Andy Galpin: 3 Ways to Lose Weight and Gain Muscle (the Fitness Plan You Will ACTUALLY Stick To) | On Purpose with Jay Shetty

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You want to gain more muscle.

You want to have more energy.

You want to have more mental focus.

Okay, why haven't you done that before?

I want to find what is that single thing that stopped you from winning, and that's all I want to work on.

Professor of kinesiology.

Expert in muscle physiology.

Dr. Andy Galpin. What's going to burn more calories?

Walking a mile or running a mile?

Running a mile. A calorie is energy.

Walking a mile, running a mile, it's the same thing.

if someone's listening right now and they're thinking fitness and strength are my big goals this year how would you encourage them to think about it number one predictor of success with training programs is the number one health and wellness podcast jay shetty jay shetty he won the only jay shetty hey

everyone welcome back to on purpose the place you come to become happier healthier, and more healed.

Today's guest is going to help us do that for our physiology, for our body, for our muscles.

I'm excited for you to listen to this episode because I know it's going to make a big change in your life this year.

Today's guest is Andy Galpin, professor, podcast host, and leading expert in human performance science with a PhD in human bioenergetics.

Andy focuses on muscle physiology, strength training, and performance science.

Andy has worked with elite athletes across sports, including Olympians, UFC fighters, NBA, and MLB All -Stars.

Welcome to On Purpose, Andy Galpin.

Andy, it's great to have you here.

Oh, it's a pleasure, man.

We have many friends in common.

It's about time here.

Yeah, I love it. Thank you so much for being here.

And I want to dive straight in.

And today what we did is we asked our audience to tell us what they wanted to know from you.

And we had so many questions.

People had so many things they wanted to learn.

And I think when we're releasing this, it's going to be at a time when it's like kicking off the year.

Like, this is a big goal for people.

This is what people want to achieve this year.

They want to be fitter.

They want to be stronger.

And so the first question I wanted to ask you is, what routine is the best for someone that wants to gain muscle and lose weight?

There is no specific direction to that.

And I know that was like the most deflated answer possible after that enormous setup.

But I'm saying that because I actually want to empower people, not the opposite.

Having done this for many years, having taught for a very long time, one thing that is very clear, if you give hyper -specific answers to questions like that, when someone hears that and they go, oh, I can't do that exercise because my knee hurts, or I can't train like that because I fill in the blanks,

right? Then they often feel like they can't do anything.

And so what you do is you take people from 10 to zero.

And I hate that. I want to go everyone from zero to two.

I want to get somebody to 10, but I want all the wins we can possibly get.

And so if you look at that combination of things you said, two very things, specific things, grow muscle, lose fat.

Okay, great. That gives you effectively every option under the table for your fitness routine.

There are some core things that will lay in that foundation, though, that will be true regardless of your approach.

I can hit those very quickly.

This is a basic saying that we will, and there's variations of this, but the concepts are few and the methods are many.

As long as you hit these next couple of concepts, you can choose all kinds of different methods.

The methods are things like how many days you do it.

Do you use kettlebell?

Do you run? Do you go outside?

Do you use group classes?

Those are all methods, methods.

They're important. We can get to that detail, but concepts are few.

Here's what that's going to look like.

Are you doing something consistently?

If you look across the literature for many years now, the strongest predictor of success with training programs, fitness programs, exercise programs, and nutrition programs, number one predictor of success, short and long -term, is adherence.

You have to be consistent.

I would take a consistent approach with a suboptimal program, with a bad program, any day of the week for that particular question.

So be consistent. Second one is there's got to be some sort of progressive overload.

That doesn't mean you have to lift more weights.

It doesn't mean you have to train harder or more, but there has to be some sort of intentional progress.

That could be done within the day, the week, the month.

You get lots of ways to get there, but be consistent and try to keep progressing eventually.

Outside of that, we're getting into more nuance.

And so now we're thinking about things like you probably want to use really high efficient movements.

These are exercise types, movement patterns that have a lot of caloric expenditure with minimal time, right?

Most likely I'm inferring from that question.

That person probably doesn't want to spend 20 hours a week in their fitness.

And so you want to choose things.

Um, this is not typically isolation work.

So I wouldn't spend 20 minutes doing bicep specific exercises for that particular person.

You got to get a lot of muscles worked and you got to burn a lot of calories.

So this could be a combination of some type of strength training program and some type of cardiovascular program or anything in between.

The reality of it though is I'll reiterate one more time.

And because I've done this many, many times personally, this is consistent across the literature.

Those two goals can be achieved with no or minimal cardiovascular training.

These can be achieved with very minimal strength training.

These can be achieved with body weight training, with any other combination of those things.

You have tons of options there.

So if that is truly your goal, pick something that's going to give you a little bit of both sides of that equation.

Stay safe. Don't get hurt.

You still got to work.

And our, because this is our third one, there's got to be consistent effort there.

So be consistent, keep doing it.

Try to be high productivity with that.

And then you got to try.

I need a six to seven out of 10 on an effort scale.

We'd love to see a little bit more, but I'll live with six below six.

We may not be having enough actual stimuli to grow muscle or lose weight, but you give me those three things and most people are going to have a tremendous amount of success.

Absolutely. Thank you for that.

And I appreciate the refreshing answer and not having to be specific.

And I agree with you.

I think that's a very fair way to go.

And it's actually the only truth and reality to it as well.

Yeah. You know, honestly, I have a hard time when I get questions like that because I want at home as a listener, when I hear people on podcasts, I'm like, but just give me like one example.

So I'm so sensitive to that.

But the reality of it is, that's not the most honest answer.

It's not the answer scientifically.

And me coaching people now, the people that I personally train, the non -athletes, it's not real.

That's not really how I would approach them.

So I tried to do my best to give an honest answer.

And I know that's not always as tangible, but it is honest reality.

If someone's listening right now and they're thinking, fitness and strength are my big goals this year, how would you encourage them like the people that you work with?

If someone's like, Andy train me now coach me now how should I be thinking about my goals over the next 12 months how would you encourage them to think about it there's a handful of ways um we will always start at the top okay what's what's our biggest constraint and that sounds a little bit backwards

but we call these things performance anchors so you want a goal right and I use the soccer example here football maybe if you're listening you want to kick you want a goal and there's something in that way there's a defender there's a goalie there what's your goalie and I'm saying that to say, is it

finances? Is it time?

Is it injury? Is it you've never been to the gym before and you're nervous?

Because once I know that, the entire path I'm taking is going to be different based on that very first filter.

You want to gain more muscle.

You want to fill in all those blanks.

Okay, why haven't you done that before?

Have you tried in the past and failed?

Have you never tried?

That's the biggest lever we have to work on.

If it is a finance issue, I can't afford gym membership.

Okay, got it. Now I'm going to take you on a totally different route.

If it is unlimited finance, like, okay, now we're doing next level stuff.

If it's somewhere in the middle, we have different answers.

So this could be a combination of saying, identify why you failed in the past or why you've never started and overcome that barrier.

And I'm done. I'm going to stop right there.

That'll give me six months, right?

In this initial case, in that person you laid out, I'm going back to what I said earlier.

Adherence is number one and consistency over time.

I want this first January push, this February push towards fitness, like new year, new me.

I want to win. I want wins, wins, wins.

I don't care if it's an optimal program.

It doesn't necessarily matter.

We'll come to those details later.

But I want you to have an experience through fitness that went, yeah, that was okay.

It wasn't so bad. I wasn't super sore.

Okay, now you're a believer.

Now I can get that two days a week to three.

Now I can get you to invest $50 and get you a kettlebell at home.

Okay, great. We can start pushing the pace here.

If we do the opposite and we get these big, huge charges that can work if you're an all -in type of person, you, maybe I could get you on that.

All right, let's get it personality -wise.

But if that's not your personality, oftentimes that is a crash and burn by February or March, and that actually dissuades you probably more from starting again the next time.

so for the general population as a aggregate answer here i want to find what is that single thing that stopped you from winning and that's all i want to work on when we program this for our executive clients and all those we look at the year and we look at this whole thing and we use what we call a quadrant

model so the quadrant is you get 10 total points and you can choose to spend those 10 total points across four areas all right so 10 total not 40 total here are your four areas and we do this practice before they start anything they don't get a workout before any this question is answered we go through

this exercise we lay out their answer this gets posted on a note card it goes in their most vulnerable place this could be their office where's the point where it's gonna you were gonna work out today and then you didn't is that your netflix tv is that the office because you wouldn't stop working is it right

you get held accountable to that and we're going to hold you accountable to that.

Here's what the quadrant looks like.

Quadrant one is we'll just call it business.

Whatever you do for your life and your finances.

Okay. That's business.

Quadrant number two is social, family, relationships, whatever that means to you.

Number three is your physical health.

Again, these, these are wide ranging definitions and everyone gets to define it for themselves.

Quadrant number four is recovery.

So we start off by asking, and we always do this and if you want to play long you're welcome to this is kind of fun sometimes do it great let's do that right now for you so you got 10 total chips let's start with business of your 10 how many do you want to spend let's say this is january and you're

going to get kick -started jay where you going to put and it's time am i thinking about in terms of time or energy or it's all of it right so we intentionally keep it vague if i say you got life energy yeah you got 10 right could be money could be combination focus attention resources however that makes

sense to you yeah it's business family let's start with business health and recovery recovery right so business and i would and over what period of time it doesn't matter you define it okay so i'd say yeah over the year let's do let's do it a quarter quarter one over the quarter okay yeah so i'd say

honestly where i'll probably prioritize would be like five great yeah most common answer is five okay by far the most common answer is five nobody wants to say six because in their head they go haven't got enough left yeah and no one anyone knows it's not four yeah right so we're at five for business

now let's go on to uh relationships relationships i'd say is well my work i business relationships are very strong in that sense so my personal relationships it's an easy one for me my circle is small so I'd say two okay great we're at seven now how many is your fitness?

two great now we have an obvious one left a couple of rules we have on this one by the way what you just gave is by far the most common to answer almost everybody has this problem there's issues with what you just said we never let recovery be less than half of our next highest category.

