Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,
where we revisit past episodes for the
most potent and actionable science-based
tools for mental health, physical
health, and performance.
I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor
of neurobiology and opthalmology at
Stanford School of Medicine. And now for
my discussion with Dr. Andy Galpin. Dr.
Professor Andy Galpin, super excited to
have you here. You're such an immense
treasure trove of information on
physical training and optimizing for
specific goals and outcomes. How should
I or anyone else for that matter think
about their level of fitness in terms of
really assessing whether or not I'm as
fit as I could be and should be both for
sake of health and performance. When it
comes to exercise, people generally have
two major goals in mind. Goal number one
is achieving some sort of appearance.
Right? This is I want to be big or I
want to not be too big or I want to be
lean. There is an aesthetic component to
almost everybody. They want to look a
certain way or not look a certain way.
The other one is functionality. So I
want to be able to perform a certain
way. Now again that definition differs
per person. So I want to be better at
strength. I want to be better at
mobility. I want to be able to have
energy throughout the day. Whatever it
is. So there's some sort of appeal to
aesthetic and there's some sort of
appeal to functionality. So within both
of those categories, we want to be in a
position where we can understand where
do I need to go with my exercise
training so that I can be as fit and as
healthy and achieve these goals that I
want now as well as be in a position
where I can maintain them for a long
period of time. So this blends both
immediate goals. So say you're just
interested in squatting a lot of weight.
Say you're interested in running 5K time
the best you want. It doesn't matter. It
blends that with the ability the desire
to have a long wellness span to be fit
throughout life to achieve all those
things for as long as possible. So then
the question kind of comes back to
saying how do I know
which area I need to focus on the most
and why am I not achieving these goals
or how can I get there more effectively?
And if we look at the big picture we
have to understand that there are
several major components to physical
fitness that are going to be required in
all of these categories. And to achieve
that, there are a handful of components
that have to happen. So what I'd love to
do today is over the course of our
discussion is hit exactly what those
concepts are and then cover a whole
bunch of different methods and we could
do that for hours, but we'll cover a
number of them for various goals.
>> What are the major adaptations that one
can create in their body using exercise?
>> The physiological adaptations can be
bucketed really into nine areas. So the
very first one is what I call skill or
technique. This could be running more
effectively. This could be practicing a
skill like shooting a a ball or an
implement, swinging a golf club,
anything like that. I call that skill
development. The second one is speed.
This is simply moving at a higher
velocity or with a better rate of
acceleration. That's very similar to the
next one which is power. And power is
speed multiplied by force. The next one
then of course on top of that is force
or strength. Those are really synonymous
terms, right? uh how effectively can you
move something? Now this is often
confused strength rather uh as muscular
endurance. So what I mean by that is
strength truly is a marker of what's the
maximum thing you can move or what's the
maximum amount of force you can produce
one time. Number five is muscle
hypertrophy and this is the first time
now we're talking about an appearance
rather than a functional outcome. This
is the first one that's just simply how
big is your muscle and that's muscle
hypertrophy or muscle size. After that
is muscular endurance. So this is how
many repetitions you can typically do of
a movement. So think of how many
push-ups in a row you can do, how many
sit-ups in a minute you can do, things
that are typically in like five to 50
repetition sort of range. And it is
almost always local muscle. A push-up
test is is really how many reps that
your triceps and pecs and and deltoids
can do. It is not a cardiovascular
endurance. It is not a global
physiological endurance. specific to
typically one or a few muscle groups at
a time. This is why you have to do
multiple tests for for sort of every
group there. Uh after that, now we've
moved into number seven, which is what I
call anorobic capacity. This is more
synonymous with maximum heart rate. And
now we're actually looking at rather
than a single movement or muscle group,
it is a total physiological limitation.
It is the maximum amount of work you can
do in say 30 to 45 seconds, maybe even
up to 120 seconds of allout work. Think
of your classic interval type of stuff
here. So, how much work can you do at a
maximum rate where you're going to enter
tremendous amounts of global fatigue.
