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Speaker A: Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, my guest is Jeff Cavaliere. Jeff Cavaliere holds a Master of Science in physical therapy an... |
Speaker B: I'm glad to be here. It's amazing. |
Speaker A: I'm a longtime consumer of your content. I've learned a tremendous amount about fitness, both in the weight room, cardio nutrition, things that I've applied for over a decade. So for me, this is particularly meaningful. And my goal here is really to ask a bunch of questions to which I'm interested in the ans... |
Speaker B: I think it's like a 60 40 split, which would be leaning towards weight training strength, and then the conditioning aspect be about 40%. So if you look at it over the course of a training week, I mean, five days in a gym would be a great task, and obviously not in the gym. It could be done at home, but three... |
Speaker A: And in terms of the duration of those workouts, what's your suggestion? I've been weight training for about 30 years, running for about 30 years, and mainly for health, and have found that if I work hard in the gym or at resistance training for more than 60 minutes or so, it's very hard for me to recover. I ... |
Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's. Those are good numbers. Cause those are the kind of numbers that we usually preach. We try to keep our workouts to an hour or less, if possible. Now, depending upon the split that you're following, if you're on a total body split, there's just gonna be more that has to be done in a given ... |
Speaker A: In terms of splits, you mentioned splits. And so for those who aren't familiar with this term splits, it's really which body parts are you training on which days? Seems like almost everybody follows a weekly workout schedule. Although the body, of course, doesn't care about the week, there's no reason to thi... |
Speaker B: For me, the first rule is, will you stick to it? Right? Because there are split. I don't particularly like full body splits. I was actually talking to Jesse about that the other day. I don't necessarily like to have to train everything now, of course the volumes will come down per muscle group, but if you do... |
Speaker A: Is that the definition of a bro split, one muscle group a day? |
Speaker B: Yeah. |
Speaker A: I see. So it's very much geared towards strength and aesthetics, really. Maximizing chest. |
Speaker B: Probably more. More aesthetics than strength. Yeah, yeah, you're just. |
Speaker A: Hence the bro. The bro name. |
Speaker B: Yeah. But again, like, you know, in here, I am a science guy, and I could appreciate the benefits of a bro split, especially because, again, like, what, to what, to what end? You know, who. Who's. Whose goal are we, are we trying to achieve here? Theirs are ours. You know, like, I mean, if. If I'm applying m... |
Speaker A: Yeah. That raises a really interesting, I think, important question. Early on, when I started resistance training, which was when I was 16, in high school, I got in touch with, and I was learning from Mike Mentzer. Me, too. Me, too. |
Speaker B: Me, too. That's crazy. |
Speaker A: And Mike was very helpful. Very, very helpful. We got to be friendly. |
Speaker B: I just read his book. I didn't get a chance to be. So I'm jealous. |
Speaker A: Well, I, back then, no Internet. I paid by western union type thing to, to send him some money for. |
Speaker B: The back of the magazine. |
Speaker A: And then he got on the phone with me, and my mother at the time was like, why is this grown man calling the house? And he gave me a very straightforward split, which was shoulders and arms. One day, he had me taking two days off and then training legs, and then two days off and then chest and back, etcetera. |
Speaker B: And that's a variation of a bro split, too, where you're sort of, you know, breaking them down that way. Chest and back or chest and bis, you know. |
Speaker A: Yeah. And it worked very well for me. I probably would have because of my age, I think, and because it was the. I was untrained, I think it largely untrained. I think it would have grown on many different programs, but it worked very well for me. I eventually just made that an every other day things. Shoulde... |
Speaker B: Yeah. |
Speaker A: In other words, if I put a day off in between each workout, I really want to be there, and I get in there with, with a lot of fire. And I'm also doing other things on the off days. So I think that, I love that you mentioned the split that you'll stick to and that you can bring the intensity to, because I thi... |
Speaker B: I actually. I think it makes sense in some scenarios, but it doesn't make sense practically for a lot of people's schedules. So, like, if you could break down, let's say you were gonna do even some version of a total body session, or maybe, like, you're gonna do an upper lower split, right? You could do an u... |
Speaker A: You know, I've never had a strong recovery quotient, but if I stick to this one day off in between every once in a while, two days in a row of training, maybe because I have to travel and I want to make sure I get all the workouts in kind of thing. I seem to be okay. I like your example of warming up the car... |
Speaker B: Um, so again, I think that the, you know, the bare minimum is probably twice a week in terms of cardiovascular, if you want to have some semblance of cardiovascular conditioning. But I think most people who actually need it more or want to pursue it more than that are going to need more time to do that. So, ... |
Speaker A: Got it. And in terms of the form of cardiovascular training, I've seen you do a number of, I have to say, very impressive high intensity interval type work. So burpee type work or push ups with. With crunches mixed into them. Anyway, people can see your videos to. I didn't describe those in the best way, but... |
Speaker B: I think all the above. I mean, those are factors from a personal level. But I think that if I. If you are, if we could blend function across these realms and not have such a delineation between this is my weight training and this is my conditioning, but figure out a way to blend them together, I always think... |
Speaker A: I love the idea of bringing some mental challenge and some desire to improve a skill while conditioning. That's not something that I've thought of before, and it, and it's simply because I've overlooked it. But it makes sense because my sister, who's reasonably fit, although I'm always trying to get her to d... |
Speaker B: I mean, it just honestly is something that made sense to me because during my workouts, even as a, as a young kid just starting out, like, I always wanted to know, what is it working? You know, a lot of people ask that question more so than you think. Like, what is this supposed to work? And a lot. And I don... |
Speaker A: Right. |
Speaker B: If you don't feel the discomfort, then you're doing something wrong. And I struggle to this day on certain muscle groups to still do that. Even knowing what I'm trying to work and knowing what the goal of everything I'm preaching here, it's very difficult for some muscles and for certain people to do this on... |
Speaker A: It's a couple of really important I'd like to delve into further. First of all, my hunch was always that the muscle groups that grew easy most easily and that I could contract hardest without any. The first time I did the cavalier test, got ten out of ten. If we give it a ten out of ten scale, you know, it c... |
Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, yeah. |
Speaker A: And do you think this is something that takes upkeep maintenance or that once you develop that in a muscle, you can just kind of let it coast? |
Speaker B: So I think, like, everything, it requires upkeep, you know, use or lose it, I do believe firmly, but, like, I think that it's the development of the connection is going to be harder than the maintenance of the connection. As I said, I still struggle to this day for myself with, you know, unnamed muscle group... |
Speaker A: Well, it certainly obeys all the rules of neuroplasticity. The fire together, wire together mantra, which is the word to my colleague Carla Schatz, hold true for all aspects of neural function, including nerve to muscle. So these flexing throughout the day, or the deliberate isolation of contracting a muscle... |
Speaker B: Yeah. And there's no, believe me, there's no science behind that in terms of the application of it. You do it when you catch yourself doing it from time to time, but it is definitely something that's easily done discreetly. And, you know, you wind up doing that. I actually, I think in a, in a recent video wh... |
Speaker A: Sharpening the blade, so to speak. Yeah. Certainly obeys the laws of nerve to muscle physiology. I want to just touch on a couple of things. If the goal is to challenge muscles, and one is dividing their body into, let's say, a three or four day a week split or so, or maybe up to six, how do you know when a ... |
Speaker B: Makes total sense. Makes total sense. All right, so regarding the first part of the question, like, how would you kind of dictate when a muscle is recovered? So I do think that what you're experiencing is totally real, that different muscles recover at different rates. And I've always been so fascinated by t... |
Speaker A: Every day with those guys. |
Speaker B: No, we would do, in spring training, we do sort of a baseline entry level measurement, and then we would, we would measure it throughout the season, maybe once every two weeks or three weeks. And, you know, the idea there was to manage a recovery measure, the recovery, but I just gave it away. You know, to d... |
Speaker A: It's like old Macintosh computers. There's a huge market for them and old phones. Keep your phones now. In 30 years, the lame phone now will be worth a lot of money. |
Speaker B: Worth a lot. So, you know, I wound up, you know, finding one. And it's a great tool for just squeezing the scale with your hands and seeing what type of output you could get. And I think we all can relate to this. When you just visualize, imagine the last time you were sick or that were you? Or just try this... |
Speaker A: I love this tool. It's simple, it's low cost. If you can find such a scale, I guess you could also find one of those grippers that, and you can do this in a very non quantitative but better would be a scale where you could actually measure how hard you can squeeze this thing at a given time of day. It draws ... |
Speaker B: Yeah, and they also, I mean, there certainly are more sophisticated tools, too. As a PT, we have hand grip dynamometers, and we can measure one side at a time, too. You know, I'm not really. I'm. I'm getting a little bit blinded by the fact that both hands are squeezing into that scale. And I don't get, real... |
Speaker A: Know, and I'm sure some of our listeners will want one, too, because there are a lot of tech geeks out there, not tech industry geeks, but people who like, like tech gear. What's it called again? |
Speaker B: Hand grip dynamometer. |
Speaker A: Hand grip dynamometer. Said by Jeff with the great east coast accident by me, in a terrible, botched it west coast version. Thank you. We'll put that in the show notes. Also, I think recovery is key. We always hear about sleep. You grow when you sleep, and incidentally, your brain, you stimulate learning whe... |
Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, first of all, some people's opinions of that type of content is that you sleep in the position that's most comfortable, so you ensure that you're sleeping. Oh, great. I understand that we all want to sleep. That's the goal when we put our head on the pillow, is actually fall asleep and wake up ... |
Speaker A: It's hard to make the bed in the morning. |
Speaker B: Right. So it's like you, you're going to want to have, you know, them tight. Well I'm, I'm, I'm saying as you experienced, you know, you're going to have these, this, you know, prolonged plantar flexion that's going to likely lead to shorter, you know, calves over time because you're lacking all that length ... |
Speaker A: Terrific. And again, it's really helped me and I'm a big believer based on good science out of Stanford and elsewhere, that as much as we can be nasal breathers in sleep, we probably should be. I don't know if you've done any content yet about taping the mouth shut with some medical tape, but the benefits of... |
Speaker B: That's a recent, that's a recent evolution I think, for sure, and not the nutrition as much, but the pts have become a little bit angry these days. |
Speaker A: I see. Well, I always say with feelings of powerlessness comes aggression. Remember that folks. So in any case, they're stretching where I'm trying to consciously lengthen again in air quotes, the muscle I'm not yanking on the limb or bobbing up and down. Maybe you could define the different types of stretch... |
Speaker B: So yeah, there's obviously, there's a lot of different types of stretching there could get even to PNF stretching and things that are a little bit more, you know, niche. But like in general, the two basic forms of stretching are active stretching and passive stretching. And your, or, you know, your dynamic w... |
Speaker A: Sorry to interrupt stretching later in the day because I'm intrigued by this concept of heal shorter. So part of the healing and recovery process means a shortening of the muscles. This is the tensing up in sleep. Could you elaborate just a bit on that? And then, sorry to break flow, but then to continue, do... |
Speaker B: No, just basically, you know, what's been shown is that when the repair process, muscular repair from, let's say, strength training during the day, the repair process usually results in a muscle that is slightly shorter rather than increased in length. It's just muscles prefer to ratchet their way down into ... |
Speaker A: For me, it doesn't even include the toe. |
Speaker B: Right. The shin touch, the toe touch attempt. Right, right. So, like, you know, those, those are going to improve with each subsequent rep. And I think that's what people actually like. When you can see those, those actual changes from rep one to rep seven, you just feel ready. You feel more alert and ready ... |
Speaker A: These pro athletes are amazing, and you've had the great fortune of working with and improving their, their abilities. Um, but I can only imagine, uh. Cause I also imagine he's pretty strong in the gym also. |
Speaker B: I mean, you know, it's always, it always amazes me, the guys that make it to that level, no matter what sport they do, they're so gifted in everything, you know, like David Wright used to make me laugh all the time with the Mets, because no matter what I ping pong, you know, like anything, he. Because of his... |
Speaker A: Yeah, I have a couple. I'm smiling because I have a couple really close friends who did a number of years, some several decades in the SEAL teams, and I don't know that their skill level at everything is so high as you're describing for athletes, but their level of competitiveness is beyond. I ocean swim wit... |
Speaker B: They're trying to beat themselves. They're not even trying to beat you. |
Speaker A: That's right. I'm not even in the competition. |
Speaker B: Not even the competition. You're not even there. Yeah, exactly. |
Speaker A: Thank you. Now I won't feel so bad or worse. It's true. It's a remarkable thing. I'm glad you mentioned jump roping. I used to skip rope for warm up, for boxing, like, three. Three minute rounds or something like that. But I'm glad you brought it up because, um, skipping rope is something that, uh, obviously... |
Speaker B: All of the above. Maybe not the double dutch, but all. All the above. I mean, I think that that's the cool thing about it, right? Like, once we sort of master the skill, because for all of us, that first jump with the 2ft going together is a challenge because you just got to time that rope. You got to time y... |
Speaker A: Great. I own a jump rope. I love doing it in the morning while I get sunlight in my eyes. It's actually a protocol I picked up from Tim Ferriss, who mentioned, because listeners in my podcast know I'm like a broken record with get sunlight in your eyes, even through cloud cover, it just sets your sleep rhyth... |
Speaker B: And there's sort of that hybrid that we were talking about before of like, you know, you're not, you're not necessarily dropping down to the ground and doing burpees, but I just look at it as a more athletic endeavor because of the coordination involved than just simply walking or jogging. |
Speaker A: And you, it's not much of a equipment requirement, very minimal cost. You could even use a rope or, or something if you, although we even. |
Speaker B: Instruct people they can use no rope and just pretend, you know, and just move the arms, right. You're never going to hit the rope, which is good, but you know, at the same. So you're never going to know if you're doing it wrong, but at least you can, you can move through the, and get the same benefits throu... |
Speaker A: I love it. I love it. I told myself before sitting down with you today that I wasn't going to focus on specific exercises because there's such a wealth of incredible content that you put out there that people could just put into YouTube or elsewhere and arrive at the proper way to do a chin or a dip or for w... |
Speaker B: We censor this podcast? Censoring? Do we beep this out or no? |
Speaker A: Oh, do you get beef about this? |
Speaker B: Oh, you know what? We always get beef in any social media platform where we're put out. But like, no, I guess I get some from it. But I'm fully prepared to defend myself. |
Speaker A: So. But here's the reason for asking about this. I never really cared much for upright rose. It's not an exercise I tend to do, but one thing that's apparent in all my colleagues and every child I see and every adult I see is that almost everybody is in inward rotation now. So folks think if you stay. I thin... |
Speaker B: I actually love it. I am happy to talk about it because I love. I love the shoulder as a joint. I think pts tend to fall in love with certain areas, and the shoulder is one of the cool areas for me, that's like the foot is, but like, the shoulder has the most mobility in the body of any, of any joint, but it... |
Speaker A: And for those listening, we'll put a link to a short clip of what this looks like. But basically what Jeff is doing, and tell me if I'm describing this incorrectly or correctly. Jeff is taking your two thumbs and pointing behind you. And so elbows up kind of near the chin and pointing behind you, like, oh, h... |
Speaker B: Yeah, well, again, listen, without naming names or programs or anything like that. When I got involved, when I got involved in Athleanx, when I first started my online presence, there was a very, very, very popular program that was out there that I just, for fun, I wanted to, as a pt, this is the nerdy thing... |
Speaker A: No, it makes. Makes sense being able to train for a long period of time and feel good, you know. No, I'm proud to say, you know, and I don't have the kind of genetics where, like, we don't have a lot of impressive athletes in our family tree or anything there, you know, some fit individuals, some less fit in... |
Speaker B: Sure. So this is definitely like a big cornucopia pt stuff here. But like, I, and this is what I love. So first of all, that video that is, it's my proudest video that I have. And the reason being is that it's helped so many people. Like, we get comments on that video every day. I don't even know how many vi... |
Speaker A: There's a lot of news. |
Speaker B: And quite honestly, it was a little bit of an afterthought video in terms of its origin. I think that that day maybe Jesse was having some problems or something like that, a little bit of low back pain. And I showed him and it helped right away. I was like, well, we can make a video on it because this will h... |
Speaker A: Doctor Justin. Yeah, it's fascinating. In another lifetime, I would have gone and been a pt, although it sounds like the community among pts online. |
Speaker B: I don't know what. Listen, we're good people, but it's like. |
Speaker A: Yeah, scientists and neuroscientists can get into pretty intense battles. You know, coming from the academic community, you know, the etiquette is so different online because I always say, you know, I think in person people would probably behave a bit differently. |
Speaker B: Take your hand and say hello. |
Speaker A: Yeah, you take your hand and say hello. And there's also. Look, I'll just be very direct about this. There are a lot of people online for whom their only content is pointing out the misunderstandings or alleged flaws of other people, it's like the bulk of their identity, which to me is sort of a sad existenc... |
Speaker B: I mean, questioning what's out there, it's healthy, it's normal, it's great. It actually sparks conversation. But as you said, some people's existence is solely to find things to nag about and not actually with the goal being to advance anything, but rather just to. |
Speaker A: Yeah. In the world of science, being skeptical but not cynical is encouraged. But I always say that the longer that somebody is in a career path, it's certainly in science or medicine, and they realize how hard it is to do various studies. Once they publish a few studies, generally they. They sort of get a b... |
Speaker B: Yeah, this is fascinating. This is because it just shows, again, how intricate the body is and how responsive or over responsive it can be to something so little. And what you're talking about is that when you grip a bar, whether it be through a curl or whether it be, and this is mostly pulling a exercises b... |
Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's what was happening to me and I'm very conscious of this now. Again, for me it's complete. I haven't had this elbow pain at all. So that's great. You know, very fortunate. So again, a debt of gratitude to you. Never. I thought there was something wrong with my elbow, basically, and I thou... |
Speaker B: Well, I think, you know, it might just be an inherited practice from the days of trainers since Babe Ruth, you know, but we in baseball, we used a lot of cold following performance, you know, just because the idea would be there, there is some, especially pitchers, you know, there is some inflammation, um, t... |
Speaker A: Yeah. What would be fun would be to bring the cool Mitt technology from Stanford. This is Craig Heller, my colleague, Craig Heller's lab at Stanford. Some really important and amazing work in this area. But then it moved on to some other things. He's also working on down syndrome, and he works on a number of... |
Speaker B: Like the blue blocker test. |
Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. And see how that goes. With somebody as advanced trained as you, that's probably the best thing to do. So, content for the future. Yeah, I think heat and cold are kind of staples in the PT world, and it does seem like people use them slightly differently, but they are kind of the macronutri... |
Speaker B: Yeah, I can't claim that I'm not guilty of that. Sometimes I am on social media, but sometimes I'm trying to post something. |
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