your arm So I think the strategy should be that When you're playing a sport devoting a lot of time to it, whether at the professional level or not you still should focusing the majority of your Strength training and conditioning work. towards your overall balanced physique, trying to get strong across your entire body. Let the skill work be the skill work And if you want to focus on, there are certainly a few things we mentioned a couple when we were at the gym yesterday, but a few things that specific athletes can do to improve their specific skill. And that's fine. from a strength training perspective. And that's fine. like maybe more forearm work if you're having to swing a rackquet or a bat, right? That's fine. that can be done in addition to your basic core lifting. to go back to the days where The strength training was basically replicating the motions of the sport especially nowadays where you've got athletes who never stop playing their sport It's young athletes they're playing baseball year round through all these fall leagues and winter leagues. and like there's way too much repetition of the same movement pattern. And that doesn't end well because you can see what's happening these days with pitchers, like it's almost a rite of passage. how many years are they going to be able to pitch before they have to have a Tommmy Johns surgery What is the Tommy Johns?lono collateral ligament you know, basically being replaced or it tears in their elbow. They're out for an entire season. but it's like Some of these pictchers, it's like they want to get it done early so they can hopefully come back and then have a string of years where they can dominate Its it's crazy, but I think a lot of it is coming from A lot of overuse, a lot of repetition, not enough moving into other sports and movement patterns to balance off the strains and stresses that they're going doing in that sport, their chosen sport And and' and it's causing a lot of avoidable, avoidable stress that again Just fixing it through a more managed, well balanced approach in the weight room is probably key number one That's interesting. that's not the answer I expected, but reallyally cool to hear that. So doing the classic all around weight training, you know, squats, some deadlifts. It also should be to strengthen to strengthen your body to improve your flexibility everywhere. to you know, if you're talking about Let's say a situation with a pitcher where you have hypermobility of your shoulder because you move your' throwing requires a lot more range of motion than a non throwing shoulder You don't have to say, well, I'm mobilizing my shoulders now, so I have to do a lot of mobility work on my throwing shoulder. That might not be necessary. In some cases, you might want to not do that because it's already mobile enough because of the skill work. So it's not like a broad, you do everything you do here, you do there on each side. you might want to actually steer away from some of the things that you're repetitively using in the and the in the sport itself, but from a strengthening standpoint You'll never go wrong, sticking to the core lifts, building up your strength in those core lifts, bilaterally strengthening your body and your balance and your coordination and your explosivity and your power. you're not going to go wrong. That does transfer back over to the sport itself. People think that it has to be in this sport specific motion to transfer back over there. That that's not true One thing I noticed yesterday when we were training as well as in your videos is that Whenever you have the opportunity to do a movement standing as opposed to seated, you'll do that. Whenever you have the opportunity to stagger your stance a bit not fully lunging, but offset your stance a bit, you'll do that. And then you also talked about evenven on a dumbbell curl leaning a bit toward the side that you're curling up assuming you're doing alternating dumbbell curls can be very useful. Would you sort of explain the general logic for that? and then maybe we can touch into a few of the specific examples I have a phrase if you want to look like an athlete, you have to train like an athlete, right? And what that really means is like sure, people might while I look athletic they want to have an athletic physique. They want to have the six pack abs. they want to have what they think is an athletic looking physique. That's great because a lot of people want that You have to train for it. It comes at a price. have There's a way to get there. And I believe that the way to get there is by training like an athlete. Do doesn't mean you have to start going out and doing again all these things that people thought is what athletes need to do to be athletic You just have to start A, caring a little bit more about what you do. So treat it like you're an athlete and these little things matter. It goes back to the original point. The little things matter just like they would if this was your contract on the line, every little thing would matter But more importantly, functionally what athletes do Most athletes, not all, but most athletes are on their feet Most athletes move around You move around, you're not squared up with your feet right next to each other unless you're You know, I mean, and one phase of an offensive lyman's u duty, they stand up and their feet are square, but they quickly stagger their feet for more stability. So you need to be able to operate from that position, I think as often as you can because It's not to produce professional athletes, It's to produce a body that's functioning the way it prefers to function. Why do we default do that If I told you Andro, I'm going to come over here I'm going try to push you over right now. Would you stand up like this or would you put one foot back Like by default, you would instantly go to one foot back and you try to lean into me and get get more stable because your body instantly knows that's a more stable position If I can train with more stability I know I can decrease injury risk no matter what I'm doing. You talked about even something as simple as the curl when I It's not just looking at the bicep, but when I turn towards the bicep and I kind of screw I call it screwing down. as I screw down on that weight I'm able to stabilize the torso a little bit more over this shoulder. I can even dig the arm into my side a little bit engaging the lats, stabilizing the shoulder girdle so that when I lift the weight, I have more Tension in the biceps is number one, but more stability that the biceps can work from by stabilizing the entire shoulder girdle. When I'm out in space like this, it's a little bit more of a free willing deal here where I don't have that stability. So is something going to happen or go wrong from doing that? No, but that's not creating the most functionally stable body. So by turning your body around that arm, keeping it stable in your side and curling I'm able to create a little bit more stability there. I take it to the same way down to the ground with a lunge When you lunge and do my favorite reverse lunch takes a little bit of stress off the anterior stpping backward. step backwards rather than forward. Just again, I'm sensitive to that because I have pretty bad knees. from those early days in the twenties of doing things wrong with flat feet You want to as you step back A, take a little bit of a wider step on that back leg. So you're creating a wider base of support, more balance, right rather than being completely narrow. Not just staggering my stance, but staggering and widening my base of support is key. It's funny. you're in the gym with people, I'm not a trainer, but occasionally I've shown some people how to do some things and you say, widen your stance. They immediately put one foot further out in front of the other, but what you're talking about is getting them where the space between the the insides of your feet further apart. so literally wide widing outside should lthen your stance. Right. and especially as you lengthen your stance, widening them in conjunction is going to create a wider base support more stability. So when we do that you step back, you create a little bit of that width and balance. but as I go down into the lunge, you'll find If you don't lean your torso or turn your torso a little bit in the direction of that for leg and kind of do that same screwing down effect that I talk about That front leg wobble a little bit, you'll feel that the hip is a little bit more unstable. Back to again, that single leg suitcase lunge we talked about where that hip drops and you get a lot of that instability. I want to be able to turn and sort of screw down on that hip and what I'm doing is basically kind of tying the muscles of the pelvis together. muscles of the hip co contracting and creating more stability so that now when I ask that quad and gluten hamstring to to work and push me back to a standing position, it's working more efficiently because it's on a stable base I've mentioned before, If you're going to Jump and try to get the highest verticalump jump we could Would you jump off this ground, this floor or this table? orr would you jump off of sand Jump off of firmir. jump off of sand. as soon as you try to place force down into the ground, it's going to dissipate because the ground itself is moving. When we want to create as much force and efficient force as possible, we want to have a stable base. So all that co contraction of the hip when you screw down into it or even in the shoulder girdle, you're going to then operate this this elbow flexion, shoulder flexion, movement of a curl, then you basically get a more efficient movement. So stability is a key for M efficient movement and also I think long term safer movement As many of you know, I've been taking AG one for nearly fifteen years now I discovered it way back in twenty twelve, long before I had a podcast and I've been taking it every day since. AG one is to my knowledge, the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional supplements on the market. It combines vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, and adaptogens into a single scoop that's easy to drink and tastes great. 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For a limited time, AG one is giving away a weak supply of AGZ, which is their sleep supplement and a free bottle of vitamin D three K two with your subscription. AGZ is something that I help design. It tastes great, and it's the only sleep supplement I take. It has a collection of different things in it that has dramatically improved my sleep, both my slow wave deep sleep and my rapid eye movement sleep. and I absolutely love it. Again, that's drinkagG one. com slash Hubberman to get a weak supply of AG Z and a bottle of D three K two with your subscription jumping around a little bit here, but I calling the many things that have reversed or eliminated pain that is very common in anyone that works out in one of those, you mention it is pain at the kind of inner elbow point, kind of forearm, inner elbow. and I figured I had an elbow problem. I had something going on with tendonis of the elbow and you know Turns out It was Further away from that, it was all happening at the level of the grip. Yeah. You said and I listened fortunately, on pull ups to not let the bar be at my fingertips to try and get my knuckles over the bar, right? And you have a beautiful demonstration of this. It almost sounds like that trick that kids do where they go, hey pull my finger, you know, It's not that trick, folks, but where you got to put some resistance to each of your own fingers like your index finger, your middle finger, your ring finger and then your pinky finger. And when you put the pressure on that pinky finger, you can feel it right at that elbow. And so sure enough, I was causing this elbow pain by doing you know pull ups slipping off the bar a bit and I'm at my fingertips. As soon as I took your advice and got my knuckles over the bar, even though it requires a little bit of a wrist bend Fure enough, I haven't had elbow pain in decade It is one of those things that can happen so quickly too. L you could go from having no elbow pain to the very next day having elbow pain or even right after the workout doing elbow pain, if you're doing a lot of chin ups with this issue where the bar is too far away. And it's just an overload issue. Essentially the muscles, the flexors, the deep flexors of the forearm that run down into the fingers It's actually the ring and fifth fingers. So the fourth and fifth finger that tend to be the weakest and least resilient to that kind of stress. If you're gripping through there and that bar gets deep into the into the fingers Or if you do it where