The next past that is maximum aerobic
capacity. And this is probably something
like in the 8 to 15 minute range where
you're going to reach probably both a
maximum heart rate as well as a true V2
max. So that is different from the
previous one where you can't reach this
in a matter of seconds. It simply takes
multiple minutes to get to a position to
where your V2 max is actually going to
be sufficiently challenged or an
indicator there. And then the last one,
number nine, is what I call long
duration. And this is just your ability
to sustain submaximal work for a long
period of time with no breaks, no
reductions whatsoever. This is often
called steadystate training or a lot of
people just think of this when they
think of quote unquote cardio. But your
ability to continue movement without any
breaks or change or drop uh is the last
and final adaptation. So really, if you
look at a kind of a minimal number
there, it's generally 20 minutes of what
we're looking for. But a more typical
would be 20 to 60 minutes. But anything
past that would still be limited by your
long duration endurance. So your ability
to sustain work over time.
>> Can you walk us through the nine
different adaptations that you mentioned
earlier and give us a way to assess our
level of adaptation in each of those
nine?
>> All right. The very first one we want to
talk about is is movement skill. This is
really about human movement so that you
stay injuryfree and and you can continue
to train for as long as possible. So
what are the minimum requirements? Now,
if you can have access to a highly
qualified physical therapist or movement
specialist, that's the best route. Go to
them, have them identify all of your
movement patterns, overhead pressing,
squatting, running, all these things.
That's your gold standard. If you want
to do it yourself, though, here's a very
simple four-step solution. So, the way
that I teach this is I go joint by
joint. And so, I I think of this just as
the major ones. your shoulder, your
elbow, your low back, hip, knee, and
ankle. Okay? Now, what you can do is do
a representative movement for you. So,
if you bench a lot, use the bench. If
you do pull-ups, use the pull-up. If you
squat, do that. I would recommend doing
an upper body press, an upper body pull,
a lower body press, and lower body pull.
An example would be a push-up, a pull-up
or a bent row, a squat, and then a
deadlift. And record a frontal view, and
a side view. uh probably do three to 10
repetitions per angle. Okay? Slow and
controlled. And you want to look for
four key things. Number one is you want
to look for symmetry. So symmetry is
front to back, left to right, and your
right limb and your left limb. If they
aren't moving perfectly, that's fine,
but you want to see is one moving
further ahead than the other one. Is one
turning to the side and one's not? Is
one fidgeting and and twitching around
differently? So you want to look just to
check to see and make sure that they're
stable. Number two, you want to look for
stability. So, key indicators here are
things like if you if you can't control
a a squat, a controlled squat where your
knees don't start shaking. That would be
an instability issue. So, can you do the
movement slow? Can you pause at the
bottom? Maybe 3 seconds, maybe 5 seconds
or 10. You should have complete control
of that movement at all of these joints.
Are your hips sliding to one side when
you stand up? Is one elbow closer to
your body when you're benching and the
other one's more flared out? These are
the things I'm talking about, right? I'm
not worried about what angle they should
be at or not. You're simply looking for
asymmetries or instabilities. All right?
So, again, as you're pushing up, does
one elbow start flipping and twitching
and going all over the place? The third
one is what I call awareness. There are
a lot of movement technique issues that
are simply people don't know. And so,
you'll watch them squat. I do this in my
classes all the time. I'll have a
hundred kids out there squatting and
you'll see some horrible squat
technique. And when you just tell them,
hey, did you realize your heels were
supposed to be on the ground at all
times when you squat? They're like, oh,
okay. And they can correct it. It's not
actually a movement flaw. It was just
simply an awareness. I didn't know. And
then I actually didn't realize that that
was happening, that position. So, we
want all of our joints to be going
through a general full range of motion,
which is number four. So the ankles uh
during like a squat, your knee should be
able to go as far over your toe as
possible while maintaining good
position, your feet flat on the floor,
your you know three points of contact,
your whole foot foot, and you're not
compromising another joint. So that's
all you're going to look for those four
things, symmetry, stability, awareness,
and range of motion through each joint,
through each movement. You can generally
kind of clear these things in one or two
repetitions in a couple of seconds. I
just look for absolutely terrible, like
can't do it at all, minor flaw, or
pretty close to good. That that's really
all I'm looking for. So, my scoring
system is 013. Zero is like you're not
going to do this exercise because you're
at a very high acute risk. You might get
hurt on rep one tomorrow. Like a score
of one is like there's a minor flaw
here. We can probably do it, but we need
to be cautious of load and volume. The
other one is maybe it's perfect, maybe
it's not, but go ahead and sort of do it
on a reasonable protocol. You'll be
fine. So that's generally uh what you
would need to do is a cost-free method
of identifying good movement technique
within any of the things that that you
would do.