I'm happy you did two in one.

That's great. Most people, recovery end up going to zero.

What does recovery mean?

It doesn't necessarily mean a massage or a sauna.

Fine. That can be it.

Recovery can be a night out with friends.

Recovery can be, I need alone time.

Recovery, tons of ways.

But what is the thing that gives you energy back is what we're trying to go after.

Physical fitness, same sort of thing.

There's always overlaps between these things.

We will work through you on that one.

So that routine you laid out says fine, okay.

You gave me two for physical fitness.

I'm gonna construct a program now that says this is at most 20 % of Jay's energy.

If I come then and get you with this program five days a week, I know I've lost already.

You're not gonna get it.

And if you are, are you gonna get it for three straight months?

You just told me business was a really big priority.

At the same token, when you come back to me and you're asking and you're wondering why the program isn't getting you the success that you want, I'm gonna say you gave it 20%.

percent. What expectations did you have?

Okay. What do you want to take it from?

If you're not willing to move it from somewhere else, there's only finite things that a human can do.

So we're going to walk backwards from that equation.

So I might say, fine, we're there.

Now we get to quarter two and you want to adjust that.

You want more results.

You want to lose more fat, fill in the blank for the adaptation.

I go, great. Where are we going to pull it from?

It's not going to come from recovery.

Now it means less business, less friends.

This is the ultimate dynamic we have to play, right?

People don't want to do the recovery and they don't want to pull it from there, but then they expect massive gains in fitness.

We can get you through short periods of time.

We have these special scenarios all the time where it's like, hey, the Olympics are coming, world championships are coming.

We can juice up this a little bit with all kinds of little tricks, but those don't last.

And sometimes they burn you into a bigger hole.

So if we're thinking long -term strategy with you, I'd say, great, I'm fine with two.

We would scoff up a little program and in your brain, it goes to two and I'm watching and I'm like, Jay, you didn't do this thing for recovery it's been three days, it's been a week we're at zero for recovery don't expect fitness goals with no recovery Bam, Jay, went out again last night went out a little

again, took another trip friends has been at three or four you get the point here, right?

so I can hold you really accountable to that and saying if you're not getting your fitness goal number one starter is are you even giving it a chance to succeed?

if not, we have a non -starter and we have to change our expectations Yeah.

If you want more results, you got to give me more pie.

Give me a bigger shot at it and we'll get more results.

Yeah. Super smart. Yeah.

I really appreciate the constraint approach too.

I found my constraint was travel.

And so I haven't traveled for the last six weeks and I've felt my absolute best with sleep, food, diet, everything.

I've been on the road for probably eight straight weeks and I'm the opposite.

Yeah, exactly. And that was my, my life was like I'd be working out for one week eating right for one week everything's good then I'm traveling for one week then one week so I was one week on one week off and then I'd plan to spend these two months in LA and it has been life -changing from a workout

point of view sleep point of view recovery point of view everything we just talked about yeah I can do I have been doing five days of workouts a week you know eating really well whatever because I'm in one place because I'm saying all of this to reiterate your point.

It was all about the constraint.

I had the motivation, I had the drive, I had the discipline, I had all that stuff.

But travel was the thing that made me feel like I was having gains for a week and then losing it and then getting discipline and then losing it.

And that was just exhausting.

So let me run you through two specific examples on that.

I love you brought up travel.

This is super easy.

We have a coaching program called Arate.

this is this like excellence in kind of everything program if you were an rt with us right now i was like great you've been home i'm gonna change your entire program it's gonna be more gym stuff we're gonna lift more weights we're gonna have a very specific plan i'm gonna ask you to report back exactly

how much you lifted and we're gonna track it and we're gonna do have you there had we flipped the rule and you were all of a sudden on the road i would say great if i gave that same program that's going to be a terrible one it's not gonna work why because everywhere you land you're gonna have to go

to find a gym, it's not gonna work, and then the hotel gym sucks, like I've set you up for failure, that's bad coaching, I would've sent six weeks going, you know what, here's what we're gonna do, it's called a flexible program, we don't need anything more than a band and a kettlebell, okay, maybe not even

the kettlebell, and we're gonna rotate the days, so what I mean by that is, right now if you're at home, I would say, okay, Mondays are this, Tuesdays are this, Wednesdays are this, and when you didn't do that on Wednesday, I'd be calling you, why didn't you finish, why didn't we train Wednesday, do what,

I don't care, I'm on it, right?

That doesn't work on the road.

I would do more flexible program where we have a concept we're trying to hit.

We're trying to get a strength training day in.

You do that strength training day whatever day that comes up.

And as soon as you get in, we check it off.

And then we have, say, the next day is gonna be a long duration workout.

Great, you get that in when you can.

But we also have flexibility because when you go, hey, you know what?

I got an extra hour today.

There was no gym, but I went for an hour walk.

Boom, got that thing in.

You have different things you can plug in play based on availability, time and energy, right?

So that's the way to have you success.

At the end of the six weeks, we wouldn't have probably made a ton of progress on you if you're on the road constantly, but we would have not gone backwards anywhere.

The literature is really clear.

The science is clear.

You can maintain muscle size.

You can maintain muscle strength very, very well.

Cardiovascular fitness is incredibly stable with one or so training sessions per week.

We could have kept you right where you're at.

And then we would have looked at this and said, okay, our expectations for progress are not going to be high during Jay's six weeks of travel.

Let's all set expectation here.

But when we get home, we're getting after it and our expectations are higher.

So at the net end of both of those, you add them together and you see where I'm going at that, right?

So it's not just expecting yourself to gain five pounds of muscle every single month.

It's unrealistic. We looked at the whole quarter or the whole year is what we, in our day, we look at the whole year for people and we go, okay, great.

Quarter one is not the quarter, we're going to go after it.

We're going to work on mobility.

We're going to work on our breath work.

We're going to work on thousand other things that can be done on the road, can be done to traveling.

We're going to get our best gains in fill in the other blank when we've got maybe it's quarter three.

And we actually have goals for each quarter for the year that are plotted out.

And so we give people the best chance of success.

The best example I can give of that is quarter four is the worst possible time to have fat loss goals in America.

Like run into Halloween, I have a little bit of candy, right?

And then it's like, well, I'll get back on it.

But reality, it is like Thanksgiving's going to be here in a couple of weeks, all the way out through new year.

Yeah. Terrible. If you try to have, for most people, a huge fat loss goal, you're going to lose.

So we don't play that game.

You know what we typically focus on this part of the year?

We're going to shift towards muscle growth.

That's when you need excessive calories, right?

Let's feed the beast.

Let's not fight our life.

Life will win. We're going to go back typically just as you know big examples here it's different for everyone we will focus more typically on on fat loss quarter two you know why no holidays nothing around and everyone has a little bit extra motivation to look a little bit better over the summer when the sun

comes out and they're more likely have their shirts off clothing down so it fits life a little bit better is you see my point here.

Yeah. Seasons, seasons of when to shift.

And sometimes we have one goal.

It's really basic. It's really simple.

It's like, I want to do this and it's not possible throughout the year.

And we don't shift and mold it.

And I think Andy, you know, I'm taking a couple of steps back here, but it comes from this societal view of what fitness is, right?

Like that's, and I want to talk about that with you because I love this.

Yeah. Because I just feel like as i'm listening to you i know it's one of the biggest challenges is we don't actually know it's like every year there'll be a new thing like strength is really important proteins really important this whatever right and it just there's a new fad every year and i want

to talk about that with you but i think for a lot of us we don't really know what the pillars of fitness are like we don't know what defines someone as fit we just have goals like oh i want abs this year i want this this year.

I want less belly fat this year.

And, you know, for someone who grew up overweight, I grew up overweight.

And then when I changed my diet, started working out, I just got super skinny and lean.

It's like, to me, there was a point in my life where I just believed if I was lean and I wasn't overweight, then I was healthy.

Right. It was as basic as that.

And I think a lot of us carry that around where it's like, you see someone with abs or whatever you want and it's like, yeah, they're healthy.

They're fit. If you had to break down and say, what is the pursuit of fitness?

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Yeah, no, I absolutely love that.

So at its highest category, we always define it as people generally want three things in their fitness.

They want to look good, they want to feel good, and they want to perform good.

Pardon my grammar, right?

Now, what does look mean?

I don't know. you tell me you want to have this look or you don't want I do not care but at some point you want your body to look a certain way or not like a certain way up to you to define you want it to feel a certain way you want to feel strong you want it to feel fast you want it to feel mobile

you want it to feel don't care you define that then you want to perform what's that mean you want to have more energy you want to have more mental focus you want your digestion problem to go away you don't want that knee pain gone okay so it's it's a look of feel or performance metric Absolutely.

Ultimately, everybody's after, right?

Yeah. So from our professional athletes to non, to the students that work in my lab, for our research questions, that's the first lens I'm looking at.

What does that mean for you?

So when I'm designing a, when we're designing a study or we're, again, working with individuals, filter number one, what does fit, what does look mean to you?

What does feel, what does perform look to you?

Now I'm calibrated, right?

Because I love this question so much.

Fitness can be, I just want to be able to surf every day.

Amazing. I'm in, right?

Fitness just means I want more energy with my kids.

I'm here for all of that.

All of that can be rooted in performance.