you're doing a curl, even if the bar sits too deep into your hand there and you try to curl head toward the ends of your f end your fingers. Yeah when you not into the actual meat of your hand. It's just a lot of strain more than that muscle is really built for to handle. And those tendons get a little bit strained and it can immediately feel like a knife in the elbow feel. and it takes a long time to go away becausecause How many other exercises do you do where you're gri and requiring their grip to be in place to do that. Now if you want to intentionally do this, you can do it intentionally, let's say a an underhand lap pull down like they call a hook grip because what people wanted to discourage people from doing is pulling down too much with the bar, right causing too much form involvement in whatever back exercise I'm trying to do But in that case, you're really trying to hook through the stronger fingers of the index finger, middle finger, right? And even the just you're getting a little bit of assistance on the ring finger, but you're really trying to hook through there. All four fingers might be on the bar, but most of the force is being held through there. and you're still pulling down a lot through your lats to pull that bar down. So it's not like you're just letting it hold all of the weight But that that little hook grip is meant to discourage any meaningful risk flelection that would take over and take away some of the work of the lats. But if you've got a history of elbow issues, You don't need to use that grip Like that's just it's just not worth it. The extra benefit of a little extra form involvement may not be worth it for you But for people who find that they don't have elbow issues and they want to get a little bit of that You can do it in an intentional way, but you really have to kind of steer away from making these fingers do the bulk of the work. How did you figure that out by having that issue multiple times? Yeah, I mean I was just, again, you know, just blown away. It was like, okay, I've got this inner elbow pain and I'm like curling and I'm doing my tricep work and my back work and I'm wondering, okay, what's wrong with my elbows and you know That time, you know, young guy like what's going on and then And then it makes perfect sense, as you point out, you know, ring finger, pinky finger are are taking too much of at the load at near the tips of the fingers force myself to put the bar or the dumbbell in the meat in my hand Yeah now we take a more traditional grip, right? you're not like relying on that those distal tends to have to do all that work and manage that load. Now now the hand can hold on to hundreds and hundreds of pounds, right? So if we can just get it into the mat of the hand, now I'm getting all the assistance of the intrinsic hand muscles on top of it. so now it's no longer a strain or a stress to those particular tendons. Believe me Two things contribute to me figuring these things out. Number one, being a physical therapist changed everything for me because I had to think of things differently. Number two, when you're treating patients Not everyone presents the same. So you have to come up with alternative ways to get to the same end result I might be able to tell nine out of ten people to do a Bulgarian split squat to alleviate knee pain But for that tenth person, it just lights them up and they can't do it. You have to be able to figure out how to how to work around that. And the second thing is that I had the unfortunate but fortunate experience of having to deal with a lot of these things for my life in the early years. and even still now, I still do things that cause inflammation and a need to reassess and look at what I'm doing and maybe why And like you, I didn I knew when I first started experiencing that pain also in my twenties, like That wasn't I didn't have an elbow issoue.ike, there's nothing structur wrong my elbow. so I had to look somewhere else. I didn't look then, but I looked when I got older and had way too many of those incidents happen. So it forces you to look and it forces me to look. I have to look because this is what I do for a living, but it forces me to look. and figure out what's causing this And more importantly, what can you do to stop it I and many others are eternally grateful because that inner elbow pain, the lower back pain. Yeah, they're brutal. L they they can really take the they can really take the pleasure out of a lot of things because it's not just during training. Yeah the shoulders I'm going to knock on wood in a second because I've been fortunate that my shoulders haven't gi me issues but that means it's probably just next. But perhaps that's also the consequence of having againain, listen to your content and Whenever possible, I've tried to get into external rotation, which is if I reference the fonts, will anyone know what I'm talking about? s thumbs out and you know, giving the thumbs up, but thumbs rotated away from the belly button, away from the midline. Could you explain where the shoulder tends to be most vulnerable in this business of internal thumbs pointing toward the belly button versus external rotation during all sorts of movements and also just daily life good point here too is on top of the thumbs is, you know, not just the flipping of the hand itself through supination and pronation of the forearm, but literally letting the elbow kind of travel with that right right? So you're letting everything move together because it's the rotation that's happening in this joint, this ball and socket up top Shers got to rotate out with it with it. Right. So we're not ling our elbow. We're not just talking about moving your thumbs away from your belly button out. For those just listening, we're talking about getting the elbows withid in a bit more as those thumbs go out, the shoulders externally rotate as well. Yeah, which is key. The issue with internal rotation, external rotation is that they're both motions of the shoulder, right? We We need both of them. We need to be able if you go back to the pitcher, he needs to be able to externally rotate, and then of course, internally rotate to throw the ball I'm not saying that internal rotation is is the devil. What we need though is the ability to control internal rotation, we need to be the ability to have enough external rotation strength to hold that position for longer or to be able to control, right? The the eccentric control from the External rotators is what actually controls the internal rotation. e centrer control from the internal rotorsor exn rotators from then rotators control intern rotation Because as we're lengthening the external rotators, we're controlling if we have good control, the e centrer control of that, then we're slowing down the internal rotation or at least controlling it at a certain pace. That's extremely important when it comes to pitching We have this rapid internal rotation going on right that essentially the thumb is moving toward the midline to thright. And so is the Thats so the elbows sos your shoulder. So if the external rotators are eccentrically strong They can control that and control the pace of that and make sure that it's not outpacing what you're Y shoulder itself can structurally protect So it's important to have that too. why intern rotation in the world of the non athlete. is particularly problematic if A, you're postally holding that position for way too long throughout the day and which is what we all chronically are suffering from, whether we're texting, typing not focusing ever on the external rotators of our you know, in our training You're just getting chronically tight and internally rotated And then when you go to do even basasic things like lift your arm up over your head. You're creating an internal shoulder environment that's more prone O two creating less space in inflaming tissues that wind up getting pinched in that position basasically when you're tight internally you get changes to the shoulder capsule itself, which is all the ligamented structures that surround it make you more intnally rotated and tight. You can't get out of that position. So now when I go to raise my arm up There's just less room in here For instance, I think we might have done this before you and I, but if I were to have you just lean forward like this or slump your shoulder and then raise your arm as high as you could in front of you That's as far as you get R And you're limited, not because of anything that's necessarily tight right there. but structurally there's a bony bump on the top of your humerus that's actually getting stuck on the upper portion of your shoulder joint there. So now bring your arm down, openen up your chest as much as you can, turn your arm out a little bit, now raise it up overhead and it goes higher. Why? Because you just create external rotation inside the joint that allows it now to go up in a higher position. Well what happens if you're chronically in this position of internal rotation and you go to raise your arm, you go to wash your hair, you go to get stuff out of the cabinet, you go to do all the things you do every day. Every time with there being less space in there, there's more likelihood to pinch on a superpinous tendon. There's more likelihood to be pinched on a burster. there's more and every time we pinch We potentially inflame and cause more swelling inside that joint, which causes less joint space Right? So inflaming those tissues more more compression in that joint and then more pain ultimately and then that winds up causing down the road things like partial thickness, tears and tears of the rotator cuff that we don't want. interternal rotation in this elevated position is not. having external rotation abilities or strength that can help to centralized, what it really does when people talk about rotator cuff training is yes, you're working the external rotators, but what its main job is to actually keep that ball centered in the middle of the socket. I see So as you go and you raise your arm up in an internally rotated dominated dominant shoulder, it will migrate up. Why? Because the deltoid it pulls up So as you're raising your shoulder up The delto is pulling that humorus up and the interpretation of the Other muscles that are already too tight, chronically tight are just keeping it in the front side anyway. So you're lifting your arm up and you're getting very little space what the external rotators will do is they'll keep it centered so that as you raise, instead of it migrating up, It's countering the force of the deltoid. So it's staying in the middle and it basically can rotate and stay right in the middle where it has to be. You're not getting this migration or pinching going on So That's the real function of the rotator cuff is to maintain a more centralized position with less of this pinching. You really have to focus on when we're talking about avoiding shoulder issues biggest thing you can do is startar traying the rotator cuff not stop training the rotator cuff. And if you're doing a lot of heavy pressing or a lot of work with exercises that tend to internally rotate your shoulders now, then you have to do even more work for the rotator cuff to try to maintain that balance. If you're doing all kinds of delt work and you're never doing rotator cuff work, you're just creating and more of that imbalance I think the biggest thing you can do is maintain mobility of the shoulder, mobility of the shoulder girdle itself so the scapula being able to rotate and then having strength of the muscles of that shoulder girdle, which are the rotator cuff. Those are the three main things you can do. Keep that shoulder functioning well and staying out of this domination of inter rotation with elevation. What's your favorite external rotator Exercise. My favorite is just simply attaching a band to a stable be a stair like a stair post or it could be in a gym, just a rack, right? And you step away, you put the Bandon your hand From the anchor point, you're going to step out until there's good tension on the band. If you were to let it relax, you would pull your hand towards your chest, towards your belly You externally rotate. about Back to neutral or a little bit beyond if you can. A little bit beyond your torso. Yeahep. yeah. a little beyond your torso. if you can, it's even better if you have that range of motion. sometometimes people don't And when you get it there, you again, hold it, right? You hold it for a second, just so you know that you actually muscled it out there and you didn't just swing it out there The number one thing people do here to cheat And we talk about this, we talked about it in the gym quite a bit. Y body knows how to compensate. L If you ever want to know what