>> What about speed?
>> I actually don't think this is one most
people should test. If you're a high
performance athlete, we can run a
40-yard dash or we can do uh some
different things with a velocity
transducer on a barbell. If you're a
weightlifter or something, for most
people, pure speed is really maximum
velocity or acceleration are kind of the
two ways we break it down. It's not it's
generally not that necessary to test.
>> What about number three, power, which I
believe before you told me was speed
times force.
>> The apostrophe version here is a simple
broad jump. So this is stand, you know,
normal position, jump out as far in
front of you as you possibly can and
measure the distance between where you
started and the back of your heel where
it lands. A super basic number to look
for there is your height. So you should
be able to broad jump how tall you are.
If you're five foot five, you should get
five foot five, six foot five, etc.
That's going to ratchet down a little
bit, about 15% for females. They just
simply don't have the power in general
that men have. And so, you're going to
want to bring that down a little bit.
But that's a it's a very crude number.
If you were to look at like a high
performance NFL player, if they're 6
feet tall, they're going to be jumping
like 9 to 10 to 11 feet. We're not
looking for optimization in this
particular test. What you are looking
for red flags. If you can jump your body
height, you're going to be just fine. To
clarify, there's no running approach
here. You're going to stand at a still.
Yeah, you can swing, bounce as much as
you'd like to do. You're going to
projectile off. So, you're going to
measure the distance from the tip of
your toe. So, basically stand behind the
line and then the furthest point back
where you land. So, basically the worst
possible score, not the best possible
because your feet won't land
symmetrically. One's probably going to
be a little bit farther. Just use the
furthest point back of your back heel
and go from there.
>> What about strength?
>> So strength is really important. You
need to measure this in a in multiple
areas. And we'll start off with grip
strength. You can do this in two ways.
You can buy a hand grip dynamometer. Now
these are anywhere between 20 to $100
anywhere. These actually used to be like
when I was in school like hundreds of
dollars and now you can literally buy
them on any website for 25 bucks. So
technically that's not cost free. I know
your whole thing about the cost free
protocols, but 25 bucks. I'm calling
that basically cost free. Um, you can
bring that in and test that and that's
just a little device where you're going
to squeeze and you're gonna do and I
would do your right hand and your left
hand. They're going to give you a value
in kilograms. You want to look for
something like a minimum score here of
40 kg. Ideally, you're up past 60 would
be a really good spot to be in. You want
to make sure that there's no less than
10% variation between your left and
right hand. Your your non-dominant hand
actually shouldn't be that much weaker
in this test. So, what you'll actually
see a lot of times is the non-dominant
can be often times stronger because a
dominant hand is more for movement
precision, writing, things like that. If
you're a male and you're under 40 kg on
a hand grip dynamometer, we're going to
need to train that. If you're a female,
it's not that much lower, but about 35
kg is the cut off point. Another one
that you can actually do is just a dead
hang. So, you can hold on to any bar,
ideally one that is thin enough to where
you can wrap your whole hand around it.
something like going to the gym and
jumping on any pull-up bar or or pull-up
rack. In general, we we should be able
to hang for a minimum of 30 seconds is
what we're what we're looking for. 30 to
kind of 50 seconds is my like good, but
we could probably get better here. If
you're cruising above 60 seconds, I'm
generally pretty happy. Now, if you are
exceptionally large, this thing doesn't
scale perfectly. You know, if you're 240
pounds and even if you're lean, it's
just hard to hang and hold 240 pounds.
Conversely, if you're 145 pounds, even
if you're unhealthy, you're going to be
able to hang for a long time. It's just
not that much weight to carry. So, just
rough numbers to start off with.
>> So, that's grip strength. What about
strength elsewhere in the body?