We have a saying that if you have a body, you're an athlete, which is to say, I don't care if you want to use those physical abilities to shoot a basketball or hit a golf ball like some of our clients, or you want to use that to just run your business better, be a better leader, make better decisions,

be able to work more hours and less fatigue.

Fine. You're still asking your body to perform.

it's the exact same thing except for a couple of little points at the end of physical movement skill right so that's answer number one now taking this question entirely differently if you look at what is generally true for most people fitness is a combination of a handful of things you want to be able

to do activities and not pay major consequences that is it right i want to be able to walk up this dang hill and then not wake up tomorrow in screaming pain so it is a I want to do A and then I don't want B to happen as a consequence, right?

So I want to empower everyone to be able to have that.

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And then not pay major consequences, whether it's injury or a handful of other things.

so for most people to execute a resilient physiology that is to be able to do many things it's one of the reasons again we call it RRT it's this concept of I want to be able to do many things and then not have severe consequences so you're gonna have to have some semblance of physical strength number

one right you don't need to be a power lifter or a bodybuilder or a weight lifter blah blah blah but minimal levels of strength if you want to look at this from the medical perspective, i can make that argument we can go into tons of the research i was about to ask you that yeah why is strength so important because i

feel like we've undervalued it for a long time and you don't you could go your whole life well i would say that we as a strength conditioning field didn't help ourselves much this was actually the whole fun story here in the early 1900s strength training was viewed as something that was really deleterious

It was dangerous. It was a long story here, but you'll have a heart attack.

It's this thing, right?

And that stayed along for a long period of time.

The science said it was bad for you.

And then the science changed.

In fact, there's a famous individual named Dr.

Karpovich, who himself was a scientific advocate of this is dangerous, and then collected more data and realized actually it's not dangerous.

And then, oh my gosh, there's all these health benefits.

That happened in the 1950s and 60s.

Right after that, on the back of it, you've got Arnold Schwarzenegger.

You've got pumping iron.

and you've got Conan, you've got these things.

And you went from bad for my health to, oh my gosh, I can become a superhero.

And this empowered a generation of men mostly.

Oh my gosh, I can become a physical superhero.

That was awesome, but the downside of that was everyone's association with strength training was muscle and bodybuilding.

And that is a very limited perspective of strength.

So scientifically, the people in this field were not strength training people.

The exercise physiologists, the nutrition scientists, for in most part, the 1960s through 90s were all endurance folks.

And so you had no research being done.

I mean, you couldn't make the argument anymore that it was bad for your health, but there was no argument that it was really great for your health.

And they had a whole generation of kids like me who came up on that, but then also like science and started saying like, why aren't we doing studies on strength and high intensity stuff?

And well, that only lasted so long before work started coming out in that area.

And now it is so clear.

We have mechanism, We have epidemiological evidence.

We have randomized control trials in men and women, young, old, and the research goes on.

Physical strength is one of the single strongest, pun intended, predictors of lifespan.

And so you've got lifespan, which is how long you're going to live.

You have healthspan, which people talk about now, which is how healthy are you within those years?

And now scientifically, we call it strength span, right?

And what they're saying is strength span, it's not the only thing that matters.

but it's an important characteristic to your health span.

If you lack physical strength, a number of things start to happen.

Number one, this is one of the reasons why we look at for the record like leg strength and grip strength as two of the most ubiquitous predictors.

You'll see this all across the literature, a statistically significant predictors of mortality.

And in fact, some of the papers that directly compare strength, again, mostly leg strength, leg extension and grip strength to VO2 max oftentimes, but not always, but oftentimes will show strength is a stronger predictor of mortality or all cause mortality than VO2 max.

So we've, we've talked ad nauseum, you know, last a bunch of years about important VO2 maxes and it's absolutely true, but strength is right there as an equivalent predictor of how long you're going to live.

So the question is why?

Well, you have correlation and causation here.

Lots of evidence on both sides.

If you are weak, say, in your hands, it is a proxy for overall strength.

So that in and of itself is true.

It's also direct intervention.

If you can't carry a bag confidently and you can't put a backpack in an overhead compartment, you're not going to take the bus.

You're much less likely to go on an airplane.

This now leads to secondary problems with social isolation.

you're not confident one of the single biggest predictors of one of the single biggest issues we have with unsuccessful aging is that people when people start to feel like they become a burden on society they start to withdraw rapidly no one wants to be the person in line holding everybody up no one

wants like you just you know all those examples there right so people are more likely to just socially withdraw and now we're having all the secondary problems of social isolation and even physical activity starts to go down because people don't leave their house they watch TV more and this whole cascade

of things start to happen.

And so we have direct and indirect mechanism there that say, again, you don't have to be massively strong, but just maintain some semblance of grip strength.

Your legs are going to tell the same story.

This is your interface with the world, your legs and your hands.

And so your ability to locomote, to move throughout the world is mostly your legs.

If you don't feel confident that you can walk up the steps to that museum, slowly you stop going on those trips.

You start doing that extra thing.

it hurts too much, it's too exhausting.

Again, fill in all the blanks here.

And so having some sort of physical leg strength gives you confidence that allows general physical activity, which then pays all those additional benefits.

That doesn't even carry and count the direct physical benefits.

So if we start looking at muscle specifically, muscle quality, and this can be defined a lot of different ways, is going to regulate in part things like your blood glucose.

And you've, I'm sure, talked to many people about the importance of metabolic health.

Skeletal muscle is going to explain about 80 % of the variance in your resting metabolic rate.

That's your, you know, your faster, slow metabolism.

Again, 80 % of the variance is going to be explained by how much lean muscle you have for the most part.

So you don't need to be huge, but losing muscle is called sarcopenia.

If it's, you lose muscle faster than you should be with aging.

Highly associated with inflammatory states, reduced resting metabolic rate, which then goes right back to the equation, glucose regulation, all of these things start to happen.

Last fire hose, I know I'm going after this a little bit here, but this is a topic of clear passion to me, is you have the presence of strength as well as the act of the training itself.

So going through the strength training process has additional benefits to things like your central nervous system, brain, and neurological system.

The evidence is very clear.

Your physical brain will stay healthier in terms of white matter and things like that when you strength train.

It will stay around a lot longer.

There's actually a lot of research now that's starting to point to the fact that things like dementia and Alzheimer's, late onset specifically, is highly preventable.

And that by highly, I mean it's an extraordinarily high number.

You'd have to get a neuroscientist on to really get numbers there.

But it is way more preventable than we realize specifically from physical activity and exercise as a, as a, not the only thing there, but a huge component to that.

Lastly, why? Remember the way that you move throughout the world has three big components to it.

So when you pick your leg up like that, and you just shifted your toe, what ended up happening there is three things.

Some signal went from your central nervous system.

This could be your brain, spinal cord.

It doesn't matter. nerves.

Send a signal. That's part one.

Part two, those nerves activate or turn on muscles, and then the muscles contract.

That's part two. Those muscles are surrounded by connective tissue.

The connective tissue actually is tied in your bone.

Pulling the connective tissue is what actually made your foot move like that.

So, connective tissue is part three.

So, the reality is anytime you're strength training, you're keeping connective tissue healthier, you're keeping that muscle quality high, and you're continuing to keep that nervous system activated.

Keeping that nervous system alive is keeping your brain alive.

It's physically what you're doing.

It's keeping your entire nervous system around and fine -tuned.

It's the same process.

And so when we tend to think about strength training as something we're doing for our muscles, we cannot forget, we're also doing it for our joints.

We're doing it for our bones.

And we're also doing it for our brains and nervous system.

It's, yeah, I really appreciate the, I actually, please go into as much detail as you like.

It's very useful to get to that granular level to actually understand the value of strength training because i think like you said because of the bad pr that it's had for so long we've kind of we did it to ourselves yeah we did it to ourselves yeah i was going to ask you you specifically spoke about uh

leg muscles and like strength training there what's the difference between walking because we always hear walk 10 000 steps if that's the least you can do what's happening when you walk in 10 ,000 steps versus running a mile, three miles, five miles, whatever it may be, versus strength training with weights

for your legs. Great, man, you're on fire.

I love these questions so much.

Let me ask you a trick question.

And I'm telling you, I'm tricking you right now.

Yeah. Right? What's gonna burn more calories, walking a mile or running a mile?

Running a mile. What's calorie?

Oh, walking, sorry, my bad.

A calorie is energy.

Right. calorie is work.

Walking a mile, running a mile...

Oh, same thing. It's the same thing.

Interesting, yeah. Now, it's a bit of a trick because you probably would burn a few more calories walking or running rather because there's a little bit of inefficiency in the system.

Right, right, right.

But theoretically, if you're simply looking for caloric work, this is why we have so much evidence at this point you can manage calories any way you'd like.

That'll hit people.

If you like long duration, slower stuff, if you like, you know, cardio or heart, I hate those phrases, but if that's ringing a bell to you.

Which phrases do you hate?

Things like cardio.

Okay. I because it doesn't mean anything, right?

Well, it's cardiovascular training.

Anything that uses your heart.

Like, well, fantastic.

That is literally every form of exercise, right?

Like it doesn't make any sense.

Right. If you hate that though, you don't ever have to do it.

We can get the same place.

And the energy thing I just gave you was just a little silly example of saying, hey, look, if we really actually get down to the physiology and science these are not major differences like people think that they are so i if i'm looking at fitness across the entire spectrum here i think it's helpful

to break it up into three global areas if you can't tell by this point in the show i'm a i'm a teacher so i love it i like systems and numbers yeah it's great number one what you laid out when you said walking 10 000 steps i will bucket that into physical activity this is human movement, we should have a default

state of human movement, right?