you're doing wrong, just look at yourself in a mirror and then look and see what your body's trying to do, youll realize the compensation is the direct opposite of what it's not doing, what the job is avoiding. So when the rotator cf is trying to externally rotate the shoulder The way I can avoid that is just lift my elbow away from my side I can get my hand from here to here if I raise my arm out to the side, but now I'm using my delt to do it and not the rotior. Keep that elbow pined. You gotta keep the elbow pined to the torso. So the easiest thing you do is just put something underneath your arm A little towel, fold a towel, put it underneath there and then do the exercise. And if you find that your towel is dropping to the floor, it's obviously that because you're lifting your shoulder your elbow away from your body and you're using the wrong muscle Do this is a warm up, Do do it at the end of the workout. how many sets, how many reps, how many times a week? There's different applications of it. You can do it before a workout. So if I'm going to press, like let's say bench press I could use this as a good warm upp before I go press almost as a neuro activation technique to make sure those muscles are alert and firing so I can make sure that they're working when I go to press to keep my shoulders back in a better position. And especially as I raise my arms up in an overhead press, I can make sure that They're alert, they're fired up, they're willing to contribute to keep that head centered when the arms going up overhead. So I like to do them on pressing days as a neuroactivator before I train and it's serving as a warm upp too. O on other days, again, treating it as my special program, which is what I have to do because of all the issues that I've had with my shoulders. againain, not from this one didn't come necessarily from bad training, but just dumb decisions, trying to throw a baseball back the Mets, I lost a bet It's not famous at this point, but like playler bet me that I couldn't throw the ball from well, let's rephrase that. I bet that I could throw the ball from right field to third base on the fly Be it just looked rather short from where I was, but it's actually a lot longer and only the better arms and baseball can actually do that really easily. So I have no idea why I thought I could But I did and literally the The moment I let that ball go I feel like my Labrurn went with it, maybe landed somewhere near second base because it just It felt like a burning zipper pain in my shoulder. and I've had to deal with it ever since. Did the ball get to the third base? Oh, no, no way. No. I think it landed with the laborat at like second base, you know, like. No way. You know, I learned my lesson, but The fact is it's something that you can you can adopt pretty easily as a special programming type thing Um And there's things you could do too to make it a little bit more interesting. like once you get into a position where you could do the actual repetition, you could then hold it You know neeutral position. neeutral for this exercise would be not in, not out. where your fist is pointing straight ahead. and then then take a big giant step away from the band So you're increasing the resistance of the band. dynamically, but still having to keep yourself in that same position elbows still locked to the side fist out in front of you, you're holding the band, there's tension. Yeah. Step away from the bar that the band is fixed to, so there's additional tension. Yeah. And it's going to want to pull your hand back. but you keep it right where it is. And the fun part of it is that I could then take it even further. I could jump out there So now it becomes a little bit more ballistic and dynamic. So I can be in this position and then jump And if I jump quickly Now it really wants to pull me in, but I have to still keep that same position here. So it's mimicking a little bit more of a ballistically dynamic force. So I could do that. I could start to change the angle. I could be here in this position now facing facing the anchor point and it still wants to pull me into internal rotation. band in front of you not to the side. Right And I could jump back and see if it pulls me down in this direction. Internal external rotation is is done so many different ways. Ag, I could be in this position here. I'm just reaching my arm out in front of me and turning my my arm all the way thumbs down to the floor, all the way back past the sky and then thumbs out towards my side, right? That's internal external rotation. I don't even have a bent elbow R? Because we're talking about a shoulder movement, not an elbow movement. But when we do it, we could do it down low. It's going to be easier for people to start. And the more things you start to do with external rotation, internal rotation with the arm elevated, the more challenging it starts to become So you progressively move towards movements where you're internally externally rotating against resistance in a higher and higher arm position loveove it. I want to take care of my shoulders. For me, neck training has been fundamentally important for avoiding injury outside of the gym, got rear ended in a car I just bought, my first car, this was many years ago, two thousand five CRV. I'm like driving my first new car. I' driven, you know, used cars before. parked at the light or stopped at the light rather and all of a sudden just rack, someone just ran into me person next to me ended up with some pretty bad whiplash and back pain. I was a little sore but, um Nothing really and you know, it's not a controlled experiment, but I credit that. U 've been training my neck evenven back then, I learned how to do it properly from you in your video and we will definitely provide a link to it. I talk about this nonstop.. This video is so valuable. You don't need any special equipment. some standard plates and a towel, but This neck thing it iss not just for fighters It's your upper spine posturally I feel like people don't like nowadays everyone's posture is so terrible. Posturally it makes your default posture better. something we're always all working on. but training for men and women. I think men probably would be okay with having a Most of them would be like, o, cool, I'll get a slightly bigger neck. Women probably want to avoid that. Is there a way that Women or men, but tends to be women who want to have you know great posture, a strong neck, but they want to maintain that kind of you know like elegant neck. They don't want a thicker neck. Is there a way that they can strengthen the neck muscles and achieve that without thickening the neck Yeah, I think that women would be less resistant to the idea of having a stronger neck. I think as long as we weren't talking about building massive traps along with it, right? And I think that they think neck and traps because they do feed into each other. The reason why men who train their neck tend to have a better much thicker look to their neck better for men is that They're also in conjunction, likely training their traps either directly or indirectly through some of the other movements of doing and in a heavy way Women who tend to train their neck directly and not focused on building their traps at the same time They're just going to have a stronger neck because they're not necessarily the biggest muscles in here that grow substantially. And again, when you look at the proportional growth in muscles from men and women There's already a difference in how big these muscles will grow male versus female. But now in an area where the muscles themselves don't grow to astronomically large proportions, you really aren't going to get that much size in the neck. And I think women are chronically underrained when it comes to the neck. I can't tell you how often that you'll prescribe some kind of an ab routine. And I'm not even thinking about the repercussions on the neck because for me, it's like it's no strain at all. But a lot of people will complain and most often it's women that just doing the crunch, because I don't want them holding onto their neck and cranking on their neck during a crunch They'll say my neck is hurting. I can't do that. I can't do that routine. It's only hurting because of fatigue Not because their neck is being held in one position and their fingers are just basically touching back there to just keep them away from cranking. and it's also that's how you want them people crunch is not cranking not pushing that Yeah. So just touching the back of their head touching the back of your head lightightly in. what you're getting there also is a little extra weight the way of your arms back there is going to provide a little bit of extra resistance on a basic crunch But it's also leaving the neck unsupported because so often people are used to holding the entire weight to their head. And then what happens is they start to fatigue and they're ab Here we go again. What is the body' natural compensation? They know that the eyes have to get up when they're doing a crunch. The eyes have to raise up. So what do they do? They just pull on the head and the eyes come up and they're not doing any more work for their abs, but they've gotten to where they thought they were supposed to be. Natural compensation gone wrong That's not what we want to do. So when women are encouraged to do it, quote unquote, right and don't pull on your neck, they don't have the strength in their anterior neck to do that So doing this next series that you're referring to is a great way strengthen the neck. and again, depending on how much weight you use, you could just use a five or ten pound plate and have plenty of overload there to create a stronger neck without a lot of hypertrophy. And for those that aren't aware that the series is simply Taking a plate. let's just say we start really light. We take a five pound plate We wrap it in a towel Nice cushy towel, so it's not uncomfortable at all. He lay on a bench And you're going to go basically in four different directions. You're going rotate your body's position on that bench in four different ways to work the extensors the flexors and then the lateral neck muscles both left and right sides. So all you have to do is let's say you're starting on your back, you lay on your back headad is off the edge of the bench Nice cushy towel with the plate inside of it is put up on top of your forehead. You allow yourself to lean your head back As you come up, you want to also pull your chin down, right? Be you're not just trying to like ovextend or hyerextend your neck at any point. You want to the stability we talked about before, whether it be the hip screwing in or the shoulder, the stability you get here is the retraction of the chin That provides the stability to the neck So you have the retraction of the chain, which is just pulling it straight back It's gonna to feel like it moves only about a half an inch or so That's the position there and then you pull your head back up to neutral again. you flex your neck until you're back to neutral again You do that? twelve repetitions. haveever many, you know sub fatigue here, but just enough to cause some fatigue. Turn ono your stomach at that point, if you like, put the weight on the back of your head and they do the same thing. retetract first, make sure you got the stable neck. Chin closer to your ab. good way to talk about it. and then you basically allow your head to sink down forward off the edge of the bench, and then you're going to extend your neck back up again to neutral or in this case, a little bit beyond into a little bit of extension And then you go to your side. In the same deal, you allow your head to just bend a little bit to the laterally like ear towards the shoulder but you're laying on the bench, you do the same thing, place the weight on top of the opposite side of your head, and then you're going to lift up against that weight. These are just supposed to be done very slow, very controlled, there's nothing crazy explosive about these. You're just supposed to feel those muscles. And trust me, like if you have not done these You do one, you start with one round of this and then wait until tomorrow because like you don't want to do too much because I guarantee you're going to be sore. Back in the day when I played football. You didn't realize how weak your neck could get in an off season until you put the helmet on for the first time And just one practice with the helmet on, You know, you're controlling all that extra weight of the helmet dynamically and the neck would be sore for two, three days. We had to accommodate them to the weight of the helmet So With neck training, it's a long, slow process. You just start very light, you start sub maximal