>> You can do an upper body strength test
if you would like, although it's not
technically something we do very often.
One I'm generally more interested in is
a leg extension test. And the reason I
like this is a back squat is better. A
barbell back squat is look, that's my
like that's my jam. That's my life,
right? It's just very technically
demanding and it it's challenging. You
need spotters. You need comfort. A lot
goes into this. So for the average
person, a leg extension test is fairly
standardized. You don't have to worry
about technique and people can just get
into it and go. And so what you want to
look for there is a couple of standards
you want to hit. Again, a very simple
answer here is body weight. Can you do a
leg extension with your body weight?
That's a pretty good number you want to
be at. If you go up an age past age 40,
every decade, that can come down about
10%. And you'll still be in a pretty
good slot. So, if you're 50 years old
and you're 170 lbs, if you can do 160,
you're in a pretty good sort of spot.
And then you can just again take it down
about 10% every decade after 40. Any of
these strength tests, they don't have to
be done to a technical true one rep max.
You can use what are called repetition
conversion equations. So, put on a load
that you think is kind of close to your
maximum and just do it for as many reps
as you can. As long as it's under five
reps total, you can then actually go
online and enter that into any number of
calculators anywhere and it will tell
you, okay, you did three repetitions at
200 lb. Your one rep max is probably
215, whatever. So, there's estimate
equations. So, if you don't want to
spend the time or you're not truly
comfortable like absolutely going to
your true one rep max, just get to a
number that's fairly close and do as
many as you can and then go online
again. One rep max estimator equations
are everywhere. If you get past five
repetitions or so, the accuracy of those
equations starts going down. So, don't
put on something and go, I did 12 reps
of it and then try to figure out where
you're wonder. It'll get close. You
start moving past that, you're just
getting worse and worse and worse
accuracy. If neither of those are an
option, another one I like a lot here is
simply a front squat or a goblet squat
hold. So, you're going to hold a weight
in front of your chest, whether a kettle
bell is is great here, a dumbbell is
fine here. And you want to hold about
half of your body weight. Go all the way
to the bottom position and try to hold
that for about 45 seconds. So, it's it's
a pretty good indicator of number one,
your position. It's hard to be in a bad
position for that long at that load, as
well as core strength and low back
stability. It's more difficult than the
leg extension, but it's it's quite a bit
more functional and it's going to give
you insight into a lot more areas than
just the quadriceps.
>> So, 45 seconds down at the bottom of the
squat. Yep. And then returning to a
standing position.
>> Yep. And if you can't do the return, I
actually I'm not that worried. But as
long as you can hold that good position
without a technical breakdown in that 45
seconds, that's a really good spot. As
an intro, I want a third of your body
weight for 30 seconds. It's important to
add a couple of caveats to the strength
training stuff. So there's two that I
want to do. Number one, these are
assuming you are technically proficient.
So I don't want you to do any exercise
to exhaustion or to maximum strength if
you're not comfortable with your
technique. So adjust these accordingly.
If you're not comfortable with the front
squat, do the leg extension. If you're
not even comfortable with that, do
something different. So we never want to
utilize maximum testing if it's going to
come with a consequence of of serious
acute injury. So that's the most
important flag. The second one is your
warm-up protocol will have a huge effect
on your actual results. And so whenever
you do these tests, especially if you're
going to do a test and then a test again
down the line, you want to make sure
that that warm-up protocol is
standardized.
>> What about hypertrophy?
>> So the thing you want to pay attention
to here is
you have the aesthetic portion of
hypertrophy. That's entirely up to you.
There is no rationale. You can decide
what you feel like looks good or doesn't
look good. That's irrelevant. There is a
sufficient amount you need to have where
below that is detrimental to your health
regardless of your outcomes. And so the
best way to do this is a couple of ways.
Any sort of body composition test can do
this. So whether this is a um a scan
through like a DEXA scan which is a gold
standard or other uh ways of
bioelectrical impedance or other ways.
So there's a ton of different tests you
can get that are pretty close. Okay. So
what you want to pay attention to when
you get like a DEXA scan is a number
called FFMI. And so that stands for
fat-free mass index. So you can look at
again any number of online calculators.
These are all standard. So it doesn't
actually matter where you pull them up.