Whether this is walking, standing, playing with our kids, gardening, if you're in a labor and you have a physical, fantastic.

So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, my lifestyle is really active because I'm a construction worker or I'm a nurse and I'm walking up, okay, you probably don't need to go out of your way to do a whole bunch of low intensity cardiovascular exercise.

And you could, But if we're trying to get really efficient and saying kind of what's my minimal viable option here, I could say, if we got to give one up, let's give that one up because you're getting your 10 ,000 or 15 or 20 ,000 steps.

If you've ever paid attention to a teacher's, my wife spent 17 years as a preschool special ed teacher.

Her step count was outrageous because her whole life was just going three steps at a time trying to keep a kid from like doing something really naughty or dangerous or whatever.

So there's a lot of professions that are even outside of a true, like construction jobs that get a lot of physical activity, they don't realize it.

So that person I'm going to go, we're good there.

Maybe we're going to go float on category two, which is we'll just call this structured cardiovascular exercise.

This is intentionally going to work out.

This could be intervals, it could be swimming, it could be pickleball, sports, wrestling, like any number of things.

It could be higher intensity stuff, or even lower intensity stuff, but you're, you're going to work out, right?

Heart rate's going to be much higher here.

You're probably going to break a sweat or something like that.

I hope that you're not breaking a sweat walking like that's physical activity, right?

So if you, if those things help you kind of understand the general category of number two, that's what we're after.

So if we go back to that nurse or that teacher and we're thinking, okay, we're good over there, but we still need to get one to two days a week, most likely of this structured cardiovascular training.

If we want to make it simple, give me one day where we get a really high heart rate.

I'd like to, I'll call it max.

It doesn't necessarily need to literally be 100%, but it's going to have to be well past comfort zone.

One day a week is all we really need up there.

It doesn't have to be a long time.

I don't care the method you pick.

I don't care the machine you go on.

If you want to run sprints, I'm all for it.

You want to swing kettlebells to do it?

Great. What I'm looking at is did we get that node knocked off?

Yes, we got high, high right up there.

Cool. Category three is more of our traditional strength training thing.

And you asked a little bit of a question earlier, but why is that different?

Why is it not the same?

Why isn't the walking and the higher intensity?

I did sprints. My legs are tired and sore.

Why is that not strength training?

Well, there's a very specific reason.

First of all, it's pretty good.

If that's all we can do, I'll take it.

That's a win. But your muscles are actually constructed of hundreds of thousands of individual muscle fibers.

So think of this like a ponytail.

So a ponytail you think of as like one thing, but in reality, it's just a conglomerate of a bunch of individual hairs.

That's how your muscles work.

You have lots of hair, we call them muscle fibers in there.

Each one of those muscle fibers can be broadly categorized as either fast twitch or slow twitch.

Fast twitch does what it sounds like.

slow twitch is more has more mitochondria in it it handles most of your basal physical activity right now you and i are using almost exclusively slow twitch fibers nothing we're doing fast here right and so they're not fatigable so if i ask you to take your finger yeah maybe your right finger left finger

we'll do left finger and reach up and touch your nose with that left finger now what you just did right there is you activated a set of neurons that said okay turn on the muscles in combination to touch that nose.

The neurons you just turned on are very low threshold, which means they're easy to activate.

They're very energy efficient, but they're going to activate generally those slow -twitch fibers.

Now, if I said, grab that can of juice, will you?

Or too sorry to call it juice.

Tea? Yeah, sparkling tea.

Yeah, okay, great. Put that back in your left hand.

Now, do the same exact activity and raise it to your nose.

Boom. You just did the exact same process, but you needed to produce more force.

Why? Because you got an extra eight ounces or something in that.

So your body went, wait a minute.

I'm assuming nothing was going to be in my hand.

But then I realized there's an additional amount of force needed.

And so how did it increase force production?

Your muscle fibers can't squeeze any harder.

When they contract, they contract as hard as possible every single time.

The only way that you increase force production is to turn on more of those nerves.

We just trained our nervous system.

That's what it is. More of those nerves turned on.

If I were to now take that T and we made it 40 kilos, the only way that you can continue to produce more force to lift it up to your nose is to turn on those additional muscle motor neurons, which are going to be your fast stretch muscle fibers.

So if we extend this all out, when you're doing those other activities, you're not ever going to get to that high threshold.

You're never going to use those muscle fibers.

And so one of the things we know happens with aging, when we omit strength training or strength training -like activities, those motor neurons and those muscle fibers die.

And this is why we lose strength and power as we age, it's because we never activate those neurons.

I don't care about getting you PRs in the gym right now.

We're trying to make sure that we You just don't lose any functional capacity 50 years from now.

The sprinting that got your leg sore was good, but those nerves are turned on when force is required.

We didn't get enough physical force production.

This is the exact same reason why things like bodyweight exercise is great.

It's good. It can take people a long way, but eventually we're going to run out of some options here, especially for our lower body, because we just won't have enough load to activate all the nerves or the motor units rather in the legs to truly get force production to keep them as strong and healthy

as possible. So that third category we're talking about, remember category one was kind of physical activity.

Category two is that structured cardiovascular.

Category three was structured strength training stuff.

You gotta give me one of those days a week, right?

So if we go back to this kind of nurse, lots of physical activity, one to two days a week of that, one to two days a week, of something related to strength, we'd be good there.

We changed that scenario up to somebody more like you and I.

It's probably not doing a lot of steps throughout the day because we're sitting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You and I are going to have to engineer that back into our lives.

So the fitness routine, I don't know anybody about how your day is set up.

I'm just assuming you're sitting more than that type of person, that avatar.

I would put more structured physical activity in your life.

We would maybe do something like a 10 minute walk three times a day.

two times a day. We would maybe, hey, let's add in a walking treadmill.

Maybe let's add in, like we would look for little games that we can, maybe we need to add in one or two days a week of an hour long hike as a part of your structured fitness program to get that back, right?

So what we're always doing is again, assessing the entire nature and saying, those are the three big areas most people have.

And you got to move well within those categories and don't get hurt and never lose your flexibility.

And there's more stuff, but categorically, these are the first layers of filters I'm going through and saying, okay, if we have to leave one of these things out, maybe we can, right?

So maybe you sit at a desk job, but then you go and you do kickboxing class.

Okay. We actually got node two out of there.

Maybe now we just put some physical activity in there and put some strength training in there.

And we're actually, we're okay.

We can survive with that.

Right. That's kind of the best way to think about your lifestyle and think, am I getting any of these three?

Great. And then if, okay, optimal is not realistic to me, then what do I have to do to just kind of get MVP out?

And then that's how I go about thinking it.

Yeah. That's brilliant.

That's such a great breakdown because I think we often, like you said, we kind of live in either extreme.

We did a lot of number three and not one or two and not three or however it works.

And I think I've been through every phase of my life of doing tons of one, ignoring two and three, doing tons of two, ignoring one and three, and then doing tons of three and ignoring one and two it's hard to be really good at all three yeah this would go back to quadrant and we say okay what's the realistic

goal yeah right okay realistic goal is i'm i'm at five with business okay well then maybe we go look he doesn't have time to do three and a half hours of zone two and then do a strength training and then do it that's we're gonna lose that but we're not gonna let that be an excuse for never doing it

yeah yeah so next quarter we're going to come back and you got to pay me back.

We're going to go back into it.

We're going to now emphasize maybe caloric restriction.

We're going to do more movement because it'll burn the same calories and we have more time and you got to promise me we're going to take business down to four.

Deal. Great. Now you have a window.

You're looking at it.

You're going, okay, I got this month.

I got the, you don't have to feel bad about skipping this thing because there's a plan.

There's a strategy, right?

But then I'm also going to be able to hold you accountable to something that was realistic, um, and making progress.

So you don't have to have those balances.

I talked about all year round.

It's okay to shift them different priorities, different times of the year.

Look at your schedule, look what you want, look at what's realistic, and then set yourself up for the best chance for failure.

Yeah. For success. Sorry.

Yeah, for sure. What recovery aids or what supportive environment do you need for strength training?

Because as you explained, that's like the most intense or the one that's really working you the hardest in that sense.

What do you need to support that to make sure it's effective?

Right. So with recovery, when you think about strength training, recovery in most people's mind is how sore was I?

Okay. However, you got to remember with higher intensity, cardiovascular stuff that has a different recovery demand as well.

So I don't want you to think strength training requires my recovery because we've seen a lot of people burn themselves into the ground with lots of high intensity cardiovascular training and they have no idea why got it right especially your your hard charging executives decision makers surgeons high

pressure jobs high pressure high pressure high pressure high ventilatory rate high sympathetic drive all day and then leave straight to the gym high high high high high probably had a pre -workout and then guess what we can't sleep stunning right yeah so there's a recovery requirement for both pieces

there and they're separate right so when we're thinking that higher intensity cardiovascular stuff we're thinking more systemic right so now I'm looking at is our overall caloric expenditure there do we have recovery time are we down regulating throughout the day are we not overindulging in stimulants

a whole set of equations over there.

From the muscle side, number one, if we're getting excessively sore, we might have issues with our training program.

We shouldn't be getting that sore that often unless you're at a pretty high level.

And even then, the research is very clear.

The amount of muscle soreness you get from after lifting weights has almost no correlation to how much muscle growth you'll get from that workout.

Wow. So that's the terrible proxy for good or bad workout of how sore a guy.

What is the proxy for a good or bad workout?

There's a fantastic model that I heard years ago from a friend of mine named Dr.

Mike Isretel. And I'm stealing this directly from him.

So I'll give him his due credit for that.

You can kind of think of three things.

Here we go with the list again.

In the workout, if you're trying to grow muscle, you should probably feel that muscle.