and you start building up your strength. And then when you talk about a crunch, that's a nothing exercise for maintaining stability and control. When you get into situations like you where you have accidents and car accidents, you become Not only just resilient, but potentially life saving, you know by having a stronger neck. Gosh, you know could highlight bolden, you know, and underline this and send it out as far as I can the next stuff men and women, it's you will be positively amazed at the transformations. You' pressing lifts will get stronger. Youourre pulling lifts will get stronger. You get stronger. aesthetically for guys. know I mentioned this in the video yesterday, but I'll say it again A lot of guys who work to widen their shoulders if their next strength isn't coming up. roportion it looks like they got the wrong head on that body. It looks crazy, guys, you look ridiculous, especially in street clothes. Like I'm not saying you need a giant neck, but there's a proportion thing there that's important. If you care about that sort of thing As I said this, I know that Most people won't take the time to do it because it looks awkward. It's a tiny place. We're to do it in a gym too, you know, it just seems a little weird, but look at People do a lot of weird stuff in gyms and this is one of the weirder things the better weird things you can do if you're going to invest some time. Again, it doesn't take a lot. It really doesn't take a lot to pay big dividends here because it is an area that's pretty much untrained Again we're not talking traps, traps get a lot of work, but those muscles of the neck don't get trained very often at all. Yeah. so much of what you teach is about winning the short game and the long game. And to me, winning the long game is about being able to come in and do the big stuff year after year, decade after decade, so that you know, when you're forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, why not? Right? I mean, the experiment of whether people can have great strength and mobility, et cetera into their eighties and nineties with rare exceptions has never actually been done. That experiment is happening now because resistance training, you know, especially for women, you know, a few years back, like It's bodybilders, noobbody did. Now everyone knows this is part of the longevity game. I'm so excited that these Again, what sound like small things are getting out there thanks to you because they really do make a difference. And I believe that in our eighties and nineties and maybe even beyond People can move right and feel right and be posturally right. There's a cool video, forgive me for going longong, but we'll put a link to it that I saw No It's not AI of a woman escaping from a Chinese resting home. Okay So she's in her nineties, she's ninety two and she's climbing over the front gate. she was caught on surveillance g Yeah. And it's so cool.ise has't come on my feet. Yeah. So she's crawling over the surveillance gate and then she gets out and then she walks away. No she she's got some a little bit of frailty to her, but there was a drop down to the ground on this a big iron gate and she's just like, I'm out of here. pretty c. But it doesn't that's not to say that When you do the things I'm saying, you do the small things that you're not going to still have. aches and pains and things that you have to be able to also manage that Like how can you show up each day and still manage the fact that yeah, this shoulder is still a little bit sore this shoulder still or this knee is a little cranky You have to continue to show up if you're going to play this longevity game, right? Because thing is the fastest way to slow your body, right? So I think it's to slow your body down to a point of poor quality of life you have to figure out how to manage through these injuries and train around and through these injuries. And a simple example of that I was have to use an analogy of like, construction zone If there's one street that's shut down, you're not going you're not going to shut the whole city down. R? You need to find a way to redirect traffic around there so the city can operate. So if it was, let's say that shoulder and you were doing a I don't know, a dumbbell or a barbell ever head press. You can't do it. it hurts you have to have a way to reroute that. So let's say it's a machine press. Is that my first choice based on the things we talked about? You're sitting down, you're on a machine, you're in a fixed pattern No, but if it allows you to still train You're getting a lot of other benefits. N one, you're getting some additional strengthening of the inactivation of the deltoid. You're getting some movement through the joint itself, which we know bathes the joint surfaces and helps to provide nutrition to the joint. You're moving that capsule so it doesn't get stiff and tight. You're doing a lot of things right, even though it might be choice B for the exercise Let's say you can't do any pressing at all Again, you don't shut the city down, you just take a backroad, right? You just take another backroad. The backroad might be rowing. Rowing is going to still work the shoulder joint through extension. It's still going to provide some of those joint benefits. It's still going to provide the capsule benefits. It might not be stimulating the delts that way But there's other exercises you can do for the delts that won't do that So Our job is to figure out how We can always have something we can do so that the option is not or the alternative is not nothing because that's when things really start to go go wrong when when you opt for nothing And that's when the aging process starts to really accelerate to the point of even just the functional aging, how you feel and the quality of real life will sink if you don't continue to figure out ways to do that. So I always felt my mission and my goal was to empower people with these options and these alternatives of how do you do these things Because again, if someone came to me as a PT and my bag of tricks contained one, two and three, and they couldn't do any of them, then what do I do? I have to have options four and five there too And I think that's always been my strength is to figure out, not just to have option four and five on reserve, but then also have six, seven, eight, nine, and ten in case I needed those too And if I could provide people with that information, then they know how to dip into those at the right time to keep going. Ke training I would like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, J Juve makes medical grade Red lightight therapy devices There's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology and our health Now in addition to sunlight, which I've talked about a lot on this podcast Red light, near infrared, and infrared light been specifically shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health These include faster muscle recovery, improved skin health, wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improvements in vision Nowadays, there are a lot of red light devices out there. But what sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning they use the specific wavelengths of red light, near infrared, and infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week, usually for about ten to twenty minutes per session And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you would like to try Juve, they're offering up to four hundred dollars off select products for listeners of this podcast To learn more, visit Juve, spell j oovv dot com slash Hubberman. Again, that's j oovv dot com slash hubberman Do you do cardio? I mean you're naturally pretty lean. I know you eat extremely well. and we can talk about nutrition a bit as well. But what are your thoughts on cardio? Cardio is is the right foot to the left foot. like. it's very important for the overall picture of health. If you're if you're avoiding cardio and condition entirely, you're not as healthy as you think you are I don't do as much cardio as I should. It's always my big confession that I don't. And the reason why is simply because I have to choose based on time limitation And for me, with priorities being to spend some time with my family and my boys and how much can I actually get done with work and my workout time, I always take a step in the direction of strength training and weight training B I try not to ignore it entirely. When I do, I jump on a bike And I do stationary bike riding because I can I like the fact that I can increase resistance on the pedals and kind of turn it into almost a pseudo. You know again, the meat heads side of me wants to turn into some sort of of a resistance activity, but of course doing it for the duration to improve my cardio respiratory health But it's also good for my knees. My knees are quite beat up. Again, that's That's something that. I'll never be able to reverse, at least not without modern medicine, but I have to manage that. And anytime I try to do anything where I'm running or jumping, it tends to hurt a little bit. I do still love to jump rope. We talked about jump rope before. Jump rope happens to be a lot lower impact for me as long as you can properly on the balls of your foot andb absorb the shock of jump roping. But I would say between bro in a stationary bike at a higher resistance level and done in interval fashion, those are my two favorite ways to do it Jump Rpees great. I haven't been doing it as much as I used to. and Now that I got this new puop, I've got him in his little pended area sometimes and I'll skip rope. I don't let him run around while I do it because I'm afraid I' whip him, you know accident. I don't want to do that. But I'd forgotten how effective it is at getting heart rate up, especially if you're doing some double unders, you know or speed up or high knees and things like that. The coordination piece is awesome. You know, it's one of these things like Back to the basics feels good. That's also there's a gamification aspect. like you want to, you know, you want to learn a new skill. kind of do it a single leg, kind of do it side to side, kind of do it double under, as you said, like there's there's There's little built in challenges. I think we inherently always try to like up up the level of what we're doing to see what we can do and what we can't. But that's built in, that's not really built in on a lot of the other modes of conditioning, which is why people who do skip it skkip it because it tends to be Unapologetically kind of the most boring part of training. if you're used to doing lots of different exercises and feeling the weight in your hands, it could be a little bit boring, but there's ways to make that more fun Do you like running? I actually like running, but again, I can't tolerate it. My knees are just they feel like they want to detonate when I take about after about a quarter mile. Now I could do it on my I have a woodway treadmill, which are incredibly forgiving. whichich one is? Wood wayay? Wood wayay. Yeah we We used to have them in all the MOB weight rooms They're they're Basically, there's no deck underneath them. so they're It's like running on air and B treadmill also pretty super expensive, but they're worth the money if people have the ability to invest in one and they want to run in arched ones or are they straight? They make an arched one, but they're straight and they're just there's just no decck in there. So it feels a lot lighter and more forgiving on your I if you'd actually have some amazing versions of the woodway that they called the altar G where they actually take the gravity away. so you can run in a gravity free environment. Yeah like whichich is crazy because if you think about injury rehab We've taken players with lower body injuries. put themem on the alar G and have them run with only five percent or ten percent of their weight So you can unweight their body, get them into the mechanics of foot on the ground and running and transmitting the force through the whole body, but do it in an environment that takes all of their body weight away. and then progress up to now you got ten percent of your body weight that you're running on and twenty percent of your body weight that you're running on. so you can actually progress them to not have to go from non weight bearing to fully weight bearing in a cool athletic way Yeah, because swimming is great, but you have to have access to a pool and I miss swimming. I need to get back to that. I swim as a kid all the time. likewise. Yeah, everyvery kid in my town did soccer and swim team. Th those are kind of the big sports. I'mc comfy in the water. I live near the ocean now but un'mfortunately Ocean hasn't been that clean since the fires. There's a