You don't have to worry about looking it
up and whether or not it's right or not
or something. And so that's going to
actually tell you if you have sufficient
muscle math. And so a number you want to
look for uh in general is something like
if you're a man your FFMI should be
something like 20 or higher. If you're a
woman you want to look for something
like 18. So that those are the targets.
If you get past like 24 25 for a man
that's a lot of muscle mass assuming
you're reasonably lean. Now if your FFMI
is like 24 25 but your body fat is like
40%. You're actually just a very very
large individual. You're not in a great
spot. So when we say these sort of
numbers, it's the assumption that you're
probably sub 30% body fat um for a man
and sub 35 for a woman. So those are the
numbers. There are online calculators.
All you really need to know is your
total body weight, your body fat
percentage, and then your height. You
can enter those three numbers and then
they'll tell you your FFMI score, and
it'll correct for an adjusted value. Uh
and most of those will actually tell you
the grading rubric in them. So good,
average, bad, etc. But those are the
numbers we look at. If you are as a man
sub 17, as a woman sub 15, now we're in
an area of of pretty severe
physiological detriment for insufficient
muscle.
>> What about muscular endurance? Is this
where you're going to tell me I need to
do wall sits?
>> So, this is really nice. You can do any
number of tests here. A standard plank.
Can you hold a front plank for 60
seconds? Can you hold a side plank for
45 seconds? If you're able to do a
push-up, we want to be able to do for
again for a general male, we should have
no problem doing 25 plus consecutive
push-ups. This would be a full complete
lock out of the elbows on the top and a
full chest touch or close to it at the
ground. You can do it different. It
doesn't really matter, but just keep it
standard from your pre-EST, your post-
test if you're trying to mark progress.
>> And for females,
>> so for those those folks, any that's
going to scale down a little bit, right?
So basically you're looking at 15 is
that marker like 25 was for the male
where I want to see above 15. Uh and if
I do we're good. Anything between 5 to
15 is the number of like okay if you're
sub five we generally have some problems
and if that is different between one and
zero then like now we zero is is is a
problem. So we should be able to do
that. The other way to assess muscular
endurance is take the exact strength
test you did from the talk five minutes
ago. Which one did you do? load that to
75%
and then do that for as many repetitions
as you can. And that is a tremendous
barometer uh of muscular endurance. So
if you are able to do 200 lbs on your
leg extension test, put 75% on that and
do that as many reps as you can. You
want to look for more than eight
repetitions. If you are below eight
repetitions, then we have a muscular
endurance problem.
>> What about anorobic capacity?
>> This one's more challenging. You either
have to go to a laboratory and do
something like a windgate test. So, this
is a 30 second maximal test where you're
going to see how much work can you
possibly do in that 30 seconds. If you
don't have allowed access to a
laboratory, you can you can do this on
any protocol you want. This could be
sprinting, this can be on a like an
airbike, this could be on a rower,
anything like that. Anything where you
can exert maximum effort and you don't
have to worry about technical problems.
So, I generally don't like to do things
like a kettle bell swing or something
like that. There's just too many other
variables. You need to be able to go as
hard as you possibly can knowing you're
going to get to a place of tremendous
fatigue. Now, in the lab, we often use
what's called a Bosco protocol, and
you're going to stand on a force plate,
and you're going to do as many vertical
jumps as fast as you can, as high as you
can for 60 seconds, and you are
absolutely destroyed by like second 45.
So, we either use that Windgate protocol
or that Bosco protocol. If you want
though, again, take any of those other
places, 30 seconds or so, up to 45
seconds, up to a minute if you want. It
doesn't really matter. We don't really
have standards for these things because
it's going to be different. How far you
can travel in 30 seconds on a treadmill.
Is this going to be so different than
sprinting in the field or on the assault
bike or whatever. So, what you really
want to worry about there is, can you
complete it? And then, how awful do you
feel afterwards? So what what you really
want to think about here is not those
protocols, but this you want to think
about can you get close to your
predicted maximum heart rate. So the the
number we throw out is 220 minus your
age. So if you're 50 years old, 220US
50, you should be able to get to a
maximum heart rate of around 170 beats
per minute. Now that number is extremely
generic. If you don't get there, that
doesn't have any indication of your
fitness. If you get higher, that doesn't
mean you're any more fit. It's just a
rough number. So, here's what I'm what I
want you to do in this case. Your heart
rate recovery is the better metric. So,
I want you to get up to a maximum heart
rate and then test your heart rate
recovery. And what you should be looking
for there is about a half a beat
recovery per second. You're going to get
up to a place where you reach like
absolute terrible exhaustion, maximum
fatigue, test your heart rate, and then
count, right? Have a timer going. Within
60 seconds, you should have again at
half a beat per second, you should have
a heart rate recovery of 30 beats per
minute. Within the next minute, so
two-minute recovery, it should begin
half that. So 60 beats. Those are rough
numbers to go by. And your 3minut
recovery is again half of that again. So
that is the closest way. If your heart
rate recovery is worse than that, then
we know we have a problem in your
anorobic capacity or your cardiovascular
capacity.
>> What about number eight, maximal heart
rate? Because what you just described
sounds a lot like maximal heart rate. So
this is your V2 max. So the gold
standard here is to actually go into a
laboratory and get this thing done. So
we can actually run a a V2 max test
where you put a mask on, collect all
your gases, and run you to there. And
there's a very specific protocol for
completion of a a true maximum test. And
any any of the scientists will know that
if you don't have access to that, you
can do a couple of tests. One of them is
called a 12minute Cooper test. So this
is simply time. You're going to run for
12 minutes as far as you can and you're
going to record the distance you
covered. Again, you can go online to any
number of of calculators, enter that
distance in, and that will tell you your
estimated V2 max.
>> So, that's a 12minut sprint.
>> 12-minute sprint, maximum distance you
can cover in 12 minutes. So, that's
anywhere between a mile to two plus
miles, depending on how fit you are, but
you just do that Cooper 12-minute test.
If you want, you can do a little gentler
version of that there. In fact, there is
a onem walk test you can do. In this
case, you have to have some sort of
either a stopwatch or ideally a heart
rate monitor. And all you have to do is
this is a Rockport one mile submaximal
test. So you're going to walk a mile,
record the time, record your heart rate
at the end, enter those in, and those
will give you again estimates of your B2
max. So that's the the like, oh my gosh,
I can't run for 12 minutes as hard as I
possibly can or I don't want to do it or
uh we have a lot of these in our
executive program. It's like my knee
hurts too bad. I've got back pain when I
run or whatever. Can I Okay. And you do
the walk test and it's pretty accurate
if you do it correctly. And again, those
are all standard uh calculations. So
anywhere you find those, you don't have
to worry about the source that you just
enter your stuff in and they're going to
be running off the same equation.
>> Number nine, long duration steady state
exercise.
>> Yep. So you really want to think about
this as not a standard number. This is
you should maintain consistent work
output for over 20 plus minutes. In this
one, I want you to just pick something
that it was in your lifestyle. So, is
there a loop around your house that you
can do? Is there some protocol that you
you like to use before? And you're
simply going to test your ability. Can
you maintain work without stopping?
That's all it needs to be. Now, ideally,
I personally like to throw a little
twist in here, which is can you do this
with nasal breathing only? That's when I
feel really good. If you can go 30
straight minutes without needing to take
a break, um, walking doesn't really cut
it unless you're very very unfit, in
which case if walking 30 minutes without
a break is a challenge. Okay, like
there. But if you can, I want you moving
at a nonwalking pace. I don't care what
zone this is. 2 3 4 5 I don't care. Show
me you can maintain minimum of 20
minutes of work with no breaks, no
intervals, no downtime. Uh, and again,
ideally breathing through your nose
only. How often should we be assessing
our fitness for each and every one of
these?
>> Well, the way that I would say this is I
would recommend doing this full battery
once a year. Now, you could do these
technically all in two days. A 3-day
split here is probably best. So, if you
were to just say, "Hey, this is like
testing week. I actually love this for
beginning of the year or whenever it is
that you sort of change your training."