This sounds crazy, but you'd be stunned how many people have tried to say, get a bigger chest and they're benching and they're benching and they're benching and they're never getting a bigger chest from it.

And like, are you feeling your chest contract?

No. Well, then for you, that position, the way that your anatomy works, your technique, whatever equipment you're using, it wasn't probably targeting your chest.

So then why do we expect your chest to go?

Doesn't mean it has to be maximally contracted, but there's got to be probably some feeling of it's feeling like it's contracted.

Number two, you probably want to feel some sort of what we call a pump in there.

So after the session, that muscle should look a little bit bigger.

It should have contracted, filled with blood, filled with fluids.

Like it should look a little bit bigger.

Number three, you should feel it something the next day, a little bit tight.

Good. Um, three out of 10 in terms of like how tight, how sore it's probably good.

If it's seven, eight, nine out of 10, you may actually be going backwards because you may take so long to recover from that, that it's going to compromise the quality of the next training session.

if you love this stuff and you're into it i'll take five or five is okay uh but if more than that if you're at zero then i might be thinking okay maybe we didn't get actually enough out of that session two to three is a really good level of soreness out of that so um we're initially thinking those types

of things so number one if you're getting extensively sore my biggest tip for recovery is making sure you're not actually getting too sore to begin with.

Second one, by far, there's nothing that will land even close to as impactful as even moderate quality sleep.

You have to have that.

If you look at any of the scientists that work in this area of muscle growth, if you look at many of the people that coach people here, when you start seeing solid progress, you start looking at sleep as your first.

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And if you see compromises in sleep, you're going to go back to that as your first area of emphasis.

And I know people hate to hear that, but I'm telling you, look at the people who are the best in the world at growing muscle.

There's a reason that that's like one of the first places they're going after.

Yeah. So don't get overly sore, number one.

Make sure you prioritize your sleep.

After that, if you want to go to nutrition, we can look at it.

Okay, great. Maybe our total caloric intake is low.

That's generally where we're going to start from a protein perspective.

Oftentimes, um, as long as it's reasonable, walk us through the ideal amount of protein.

We actually, yeah, I mean, reasonable is, and this is a heavy ish by the way, something like one gram per pound of body weight or 2 .2 grams per kilo, rough starting point.

If you want to go below that, I'm not going to argue.

If you want to go below that as in, let's say you're at 0 .8, 0 .6, I can survive that.

That'd be closer to say to like 1 .6 grams per kilogram.

So 0 .6 would be grams per pound, right?

So both units there for you.

I can live with that.

People can grow muscle like that no question about it people can grow muscle very clearly on on many food sources plant -based animal based like they're both effective if you go above that you don't necessarily guarantee more growth either and so what we're looking at with protein for most people is like

just be in the stratosphere don't make it your constraint don't make it the problem once you make it not the problem then it's probably like going up more sometimes that's helped with people, but it's generally not been the thing that, that has really been like, oh, I was only at one gram per pound

and I went to 1 .5 and I don't get sore anymore.

That can happen, but it's probably not what we're looking at.

Um, so it, it, it's again, it's one of those things where like, just don't make it the contractor and you're probably okay.

Yeah. That was a big one for me because I've definitely, I tried to match my body weight and protein, but I just couldn't take it every day.

It just wasn't possible for me.

Ah, we got a lot of tricks.

yeah we could get you there if you like how depends on how you're eating it is why right so we can sneak it in in different places a really good example of this is how many meals do you eat a day roughly three meals okay great so sliding in 25 grams in between before after a meal is not as hard as one

thinks right if you're trying to eat that in you know eight ounces of chicken breast that's gonna be uncomfortable but if we get that in in terms of this is why protein shakes.

Unplant -based as well, yeah.

No problem, we can easily get that.

A friend of mine, Dr.

Mike Ormsby at Florida State has been doing research in an area for over 15 years now of protein feeding immediately before bed.

Now, a lot of people immediately are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what?

Yeah, that's surprising.

15 years of research in this area, he's tested combinations, men, women, metabolically unhealthy people, like in general, most of his studies point to the same thing that is 40 grams of protein about 30 minutes before bed he's yet to find any disturbances in sleep now this is 40 grams of protein there's

120 to 150 60 calories these are not 500 calorie full meals right this is a fairly modest amount admittedly i think the best he's done with sleep so far are kind of questionnaires and so i know one of the things he's working on right now is is more high fidelity sleep testing because this is one of the things

yeah obviously i'm a you know we have i have a sleep company like i'm very interested in maximizing sleep so in fairness there it's plausible but on the surface so far of all the studies he's yet to report any significant disturbances in sleep um what he has reported though is very little change in things

like fat oxidation so one there's this misnomer, like if you eat right before bed, your body won't use it.

So you'll store it all as fat.

And he's done so many studies now that I think that door is about a slam shut.

That's possible that that's just not going to be the case.

And so his research is also not indicating some over the top advantage for muscle growth.

It's not going to increase muscle growth by 25%.

Like none of that's true.

It's a modest benefit.

So for me, when I summarize his work, I say, okay, look, very little detriment, an opportunity to get in 40 more grams of protein if you're low on your protein targets.

So if you're okay on your protein targets, you don't, I don't think you need to do this.

I don't think there's a huge advantage, but if you're really struggling, this is one of the things that we'll go to.

And 30 minutes, by the way, is a arbitrary number.

If you go, oh my gosh, I tried that one time and I don't do it then like, absolutely.

There's not worth there's not a ton of benefit here and i'm trying to make that really clear right i don't like overselling this is just hey there's no detriment really and if it's not messing with your sleep and this helps you get closer to your protein i would imagine and by the way he's done this in plant

-based as well same thing like basically the same results from plant -based ones so maybe 40 is too much for you all right give me 25 give me 20 15 we don't want to like don't get too lost in detail right the point is here you go you had dinner at 6 6 30 something like that probably and then maybe a couple

of hours later you you want to do whole food great in his research you know scientifically he uses protein powders just to control he's actually used whole food as well you want to do a yogurt thing you want to do whatever your favorite source protein is 100 150 160 calories like these are not yeah

all of a sudden like massively disrupt your blood flow and stuff like that there so i think it's a very viable option it's not required no special magic benefit to it but that's one of the many little tricks we can use to plug in and you you kind of put together two or three of those strategies you'd

be surprised 60 80 grams of protein can kind of come like that and you're like oh wow like that was i would actually sort of wow yeah that's surprising i want to hear your thoughts about another thing that i think people get hung up on and and maybe don't know the insights behind is what should you

eat before and after a workout I have an old YouTube video up that is called something like post -exercise anabolic window.

I think it's like 25 minutes or something.

So you want all the details, you can go there.

I'll give you the two -minute version for those that don't want to do that.

The post -exercise anabolic window was this idea that there's this magic.

It started off as 30 minutes.

Window post -exercise where you had to consume your nutrients, specifically carbohydrates and protein, to maximize.

And there was good rationale, molecular mechanisms as to why we thought that existed.

Summarized many years later, it's very clear that that's just not the case.

And so the way you want to think about this is total protein intake throughout the day is going to determine almost all of your variants there.

So as long as you hit your total, and even I'll say total protein intake throughout the day is not even that important, it's probably thought about as like protein throughout the week.

So like, as long as it's kind of like, maybe you were a little bit lower today, a little bit higher tomorrow.

That's how real life actually works.

100%, yeah. Right? Yeah, end up having steak for one night and got extra 60 grams of protein.

The next night you had a pasta dish.

It'll be okay, right?

So don't get overly concerned about you were 10 grams low today or 20.

Like, you'll be fine, right?

So that matters most.

There are some exceptions though.

When you are performing at a high level of energy expenditure.

Let's take some of our like baseball players.

It's not a big deal because the energy expenditure in baseball is not incredibly high for Major League Baseball.

NBA players, this is different though.

Our UFC fighters, way different.

Our professional boxers, way different.

They're training hard twice a day, almost always, right?

Golfers, a little bit different.

So if you're training really, really hard, whether you're an athlete or not, but you're a workouter, you're super active, you're on the walking treadmill, you're an endurance you'd burn all those calories, your nutrition window might matter because you may not have enough time to restore muscle glycogen.

Remember you store carbohydrates in your muscle and you'll use some of those during exercise.

And if you're doing a lot of hard work, you use a lot of it.

And then if you're not consuming nutrients, you just, you kind of run out of time before then the session happens again, four hours later.

So in those particular cases, nutrient timing does start to matter, but it's not a magic molecular signaling window as so much as it is practical issue of just like you ran out of time to refill those muscle glycogen stores.

And so your training for the next session went down because we couldn't refuel.

We actually just completed an intermittent fasting study and it was the first of its kind because we were looking specifically at, there's been a lot of research.

Grant Tinsley in Texas Tech has done a lot of awesome work and many others on 16 -8 intermittent fasting, right?

Really, really common.

You eat all your calories in an eight -hour window.

Let's just say you don't eat breakfast.

You start eating at 11 a .m.

and you eat dinner at seven, right?

Really common thing.

Lots of research on that compared to normal feeding three meals a day, six, five, whatever.

And the evidence is pretty clear at this point.

The intermittent fasting does nothing particularly special doesn't help you lose fat any faster or anything like really no not at all wow long as you wait for protein and you wait for calories you you'll get basically the same result wow some studies have reported maybe like a half a kilogram extra fat loss

others not but if you look at the research on aggregate it's about the same if it fits your lifestyle if it has you be even more adherent, tremendous.

I'm all for it. That's great.

Nothing's super special about it for caloric restriction, right?

Probably 15, 20 studies from different labs at this point.

So like generally they're all kind of saying the same thing.