bunch of hazards to ocean swimming that I've seen one person or swim got hypothermia once so I'm like, I don't know Yeah, I think that the cardio piece, the big debate seems to be whether or not If people have a limited amount of time, which most people have a limited amount of time, whether they'd be better off investing in some high intensity training, high intensity interval training, or some so called zone two, zone three kind of steady state stuff for We know that caloric deficit is required for fat loss, but Assuming caloric deficit is there a Best cardio for fat loss The one that you're going to do is going to be the best one for sure. And I think It's hard to it's hard to sustain some of the higher zone five cardios for long enough to have a significant cardio or calorie burn effect I did a famous video with Jesse where I had him do burpees which is one of that It's one of the most calorically demanding exercises you can do, which is for anybody that Do doesn't know the Burp B, you basically quickly lower yourself down to the ground, you do a full push upp, you push yourself explositively out of that push upp, back to jump up to your feet again and back to a standing position. That can burn around, I believe it was thirteen to fifteen calories per minute if you did them non stop for a minute. Well If you're doing Burpees non stop for a minute, you're likely not doing a nonstop for many more minutes than the first minute because it's a very demanding exercise. So while your heart rate will go soaring right through the roof very quickly, you're going to have you can apply even intervals to do this, right? You're still going to start to fatigue because of the anaerobic part of it too, through the muscles of the chest and the arms getting fatigued He just can't really do it for more than let's say, ten minutes, even an interval format So what are you really burning there if you did it even straight through ten minutes, fifteen courers, a minute we talk about one hundred and fifty cowers. So people who use Their cardio for weight loss or caloric deficit are going to do better doing longer distance cardio at lower intensity levels. So getting on a bike and riding or getting jogging or running or even doing laps and Inval fashion where it's a jog and to run, and a jog to run. There's a lot of different ways to do that, but to sustain them for a longer periods, forty five minutes to an hour But there again and I I'm you know, just I'm a big believer that when you're trying to create the deficit relying on the conditioning. We're not talking about cardiovascular here. we're talking about just recrereating the deficit, relying on the conditioning. is a much more inefficient way to go about this. then what's actually should be done, which is just to focus on your nutrition. becausecause it's just so much more effective to create large deficits or large swaths of deficits from cutting back the crap you're eating right now than it is to try to get it through zone to cardio done for very long periods of time. Again, not to say that that's not beneficial for your cardio and in your cardiac conditioning. It's a separate issue. But when you're trying to create caloric deficits there, I always tell people first, you got to work on what you're putting in your mouth because the old saying goes, you can't outrun a bad diet. And there's just no way to really do that effectively over time. So Of the two forms, I'd say the zone two steady state longer form is going to do more absolute levels of caloric burn I don't know if you've ever done this, but I know you're you and everybody has to you know, pay attention to their caloric needs and nutrition needs, But what does nutrition look like for you in a given day So I don't know how many cers I take in a given day. I've never really counted past when I really first started out. And I think it's an important part of the process is people should count because it does two things early on. They should count because it gives you awareness. You may have no idea how many calories you're actually having until you actually count them. You also become aware of many of the things that you are taking for granted that you're just doing almost second nature that it's just not healthy. You're eating things repetitively that are just not healthy or drinking things that are just not healthy. And when someone asks you to log what you're eating you become very aware of every calorie you put in your body. So that's part of it. The second thing is there's an education that goes into learning how many calories each food has I can't tell you how many people they They'll think that Chicken Parmesan is the same as grilled chicken just because it's chicken. and they're very different in terms of their caloric impact. educating yourself ono about what those macronutrient profiles look like for whatever food you're having is part of the process too. Be ultimately where you want to be able to get to is can you make equivalent swaps in your head on the fly wherever you are, right? That would be nutritional freedom As far as what that day would look like, what I try to do is I try to build my base around protein I always have. The reason for that is it's one of those macronutrients that I know I need to build lean muscle,' one that I know can provide Society it's one that I know is important to everything I'm trying to pursue and what everyone really should be trying to pursue, they are trying to be healthy. So they should base their meal around that first. startart with your protein. And I use a visual way of doing that where I just say, Hey, take your plate and divide one third of that plate or that meal if you're having separate plates or separate d dishes. One third of that meal should come from a lean source of protein And that could be chicken, fish, beef, whatever it is that you prefer, but have that be the one third and then divide the rest of your plate with carbohydrates prereferably in a two to one ratio with fibrou carbohydrates to starch you carbohydrates. So the fibrouers being the green, the vegetables, asparagus, the broccoli And then the starchy carbohydrates, the rice, potatoes, pasta. I don't believe me personally, I don't believe that I should eliminate my starchy carbohydrates Again inherently I'm an athlete and I know that that's you know served a very important purpose for me for energy, for fuel resources, for glycogen, for my muscles that I don't I don't avoid that. Plus, I know that I could never long term restrict myself from carbohydrates. So when I started out, I said, I have to adopt a plan here that I know I can stick to If it was taking away pasta and taking away oatmeal and taking away the things there's no way that I could sustain that So I don't think that people should try to start out on some change to their diet where they're restricting foods, they know they're never going to be able to maintain long term or keep away long term so that if you can learn to. manage them and eat them in a way that's more controlled because the rest of the stuff on your plate is actually helping to minimize your cravings for that or controlling your portion sizes there That's the long term goal, I think And then overarching over all that Calgorically just because it's a fact of nature Fats are more corically dense than carboydrates and proteins. So just be aware of your fats. I know a lot of people who go down the path of healthy eating and they're putting olive oil on everything and avocado on everything. becausecause they're healthy foods, but they're putting so much of it because they w to feel like theyre they're doing the healthy thing. But you're also skyrocketing your calories. So you have to at least be aware Wh and how you're applying your fats because calorically they will add up. I have nothing against fat. I think everybody should have it. I think it should be part of every meal. I'm just saying it should be you need to be aware of your fat content. I try to go low sugar as much as I possibly can I do not I try to avoid processed foods. I try to avoid bllatant sugars unless it's my birthday and I'm having my carrot cake. but for the most part, your only quote unquote That's not my That's not my only like, you know, that that's a that's become an urban myth a little bit. Maybe I'll have it twice a year. But but no, I don't I don't I really try not to. indulge in those things, but I'm not missing it. I really enjoy it when I have it, but I'm not depriving myself of it along the way. If people felt deprived and have it more often, you could have I could have a piece of carrot cake once a week and probably not have anything happen to my physique So the fact that I don't is just really more out of habit than anything else. But if you're in a plan where you feel so deprived that you know, you're pulling your hair out and you're trying like the first chance you get to just jump off your diet and eat all the things that you you really were keeping yourself away from, then you're on the wrong plan So I think that no matter what it is, whether it be keto, whether it be the what I I guess you'd call this a bodyular style diet that I eat or wh I call it clean omnivore. There you go, Like you're not like I basically eat the same as you, although I suppose I probably be a a little high on the fat sometimes just because I mean, I love, you know, nuts and Parmesan cheese and a a little bit of butter and some olive oil and stuff whichich are all good foods. It's just that calorically there's an impact there. And if you're gonna to eat them What I always recommend people do is again, you could just cut back a little bit on some of the other portion sizes to just to accommodate calorically for what you're doing But I do think that that concept of the equivalent swaps is big because If you learn to eat the way I just suggested, there's no magic behind what I do. It's just been very I've been very consistent with it. is that you'll be able to makeake swaps when you go anywhere. What's the protein I can have here today? What's the restaurant have? Oh, they only have pork chops. Okaykay, fine, I'll have a pork chop.ike you can you're visually just replacing equivalents on the plate. Sometimes it doesn't always work. I just did a video where I talked about a steak and a grilled chicken breast are potentially the same protein in terms of their protein content, but they're not the same calorically because the steak has a lot more fat than the chicken breast does. So you might have a smaller steak to make that equivalent swap out. But that's only going to come through your understanding and knowledge of the foods and what they contain. So that early phase of learning what they have is important there But ultimately Nutritional freedom comes from the ability to be consistent with what you do I talk a lot about the fact that we can get to the gym We can train for an hour It's not easy for people, especially to do it at a high enough intensity level, but we can train for an hour, go home and feel like I did my work today. I feel good. I did what I was supposed to do. Great, your nutritional job just started You now have to figure out how do I navigate the next twenty three hours, whether I'm asleep or I'm awake, but how am I going to navigate the next twenty three hours? Be that's what nutrition is. That challenge is infinitely harder. And the reason why a lot of people struggle with their weight is because they have to figure out how to get that right and do that in a repeatable way day in, day out, day and day out. And I've been doing what I've been doing here now with my nutrition approach for thirty years thirty years. So When people ask me, is it hard? for me, it's not hard at all. But it wasn't super easy in the beginning. It just there's a process to go through to get it there. and I was willing to go slowly, but also not sacrifice the things that I really knew I wouldn't be able to live without So therefore I can live with it for forever And I think people make way too aggressive changes when it comes to nutrition. They basically, you're not just changing your diet, you're changing your habits and you're changing your lifestyle So when you go and you start making these radical changes to your nutrition plan because you're on a diet It does not work Listen, what you described, what I'll just call clean omnivore is, I think, is It's just an awesome way to approach nutrition for a couple of reasons. One, it works. Like you said, it's flexible, even with travel. you can always make some adjustment toward that it handles the protein needs thing pretty much on its own. I mean, you have to make sure you eat enough of those meals and enough protein. But as you were saying it, I realized that it gets people, if they adopt this mindset that you do that you have for nutrition, it gets them out and away from the marketing based draw of nutrition ' people say like, oh like protein bar or you know high protin yogurt. and listen, there's some great yogurts. I love Bulgarian yogurt. It's like Greek yogurt's great, Bulgarian yogurt, not dis respect to the Greeks love Greek food, by the way, too. But Bulgarian yogurt are full fat Bulgarian yogurt or low fat bulgarian. amazing. Yeah, and, you know, the Bulgarians are known for their strength in many ways. But you get outside that the marketing poll and you start thinking about food for its macronutrient content. Yeah. and it's micronutrient content and quality as opposed to like the packaging based stuff Because even the non processed or non highly processed foods, mostly we're reaching for them because of what's on the label. L the colors, the words and these. and what you're describing is completely different. It's getting to the actual food. I think that's a very very important, not so subtle distinction And once people make that switch, they're really in the driver's seat. It's not like you're like have to go prepare every meal, this kind of thing. Yeahah, I mean and again, even with some of the push towards higher protein foods. now. againg, the packaging isra bragging about the protein content, but they've also increased the sugar or they've increased the fat. and it's like all you've made is a higher protein. I mean, even Snickers has a high protein bar. Are you serious? Yeah. Snickers are milky wayay. They have a high protein bars Okay, this is this is insanity. So show me the C sueite of the snickers, you know, I'm going to get in trouble for this, but whatever. I want to see how fit these people actually look you know. And if they're eating that stuff. You know, it's like something tells me they're not. Yeah, thank you again for being a voice of reason in the nutrition space. Yeah, and I'm not a nutritionist, you know and people are quick to remind me of that when whenever I speak of nutrition I'm only speaking from my experience both with myself and anybody I've ever advised on how to do that It works. it's sensible and it's something that could be sustained So for me, that's what's most important with the nutrition. And again, I don't fixate on any one particular way if doing keto works for you, great. as long as you can sustain your eating that way great because all we're trying to is manage our weight long term and not sacrifice other elements of our health in the process. So if it works for you, cool. But this is what hass worked for me I'm starting to see more content out there about foot strength. You've mentioned you have flat feet. I had some foot injuries from skateboarding years ago. broke my left foot twice. quote unquote snaaped arches. It's not really a thing, but and have start to think about you know, foot health and foot training and stability. And so on one hand, it seems kind of silly. It's like really we're going to start training our feet. but on the other hand you know, our feet are always in contact with at least our shoes, if not the ground. So what are your thoughts on This notion of flat feet, foot strength and how it plays into stability and performance and just overall ability in life. Yeah, it's actually something I wish I had done more of at an early age. One of the easiest ways to test this is to, especially for someone like me who has, I mean, I have flippers for feet. fllat out just you flipp ed I think it is partially genetic. My mom had pretty flat feet and then I also think that it was years of doing things without addressing that. So I was as I started to lift weights and applying a lot of external force and load onto those feet that were not able to support that, it just got worse and worse. They definitely they didn't always they weren't always as bad as they got to I wish I had done more for it at an early age because E now If I were to go back and try to train the intrinsic foot muscles more It it's just not going to reverse the damage that I've done in the knee to this point So I'm less motivated to try to do it. because I've also figured out how to manage with the flat feet now Soon decrease the impacts of it. so I'm not so motivated to go jump in now and spend extra time on something that may not have a huge impact for me. But for someone who's just starting to deal with flat feet and the weakness in their feet, I would definitely jump in and do something. and the easiest test is simply to put a towel on the floor Put your foot on a barefoot try to scrunch up the towel with your feet. And if you start to rapidly cramp up in those foot muscles of yours again, it goes back to what we talked about before in the low back The cramps are coming from a lack of of strength. They're trying to provide support an area that doesn't have it. So if you don't have intrinsic support or art strength, then you're trying to ask the foot to do too much of what it can. Even a simple scrunching or activation of those muscles to scrunch the towel together is too much for you to handle kind of like the weak neck on a crunch. you have very weak feet and you would benefit from doing a lot of those activities that help to do that. Some people recommend running in sand. someome people recommend using these towel drills Just even just balancing barefoot and doing single leg balance drills, barefoot are going to not just cause ankle strength improvements, but intrinsic foot strength improvements They're all good things to do because you can improve they're muscles. There are liter muscles too. You can improve the musc muscular strength of your feet. And when you do you can I think you can start to restore some of the natural arch that you've lost to the foot. If if it's because of handandedness dysfunction that's there inherited, as you said, a genetic U predisposition to this, you may not be able to have the arch of somebody who has naturally better arches, but you could certainly create enough of an arch where all the arch is really doing is just changing the position of your ankle joint itself Right? So of how the tibia sits on your ankle. If the foot collapses, the tibia is now torqued essentially in its relationship to the foot. And so now every time you step, Whatever forces are being incurred on the ground are being sent up through the ankle, into the knee, into the hip into the back So you're just trying to maintain a better, more natural alignment between the tibia and the foot itself. So that's what happens with the The weakness of the foot is you're basically allowing it to collapse too far to start to create that torque in its relationship to the tibia. So if you can start to increase the strength of those muscles resting, they can basically maintain a higher arch or a more natural position that's more aligned with the tibia, and that's where the benefits come from somethingomething I knew nothing about back in my twenties, nothing. I didn't think at all to do that. All I did was could put an orthotic in. R, which basically put me in a better position. for that it lifts the foot up puts me in a better alignment to try to start decreasing some of the ongoing damage I was doing to my knees by being in that torque position but did nothing to actually fix problem itself Yeah That's like wearing braces. Yeah, ye. ye exxactly. So not mouth braces, but like a neat say rightight Yeah L like a mouth brace actually would actually ye create some long term change, but this is doing nothing but ye embrace. Yeah you know, um This is something I've been thinking about and reading up about a lot, but you might find interesting and I don't know, maybe since you're so much more versed and formally trained in, you know, strength training in these offsetting these unhealthy compensations and spending a lot of time looking at how the human body degenerates as it gets older because I'm trained as a developmental neurobiologist and what what you learn is that development it doesn't just stop at like puberty or something, or even when someone turns twenty five. our whole life is a developmental arc. And it really is an arc. Right And people who can offset that, you know, last third of the arc have remarkably better lives in terms of their unassisted living, their ability to be there for others, etcetera. cognitively and physically T make a long story short. It really appears that both at the level of the spinal cord and brain, but also at the level of the muscles, that the muscles that are furthest away from the midline degenerate first. And it's interesting today we've been talking about neck. Yesterday we did f arm training. We'll provide a link to that. know grip strength goes Calf strength goes, foot strength goes. And this could be taken down to the motor neuron level, the spinal cord level, molecular level. They data starting to emerge. So I'm of the mind that many of the things that you've been teaching and that we've been talking about today of working these distal muscles especially as one gets older ideeally one's entire life are really It going to be a big piece of the longevity game. I really am Longevity ultimately is basically in my eyes, is being able to maintain function as you age because again, it it's not the number of years but the quality of the years. So All muscles in your body serve a function. They're all there for a reason. almost I think there wass one or two that were potentially They don't actually even have a function. I forgget which ones they are, but but for the most part, they're there to serve a purpose The idea that We don't train all of them in some way is a little bit crazy because like they're there. They need to be able to function for the lifetime of however long you're going to be here Fing ways to do it where we don't have to do Hundreds of different exercises to address all of these muscles is the ultimate goal so we can become more efficient with our efforts and we're not skipping them But the idea that they're not necessary or're not they don't need to be maintained or maximized over a lifetime doesn't make sense to me either. right? So I think we need to able to just find ways that we can work them into what we're already doing. And again, I do think that we have different rates of decay too, you versus me versus someone else. So that's where I really believe people need to adopt these individualized plans. We all do, let's say the basic strength training, but then your specialized plan that addresses your Accelerated weaknesses is this group of exercises in my specific plan to address my accelerated weaknesses is this specific exercise plan. So But they're they're all there be to be worked on and they're all there to be maintained I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Function Function provides over one hundred and sixty advanced lab tests to give you a clear snapshot of your bodily health This snapshot gives you insights into your heart health, your hormone health, autoimmune function, nutrient levels, and much more They've also recently added access to advanced MRI and CT scans. Function not only provides testing of over one hundred and sixty biomarkers key to your physical and mental health It also analyzes these results and provides recommendations for improving your health from top doctors For example, in a recent test with function, I learned that some of my blood lipids were slightly out of range. As a result, I decided to start supplementing with natokinase, which can naturally help reduce LDL cholesterol And it did. In a follow up test, I could confirm that this strategy worked. 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To learn more, visit functionhealth dot com slash hubberman and use the code Hubberman for aty dollars credit towards your membership Again, that's functionhealth dot com slash Hubberan There are millions of hours of content on the internet about body part splits and ways to train. So I know you've covered essentially all of them, but maybe we could do a pseudo yes, no I Q and A type thing for a moment about body type splits and rests and training to failure, et ceter. And I have a very specific question about training splits that relates to real life and how to incorporate resesistance training program into real life in a way that's truly sustainable. Okay, so first things first, how many warm up sets per exercise? Tpically. Dpending upon what you're doing, we're right off into the nuance of all this because the nuance is really everything here. When we talk about muscle splits and there's so many factors that contribute to this, but let's say you're doing Just for sake of argument, you're doing a poull work out if I' do a poull would be, let's say back in biceps and even rear delts if we want to put them in the same same day. So You would warm up your bigger muscle group first. let's say you start with back and you warm up the first exercise you're doing there. You could do a general body warm upp like we did a little warm upp for our arm workout yesterday, which is actually a shoulder warm upp. We talk about in that video why. You do a little general warm upp first and then you start the first exercise with lighter weighting warm upp. I'm doing two or three warm upp sets and I'm done. as long as I feel like I've sufficiently I warmed up that movement pattern I'm going to do before I start to load it, as long as I feel like the joints I've got all the creaks out and I feel like I've done enough of an assessment of how everything feels for that day Then I'm ready to go. People spend way too much time warming up to workout. You just get yourself ready and what happens is the workout itself becomes the rest of the warm upp you need for the subsequent exercises. Oncece you get to that first exercise, you're usually ready to go. And we're talking about then shifting focus to let's say even the biceps My biceps have been done,'ve been working every one of my poulling repetitions, whether I was rowing or doing pull downs in some way. So there's no more warm upp after that. Train workss to failure or stop so called reps in reserve Oh, this is a great one for me. I mean, I'm failure. I'm just I I understand the science shows that they can get close, but it's also very heavily dependent upon mean failure or not failure Very heavily dependent upon volume So when you're looking to do a workout that is going to have You can do it in thirty to forty five minutes have a high impact in terms of its ability to stimulate growth You're going to train withith me, you're going to train to failure. And I like objectively training to failure because I know I got to failure I'm not talking about getting to a point where I don't recognize the exercise I'm doing, where I'm compromising the quality of the exercise I'm doing. I'm not talking about doing it on the comp the more ound or complicated exercises that do require synchronized movement for multiple muscle groups because it like let's say a row, a heavy row, could start to get dangerous if you're losing body position because of fatigue So we're doing it on the exercises that are the hypertrophy based exercises, a little bit more focused on one single muscle group, a little bit more isolated in nature. For instance, a u U single arm row versus a bent over barbell row. That wouldd be a good difference between to take the bent over Barbell row to fail your. Not I wouldn't do I wouldn't recommend taking that all the way to get close. I'll get close. Yeah., yeah, For for me, it's always gonna be close. My criteria there would be form breakdown. So as soon as my form started to break down, I might have had another two reps left or three reps left, but that's it for that on the Barbell row Whereas if I'm doing a Here's a better example. If I'm doing a one arm cable pull down from my lats, which I love that exercise. It gets a really good stretch on the lats and come down I could look a little ugly at the end where I'm just doing a couple partial repetitions or something just to add a little bit more stimulus that with no extra risk to my body from doing it. So there's the difference between them. But I'm always advising that you're training towards the high end. unless you're training for strength which is a whole different game. That's a whole different set of rules, It's a whole different stimulus that you're trying to build there. That is high high loads that you're trying to manage efficiently not with inefficiency to try to force muscle growth. So that's a whole different ball of wax and you're really trying to stay away from true failure there. It's actually n in the way you would actually build maximal strength because maximal strength relies on Clean, efficient well performed repetitions done cumulatively over time That's how we get neurological a stronger volume and a lot more volume, right? So that's a different that's a different game here So for squats and deadlifts, are you taking them to failure? No, sameame concept as the row, those big presses like that, I'm not going or leg movements, I'm not doing true failure on those. I can do other exercises and different variations. I could do a Bulgarian split squat to failure. Right? Be it's I love that to failure because when I go down and I can't go up anymore, I just simply drop the weights right to the floor right next to me So there's different ways to still do squatting patterns without having to put a bar on my back with the heaviest of loads that I can handle and do and do that And then total volume, I guess if you're going close to failure or failure per muscle group and I'm not calling legs a muscle group,'m calling quads, I' musc group hamstrings,' m alsole group glutes some muscle group. Work set ranges per workout herer workout Again, probably somewhere between ix to six to ten on some of the smaller muscle groups, like the biceps and a little bit more maybe tend to T to twelve, ten to fifteen at most if you're looking at some of the larger muscle groups likeike the quads, like the lats, I would go a little bit more. So that breaks down into a round If you're doing roughly three sets in exercise, you're looking at three to four exercises to get to those larger muscle groups. And for the biceps you can get away with doing to two exercises or three exercises for for a total of around seven or eight sets When we do our workout and did our workout, like what we do to expose ourselves to more exercises becausecause we can influence the biceps in different ways, a little bit more long head stretch, shorehead focus, heavier load, more concentration work. you could do that just by doing less sets of the exercise And again, when you're properly warmed up and if you have enough experienceced training There is nothing magic about doing three right? We all think three, but like you could do two and then move on to a different exercise that stimulates the biceps differently. That's a better total effect then maintaining that you have to do three of this and three of this and three and this and then therefore limiting yourselfves to the three exercises. I could do four or five exercises that give all compleimmentary functions to the biceps do two of them each. and get a better workout. Yeah, I like a A couple of warm upps on the first Exercise to two work sets to something else, two work I tend to do. You know, and a few regular listeners to this podcast are probably thinking, well, how's this square with the conversation with Dorian where it was really like one, maybe two work sets per exercise? He's always insisting on taking the work sets to failure and often beyond failure with Force rep. So When you start looking at it as like you were saying like with squats and deadlifts or rows, you're not going completely to failure And the I'm not going to say they're equivalent, but There is some offset there, right? It's either taking one, maybe two sets to complete failure with four streps per exercise and then another exercise. It wasn't like we just did one exercise for back. Th then we did the pullover and then you know we had a row a pullown and then some rowing and you know and so forth. So it ends up being about six work sets with some pushing beyond failure. You're talking about ten to twelve, but maybe not so many sets where you're pushing past failure. Yeah grew up Wing Doruring Yeates and doing the workouts and I loved it. I found it hard for me to maintain that kind of intensity, especially training alone, right? training for reps are almost impossible alone unless you have machines that can allow you to do that. So It was more of a of a difficulty of being able to stick with that type of training or reproduce it over and over and over again. Dorian Nates is Dorian Yates for a reason because in a six time Ater Olympia for a reason because he had the ability It's like it's likeael he's like the Michael Jordan of bodybuilding Michael Jordan did the things he could do because he could do things other people couldn't Dorn Yates, I feel could do things that a lot of other people couldn't in terms of tapping into that pain, discomfort and ability to go further when he wanted to quit. rightight when it got to the be the hardest part of the set, he could like start to revel in it and go further and further and further. I don't know if everybody has that ability. I can do it intermittently, but I can't do it consistently. And so for me, I just have to realize that and say, okay, I'm going to have to back off a little bit of the intensity some of the force strips increase my volume just a little bit because it ultimately comes down to a volume and intensity game And it could be Literally the extreme examples of this. like there's a lot of cyclists who cycle at eighty to one hundred RPMs but do Hours and hours of that blow up their quads and have an amazing lower body size from their cycling. How is that working? Well, there's a metabolic effect they're getting to, which we know is another stimulus for growth. the right amount of volume even low levels of of absolute load can create growth There's extreme examples that. And I always go back and say, she probably hates me for it by now, but I always use the example of my wife who is a barber and she used to cutty forty haircuts a day thirty to forty haircuts a day. she was like a machine little girl and she has like these Great traps, like really well developed traps And it's not necessarily from the load of the scissors that weigh ounces But it's the weight of the arm being held like this all day long No direct trap work ever in her entire life Massive traps that look great, by the way, baby look great, but had great trap development because of that. That's an extreme example. It's eight hours a day every day. That's no load or just again, very minimal load, but extreme amounts of volume. So in terms of muscle growth, I always think there's always a possibility to get where you want to get, but you have to know how to balance volume and intensity in terms of frequency of training a given muscle group across the week I'll just say two things that most people don't think about. One, there's nothing special about a week. I mean, we use a week as a division of time, but muscles don't really care about weeks. They care about stimulus. and recovery, the adaptation, the hypertrophy, the strength So I consider myself somebody with a relatively poor recovery quotient I can hit each muscle group directly hard once per week. So set's to failure. somewhere in between what Dorian does and what you do. you know Yesterday's workout felt slightly higher than the normal volume that I would do. The workout I did with him was slightly lower, so somewhere in between There's a lot of indirect train For instance, I'll train my legs really hard one day per week And then I'll also do a hit workout on the assault bike Yeah, it's not a squat workout, but my legs get some stimulation from that. my lats do too. And I'll do a sprint workout one day per week. So that's what works for me for you personally before you make a suggestion the larger world out there How often can you directly hit a muscle group with the kind of intensity and volume that we did in the video that provide a link to I can only directly hit that muscle group the same as you once a week with that level of intensity Even in what we were doing yesterday A lot of my focus is on you, I'm trying to focus on making sure you're doing what you're doing right. I'm trying to coach my way through what I'm doing. so it's like If it was just me in my own gym, I might have even zoned out a little bit more, gone a little bit harder, got a little bit uglier face when I was doing my repetitions that were hard So It might be even a little notch above what was shown in our video in terms of intensity I can't do that more than once a week for a muscer group. Now But you're also training back, you're also training chest, you're also training shoulders on a separate day Well, that's the key, right? So when people recommend higher frequency sessions or every forty eight hours or twice a week minimum and all that You are also forcing yourselves into some splits. that have a lot more muscles being trained at once. because in order to get back to them again in the same seven day week period You have to do multiple in one day. So let's just say in a push pull leg scenario You have to do all your pushing muscles. So right off the bat, you're doing chest, shoulders, triceps in one day I find even that to be a lot to ask for me at times, not all the time, but especially if I'm short on sleep and Short on time that day. I can't get through all those and get an adequate stimulus because there's just too much work to be done. So creates a need to have to condense into these multi muscle group splits that you go through the push, you go through the pull, you go through the legs, Now you got to have, let's say, one rest day come right back again. So you' training six days a week Some people can't manage that either But what I do is I say, all right, if I train, let's just say biceps like we did And I do them really hard. And I Even just to biceps and triceps, say. For did those two, I still have to get through legs, I have to get through shoulders, I have to get through chests, I have to get through I break legs into anterior and posterior chains, those sort of two workouts I have to get through a lot more in the week. so If I had to get it all done in one a week, I would run out of time I first thing I do is I extend beyond the seven days. So I break that rule because I realize, like you said, that our body doesn't know the difference. So it's okay if it takes me a little bit longer to wrap around before I do whatever the arms again, let's say, in this case, the arms again. So I break that rule. It could be nine days for me in terms of my cycle But I know that when I come back after biceps, if I do two, let's say I do posterior chain legs and then I do Let's say I do after that chest, right? Even just a single muscle group. When I come back and I do back The reason why back is following chest is I'm going to give my chest a reprieve from the day before. I'm going to go pulling when I was just pushing. Neurologically, I'm giving myself a complete break But I also know that I'm looking backwards to when I did biceps And it was forty eight to seventy two hours prior that I did biceps. When I do my back I know I'm going to get indirect work for my biceps again, guuarantee. So if I don't know that, I can make sure I do by doing underhand rows, I could do underhand pull downowns. I could do chin ups rather than pull ups if I feel like I didn't adequately stimulate my biceps that day. I can make selections in these back exercises that indirectly hit the biceps. That's a lot of volume. That's enough like you're getting direct volume. There's no rule again that says that it has to be directly hit to contribute volume to the work being done by by that muscle group. So I come back and I do my indirect volume there. And a lot of times these studies actually spoke to Brad Schoomfeld about this when he spoke at my event They don't do a lot of accounting for the indirect work because we can't quantify what indirect contribution that row had to a bicep. So there's not a lot of data around that anyway about how much contribution the indirect work works to us. So when they do these studies and they look for how much total volume they're looking at direct work for that muscle group I feel as if it's Intuitively from my experience, I know that I definitely get another exposure for that muscle group and that contributes to the overall volume. And then again, if it takes me a little bit longer to wrap around based on how I'm pairing things together Then so be it, but but I'm getting that indirect work, but never twice directly So in some sense you are similar to The Mike Menscer philosophy, not of one set to absolute failure because he was really, really on the far end of did too. I just couldnt sustain that. Right. But in terms of not making the seven day week the the the holy grail of how you organize your schedule because, you know, Mike, I was fortunate enough to know him. I paid him for a consult and got to know him over the years, you know, before he unfortunately passed away. and he had You training like I think it was like shoulders and arms, rest two days. You know, then it was like legs rest two days and then chest and back and rest two days. He m bl. It was mind blowing. the problem with that, I think for a beginner is you get results. you certainly get results, but you don't get the opportunity to develop the skill of training. I mean there's orr the enjoyment of it, right? Or the enjoyment Three maybe four days a week of resistance training for me just is like the sweet spot. But as with you, I've found that I can give myself permission, like if travel comes up or a poor night sleep or some extra workload or something, like, okay, there can be an extra day after legs or you can modify things, whichich brings me to my other question. yesterday after we were training I learned something remarkable, which is there are times when you will split your split Simply based on real life constraints. And you gave a beautiful example. I'm smiling already. You said, you know, there are times when you're supposed to train at night, but you go into read to your boys or spend some time with them before sleep andll you'll fall asleep next to them. That's over. Yeah. So then you'll go into the gym your home gym at like ten or eleven o'clock at night And you'll do half of your leg workout And then you'lll literally split the split and come back and do the remainder of that workout a few days later. I love this example because it's the real world. And obviously you're prioritizing time with your boys. And that's what really matters. That's why you're training in the first place. I mean, yes to have your physique et cetera, but you' motivates That's what motivates you to be around for a long time splitting the split, you wouldn't suggest it to people, but life happens. So what does that look like? Is it that you're doing like your quad workout and then you normally you would also do something else, but you're doing the other stuff later Maybe doing three sets of squats and coming back two days later and doing the other three sets of squats. So here's the irony of it. I don't know if I wouldn't recommend splitting the split. You know, I feel like I'm starting to learn that splitting the split is me breaking a bad habit that I was unwilling to break a long time because of the same mentality that led me to think of a seven day training week right I think what's happening and that I've been seeing is that Slitting the split does a few things for me mentally. It recharges me on a night where I really don't have a lot in the tank If I get over there and I was just sleeping for the last thirty minutes or forty five minutes, I'm not in the greatest state of mind to train. But if I know that the requirement is let's just get through, if I'm gonna do my shoulders, let's say Let me get through half of what I would normally do I'm going to focus Today I'm the non strength focused stuff because I'm just not neurologically prepared to do that right now. So let's just work on the lateral raises, the strict lateral raises in that case. The um that the hip exercise like a hip huger. it's just different exercises that I would do that would be perceived as the the non compound exercises. And I'll do those. and what I find very quickly is that Because I can ease into those exercises, they're not as heavily loaded, but they're high intensity It doesn't have to bec come from the load. it comes from the effort. I can ease into them after one or two sets, I'm good and I'm like kind of into it. And I know that once I'm done with these six sets or so, I'm done for the night and I can come back and do my strength work when I'm ready. what should be twowo days later usually. sometometimes the very next night. Really I'll just split it to the next night and whatever was planned gets bumped one spot. It's going to extend that training week even further So that nine days can become, you know, eleven or twelve U Well I We talked about recovery before, like it seems to be working well with me for my recovery at this age. And again, I think this I have very bad sleep habits only because the result of working out at eleven o'clock or twelve o'clock is you and by the way, eating dinner after that, that's my dinner time. Like eating dinner after that You know, I get to bed one hundred thirty. in the morning and I'm getting up at seven or I get up to b at o'clock and I'm get up at seven This might be what works for me best right now because I don't have the recovery through as much sleep as I should get. Now I know a lot of people yell and say, Well, you need to work on your sleep and get better recovery. I understand that. Right now, this little pattern is where I'm in. you know, it can be fixed by me training earlier in the day stepping away from work and ing earlier in the day, I haven't found the time or the way to do that effectively at this moment. So this is what I have to navigate. And I encourage people to do the same thing. Find what works with your current schedule. You can have an eye towards fixing it, but what works for your schedule to get you through this time period? I think it's working because I have more recovery time. in a less recovered sleep state That seems to still be progressing because I could still lift heavier than I have been able to. I'm still able to God create effective workouts for me. I feel I feel good My joints are actually feeling good. Things are feeling even a little better than they were So it happens to be working for me. So I might be changing my mind a little bit about frequencies and volumes in terms of what I do in a given workout. And accepting the fact that it can happen over two days ' so like relieving ' it's like, I don't have to bring it all today. I could just sort of get this much done today it allows me to have a higher effort to handle again some of the lower volumes that we're doing So it's like a win win all around And the kids like me more for it too. Yeah. Well and someday they'll see this I and they're going to see so much of your content. I mean, they they're They're totally disinterested right now. Yeah, but they're grateful for. I mean, they're going to be grateful for the fact I mean, you're obviously prioritizing them and your wife and your family and that's that's a beautiful thing Well, Jeff, thank you so much for the workout yesterday I definitely learned a number of things. I'm definitely feeling got to do more. more of those. Yeah, we should do more. Thank you for coming back to educate us and, you know Some people when they speak, like not a whole lot happens except a bunch of exhales shaped into sound when you speak People learn and they learn super valuable information, Everything from the basics all the way up to The nuance you constantly educating yourself already just a moment ago. you know, you're you're still evolving the way you're doing things and you share that. And again These so called small things that allow one to do the big things for much longer and much more effectively is really what it's all about. And you clearly walk the walk. You look awesome. You're fifty, you know steroid, TRT free, all of that and you look incredible. And so, you know They're Proably None people who are doing what you're doing, you're truly an N of one that you can encapsulate all this. and you're just so generous with your time and your energy. And so I'm very grateful for you coming on here again. I was so pumped I've been wanting to come back here for so long and the negotiating the travel is always a thing for me, but I was so excited to be able to do it, finally do it and get the work out in and come back and sit down with you is always my favorite thing Thank you for having me. Well, please come back again. You're an inspiration to me. and like I said, you're an absolutely extraordinary educator. Thank you. Thank you Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Jeff Cavalier T learn more about his work and to find links to AthleLenX resources, please see the show notote caption. In addition, you'll also find links in the show notote captions to the workout that Jeff and I did and that was referenced a few times throughout the episode So that's a link to a proper workout for the biceps, for the triceps, for the forearms, and Jeff's signature move face poles. If you're learning from E or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast If you have questions for me or comments about the podcasts, or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book It's entitled Protocols, an operating Mual for the human body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years and that's based on more than thirty years of research and experience prrotocols for everything from sleep exercise to stress control protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook. com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. 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