Just like once a year, you should
probably go to a physician and get full
blood work. You're going to be thinking,
"Yeah, but I don't want to like give up
on my exercise routine that week." Well,
I promise you, you're not going to
finish this week. and think, "I didn't
do very much work this week." It's gonna
feel great. And then you're gonna have a
very nice barometer of exactly where you
need to change and and prioritize your
training for the next quarter, half a
year or wherever you want to go. So,
which order to do them in? The
non-fatiguing test you can do whenever
the FFMI, the body fat composition, all
this stuff can be done wherever. I
generally like to do that though as your
very first activity. The reason is we
know that acute exercise can heavily
influence things like body composition
measurements because of inflammation,
water storage, etc. So, it's easiest to
just sort of get that off of a 48 hour
rest. You want to make sure you don't do
any hard exercise the day before a body
composition test and probably 48 hours
before that. So, just start yourself off
with that. Your movement test can be the
same thing. You don't want to try to do
a assessment of how well you're
squatting if you're incredibly sore from
your your brutal squatting test. So tend
to do those things when you're the most
fresh. Then what you want to do is any
skill or maximum strength or power goes
at the very beginning of the day. Any
fatiguing thing happens at the end. And
so you could easily do this. All right,
I'm going to do my power test. My broad
jump. You're not going to be fatigued at
all from that. And on the same day,
since I'm already pretty warmed up now,
I'm going to roll right into my leg
strength test. And since I'm really
warmed up, I'm going to do my leg
muscular endurance test right there. So,
this is a very common strategy we use.
We do our one rep max leg extension. 5
minutes, 7 minutes, whatever we need to
do. Come back, load it to 75%, do as
many reps as you can. Boom. You could
roll right into then your upper body
test or your grip strength test or
anything else that you want to do there.
So, you can knock out your strength
testing and muscular endurance testing
all in one day. You could do your
performance diagnostic, your power jump
test, your strength, and your muscular
endurance. and all that stuff is knocked
out. You're going to have to come back
on a separate day and do your anorobic
test. This is 30 seconds maximum
endurance, things like that. You could
though, if you wanted, do that after
your long duration test. Your long
duration test is again is just going to
function as like a big warm-up or you
could flip those things or you could do
them on separate days. You're going to
have to do your V2 max test on its own
day for the most part unless you wanted
to do again your movement or your body
composition sort of before those things.
So you really have the ability to kind
of mix and match. Ideally, this most
realistically probably takes three days.
You don't need to be optimal in all
these areas to be quote unquote optimal
health from this perspective. You just
want to make sure again there's no
severe performance anchors. This is what
we call them, right? We don't want any
of these severe constraints because
you're going to get limited by that
thing. And so what you want to do is
move that up to just sufficient or
concerning, right? and get it away from
that. If you do that, that thing's not
going to catch you. You're going to be
able to continue to pursue pursue
optimization any of the one things that
you have a specific passion for, which
is generally what moves people, right?
You train so that you feel better. You
train because you know there are all
these benefits to it and and gez this
audience probably could list hundreds of
them. But you also train because you
generally like to get better at
something. A lot of us like have
something. And so you want to make sure
that you're not going, "Hey, I know
you're good at endurance, but you really
shouldn't train anymore." We don't want
that message. Not at all. I want you to
love your training. So before we close
out, I want to go back and finish off uh
the metrics for V2 max because I don't
actually think I gave you numbers on
that. So in general, for men, a minimum
number we want to look at here is 35
milliliters per kilogram per minute. And
for women, that'd be about 30. We could
actually push a lot higher on those
things. In reality, I want to see men
above 50. And I'm not even really stoked
until I get above 55. In fact, if I want
to see men above 55, I really want to
see women above 50.
>> I want to add just one more metric to
our discussion today. Uh, which is
really just my way of saying thank you.
Because if there were a metric for
amount of useful information per
sentence spoke, you would be at the
upper level of that metric. you have
this amazing ability to provide so much
knowledge in a clear and concise and
today listed out format that is both
interesting, grounded in science and
actionable. So on behalf of everyone
listening and certainly for myself as
well, I just want to say thank you.
Well, I appreciate the compliments and
I'm looking forward to the next
conversation jumping right into speed,
strength, and hypertraining and what are
the evidence-based and best practices
for protocols in those areas.