What we were interested in though is what about if you're trying to grow muscle?

What happens, right?

Because all those studies have put people in a caloric deficit trying to lose weight, right?

So you bring them down there for the most part or caloric maintenance.

So we took young, highly trained people that were trying to grow muscle.

We put them in a caloric surplus.

We went way above energy needs, put them on very high protein.

One group did 16, eight, one group did not.

And we did everything.

We took muscle biopsies, looked at molecular signaling, genetic signaling, single fibers adaptations.

We looked at muscle size.

We looked at sleep.

We looked at digestion.

We looked at hunger.

We looked at happiness, complaints of how hard or easy the diet was.

We looked at all of it.

Net result, there were differences, but in terms of muscle growth, about the same.

Wow. One of the biggest things with the fasting group was there was just a lot of anecdotal, like, oh, this is hard.

It's just hard. And specifically the problem was carbohydrates.

It was hard for them to get their carbohydrates in without getting a lot of GI distress.

We have that come up a number of times.

Performance, specifically leg strength, started to come down in the fasting group.

And I think we have a pretty good rationale to suggest if you're trying to maximize, because we were progressively overloading them.

Basically, you can imagine this, like you're in the gym training and you finish every set.

This isn't exactly what we did, but it gives you the concept.

You finish every set.

And let's say you do a leg press at 200 pounds and you do 10 reps.

Okay. Next time you come in, you're going to do 11.

if he did 11 next time we're going to do 12 so like every single session if they were getting they were gonna so they were training really hard for eight weeks i just don't think they had the recovery capacity right i think either there was under reporting because it was just like i can't i'm just going

to write the number down but i can't really eat that food that's always possible and like real human studies yeah or there was actually and we had in the paper we have pretty good rationale i'll think that this is a real finding so coming all the way back like if you're trying to maximize strength and muscle

gain and you're training really hard both would work um in fact actually the intermittent fasting group didn't put on as much fat so the reality of it is it's my opinion this is how science this is how nutrition really works one of the reasons i advocated so hard to ask sleep questions um fatigue was higher

in the fasting group too oh interesting energy got lower interesting harder throughout the day more naps and actually naps was saying but just perceived energy got lower towards the end of the study people go into change my from my worldview that's exercise that's nutrition there's many forms of change

though right when you go into change you often do it because you're inspired you heard something you heard your podcast you're like great i'm gonna try that that sounded awesome so you go into it with an expectation the reality of it is very few things are panaceas so maybe higher protein is better

for muscle but maybe it hurts your digestion okay maybe it hurts your sleep maybe it then helps your hormone i'm making those up yeah but that's the real honest true truth of how it works right so right you're gonna have to make your selections right i don't like to be the person of going like you should optimize

for this over that right?

But you should have some knowledge of going, okay, I'm going to choose intermittent fast.

Okay. I like it because I get A, B, and C, but then I'm probably going to lose D and B.

You're constantly experimenting and figuring it out.

Yeah. I really appreciate that take because I think that's what it's been for me.

I've found that so many things that you've heard and tried to do and felt it was right.

And it's like, well, actually I just want to feel.

And it goes back to what you started with, right?

How do I want to look?

How do I want to feel?

And what's the third one?

Perform. Perform, right.

Yeah. And so I, I spend a lot of time in that.

How do I want to feel and perform?

And so many things that I'm told would help me look better are not things that help me feel and perform better.

That's probably pretty true.

Yeah. No, but I just love the take that it's about figuring it out.

How important is hydration and how much water do we actually need?

Okay. This is another one where if you want to get scared, look at the hydration research.

Scared in the sense of, uh, you want to pick erectile dysfunction.

You want to pick headaches.

You want to pick, in fact, there's, there's actually a paper that I just saw a week ago, uh, two weeks ago, less than I actually, yeah, I think it was about 1 % dehydration will reduce cognitive function in a statistically significant manner.

Right? So if you are less than 1 % dehydrated, which is almost functionally impossible for you to notice, you will see clinically meaningful and statistically significant reductions in a number of different markers.

This is when I say cognitive function, I mean, I think I can't remember, honestly, specifically this paper.

But it's often things like word recall, executive decision making, short term memory, things like that, right?

So again, I can't remember the exact metrics in this particular study.

So you'll see that you can pick thermoregulation, you can pick I mentioned sexual function, endocrine health, body composition, to sleep, like you'll, you'll run yourself dead worrying about this.

That said, it's not as scary as it sounds because when we typically report like 1 % dehydration, 2 % dehydration, what we're talking about is percentage of your body weight.

And not like, oh my God, I'm just tiny below optimal.

You have to be like pretty far below optimal to be 1 % of your body.

You have most of your body is water.

So to lose 1 % of that is, you know, a liter or sort of more, right?

So that's to say when we have done this a lot, I'd probably say I'm making this number up somewhere between five and 15 % of our people that we've coached over the years have come in with problems.

And all we had to do is just get their hydration, not terrible.

And this is everything from headaches, constant headaches to brain fog.

Brain fog is probably the biggest one.

Brain fog and energy are the most common ones.

10%. I'm comfortable saying 10 % of the time it's just been a hydration issue wow what what is it the other times sometimes it is by the way sometimes it's over hydration interesting very like probably and this is just anecdote here this is not my lab i don't know the research on this or if it exists

or not but this is just what we've seen generally women have an issue with over hydration there's like my my wife and her friends have these like called emotional support models it's like they go to work whatever it's like seven different a tea and a like a recovery drink and their hydration it's like

bottles everywhere right i'm talking about you darren danny um but sometimes that's a case of like they just consistently drink water water water water and so they get they get close to what's called hyponatremia that's the science word for salt right sodium more specifically and hypo meaning low so what ends

up happening is not that your salt or sodium gets low in your system um by the Boy, this is actually really common in endurance athletes.

And every year, somebody dies in an endurance race from hyponatremia.

Drinking too much pure water.

You drink too much pure water, it gets really dilute.

Sodium is half of the, well, it's part of the equation, rather, that causes an electrical gradient that lets muscles contract.

Why that kills you is your heart is a muscle.

So your heart will stop contracting because there's no gradient difference.

There's not a positive and negative charge from one side of the cell to the other side, so it won't contract and transmit electricity.

It's not really super common.

You're probably not going to die drinking like a little bit extra water.

But if you remember back in the day of, there used to be things like fraternity rushes and things like that, where they make the new pledges, drink a gallon of water, or there's been terrible stories of parents like punishing their kids.

And again, it's not really common, but people have died pretty routinely.

Yeah, lots of fraternity people died from these like, that's terrible.

You just, your heart will stop.

Yeah. Right. You get super deluded.

So most likely you're not drinking.

You're not going to kill yourself, but what you can get is some way up that journey to where electricity can, I'm kind of screwing up some science here on purpose to, for communication purposes.

But if you can't send electricity from one side of a neuron to the next one, then why are you expecting cognitive function to be at its peak so we have seen this again many times it's not the most common maybe 10 of people it's hydration issue all that 10 probably i'd say 70 are under hydrating so 30

of that 10 it's a small number but it is real are just drinking too much and the rest and the rest of that are on the opposite side of the equation right so they're drinking insufficient amounts of water or they're having things that look like dehydration that are this is going to sound funny but they're

actually we'll call them anxiety related there's a very clear relationship between hyperventilation and this is resting hyperventilation so if you're sitting there and you don't realize it but your respiratory rate is actually like i'm exaggerating but yeah you're making a point right yes yes yes that can actually

put you in a position of um where you're actually getting rid of too much carbon dioxide because you're breathing in oxygen breathing out carbon dioxide you're getting carbon dioxide concentration is too low in your system, this is going to put you into what's called respiratory alkalosis, okay?

Respiratory alkalosis is oftentimes then matched with metabolic acidosis.

So that entire side of the equation tries to balance the pH in your system.

One of the mechanisms that has to do that is to then start altering how your kidneys reabsorb and reabsorb electrolytes, salts, and things like that, which then alters hydration.

So some of the times this comes back to us going, and I'm using anxiety like very inappropriately here, but roughly of saying, oh, okay, this is a hydration issue, but that's not because you're not drinking enough water or having enough salt or whatever the case is.

This is the fact that your system is continually trying to dump fluids.

That's the problem we have to come backwards and solve.

So we can cover the symptom, give you more salt or reduce water, something like that.

but really we got to work all the way back to the beginning and say like let's stop this problem from reoccurring that happens really commonly we see that a bunch in that you know 10 sort of people what are some other healthy solutions for brain fog yeah i mean we get this one a lot so it's funny um i

would say of brain fog people i don't know again i'm making a number up but it feels to me like 90 % of the time, they think some thing unique and special is going on.

Some micronutrient is at a whack.

They've got some sort of toxic thing floating around.

They got a pathogen or gut bacteria thing.

And those, those happen.

We, we see those. And that's a real thing.

Mostly it's the basics.

And I, and I really truly mean that we have a very high success rate at Arte with brain fog, really high success rate.

And often the majority of the time it is the, for you, it might be your sleep is completely dysfunctional.

Boom. Maybe you don't realize your sleep is dysfunctional.

Gone. Brain fog gone.

That's it, right? Maybe it has nothing to do with your sleep.

Your sleep is okay.

Maybe it's not great, but it's okay.

And your nutrition is really mixed with your physiology.

Great. Sometimes it is gut microbiome related.

Sometimes we do see heavy metal toxins at high concentrations.

Like those things are real.

I would say if you don't have access to a program like ours or advanced testing, if you do the basics, really get your stress management under control, quality water, like really all that stuff.

And I'm really trying to emphasize that because that's mostly free stuff.

You don't need to turn to coaching.

You don't need to turn to a stool sample.

You don't need to turn to a blood test.

You don't need to buy supplements yet get your house in order with movement sunlight quality food a large percentage of your brain fog is probably going to go away if you've tried that and haven't had success maybe you can take additional steps but really um we've had we joke sometimes um that like

we've had a lot of people spend a lot of money and we're like you knew the answer yeah We told you this coming in and you.

So past that, it can be micronutrient related.

There's no question about that.

There's, we. Good people.

What's up? It's Questo.

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Seven questions, limitless answers.

you see that pretty routinely that can look like all kinds of different stuff um i'm i'm wishing there was like one or two i could pull out and say jay it's usually b6 or b12 it's not the honest answer though it has come up but like sometimes it's it's all it's honestly it's super sporadic yeah if you

get your breathing in order though if you get stress in order you get reasonably close with hydration reasonably close with quality foods and see some sun like most of you will probably see really significant improvements yeah and i'm intrigued we talked about all of this i'm wondering what's your schedule

what what do you prioritize well i have a family i have five companies and i have a research lab so let's answer it with your your quadrant oh my quadrant we'll start there yeah so that's actually really cool because I do this practice just moved my family pretty recently moved my lab so now my lab

is in I'm at Parker University in Dallas Texas we're building a 65 ,000 square foot human performance center it's going to be open to the public so really really excited about that that's dope we're going to be able to do a lot of testing and stuff in there graduate students a lot of research in there

we have a cool visitor center that's going to be a part of it I'm just like so stoked to be congrats man that's thank you man so that all happened this quarter and then um my my sleep company absolute rest our blood work company vitality and our coaching program um all this stuff came up so this quarter

is it was quite frankly a seven in business and I have to give a huge shout out to my wife because like we knew coming into this quarter I'm like this is going to be rough i'm not gonna say she hasn't complained at all but for the most part so my fitness has been a one the lowest it's probably been

in my memory i'm doing the best i can my coach tim is sort of like geez are you ever gonna train i'm like i'm doing like doing sort of the best i can yeah um everything the rest of it's one right so it's one one one all category recovery one relationships one my relationships personal things like that have been

almost non -existent very intentionally That said, I'm super stoked because I'm about, when I leave here, I'm going to be spending about seven straight days with nothing but family.

I love that. So I'm paying that back.

When the new quarter comes and when we start off that, that's going to go back down to five from a business perspective and that's all going to come back up in training.

So I'm super stoked to get back after it.

But we made this decision in early summer.

Just, it's the unfortunate thing of Like the, the lab move and our family move and two of our companies really taking off, like really taking off.

And I was like, I see where this is going and I'm just going to set expectations personally.

Yeah. Well, it's great to hear the reality of it, right?

Like that's the point.

That's the, that's the reality of life that you've kind of had throughout this whole conversation.

I feel like you've given no false solutions, quick fixes.

There's, there's no hacks and habits that are like, it's not who you are.

And I appreciate it because even in your life, you're like, yeah, this is what it actually looks like.

When you are working out consistently, training every day, what does your workout look like?

So I have different phases is what I do right now.

One of my biggest things I look forward to every year, my dad, my brother, and I always go on a hunting trip in the fall, right?

It's like all kinds of stuff this year, we're up in about 10 ,000 feet elevation in the, in Western Wyoming and we're running up and down the hills basically the whole time.

So I will generally schedule my entire year around that phase, which means prior to that, it was a lot more long duration, um, rucking, moving training, things like that, not emphasizing muscle growth, not emphasizing even like VO2 max or anything like that.

I need to be able to handle the mountain and I need to be able to handle my respiration and the elevation.

So I'm geared towards that coming back off of that trip.

Then I knew this quarter was going to be awful.

So this quarter was just about moving.

I'm trying to move.

I did a little workout yesterday in the hotel room.

Um, today, all I basically got in was, was sauna for the most part, right?

No time. And I had, well, that's a lie.

I did a bath. I did a bath in the hotel rooms.

Like the best I could come up with.

I had no break in meeting.

And I'm like, I can get a 15 minute hot bath in and like sweat move throughout the day.

Okay. That's how it is now.

When I go back, um, to start off after this refresher here, it's generally going to look something like this, I'm mostly going to be lifting weights three to four times per week.

And I don't ever have a Monday as legs, Tuesday as arms, things like that, because that's never going to happen.

I just have the next workout and I get that thing done the next time it's available.

So I don't actually have like seven day routines.

I just have a thing I'm trying to get done over across 90 days.

And so what that ends up working like is generally like 70 workouts.

So I try to get done in 90 days.

Sometimes that's nine or 10 or 11 days in a row because I like have the space and then I know I'm going to have two workouts in eight days.

Right. So I'm just like, if I have a chance to train, I'm going to train because I know like schedule is going to eat me right now.

So I do that. So generally three to four days a week of lifting, generally one to two days a week of trying to move a ton.

This could be a lot of steps up and down the mountain where I live.

this could be. I will do many of my meetings where people always laugh at me because I'm just going to pace back and forth.

I love pacing when I work.

So I'm just trying to accrue movement throughout the day.

And then something at least once a week, like I said earlier, where I touch maximum possible heart rate and a lot of different varieties.

The last probably year or so of lifting specifically has been probably the most frustrating year of more like almost year and a half now because i made a conscious decision of saying you know i feel good everything is great but i need to be thinking about the next 60 years and so i have a couple little

asymmetries and a couple of little things that i know are not moving how they should be moving so i have a coach and all of my programming is just correcting those things so the workouts are just infuriating because it's all the stuff you suck at.

It's none of the stuff that like feels these big rewarding things out of it, but it is a saying, it's me stepping back and going, what if you spent a year?

What if you spent a year and you weren't trying to maximize growth or maximize strength, but you're really trying to maximize joint health and function?

Would you regret that 40 years from now?

I doubt it. Right? And so it was just like looking back and going, let's run the counterfactual.

What if you didn't do that?

You'd probably regret it.

So then you make that choice.

So lifting for me specifically the last year has just been like, so not fun, but like that's the conscious decision I made of investing in myself.

So thanks for the honesty, man.

Yeah, man. Yeah, I really appreciate it.

It's great to hear.

And I think everyone who's listening can give themselves a bit more grace as well because, you know, you know all of this.

And I think often people look at people who know a lot and are doing so much research and have good, healthy habits.

yeah but there's a reality of you know and and i i you know same for me like in the work that i do like it's you know i'm constantly trying to share the moments where i'm like you know probably didn't respond as well as i could have or wasn't as mindful as i should have been sure you know that's the reality

of of what it means to be alive and so it's a practice man it's always a practice right yeah absolutely uh andy we end every episode with a final five but before we do that there are a few more questions I kind of wanted to loop back to.

And so one of them was, why do you suggest that we don't work out at night?

You can work out at night, but you want to just be careful of how much is disrupting your sleep and what type of workout you're doing.

Especially if your day is laid out.

The example I think I gave earlier was really high intensity, sympathetic fight or flight type of day.

If you're then always matching that with additional sympathetic drive, some people that's okay.

But a lot of people in our experiences, that has been their quote unquote root cause of fill in the blank, right?

So low testosterone, brain fog, sleep, sort of like, okay, when you're on gas pedal all day, maybe for you right now, your exercise needs to be a little bit more restorative rather than the opposite.

It's not always the case though.

I train at night with generally no issues whatsoever.

I like it. I almost always train at the end of the day.

so it can be just fine just be mindful of if you're looking at your system and going okay great I can do really high intensity stuff I can do our sleep technology is pretty outrageous so I can verifiably say these things I can do lots of stimulatory stuff, I can watch Lord of the Rings in 8k on a 90

inch screen, I don't have this but right in front of my face a minute before bed and I have zero issues with blue light I have zero issues with stimulation.

That's just how you're wired.

Sleep architecture is going to be fine.

Sleep duration, sleep quality, the amount of time, the depth within each sleep phase.

I track all these every night, right?

No change for me. So intensity of exercise is going to have no bearing on me.

But that's for you specifically, yeah.

Totally. What I've seen though for a lot of our people is not always, but many people it's the opposite, where we have to be a little bit more mindful And so what we might have to do is say, okay, we can train, but your training has to look like this.

We have to redefine what training is for you.

We have to do our higher intensity stuff earlier or at minimum.

And this is what we do for our athletes because they don't have an option.

They have to, their competition is at night, right?

NBA plays at seven o 'clock or you get the idea.

Let's at least match the high intensity work with down regulation post -exercise.

if we just walk off the court or walk out of the gym and go right now now we finally see our kids for the day or whatever like you're just asking for disaster here give me five minutes three to seven is what I say give me three to seven minutes can we down regulate a little bit and we have really found

that can give us 80 percent of what we need to get it's not 100 but if all those things are or you're fused you're like that's it that's my only time of day and I'm not giving up my okay fine give me my five minutes post training you can do this in the car you can do this in the locker room or wherever

it is lights down cover your face with our athletes will put just their shirt or their towel over their face lie on your back i would love to give you a specific and highly designed down regulation breath work routine that's what we that's our gold standard but if you can't do that or won't do that just

give me the other stuff fine just breathe through your nose.

All right. You want to do a double extended exhale.

So you want to do a cadence, like a four second inhale, eight second exhale.

Generally the longer you're exhaling, the more down regulatory it is like, Oh, okay, great.

Like we have lots of protocols.

We can go into tons of customized breathing programs.

We do that a lot, but if not, can you make it as simple as go sit in your car, close your eyes and just breathe through your nose, set a timer for four minutes that actually is a stunning amount of effectiveness to that wow i love that man that's great yeah i i definitely start i was playing pickleball

at night i was doing my morning workout in the gym and then yeah pickleball in the evening it was destroying my sleep like i yeah it would take me two hours like i'm someone who thankfully falls asleep pretty quickly and it's like i would get into bed at like 9 30 and i wouldn't get to bed till like

11 30 12 because i was just like wired from playing pickleball for like seven to nine or whatever it was.

And so I'm having to figure out, I've, I've just stopped playing because it was having such a big impact, but I try that out.

I will try it out. Yeah.

You'd be surprised.

It might not be enough for you.

You might, you might have to do 15 or 20 minutes or it might not work at all, but, but give it a go.

You might, we've seen enough.

I'm might work. I'll try it out.

Another audience question we had to answer was what do you suggest for women with PCOS in terms of an ideal workout?

So when you get into situations like that, whether it's PCOS, whether it's just simply really difficult menstrual cycles to manage, whether it's a menopause or, you know, you know, if we're going through it, things like that.

This area of research is so tricky because symptomology is so wide ranging.

Defining menopause is physiologically easy, but even understanding, you know, it could be six months or 10 years.

Like it's a really hard thing.

Symptoms are up and down the menstrual cycle alone independent PCOS you're you're adding on top of those things I have yet to see a clear -cut specific this is better got it um and just sort of like if you want to follow some guidelines and you're feeling better I'm all in like that's great yeah if not though

I don't have a specific thing that says you have to do this this way um we on are yet to give women different styles of training while we're here.

We don't train them differently just because they're women.

We don't do anything different throughout the menstrual cycle with training or nutrition just because they're women.

We do everything that's based on the individual.

So if we need to do such stuff, we absolutely will.

But we do not walk them in and saying, okay, our women do this style of training.

Our men do this. We absolutely do not.

And I know that wasn't what you're asking.

No, no, but that's really useful.

Yeah. I didn't know that.

no, I'm intrigued we definitely do have different protocols it's so individual it's not based on gender it's not like, oh, you're male so this is better for your strength than female yes, men and women have massive differences and we're always going to acknowledge and pay attention to those things but I'm

always just coaching you what are the differences that people should be aware of?

you have clear hormonal differences generally one of the things that we have seen in our research and I would say it's held true in our coaching practices a lot of the times women handle volume better from an exercise perspective and when i say handle i mean you can give them more reps more sets they

can train more often their recovery is faster the other way you can flip that why is that well we've actually done some work here and nobody really knows i noticed that with my wife my wife's like that yeah you honestly like yeah it's pretty true um my friend brett contraris made a really awesome post

recently and i'm like wow, this is great.

Specifically on this point, again, I want to give him credit because I'm like, oh, actually he nailed this.

When people say things like, oh, we don't train men and women differently, like I just said, I generally hear that and go, okay, you never train women.

Like, you never train women if you're going to say that.

That's exactly what Brett's post was.

I'm like, okay. Because honestly, we sort of do.

Now walking in, we do not, but I know that oftentimes we can bring the volume up.

Also, it oftentimes means they need more volume.

Not always, but i'm hedging quickly of going okay we got to start probably thinking more volume here and if we're not getting responses as quickly as you want we're pretty quick to just go to volume right and oftentimes when oftentimes men that'll go the other direction when it comes to performance

too women because of that generally don't need as much of a taper they don't need to have they don't have to back off as much to get that super compensation that that peaking day again these are very yeah broad yeah generalizations right we're always coaching the individual yeah we can't get specific

without totally avatar in front of us exactly so um those are some ones that we kind of like pop out to immediately where we see differences i've coached world champion females in probably six or more sports at this point so we've done powerlifting and the UFC and a bunch of different sports, wrestling.

I can also say most often women are more in tune with their body than men.

They generally give better feedback.

If you go ask one of our male athletes, like, how are you feeling today?

Like, I know what they're going to say.

Pretty good coach. Where women are more likely to be like, oh, I feel pretty good, but back's a little bit tighter here.

Energy's just a touchdown.

You're like, oh. And they're really in tune with, this thing feels a little bit off over here.

Men are like kind of blunt instruments.

A lot of the times women will be more responsive to changes in caloric intake, where again, men are a little more robust to those things.

So you have to be really careful.

You have to be really careful of lowering calories too much too long for women.

You got to be careful not in men, but you can get away with it a little bit more.

So when it comes to just sort of these generalities, Those are the ones that pop up the most.

Some things that are counterintuitive, actually, since we're here.

We, and there's a lot of research on this that I'd say empirically, our coaching practice, scientifically, we actually just published a meta -analysis.

I was a co -author on this one, so somebody else led this one.

But you don't really see much of a difference in rate of increase between men and women in terms of strength and muscle.

It's not that different.

You grow at about the same relative rate.

It's just that men are generally bigger.

So if you both gain 10%, your absolute amount is as far much higher.

So it looks like you just got it there.

There are some subtle differences there within that meta -analysis.

You can read the details if you're a nerd like that.

But the take -home message for that is it's pretty much the same.

And I would say our coaching experience has seen that.

We don't see women, on average, struggling to put on more muscle relative to men or strength um if the training and the nutrition and all the other factors are equal they're going to progress pretty much equally for a long long period of time the last one that would jump out to me is on a similar note

there is we generally see women through aging are a little bit more successful against joint injury oh interesting men are going to be a little more banged up for the most part so i think that's a believable story too.

I don't know why, but well, I could guess.

A little more aggressive, probably worse decision making, but you get it.

So categorically, those would be some of the differences.

Got it. Thank you. Andy, I want to ask you a final five.

These questions have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum.

Oh boy. So the first question is, what is the best health advice you've ever heard, received, or given?

The notion of adaptability and plasticity is far greater than people realize.

Your genetics play a big part, of course, but your lifestyle is far more important to your end story than your genetics.

So you have the ability, the capacity within reach to make a significant improvement in any aspect of that look, feel, perform that you choose.

Some work there, but you have autonomy in your body.

That's very hope -giving.

I love that. Question number two, what's the worst health advice you've ever heard or received?

Oh, boy. I'm going to cheat with my answer here and give an antithesis to my first answer, which is the idea that there is a certain food you can or can't eat, that all of us in humanity have to be eating or sleeping or training or living a certain way, or we're going to be unhealthy.

That is colossally untrue, unfair, and unhelpful.

Great answer. Question number three, for someone who's really trying to lose some stubborn belly fat, what should they do?

This will sound a little bit counterintuitive, but a large portion of your resting metabolic rate, your metabolism, is defined by how much muscle you have.

So getting those last few pounds off the belly, maybe try to put some muscle on.

My guess is you've already done everything else, so try that option.

and and would you recommend how or that's case specific yeah totally question number four what's something you used to believe to be true about health that you disagree with now i have a lot of answers i've been open honest i probably should do more about things that change i was very against cardiovascular

exercise uh i thought like strength training is the only thing you need to do that that's very wrong.

I was also very against low carbohydrate diets in any form.

I was very against intermittent fasting.

And I think I wasn't totally wrong on that, but those are viable strategies for most people.

They're not perfect for all goals, but those things are options.

So I'd say those three specific ones, but in general, I was simply too closed -minded about assuming I knew what everyone wanted in terms of the outcome and the goal.

When you do that, you start limiting options and you are working too much off of hubris.

The more you realize people are looking for different things, then you start to realize, okay, these are potentially acceptable.

They just aren't going to get to where I thought everyone wanted to go.

And that was not the appropriate approach.

So all of your questions, by the way, I'm in like sentence nine, 10, but - I love it, man, it's all good.

Fifth and final question.

It's the question we ask everyone who's ever been on the show.

If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

You know, what's quite funny about this answer is I literally sent a tweet out yesterday that said, I think we should make it illegal for people to recline their seats on airplanes.

That's so good. It's on top of my brain.

I'd be really mad at you for that law.

God, I hate that. But you can recline yours too, that's the whole point.

Not because you're smashing into my lap and I can't work.

All right. Oh, you're a worker.

That's what you're doing.

Yeah, I'm like, plane time is perfect work time.

Got it, got it. Plane time is the only time I switch to entertainment.

Oh, really? Yeah, I'll read a book or I'm watching something or...

No, man, I hate it.

So my cheeky answer here would be I'd make it illegal to recline seats on airplanes.

I love it. Andy Galpin, everyone.

Thank you so much for listening and watching, Andy.

Thank you for all your incredible insights, wealth of wisdom.

I hope that you will take away one thing and apply it from this episode.

Remember, that's my request.

You won't be able to do all of it.

You won't be able to do everything.

Try and pick the one thing and just apply it to make a shift in your life.

Follow Andy across social media, his podcast, everything else he has going on to make sure that you're connected to his insight.

I'm sure it's had a big impact on you.

I know it has on me.

And Andy, I look forward to having you on the show many, many times.

Thank you so much. That's my pleasure, man.

I can't wait to come back.

Yeah, thank you. If you loved this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with Dr.

Daniel Amon on how to change your life by changing your brain.

If we want a healthy mind, it actually starts with a healthy brain.

You know, I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over a thousand convicted felons and over a hundred murderers, and their brains are very damaged.

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I'm Maria Tremorchi.

And I'm Holly Frey.

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We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures from legal injustices to body snatching.

And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story.

Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Optimizing Human Performance: Insights from Dr. Andy Galpin]-[Andy Galpin: 3 Ways to Lose Weight and Gain Muscle (the Fitness Plan You Will ACTUALLY Stick To)]

📋 Summary

The Core Philosophy of Fitness: Adherence and Adaptation

The Quadrant Model: Managing Life's Constraints

Rethinking Strength and Physiology

Debunking Nutrition and Recovery Myths

Conclusion: The Practice of Living

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript