Hubman Lab Guest Series: Recovery & Exercise Performance (PDF)

welcome to the hubman lab guest Series where I and an expert guest discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life I\'m Andrew huberman and I\'m a professor of neurobiology and Opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine today\'s episode is the fifth in a six episode series on fitness exer...

welcome to the hubman lab guest Series where I and an expert guest discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life I\'m Andrew huberman and I\'m a professor of neurobiology and Opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine today\'s episode is the fifth in a six episode series on fitness exercise and performance and today\'s episode is all about recovery that is how to maximize your recovery to achieve your fitness and exercise and performance goals and how to avoid overtraining Dr Andy Galpin great to be back today we\'re discussing recovery and I\'m very excited to have this discussion because as we know despite the fact that different types of exercise can be used to trigger different types of adaptation such as increased long distance endurance Anor robic capacity strength hypertrophy Etc the workouts themselves are not actually when the progress occurs when the adaptation occurs occurs and this to me is extremely interesting because it parallels what we see with so-call neuroplasticity which is the nervous systems ability to change in response to experience we sit down to learn something we experience something and that is the trigger for rewiring of the nervous system but the actual rewiring occurs away from the experience or the learning so to in Fitness and in exercise recovery is where the Real Results actually emerge where we get better so I\'d love for you to explain what recovery really is and the different types of recovery certainly different ways to enhance recovery and I\'d also love for you to explain whether or not there are ways that people can become better at recovering because if indeed recovery is when progress emerges when we get better well then anything that supports our recovery and gets us better at recovering ought to increase our rate and our degree of progress absolutely you nailed it in the description what people really want is some sort of change whether we\'re talking athletes or general population this change is uh some sort of improvement in muscle function reduction in body fat higher functioning metabolism whatever the case is and the only way that happens is we talk about the equation of stress causes adaptation but as you alluded to the piece in the middle is only if you can recover from it and so the game we\'re playing here is we all agree we want more adaptation that means we need to bring more stress into the system but we then have to ensure that our recovery outpaces the stress input or else we no adaptation will occur in fact what happens is you will actually be in a negative spot and start going backwards and so what I would love to do is is talk about how we\'ve handled this um and I\'ve had a decent amount of experience here I was fortunate enough to do my master\'s degree in the laboratory of a gentleman named Andy fry who\'s an NCA lifetime time Achievement Award winner and he studied in large part recovery overtraining overuse overload in a lot of areas in addition I\'ve been fortunate enough to work with individuals from high functioning CEOs and Executives who have little time for Recovery High job stress to to athletes uh in the think of the example of pitchers in Major League Baseball who have to recover in a matter of 4 days so that they can pitch again at maximum velocity so I would love to outline some of the tools and tactics strategies that we use for all these individuals um give you some foundational stuff and I would love to maybe actually cover some things that most people have never heard of um some stuff you may not have access to some technologies that we use some biomarkers um and then even a whole bunch of things that are keeping with the theme of your show here cost free or extremely low cost so all those strategies um what i\' would also like to do is cover nutrition and supplementation and fueling and hydration and things but that\'s probably going to have to be saved for an additional conversation that we\'ll do in the next episode yes so we will absolutely hold a conversation about nutrition and supplementation where you can educate us about all the top C toour stuff all the way down to the the uh fine details I do have a question about recovery and it\'s one that I think most people are familiar with themselves which is soreness we think of it as muscle soreness but I was trained early on in my scientific career to always question the seemingly obvious so couple of questions about soreness first of all what does soreness really reflect is it really muscle soreness it feels like it\'s in the muscles uh but what other organ systems and tissues and cell types does it involve and then I\'m particularly interested in this concept or this experience that many of us including myself had which is delayed onset muscle soreness why would it be that when we are less in shape or when we perform a movement that is extremely novel to us the soreness seems to arrive after a reasonable delay of maybe even a day you know we\'re F the next day with 48 hours later we are exceedingly sore and as we get more fit or more familiar with the movement the soreness seems to arrive earlier so I realized I just asked you about three questions or more first of all what is muscle soreness at a Cellar level which cells which organ systems and so forth what does it mean if we are sore is something I know we\'ll get into a little bit later and then why the delayed onset muscle soreness it\'s actually one question so it\'s totally fine you answered all you asked all three because I\'m going to actually answer number three which will answer number two which will actually answer number one I\'d love to tell you that I set it up uh that way intentionally but uh I\'m just happy to hear that where I was unable to be concise you are able to be concise thank you yeah we are still learning a lot about this area it\'s actually really difficult to perform these studies anytime you ask a question about something like pain or soreness you\'re immediately talking about perception and there is obviously a physical component to that but there\'s also perception and so teasing those things out is extraordinarily challenging that said there has been a lot of work in this area in fact probably you may have a show already out on pain or maybe one\'s coming down the road we did an episode on pain uh while ago but it\'s definitely time to revisit that literature I also have some amazing colleagues at Stanford who work on pain both from the uh cellular and molecular side but also from the psychological side about how our um understanding of pain and what we believe about pain shapes the experience of pain and Pain Relief amazing that\'s that stuff is incredibly important and I\'m I\'m glad we flagged that and maybe we\'ll just call that good for now they can come back later for another one of your shows so that being said why does it happen uh 28 to 48 hours after you exercise well that actually should give you some Clues into what\'s happening so the traditional dogma of delayed onset muscle soreness is what this is called is that it is a result of quote unquote micro tears in the muscle and so you can sort of think I challenged the muscle there was some small tears in there and I\'m feeling the result of that well in fact that certainly does happen and it can happen that is not what\'s explaining your muscle soreness and in fact you can be quite sore from exercise and have no measurable amount of muscle damage and so much like anything else when we\'re in this idea of pain it\'s not a onetoone explanation there are multiple factors that are probably causing your perception of pain muscle damage can be one of them it is not the only one and it is probably in my opinion though this is yet to be shown definitively probably not even the leading cause of it and so what\'s actually happening well the reason it\'s taking you 24 to 48 hours is is you can actually uh find various papers uh literature reviews dating back in a number of years now over a decade that show these wonderful curves of an inflammatory uh and immune response and and we don\'t need to necessarily go through the entire physiology right now but effectively what\'s happening is those things have a little bit of a time delay and so some of those steps happen immediately like right when the exercise is there and then some of them are delayed six to 24 to 48 hours um if you know a little bit about this uh physiology it\'s you have a combination of neutrophils and macras and a bunch of things happening and this has a Time sequence so what happens is by the time we get to this 28 to 48 hour window now the muscle soreness kicks in which wait a minute if I if this was a result of my muscles being torn and that happened immediately wouldn\'t that pain start immediately well the answer is it would and so that that is your first clue that that\'s not responsible for it when we look at that immune response and we see that that is actually Peak 24 to 48 hours later and then that\'s the same time the pain kicked in that\'s cluing you with the problem so we have this immune response happening in inflammation then all of a sudden we start getting fluid accumulation and now there are what are called nose receptors and you\'re probably very obviously you\'re very familiar with these and these are pain receptors what\'s actually interesting is we don\'t necessarily know a lot of information about how many pain receptors are in muscle they\'re not really in the belly in fact this is why I can perform my muscle biopsies and they don\'t really hurt you mean in the belly of the muscle correct yeah we do have pressure sensors though and so if you change the volume of the tissue you will respond to that very very quickly so by enhancing swelling in the actual muscle that is immediately putting pressure on those pressure receptors if you will that\'s the signal so what\'s probably happening here and I just I just hate to give you another bone but a lot of delayed on some muscle sorus is probably just a neural feedback loop rather than it is actual MUSC damage yeah makes a lot of sense there\'s a lot of interactions between the um types of neurons that control touch sensation and pain sensation and itch sensation in fact a lot of people um kind of collapse itch and pain together Pingo you know that\'s something it\'s painful and it itches is is a familiar thing for people mosquito bites and such um and of course there\'s the uh classic gate theory of pain which uh people will be familiar with and then I\'ll explain why I\'m explaining this um which is if you you something hurts you know you Bonk your knee or you stub your toe we tend to grab that body part and try and rub it totally and that rubbing is not a coincidental thing it activates a set of uh touch sensors that are that respond to kind of broad dull touch um and that actively inhibits through the release of an inhibitory neurotransmitter the fibers that control the pain signal so anytime we we rub a you know like a charlie horse our leg or we or we stub our toe and we you know we winse and then we grab the toe and we kind of like squeezing in a little bit that\'s actually deactivating or partially inactivating the the pain mechanism so the idea that uh a swelling response would then trigger a neural response that then then would recruit the pain receptor response here I\'m using broad broad brush um Strokes here to explain this um makes very good sense to me um now and only now that you\'ve explained how this process works I can actually even add more to that so if you remember how muscles work so we have to have some sort of signal from the nervous system that has to actually go in and tell the muscle to contract well remember there a few episodes ago we covered the physiology here of what\'s called a motor unit okay well what I didn\'t explain to are called muscle spindles and we have talked about proprioception in uh an episode of before as well but we never tied this picture together so let me walk you through that really quickly and it\'s going to tie this Loop in into a nice bow so what happens is um this motor unit is is coming in from what\'s called an alpha motor unit and that\'s going to be innovating your muscle fibers and that\'s going to tell the muscle fibers to contract those are typically spread out throughout the uh all sides of the muscle in interior exterior all over on the outside though there is another type of muscle called a muscle spindle now these are non contractile so they don\'t have that acon and myosin and they don\'t produce Force they are responsive they are proprioceptive so what that means is they sense stretch and this is why for example if you were to um stretch a hamstring stretch any muscle group it doesn\'t really matter or muscle its innate response is to fire back to close that distance and this is what keeps you from say if you\'re leaning to the right um You can imagine that the example we give is if if you\'re standing on one foot and you start swaying to the right all right let\'s say you\'re standing on your right foot and this make this easier for folks and you start swaying to the right like you\'re going to fall on your right ear will hit the ground the inside of your right calf muscle will start being stretched the outside will start being compressed right so the stretch on the inside of the right calf muscle will sense that stretch and it will respond by Contracting that pulls you back to the middle and stops you from falling that\'s proprioception and muscle spindles send stretch and tell you to contract the way that they work is is through gamma motor neurons and so these are sensory things so what\'s happening is unlike when you tell your muscle to contract it goes Alpha to the muscle contract these muscle spindles work such that it is oh I\'ve been stretched send signal back to some Central Point typically in the spinal cord and we don\'t actually want to go all the way up to the brain we\'ve got a time delay this is why these are subconscious autonomic right versus somatic so that gamma is going to go back to the central location and then come back through the Alpha motor neurons until it to contract so you have this wonderful mechanism of sensing stretch going back well one Theory that\'s been put forward regarding muscle damage is that the pressure is actually being applied to those nerve endings of the muscle spindles and that\'s actually responsible for the pain signal that\'s going back and coming up to your brain and you\'re registering that as pain rather than it is actually in the the contractile units so the muscle fibers that that\'s a very intriguing idea uh because it would suggest that stretching muscles in order to alleviate soreness might be the exact incorrect thing to do yeah now I\'m not saying that for sure for certain I\'m just building off the mechanistic logic that we\'ve laid out here yeah really that you\'ve laid out here there\'s a more effective principle based on exactly that which is this is generally why low-level movement is effective at reducing acute soreness because that\'s lowle contraction of the muscles antich and get tissue out and and get fluid out wow you\'re literally pumping it out of the the cell yes and in our previous episode where we were talking about programming or using the wi but let\'s be fair here where you were educating us including me um and the audience about different structures for programming exercise for specific adaptations Etc the month week year SC scales Etc we had a brief um discussion about the fact that if one trains legs very hard with resistance training you know some heavy squatting or deadlifting it or and there\'s some soreness that often times doing some quote unquote lighter cardio or um some uh low impact work the next day or or any number of different things that involve um not high-intensity uh contractions of the muscles but that do require contractions of the muscles that it can alleviate soreness more quickly than if one were to Simply lie around and you know watch Netflix or something yeah that\'s exactly right the um to go back just a little bit as well the if that\'s really the case um the question is like where is this inflammatory signal coming from and while there\'s much to be learned there uh there is a little bit of information right now that suggests it\'s potentially coming from free radicals released from the mondra again that may or may not hold up as more research comes I\'m not sure but but if you remember back to our uh conversation on endurance so we talked about the electron transport chain and aerobic metabolism and regardless of whether or not you\'re getting energy from glycolysis or carbohydrates remember they have to be finished through aerobic metabolism so even if you\'re lifting weights and you\'re using carbs for your fuel you have got to finish that metabolism by running it into the mitochondria and Performing oxidated metabolism as a result of that that electron transport chain runs so theoretically if free radicals which is um which are hyperreactive oxygen species basically they\'re oxygen molecules that are missing an electron so that they react to a lot of things they\'re the opposite of antioxidants by the way this is you know oxidant molecules with extra protons so they can balance the charge if those leak out that in of itself is going to be a massive inflammatory signal and that\'s probably what signals the cause of these neutrophils and macroasia and kicks off this entire Cascade again I believe we need more research there I need to look into it maybe it\'s more definitive than I that I know um but that\'s probably what\'s happening potentially what\'s happening rather that causes that Cascade in Signal also um what you have is this combination of well if that\'s the case why am I not getting tremendous amount of muscle damage when I do more aerobic based exercise well because you don\'t have the mechanical tension pulling on the fibers that\'s actually causing damage to the cell wall that allows these free radicals to escape the mitochondria and the cell cell wall so that\'s the best we can postulate at this moment as to why those things are happening and then why again low-level exercise tends to enhance uh even things like percussion um so using either instruments that put a low level of vibration into your leg or like pneumatic boots so you massage all these things are generally probably helping because they\'re moving that stuff out Adema most specifically so pressure comes off of those nerve endings in the muscle spindles and allows you to stop receiving that signal of pain despite the fact that you didn\'t actually regenerate tissue at all yet fascinating and I think that beautifully frames where we\'re headed next which is to talk about all the different modes of recovery and how to accelerate them and perhaps even how to combine different forms of recovery in order to become better at recovering and in doing so make faster progress with Fitness before we begin I\'d like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford it is also separate from Dr Andy galpin\'s teaching and research roles at Cal State Fullerton it is however part of our desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme we\'d like to thank the sponsors of today\'s podcast our first sponsor is momentus momentus makes supplements of the absolute highest quality the hubman Lab podcast is proud to be partnering with momentus for several important reasons first of all as I mentioned their supplements are of extremely high quality second of all their supplements are generally in single ingredient formulations if you\'re going to develop a supplementation protocol you\'re going to want to focus mainly on using single ingredient formulations with single ingredient formulations you can devise the most logical and effective and costeffective supplementation regimen for your goals in addition moment to supplement ship internationally and this is of course important because we realize that many of the hubman Lab podcast listeners reside outside the United States if you\'d like to try the various supplements mentioned on the hubman Lab podcast in particular supplements for Hormone Health for Sleep optimization for Focus as well as a number of other things including exercise recovery you can go to live momentus spelled ous so that\'s liv.com huberman today\'s episode is also brought To Us by element element is an electrolyte drink that contains the exact ratios of the electrolyte sodium magnesium and potassium to optimize cellular functioning for mental and physical performance most people realize that hydration is key we need to ingest enough fluids in order to feel our 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free sample pack today\'s episode is also brought To Us by eight sleep eight sleep makes Smart mattress covers with cooling Heating and sleep tracking capacity I\'ve been using an eights sleep mattress cover for about the last eight months and it has completely transformed my sleep I\'m sleeping about the same amount but I\'m sleeping far deeper and I\'m now getting the proper ratios of so called rapid eye movement or REM sleep and slow wave sleep and waking up feeling far more recovered mentally and physically the underlying mechanism for all that is very straightforward I\'ve talked many times before on this podcast and elsewhere about the critical relationship between sleep and body temperature that is in order to fall asleep at night your body needs to drop by about 1 to 3° in terms of core body temperature and waking up involves a 1 to 3 degree increase in core body temperature with eight Sleep mattress covers you can adjust the temperature of your sleeping environment to be one 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weight slowing the Cadence of a given movement Etc how those specific types of triggers for adaptation relate to the specific or maybe similar types of recovery that are required for us to make progress us in one of our previous episodes we were talking about how the Harvard fatigue lab really identified this idea of homeostasis or at least sort of championed it for it and that\'s important because in all levels physiology wants to return to homeostasis so what happens in terms of adaptation is you\'ve challenged it to a level that it realizes if it does not make a change it will not be able to get back to the same level of homeostasis that\'s fundamentally what\'s happening that is recovery that process of taking an insult being temporarily reduced in functionality causing a change so that now we come back and get what we often call in sport performance super compensation all that really is doing though is bringing you to a new level of homeostasis effectively it is understanding if that same insult comes again I need to be able to make sure that that doesn\'t cause the same level of disruption and so we raise the bar whether this is is enhancing our ability to take the same level of mechanical tension on the muscle and not result in micro damage whether this is being able to take the same reduction in energy and not have that compromise sleep or anything it\'s really fundamentally changing so we can have a new level of homeostasis because it\'s presuming it\'s predicting that that same insult is going to come again down the road I want to clarify for people that when Dr galin says insult while he may actually insult me um insult is the nerd speake terminology for some sort of damage inflicted to a tissue or system so um he\'s speaking about the insult to the muscle or insult to the neuromuscular connection created by adding more weight to the bar um running a further distance um uh running a bit fast or or pedaling faster that creates a micro insult or an insult and now because everyone is familiar with um psychological and verbal insults you\'ll never forget that biological concept it\'s important we tag another thing here which is called hormesis it\'s one of my favorite phenomenon and it effectively means this that there is a dosage or toxicity response to almost everything and if you think about this in the context of say drugs what this means is if I gave you 10 milligrams of something that it would be okay but if I gave you 20 it\'d be a problem and eventually if I go up and give you enough this thing turns toxic this is a case of everything from cyanide uh where it can actually be in small dosages in nature in fact it\'s in many of the fruits that you eat but it\'s at a dosage that it doesn\'t matter if that dosage gets higher though that actually can cause problems and if it is high enough it can actually kill you instantaneously the back end of that though is because you introduce this micro insult as you framed it for me perfectly your body will then adapt to it and that\'s really what\'s happening with exercise adaptation is is it is a hormetic stressor and why that\'s important is if you look at the immediate responses to exercise you see an extremely large increase in inflammation you see oxidative stress you see a whole Cascade of autophagy like all these problems quote unquote happening it\'s that what\'s actually quite funny here is um as a part of my PhD the academic portion I had to go through the medical side of the school and so I was my physiology class was in med school so I\'m the only non-medical doctor in that class right I\'m a PhD some I leave my lab I walk across campus and I take physiology class with these folks and I I died the whole time internally because every time we would cover a new area it was basically the the exact same value or number in a medical setting is like oh my gosh they\'re going to die and in performance setting is like this person\'s in fantastic shape it\'s I never still amuses me to this day obviously because it\'s just simple things like total blood volume right and you cover like okay if you have a patient come in their blood volume is six liters you know immediately get them on a diuretic of some sort because they\'re going to have a heart attack as blood pressure gets up right now I\'m immediately thinking damn six liters that that person is super fit because that is actually a positive adaptation to training it\'s one of the most important if not the most important adaptation to endurance training is enhance total blood volume so you you\'ll store more blood in your body when you\'re more fit than you are less fit so I mean I could go on all all these things sodium concentrations potassium concentrations are like you look at these things on paper and you don\'t know if that person\'s about to die cuz they\'re 65 years old and out of shape or if that person is going to break a world record the marathon this brings up a very important tangent which is uh for instance if you go and take a blood test and you are somebody who exercises very intensely uh with resistance training your blood creatinine levels can be way out of range and if your physician doesn\'t know that you\'re doing certain forms of exercise might say wow there\'s a lot of muscle tissue damage occurring in your body um as you mentioned before your total blood volume is is dangerously High when in fact you are far healthier and indeed much fitter than the person who numbers would be in range that said obviously there are um limits to these to these statements whereby you would want to be cautious and take action to amarate a very elevated um blood creatinine level or something of that sort but the point you\'re you\'re uh bringing up is is also one about the field of medicine which is that many not all but many Physicians don\'t take into consideration uh the outside activities that people are doing and so it becomes a kind of a plug- Inplay type um type way of looking at blood charts we\'ve done many thousand athletes blood chemistry and uh we we don\'t use first of all we never look at disease stuff that\'s not what we do we take people that are healthy and try to optimize performance and blood chemistry is one of the best tools if you really understand what you\'re doing there you can uh get some incredibly powerful information out of blood chemistry that actually relates to what we\'re going to talk to today uh in terms of measuring uh everything from acute to Chronic dehydration to sleep deprivation can be identified in in blood chemistry to optimization improvements in nutrition supplementation there\'s just a lot you can get there um even people interested in that field I would i\' Point them to a gentleman named Dan Garner who\'s just an absolute Juggernaut and wizard in blood chemistry for high performance but you can get a ton of information from that if you understand the difference between exactly what you talked about looking for signals of increased risk of cardiovascular events 25 years down the road versus is this the optimal value for high performance in an athlete which is what our our database and all of our software and stuff does is is only looking for those things so I\'m going to talk about some of the biomarkers to look for a little bit later um salivary stuff some blood stuff um but we\'ll maybe save that part of the conversation for down the road tell me about different time scales of recovery sure this is actually where I was trying to answer your question for and then I got myself way off track but the reason I brought up the hormetic thing is if you understand that some things in the acute say 24 to 48 hour period look terrible it\'s actually fine right so this is the stimuli that\'s causing adaptation so the reason I brought up the medical U exchange there is because uh you if you looked at inflammatory markers and then you mentioned some of them you would see that they are highest acute within seconds to minutes to hours after exercise however that\'s exactly the stimuli needed to bring them down chronically okay and so chronically meaning maybe in that moment they are elevated and then maybe they\'re coming down 24 hours later and 48 Hours however if you were to compare your resting level say that Monday before you worked out so your resting level that Monday the week following the week following that what you would probably see is your Baseline inflammation goes down and so we got to be really careful are we talking immediately post exercise man these markers look terrible maybe my recovery score is awful Etc that\'s not necessarily a bad thing because what we\'re like looking to do is to not only change what\'s happening today but we\'re trying to cause adaptation that may take us weeks or months to actually access I love that you\'re highlighting this principle because one of the more obvious ones to me now that you\'ve said this is heart rate absolutely my heart rate goes very very high during exercise and I do that fairly consistently or even semic consistently my resting heart rate will actually be quite a bit lower that\'s a fantastic example really what you\'re getting at here is this concept where I think it\'s important to differentiate between adaptation and optimization now we hear that word and I use it and most scientists hate it but it\'s a good communication tool of optimization if you\'re optimizing for the current moment you\'re almost surely compromising delayed adaptation right if if I were to say do the thing right now that makes you feel the absolute best in the world and you\'re like great you took a nap and you ate a dut like awesome you feel amazing but you know it\'s causing long-term issues the same can be said on the back end if you\'re never choosing things that make you better right now you\'re never actually going to see any adaptation so what we\'re really doing with this recovery conversation is playing this game of balancing immediate gratification with delayed gratification and how do we identify how much to do now versus not how do I use a value or a marker whether this is how tired I feel today how sore I am today versus a score on an app or a a tracking metric whether this is a blood marker anything and understand if that\'s what I need to cause the adaptation I want a week a month three months from now and in the case of some of our other athletes it\'s even up to four years right we\'re trying to cause adaptations that will get us where we want to get in the Olympics or World Championships or World Cup or wherever we\'re going to be so that\'s the framework we have to think about recovery we we maybe falsely think about it is I need to maximize my recovery today and you could do something like take an anti-inflammatory whether this is a supplementation or a drug or maybe this is ice oh cool that\'s great that will enhance your recovery in this moment that\'ll make you feel better today probably tomorrow but what we know is that blocks the signal for adaptation so you\'re not going to get the same results you know four six eight weeks from now so when we talk about recovery we have to understand what tool am I using and why and in order to do that we have to understand what am I training for and what am I trying to maximize um if I am in the middle of a season with an athlete and we are competing tomorrow I am going to headed towards acute recovery right because I have to actuate that performance right now if I am starting the off season I\'m not hedging towards recovery I\'m actually hedging towards adaptation so we\'re not going to deploy any of these especially things like uh there\'s evidence that a combination of vitamin C and vitamin E will blunt hypertrophic adaptations because they\'re anti-inflammatory they antioxidants right um other other Studies have shown maybe they don\'t have uh inhibitory effect they may or may not point is conceptually you want to be careful of what you\'re trying to optimize for and you have to have that forethought and that alone is going to dictate your decision making with whether or not again you get in the eyes uh you do everything now we will cover some tools like massage that are pretty fine to use you don\'t have to worry about those blocking long-term adaptation but others you\'re going to want to be very careful about so this principle that you\'ve laid out for us which is that there\'s a set of events that occur during exercise that trigger the adaptation and that sets in motion a number of adaptations that occur during recovery that then get us the exact opposite response to what the trigger was so I\'ll go back to the heart rate example um heart rate is close to maximal or maximal you do that enough times within a short you know a week or so or two weeks and your resting heart rate goes down as I recall a few episodes ago you said that your maximum heart rate doesn\'t really change that much is that correct yes okay but your resting heart rate can go down quite a bit yep is that a general theme mean meaning do we have a more or less set upper limit or ceiling for things like inflammatory markers for heart rate maybe even things like stress and what we do when we deliberately trigger stress or a dramatic increase in heart rate or dramatic increase in inflammatory markers is that we are lowering the floor but that the ceiling Remains the Same it\'s very dependent upon the marker so in the case of maximum heart rate it will not change with the exception of one thing which is age age brings it down training will not change it up in most circumstances if you look at something like an inflammatory response I suppose theoretically there is a ceiling though I\'m not aware of it um I can tell you right now looking at blood markers of things like creatin kise so remember the conversation about metabolism and that we use phosphocreatine as one of our primary fuel sources for explosive exercise well if we\'re using phosphocreatine U this creatin kinas now remember kinas are enzymes that that function to break things down for the most part so creatin kinas is the enzyme you Ed to break down creatine when you do that a lot then that creatin kise gets out of muscle and seeps into the blood um myoglobin is actually another fantastic marker by the way myoglobin is if you think about hemoglobin being in blood is the molecule that carries oxgen around when it\'s in the muscle tissue then it\'s my globin my meaning muscle and it\'s the same globulin thing so there\'s a bunch of markers you can look at muscle breakdown and one of the things that you can see is a creatin k level that\'s elevated after say um one bot of exercise and and you might it might be up you know five or six fold um I\'ve actually seen this number in offensive lineman in the NFL be something like 500 plus fold so even within just one category to the next that that number can get extraordinarily high and if you know this is actually one is important Point here if if you\'re paying attention to any mechanistic research or use you\'re using that to inform your decision-making you have to be extraordinarily careful of magnitude and what I mean by that is if if I were to to be running a a western blot looking at a signaling protein um in a muscle does did this activation of this protein turn on mitochondrial biogenesis and I saw that whatever intervention we gave it whether it was an nutrition thing or a drug or an exercise and I saw that that signaling protein increased by 20% I would basically assume that to be totally physiologically irrelevant because in order for that to be important it totally depends on the marker you\'re looking at but you some markers I might need to see four five six hundredfold increase before I know that that will actually be enough to be what we call physiologically relevant others if they\'re up one or two% that is relevant and so you really want to be careful when you\'re either reading papers or looking at Social Media stuff if people are just talking about this marker increase this much it may not matter it may be totally irrelevant physiologically and so you have to that that\'s also if you\'re wondering like how the hell are the all these people well that\'s how they can trick you a little bit and intentionally or not it could be just they\'re trying to their best but they don\'t really understand that area enough and so um that\'s an important point to pay attention to so to answer your question again fully it would be hard to determine if there is truly a maximum level um some things don\'t want to move like blood pH it doesn\'t really want to move the range that you\'re going to move from is you know like 6.8 to 7.4 and if you get up to like 7.9 like you\'re probably in big big big trouble other things again can go up 500 5,000 fold and so the markers will really determine that answer well at some point in the future I\'d love to continue this discussion around the topic of stress specifically yeah um and maybe we will get into that a little bit later today when we um get into the use of deliberate cold exposure because that certainly um has effects related directly to temperature on tissue but it certainly has mental effects in terms of raising one\'s level of perceived pain it\'s fun also good or some people love it and some people love it for the feeling they get during it um deliberate cold exposure some people only like it for the feeling that they get after it not unlike exercise totally I I love to train I love exercise but I know many people who uh um they Lo exercise but they love the feeling afterward so this will be a theme that we will come back to thank you for indulging my interest in that semi- tangent I think it\'s a relevant tangent if there is such a thing if you can now return us to the different time scales yeah and modes of recovery because I think where we are headed is how to get better at recovering yep let\'s talk about the tools let\'s talk about what to measure and identify for all four of these distinct levels so level one is what we call overload and just very quickly what that means is I did a workout today the sign and symptom of overload is you\'re fatigued per acute performance is down so I worked out hard right now if I were to go try to do a maximum effort I would be reduced in my ability the recovery period for acute overload is minutes to days right that\'s generally what we call acute overload and that\'s what we\'re looking for right so we system should theoretically see that hormetic stressor come back in response come back bigger better more efficient Etc if you were to continue training in that state like most of us do and say I did a workout today I had a little bit of a Cute Overload going to work out again tomorrow a little more acute overload going to work out the next day a little more acute overload even if you took a day in between it\'s that doesn\'t matter right you just continue these acute bouts of insult then you\'re going to be pushing into the absolute golden Target which is what we call functional overreaching so you have overreached what you can currently do and and it results in a functional outcome and what we mean functionally here is performance is enhanced and again performance being whatever you deem it to be you\'re stronger know you\'ve enhanced muscle size your mitochondria has improved you\'ve whatever the thing is it\'s not just a physical performance thing right amazing recovery time for functional overreaching is typically a few days to maybe even a week or so and so typically what we see happen is prior to a competition individuals will do what we call a taper which is a reduced training volume for some short period of time and the the reason they do that is to again actualize is the phrase we use here the adaptations and so you worked hard for six weeks and you know theoretically the workout you did three four five six weeks ago once you allow the system to recover will be actualized which means your performance will be enhanced here so functional overreaching is the golden Target okay if you were to be at the point of functional overreaching and you continue to train so it intensified whether this is through intensity this is through volume or really as you said earlier you had something holding back your recovery it doesn\'t really matter right it\'s it\'s sort of two sides of the same coin then you would move into what we call nonfunctional overreaching so you\'ve overreached again but now it is nonfunctional as in you did not see a positive benefit once recovery allowed this typically means you have weeks it takes weeks to come back from and you basically just get back to Baseline and this is where a lot of folks are who end up in this vicious cycle and so you\'re like man I\'m not getting the results I want I\'m going to train harder I\'m not getting results I want I\'m going to train harder and harder but because you\'ve recovery isn\'t improved you just end up in the same spot so then you train more and you end up in the same spot and you end up then just either blowing up or quitting and you\'re not getting where you want if you were to continue past that point you may actually be into what we actually call overtraining and that typically is uh considered to be overtrained if it takes months to recover from so most people think they\'re overtrained are really not you\'re just probably non-functionally overreached and again the classic distinction is if you took three or four days off and you felt better you weren\'t probably quote unquote overtrained you were probably just in this area of non-functional reaching you need a little bit of a back off if you and this has been the case I\'ve had the app with gymnasts uh and a cheerleader and some other things where they take a month off and we\'re barely seeing them start to come back to their Baseline numbers in any number of areas mood desire to train testosterone cortisol ratios bow markers in a number of areas physical performance vertical jump height like all these things they just start to get back to Baseline so over true overt training is actually quite rare nonfunctional overreaching is much more common and uh it is a a shorter time frame scale so when we talk about recovery those are the four pieces that we\'re really thinking about and so if you are concerned about oh I\'m super sore how do I get less sore how do I either not be a sore next time I do that same workout or I\'m super sore now how do I recover those are playing in that first category of overload and we can certainly talk about how to figure that out but the quick answer is you got to go back to our previous episodes and just pay attention to the volume intensity recommend commendations if you\'re getting significantly uh more damage or fatigue in a workout you probably have increased your volume too too quickly or something else is dragging your stress bucket down but generally this is a problem of training um you either didn\'t warm up sufficiently your fueling strategy is off which we\'ll talk about in The Next Episode or You\' violated one of our principles of increasing intensity and volume sort of too quickly um if it\'s past that and you\'re getting to a stage where you\'re just like I\'m feeling beat up all the time my energy is going down I\'m just not feeling like I\'m recovered now we\'re in this overreaching stage so the the story I kind of tell here always is uh a few years ago I was working and uh my wife Natasha was in the garage training and I\'m doing something and like she comes stumbling and she has this look on her eyes and they\'re like giant her eyeballs are giant she\'s just like wobbling she\'s like I effed up and I was like what do you mean you like effed up and she\'s just like I read the program wrong and she\'s like like what\' you do like she was supposed to be doing 10 sets of three every minute on the minute and she did three sets of 10 every minute on the minute and she was absolutely wrecked she couldn\'t move for a few hours afterwards and then for days she\'s just like you have to handle the kids like I can\'t get out of bed I can\'t move so that was like a classic example of all right like we don\'t need to fix recovery here you\'re just a dummy and you did the training way too hard too long like this is not we don\'t have a problem here so if it\'s a situation like that it\'s generally you just the program was way off if it\'s constantly happening where you\'re just like man like for whatever reason every once in a while I\'m getting really sore or having a really bad performance in these workouts then we need to go to our other stress bucket take a look at our alistic load or allostasis and get figured out what\'s happening there um so those are the the easy ways to flag acute overload problems I\'d like to take a 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offer I\'m happy that you pointed out the distinction between functional overreaching overtraining and being overtrained I think one common mistake that people make in thinking about biology generally is that they think in terms of nouns and adjectives and not verbs amazing I love that so much you know biology is a collection of processes or processes depending on who you are and where you live and who you trained with being overtrained is a state that in many ways is an adjective you\'re overtrained I\'m overtrained it\'s like saying uh you know I\'m an American I\'m a you know Czechoslovakian whatever it happens to be right and in many ways people do start to associate with an identity at least a transient identity and they start making all sorts of decisions it sounds like about what sorts of verbs they will and will not engage in whereas I think if we look at things as processes and we assign verbs to them then we can say okay I\'m functionally overreaching or I\'m truly over trainining which is a matter of degrees correct right or under trining for that matter I\'m not I\'m reaching but I\'m not functionally reaching it\'s just it\'s just performance and you know just as with the nervous system won\'t change unless you give it a reason to this is the reason why if you can perform something perfectly or speak a language perfectly there\'s there\'s no rewiring of the nervous system this myth that we\'ve all been told that every experience rewires your nervous system it\'s different now than it was two seconds ago that\'s that\'s a ridiculous illogical statement we know that\'s not true if your nervous system can perform something it has no reason to change and it won\'t muscles the same way this is why you have to progressively overload you have to learn something new or challenge your muscle to do something new it\'s same thing so in the example that you gave uh with your wife doing this workout that turned out to be far more strenuous she had functionally overreached in some sense she might have been overtraining or heading in the direction of overtraining but the mistake would be to assume that she was overtrained right as a kind of it\'s almost becomes a bit of a a state or a character assignment um as opposed to a verb and in any case there\'s no perfect way to describe this we\'re talking about nouns and adjectives and and we\'re also um uh talking about verbs but I think the verbs are really anchored down in processes and things that we do actions that we can take and so um if I may I\'d like to just highlight this this idea of Shifting one\'s thinking towards verb actions rather than labels on the state that we happen to be in or the person that we happen to be right sometimes it even does become kind of characterological in the way that people describe it and uh so I have to believe that there is something called overtraining that overtraining is real in other words but that we don\'t ever really know if we\'re overtrained you nailed it there\'s there\'s no you know it\'s not like a red flag you know shoots up out of your shoulder it\'s like I\'m overtrained you know it\'s um so in doing so I hope that we can start thinking about some of the verbs the actions that we can take in order to ensure that we stimulate Progressive overload one way or another and at the same time that we don\'t fall into these bins of character assignment where suddenly we decide that we need to do X like take a month off or something like that because I I\'m beginning to realize um from our discussion that that\'s exactly the wrong way to go those are fantastic points I I want to make sure it is clear that there is no clinical diagnosis for overtraining there are no standards there\'s no test or or a blood panel you can pull that would actually identify you in that state so your your distinction Here Andrew of these are verbs rather than nouns is is so wonderful because that is exactly the case uh the only way we could really come retroactively diagnose one with overtraining is if again we had you did weeks of recovery and you only got back to Baseline so we can\'t do it in the moment I can\'t take a single test um there\'s no subjective marker or anything that says you are overtrained it is simply you are probably overtraining and we need to reverse that quickly or in the case of the step before you are probably fun non-functionally overreaching and if you continue to do this you will probably enter into a stage uh where this is your overtraining and we need to come back so that\'s an important thing to let people know is there\'s no one thing we can actually point to that says you are here you are not a noun this is a verb so what are some tools that we can use to enhance our recovery yep let\'s start off with that a Cute Overload phase so in other words I just did a workout and I\'m feeling awful or I just did one two days ago and I\'m super sore how do I get rid of that right now well there\'s a couple of things you can do immediately after your workout and then others that are maybe more actionable a day later or two days later and we\'ll just cover handful of them we\'ll do some nutrition and hydration and supplementation in the next episode I\'m going to cover everything else not in that category right now so a couple of things number one uh you actually start Kickstart that recovery process at the end of your current training session and I guess I should say it this way I strongly suggest you start this recovery process immediately after the workout you mentioned earlier about this idea of you got to get a really high peak of stress to cause adaptation but I actually didn\'t explain that correctly because what has to happen is you need that extremely high peak but then you have to be met with an extremely sharp recovery back down and so you know you\'ve talked about this before in some of your neuroplasticity stuff and in terms of what has to happen that caus the insult and then you immediately need to be able to recover to make sure that that causes changes in the brain same thing happens here so we need a really sharp and high inflammatory response and then if you do not meet it with an immediate recovery period the signal won\'t be there to maximize your results so what\'s that mean you can actually do a couple of things number one is listening to slow paced music there\'s evidence that suggest fast-paced music May uh slow down your recovery and slow pace would actually enhance it so if you just change from you know your maximum get you up and get going music during the workout to a slower lower Cadence that will help you Kickstart the idea of a similar note you can also use what we call down regulation breathing you could do them in conjunction or one or the other whichever is up to you so my personal favorite method here is is somewhere between 3 to 10 minutes of finishing your training session laying down i\' like to be in that position you could certainly do it in the Lotus position but I think laying on your back is generally more effective personal preference there no signs uh I like the eyes being covered getting into this dark quiet sort of area and then just breathing through your nose in a structured Cadence there\'s a lot of different things you can try an easy example is just box breathing so and you can imagine box having four squares so what you\'re going to do is inhale for somewhere between like 3 to 8 seconds and then whatever number you choose you keep that same tempo and so let\'s say you chose to do a 5-second inhale that\'s going to take you up vertically and then horizontally for your box is a 5-second hold and then a 5-second exhale and then a 5-sec hold and you just need to repeat that for the time domain I typically honestly don\'t use a timer you\'ll actually notice a lot of people will like fall asleep or get really close to falling asleep in this period you could do a triangle version of that where you do an inhale hold exhale and then go right back into your inhale or there\'s a bunch of different tricks you can try here you need to play around and see what actually works best for you 10 minutes is probably better but if you can just at least give me three that\'ll work if you\'re really really resistant you can actually do that just in the shower and so if you\'re going to finish your workout get in the shower again just close your eyes in the shower give me three minutes of focused relaxation breathing and that will accelerate the recovery process I love it and I particularly love it because my laboratory works on stress and respiration AK breathing and the interactions between the two and I\'ll just mention a result that was just accepted for publication so should be out by time this episode SS uh thank you uh this is the beautiful work of uh not me directly although it took place in my lab but as we know it\'s the students of posto really do the heavy lifting of um Dr maliss U balbon uh in my lab it\'s a phenomenal researcher that showed that a short period of 5 minutes of box breathing of exactly the type that you described or uh cyclic sign so two inhales followed by an extended exhale to lungs empty ideally the inhales are done through the nose the exhales are done uh through the mouth although it could all be done through the nose um or the mouth for that matter but probably nose nose for inhale inhale mouth for exhale or um uh in inhales through the nose and and xhl through the nose cyclic sing as we refer to it done for 5 minutes both of those produce very significant uh decreases in resting heart rate the over time will increase things like heart rate variability and so on and so forth um so provided that there are extended exhales it seems like the calming response and the reduction in overall stress occurs the only thing that really sends things in the other direction would be something like cyclic hyperventilation I\'m sure you\'ve observed that um and interestingly uh when we had people just do 5 minutes of u meditation which during which of course they are breathing but they\'re just allowing their breathing to progress however it happens to be in that moment um or moments across the five minutes uh there were reductions in the same sorts of markers of stress that I described but not as significant as breathing so I love the Box breathing tool post-workout um and there\'s some other Alternatives there too that I just mentioned but I think people greatly underestimate the potency of breathing for shifting one\'s nervous system function away from stress or if one wants toward more alertness and stress I actually have a couple questions for you on that sure I think the audience would appreciate this um how long were those boxes was it just user selected great question so we use the carbon dioxide tolerance test amazing in order for people to determine how long the different sides of the Box should be and you cover carbon dioxide tolerance test in previous episode and we can provide a link to that clip um in the show note captions but as you point out it involves a long extended exhale to lungs empty um and of course people could sit with lungs empty but uh they have to accurately Faithfully as we say report how long it took them to empty their lungs we use that as a as a gauge typically if it takes if people go to lungs empty in 20 seconds or less I believe I have to go back to the paper and look but I believe that the um duration for each of the sides of the box boxes as it were was somewhere between um two and 3 seconds if they had a uh CO2 discard time of anywhere from uh 20 seconds up to about 40 45 seconds we used a the sides of the Box were I believe um between four and six seconds and then for people longer than a who could discard their erir over a period of a minute um or more we used a uh box duration that is inhale hold exhale hold duration of somewhere between I believe it was um seven or maybe it was eight and um as long as 11 or 12 seconds you get your kind of free diver types who can really do this um who are really well trained for this sort of thing the don\'t quote me exactly on those numbers but that that was approximate those line up exactly with what what we\'ve done so I I believe it\'s it\'s going to be close within seconds of non-important Distinction is it\'s going to be close you know so that\'s great and that was uh it took them what six weeks before they uh so this study was done over the period of a month and then when they were swapped into a new pattern of breathing um condition or meditation condition and this was all done in in the natural world as we say um they were wearing woot bands that we were getting heart rate heart rate variability sleep data subjective data about mood Etc so there were a lot of measures but this was um more than 100 subjects out in the wild of life um and we tried as best we could to track life stress events and exercise and things like that that was harder to control outside the laboratory really all those results speak to exactly what you\'re describing here which is that deliberate respiration that involves controlled holds and exhales really has a dramatic and very immediate impact on reducing our levels of stress that that\'s wonderful I\'m not surprised at all uh with your findings and what\'s really interesting about that is you mentioned how the exhalation portion is primarily responsible for the down regulation and that\'s actually goes back to our previous endurance conversation which is that in general at rest at non- altitude increases in CO2 are the primary driver for ventilation and so what that generally means is inhales are associated with an uptick and sympathetic State and exhales are associated with a uptick of parasympathetic State uh this is generally why folks will do things like exhale and finish that exhale right before they perform a very high Precision neurological task so if you\'re going to say aim at a Target and shoot you\'re going to Exhale fully and then almost always execute that movement at the end of the exhale because that\'s when you\'re in your highest parasympathetic State and lowest drive for ventilation I have to say I\'m not surprised at all that you guys found that there\'s actually other data that point to individuals particularly after endurance training that can get backed down to Baseline heart rate is going to be correlated with who gets the most actual results of the training said that if you take a bunch of individuals and put them through an endurance training program and if you measure how quickly they can get back down to Baseline after each workout in general those folks that are better at that are going to see greater improvements in performance at the end of your say four six or eight week training block and so there\'s a little bit of causation and correlation there that we have to untie but I think it\'s enough to say hey if you invest these three and in your case your your study was 5 minutes it\'s only going to enhance recovery you have a likelihood of increasing the results from your training and now we also have additional benefits like being able to transition more appropriately into our next task going to work going to see family whatever the thing is and it\'s it\'s a nice close to I asked you to be in a high sympathetic State body and I asked you to perform and to be under stress I gave you recovery and now we\'re ready to transition in our next thing so that we don\'t take that exercise energy if you will into our next task which may or may not want me in a sympathetic Drive state so if somebody is sore following a workout either locally sore in a muscle group or group of muscles maybe in their legs or chest or torso or maybe their whole body is sore as it sometimes is the case what are some tools that they can Implement in order to to accelerate the I want to call it moving out of that soreness but it\'s really uh as we know the alleviation of the soreness through a bunch of different processes what are the most effective tools to push back on that soreness and dissipate it yeah absolutely first of all it\'s not lactate that\'s is a really important thing that we still hear people talk about is you know you\'re sore 24 hours later you got to do this thing to get the lactate out of there as we talked about in the metabolism uh conversation and episode that that is not the cause of fatigue and it\'s certainly not the cause of soreness so not an actionable tip there but just a pet peeve of mine when I hear people say that that I get irritated so we can maybe in that conversation um strategies tools here\'s what you can do you can actually wear compression gear that will help a little bit there\'s a decent amount of evidence suggesting if you just were to you know put some tighter fitting clothes on Leisure wear or compression gear if you have it that that can actually prevent a little bit of soreness from occurring so if you\'re in the case of poor Natasha and you realize you just done way way way too much or you went and hung out with your bow hunting friend and you trained way too hard and you realize oh my goodness I\'m going to be very sore here you can immediately put on compression gear and wear that really for as long as possible what are some examples of compression gear I\'ve seen people on the plane with those high high socks um I mean anything that you wear compression gear for what you do for exercise so whether these are just uh you know compression panss and leggings the tight fitting leggings uh whether this is a long sleeve shirt that\'s like a rashgard you would wear in you know Jiu-Jitsu or surfing or something like that as long as it\'s tight fitting it doesn\'t have to be much more than that you can wear I suppose you could get the socks would be great but um we generally just tell our athletes um they would put on long sleeve compression shirts that they would wear for their training and then long compression leggings and that\'d be fine can people apply these compression um Garb after training and still get some of the positive effects yeah I have not seen any evidence to suggest that that would block adaptation that may be the case I I am not aware of those studies if that happens but um I certainly know that the information suggests it canh hands a little bit of Muscle Recovery but ideally one knows if they are about to do a workout that could trigger a lot of soreness and then wears compression gear of some sort to offset that and if so does it have to be local to the muscle groups that you\'re working on the reason I asked about the sock is my understanding the socks that the compression socks people wear on the plane is that it\'s going to shift the patterns of blood flow not just in the lower legs but all over the body yeah you\'re probably going to want to focus it on the actual exercising tissue though actually that\'s a really good question I don\'t know the answer of whether or not you did an upper body workout only or lower body compression gear if that would actually help that\'s a great question that may have been done I don\'t know but I don\'t know the answer to that in general we just tell people like we wear the whole thing as much as you can um I actually am not concerned that you\'re wearing it during your workout it is something you could put on afterwards or even wear just a little bit of compression the other day um we\'ve actually did a really fun study uh I collaborated with um Bill Kramer who\'s uh you know Sports scientist of the Year award is the bill Kramer award if that gives you an indication out of uh University of Connecticut as well as with Lee Brown so two Lifetime Achievement Award winners and we we put people on a a plane in stores Connecticut and flew them to Cal State Fullerton so a cross Country flight and some of them got to wear compression gear during the flight and others did not and then they landed in California did a training bout put them back on the plane went back to stores and I think they did another training about when they got back there there was a lot of data that came out of that paper but one of the things that was clear is the compression group was effective um at handling some of the blood related coagulation and other issues associated with uh long flights and particularly athletic performance so that\'s actually a sneaky little Insider trick that I\'ll use a lot with people particularly with athletes that are traveling is just wear that compression gear on the plane so you you talked about that and that sort of rung that study to mind that it\'s another effective strategy so compression gear in general as well as particularly on a plane um basically the tighter you can get it the better without obviously making your hands purple and being uncomfortable and things like that so it doesn\'t have to be overly tight uh anything will work and probably help so I\'m also doing that personally anytime I\'m taking a flight like that as much as I can just feel a little better when I get there so what are some other methods that we can use to alleviate acute soreness well if we continue down this same theme which is saying okay we use some sort of pressure manipulation to enhance recovery if compression is one strategy you can also use things like um compression boots or garments and these are pneumatic devices that will you know pump uh air outside you and compress back and forth there\'s any number of devices that will do this um you can also use the physical hand so this would be massage and body work um they\'re all really working as best we can tell on the same mechanisms uh which are effectively moving fluid in and out of the tissue as well as potentially enhancing blood flow uh increasing capillarization and which is going to only get nutrients in and waste products out so you can kind of pick and choose based upon your budget uh preferences availability timing things like that so those are all effective strategy outside of that really is the next largest category which is now thermal and uh and so far in this discussion we\'ve mentioned cold water immersion and I talked about in the hypert section how you would not want to do that immediately post exercise which would be getting into cold water or an ice bath if you\'re trying to grow muscle mass having said that there is good evidence showing that cold water immersion specifically is effective at reducing muscle soreness so so it is a fair consideration and it\'s a classic example of how there are no free passes in physiology nothing is always good or always bad it\'s always about what are you willing to give up and versus what you\'re willing to get and in the case of like cold water immersion you may be thinking yeah I might blunt some of the hypertrophic adaptations but if you\'re in that phase of training where you\'re actually trying to push more towards optimization in that moment rather than long-term adaptation then a an ice maath might be a great choice in addition if you fall into a scenario like Natasha did and you realize like I\'m just so unbelievably sore this might cost me three or four or five or six days of training it might be worth it for you to accelerate that recovery process by a couple of days so that you don\'t miss so much training so it\'s it\'s just a it\'s an algorithm it\'s an equation what am I looking for again if I\'m in season or trying to compete or if I have just done way way way too much exercise and I\'m really in significant pain you would probably be willing to give up some small percentage of eventual muscle growth after a single session to get out of pain so um of the cold strategies cold water immersion is clearly the best approach rather than cold air or some other tactics so a cold shower is probably not enough here you really do uh want to be either in moderately cold this is maybe 40 to 50 degree water uh for probably north of 15 minutes or you can be in sub40 for as little as maybe 5 minutes to get some of the effect and there\'s been a number of studies um so I\'m sort of summarizing a bunch of that kind of into one rather than going through them Point by point the numbers you just threw out U which I\'m assuming are um uh Fahrenheit um seem seem really cold to me right uncomfortably cold absolutely so I always recommend that people ease into it as a protocol overall that they not immediately go to 35 degree uh cold water if they\'ve never done it before uh that said once people are comfortable being uncomfortable because I always answer the question how cold should it be exactly would you agree that it should be very very cold so much so that you really really want to get out but that you\'re able to stay in safely whatever that value happens to be you absolutely need to be safe having said that we have actually in our xpt Retreats put dozens if not hundreds of people at this point uh immediately into the sub35 degree water their first time ever and done you know 3 minutes multiple rounds uh in a session so they can handle it but you don\'t need to go that crazy if you don\'t want you kind of have to play a game right do you want to be really really cold for a short amount of time or do you want to be like kind of cold for a longer amount of time I really the only mistake you can make is doing something like you know 65 degree water which for most people is not very comfortable and doing you know five or 10 minutes it\'s just not going to be effective it\'s probably not going to be effective so if you\'re like man 35 is is absolutely crazy and you want to do 55 degree water and there\'s literature in that area but it\'s going to say you need to probably be there you know somewhere almost surely north of 10 minutes and some of it will actually show you need to be in there like well north of 20 to 30 minutes so for my money I would rather go really really cold and get it down in five minutes but um personal preference on this one you can also make it a little bit easier on yourself there is not nearly as much evidence but there is some on contrast stuff so uh this is when you go cold hot and sort of back and forth there are no really good rules in terms of how much should you go how many rounds how long and cold how long and hot again there have been a couple of studies but and obviously those studies use numbers but that doesn\'t mean those have been tested to see what what are optimal which is a very big difference so um you can really just kind of play that by feel hot is good for Recovery you just have to be careful because you are going to put more blood flow in the area and so you you may walk out of there with some additional acute swelling which is then going to put greater pressure on there so you have to kind of play with that I personally really like hot uh for Recovery I will feel maybe not great in that moment but the next day I tend to feel really really good in addition if I wake up the next morning and I\'m really really hurting and and I\'m super stiff a hot bath will will help that um quite a bit so you can play with some of those protocols again you don\'t have to do ice there\'s absolutely no requirement to do so it is just an option if you\'re interested yeah the studies of Dr Susanna soberg um sure yeah are not directly aimed at alleviating soreness or recovery they\'re more about increasing thermal capacity by a storage of uh Brown adapost tissue not the blubbery fat but the stuff around the clavicles and around the heart that help you generate body heat at rest and metabolism and so on and the numbers there that um she\'s come up with again have not been tested against all the possible derivations just like with breathing we did five minute sessions but who knows maybe a minute would have been equally effective we just there are constraints on these sorts of studies but the values that she\'s come up with which seem to be good thresholds for making sure that an adaptation response is triggered by heat and cold is it ends up being 57 minutes per week total of uncomfortable but safe heat in that case sauna and that can be all in one session or breaking it up into a couple of sessions on the same day or or different days and then 11 minutes per week of cold either in one single session or multiple sessions again one could do more um one could break that up over you know multiple days or do it all in one day or do it all in one you know an hour in the sauna and then 11 minutes in the cold or vice versa although that seems a little bit extreme especially for the uninitiated but those are the numbers that have been studied but as you point out there are not a lot of really thorough studies examining different cold protocols according to temperature by time requirements so there is a bit of subjective feel required to establish a routine and I would actually say this is another time to re-emphasize something we talked about at the beginning of our convers which is that pain itself is not a defined outcome it\'s heavily influenced by your perception and so if you don\'t feel like they work for you they won\'t work if you feel like they work fantastic they do so it\'s a challenging field to get really objective data on so there\'s always going to be a little bit of subjective nature to some of these things I can tell you anecdotally we\'ve used hot and cold contrasts for a long time with athletes um some love it some don\'t care for it and everything in between so it\'s one of those things where I never mandated of course I can\'t mandate anything for anyone I work with but I\'m never you know like hey are you interested great you\'re struggling in this area you want to try this you did and you liked it great you\'re struggling in this area and you tried it you didn\'t love it okay fine I\'m not we we\'ll find other routes as we we\'ll get into there\'s a lot of ways to enhance recovery um this is only one and it hasn\'t even really come down to stopping the problem in the first place we\'re not we\'re just treating symptoms which is first line of defense but you really need to go back and figure out why it\'s happening to begin with as a solution these are just different again acute symptom management tactics one final point about uh deliberate cold exposure I think worth mentioning is one of the reasons the shower is effective but not nearly as effective as cold water immersion or immersion in ice up to the neck is simply because of the reason you stated before which is that most showers are not going to get that cold you\'re not going to get down you know into the sub 40s um also cold showers haven\'t really been studied that much they have but not nearly as much as immersion and people always ask why I just think about the challenges of studying cold water uh exposure in the shower where you can\'t really control for how much of the body is covered whether or not the head stays under different Siz bodies Etc whereas when people come into a laboratory they can get into a cold water tank we know where the neck is know where the chin is and we can make sure that people\'s arms and um legs are underneath but with cold shower sure you can make everyone face away or toward the shower but it\'s really tricky and um for all the variations that that were described that said would you agree that if one wants to use deliberate cold exposure that cold shower is better than nothing and cold immersion in circulating cold water or ice bath is better than um than cold shower yeah what I would actually say if you\'re looking for recovery for muscle soreness I would say cold shower is probably doing very little U because you\'re not going to be able to get enough cold water onto any muscle besides basically your head um so maybe you could try a cold bath uh and so you at least get some surface area coverage but yeah if you want to use cold shower for all the other awesome reasons cold shower that\'s totally great but if you\'re trying to use that to recover your low back and glutes from being sore from training in a good way it\'s probably not going to do much the the immersion would be there you actually also hit sneaky other point which is if you can\'t get your water super cold just make the water move so if you have Jets and stuff you can turn on and anyone who\'s tried this and you\'re like okay I can do a 40 Dee bath awesome uh try 60 when the water\'s moving right because you break up the thermal layer normally you have a little thin layer of water that you\'re heating up you break that up it\'s a whole new world yeah absolutely so being very still in the cold water is actually the weaker way to go correct that you can make your face stoic but make your body circulate some water around you as long as we\'re on this maybe just one more point about heat uh I\'ve certainly used sauna wet sauna dry sauna steam sa saunas excuse me jacuzzi can work pretty well y um uh males if you are looking to conceive in the 60 days following uh following sauna or um hot tub do realize that it that both those approaches do severely limit the number of motile sperm um substantially so for people that are not trying to conceive don\'t think that this works reliably enough that you could use as a form of contraception yeah but but for people that are trying to conceive it really is detrimental to to sperm Health right and so for that reason some people bring an ice pack and put it on the groin or near the groin uh when they go in but um which is harder to do in a hot tub than a sauna so here we\'re getting into the fine points um or crude points if you will pun intended but um but the idea is that we we wouldn\'t want anyone to approach these techniques and compromise their other life goals was not allowed anywhere near these things when uh we were at that stage of life I I\'ll just say Natasha put an x on me hanging out with lared so going going in no for those reasons she\'s like you\'re not going in you\'re not going none of the stuff and I just had to wait right he um heat and sperm have a have a relationship but it\'s not one that\'s positive for the sperm I\'d like to take a brief break to acknowledge our sponsor insid tracker insid tracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals I\'ve long been a believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your immediate and long-term health and well-being can only be analyzed from a quality blood test one issue with a lot of blood tests and DNA tests out there however is that you get information back about various levels of lipids and hormones and metabolic factors Etc but you don\'t know what to do with that information inside tracker makes knowing what to do with all that information exceedingly easy they have a personalized platform that lets you see what your spefic numbers are of course but then also what sorts of Behavioral dos and don\'ts what sorts of nutritional changes what sorts of supplementation would allow you to bring those levels into the ranges that are optimal for you if you\'d like to try insid tracker you can visit insid tracker.com huberman to get 20% off any of insid tracker\'s plans again that\'s insid tracker.com huberman to get 20% off are there ways to combine uh the various types of um stimula that you described for inducing recovery you talked about breathing based tools um which while they could adjust and indeed do adjust oxygen and carbon dioxide ratios and Etc I\'m guessing the major effect of those on recovery is going to be neural it\'s going to be deliberate calming of the nervous system more sympathetic based uh you mentioned yeah most definitely and then you talked about some movement based and touchbased approaches um which will uh movement cly certainly will circulate blood but also will generate contractions of the muscles yep right which maybe if indeed again it\'s still speculation if indeed some of the soreness is due to excessive stretch or swelling at the stretch ends of the of the muscles that would make sense so movement and touch and then thermal are there ways to to combine these um that are more effective or maybe even synergistic yeah I suppose you could throw on uh some compression garment put on a Pneumatic compression device and sit in the sauna while you down regulate your breath like that that would be fine quite honestly though you probably don\'t need to maximize all of them we were joking uh you could probably go for a light swim while regulating your breathing in cold water uh you get the compression from the cold water and and you\'d be in a good spot so you can certainly do that the reality of it is I generally look for some physical approach and then some uh holistic approach of the breath work basically so I want breath and then something else if you knock those two things out you\'re in a good spot so that could be breath while you\'re in thermal stress so just controlling and doing the UN regulation stuff you have to also remember ice is a stressor and I\'ll actually show you some data here in a second about how that actually can enhance um systemic recovery although it won\'t happen in the in the acute minutes in fact it\'s going to take at least 30 to 60 minutes and then you\'ll eventually see a rebound effect but acutely it\'s going to make you actually more sympathetic which is going the other direction heat can do the opposite opposite or it can actually drive you up so it\'s a little bit dependent upon how you respond what time of day um and how you\'re using so in general I guess uh combining them is if you need it um depending on what you have what\'s available so perhaps you don\'t have a sauna but you can take a hot bath great maybe you have some percussion device some tool and you can use that but you don\'t have u a sauna amazing don\'t have ice bath these things so I think rather than thinking about an optimal combination of them I would say just use a couple of the tactics based on what you have and what is easily available um in your situation I\'d love for you to teach us about some of the methods for longer form recovery as it relates to overreaching and overtraining sure you want to think about this in a couple of phases phase one is to try to prevent it from happening in the first place uh in terms of training load you\'re going to just go back to our previous episodes where we talk give you specific instructions for how much to increase your volume and intensity per week Etc the other thing you can do then is do some monitoring and I\'ll I\'ll go over some different tools some cost-free ones as well as some some higher techologically demanding ones uh to monitor to see if it\'s actually happening and then the third approach here is what if this is already occurred I figured out I\'m so how do I get back out of that hole so I would like to just sort of tackle these one by one in order and and talk about what\'s happening what tools you can use and why they\'re going to work all right so anytime we\'re talking about fatigue management here most people are aware of these terms because if you have any sort of Technology uh you\'re probably getting some sort of Readiness score or recovery score or strain depending on which app or watch or Tech you have you have a little bit of vacular change if you\'re in the sport performance world you might be looking at things again like load or GPS tracking and monitoring and really all of it is is doing the same thing it\'s trying to either one predict a problem is going to happen in the future and then placing restrictions upon you so that you don\'t run into that situation the other thing is possibly doing is identifying a drop in physiology or performance and then saying we need to get you out of this hole that\'s really what\'s happening and so when we think of the first one just imagine uh a scenario like a mileage limitation uh pitch count in baseball and what has happened there is is you know individuals in those fields have looked and said hey what we notice is people who throw say more than a 100 pitches in a game tend to start losing Effectiveness and increased injury rate therefore we\'re predicting the next time you go to play if you cross that threshold we start having an increased risk of negative consequences so therefore we\'re going to cap your in this case pitching volume at that 100 pitches per game or whatever the case same thing with running etc etc so you could just simply do that and there\'s actually really cool data coming out now on sport performance stuff looking at things like Imus and GPS trackers and trying to identify even position by position specific uh recommendations for how much distance you should cover in a practice in a training session um so that you can say hey these positions don\'t cross this threshold these positions don\'t cross this threshold in basketball and tennis and and all kinds of things like that that\'s not probably extremely applicable to many of the listeners right now but it is still conveying the idea that that if we understand where we break then we can stop ourselves from getting there in the first place the functional example uh here is just thinking about basic things like where do I start my training program and then how do I progress it and we\'ve already covered those numbers in either case though you want to have three markers that you\'re paying attention to if you\'re concerned you\'re getting into an overreaching phase or potentially going to lead to overtraining or you want to get out it\'s three unique things number one we\'re going to look for some sort of performance metric right so this could be um your times are going down your your squat numbers your your power is going down any of these things so it\'s got to be an actual performance number two some sort of physiology and so I want to see something happening with resting heart rate some biomarker is moving uh heart rate variability some other measure that is not influenced by you and the beauty of using biological markers are if we contrast that to like performance and I said okay here\'s our performance test every day you come in you\'re going to do a vertical jump and if one day you come in all a sudden your vertical jump is super low I might think oh man maybe we\'re starting to overreach you also could be feeling lazy that day and just not have jumped very high on purpose because you didn\'t want to work out the beauty of biomarkers are you don\'t get to manipulate them like that they don\'t care there\'s a downside to it which is maybe they\'re just indirect markers right and so I\'m not telling you biological markers are better than performance markers what I\'m saying is you want to look at both all right in fact you want to look at our third category as well which is some sort of symptomology and so am I am I having a symptom of overreaching am I seeing a performance decrement and then am I seeing a biological marker as well if you see all three of these popping up you have reason to believe you\'ve reached some overreaching now what you have not identified yet is if that is functional overreaching non-functional overreaching or true overt trining and remember you shouldn\'t be feeling great after every training session you\'re trying to cause adaptation and until you back off maybe even weeks or months later to actualize the adaptation and get that super compensation and performance increase you\'re going to have to invest a little bit so you\'re going to go in the hole um any sport performance coach is going to look at numbers throughout the year and say yeah yeah when we first start training and preparation for this the season we are going to see a drop in performance that day that week that\'s part of the plan though right that\'s the stress you\'re trying to accumulate so you want to see all three of those markers you just want to pay attention to a couple of things how long are they down for a day three days 7even Days 15 days Etc if you\'re seeing a performance drop in a day and I am far away from from performance uh so the day that I want to peek for I\'m not going to do anything different if I see two days in a row drop performance I\'m not worried if I see more than probably in my opinion five days in a row of decrement then I might start paying attention if you\'re in season though or close to competition or whatever that thing means to you and you see more than a couple of days in a row of dropping then you might actually want to take some some steps to mitigate that so it really is important you understand again what are we trying to do are we trying to cause adaptation are we trying trying to cause adaptation and I I have a very specific example of all this we can run through uh here in a second and then of course a bunch of tools to to pull you out of those phases but that\'s that\'s fundamentally what we\'re trying to do here uh I would encourage you again don\'t be too reactive and responsive to any one measure I\'m going to cover a whole bunch of them in a second but you can get lost in in different things because they all have pros and cons and so I know it\'s simple to just look at one score on your watch and make your decisions because of that or check your app but you really want to be careful of doing that you\'re going to probably lead yourself in the wrong direction more often than you\'re going to help yourself I\'m curious as to why when we overreach too much or too often or we are overtraining that performance is diminished because on the face of it it\'s kind of obvious you\'re overreaching you\'re overtraining so performance has diminished but that\'s completely circular you hear about things like adrenal fatigue and adrenal burnout well it turns out adrenal burnout doesn\'t even really exist absolutely not there is such a thing as adrenal insufficiency syndrome but course you know these phrases like burnout adrenal burnout overtraining um they\'re thrown around you know as much as words like gaslighting and obsessive compulsive you know are without any real clinical definition um or there are clinical definitions but people aren\'t obeying them when they use the language I do want to acknowledge however what is absolutely true which is that over reaching too much too often overtraining these can degrade performance but mechanistically speaking what\'s going on because I think if once we understand what\'s going on mechanistically then I think um we can all look at tools whether or not it\'s breathing movement compression thermal psychological um motivational Etc and have a much clearer sense as to what\'s going to work best and what likely won\'t work I love this question so much because as I mentioned at the beginning I I was fortunate to spend my uh some of my graduate work in Andy fries Lab at the University of Memphis and we we did a lot in this area and so we in fact this is how I learned how to do assays and run Western blots and measure signaling proteins and things like this so this stuff is near and dear to my heart we also did a bunch of really wild studies and he had done some before I got there so I\'m going to combine kind of Andy his entire career uh and just highlight some of the big pictures of what he found there um he was very interested in exercise particularly strength training and trying to figure out this entire question right which is like why is this actually happening when I work out too much when I lift too much that all of a sudden I can\'t sleep what\'s happening like why is my energy down why is my mood my motivation reduced if I squat too much so we did a whole series of studies across his career and again I\'ll just sort of highlight some of the the some of the themes that ran through them so the first one that jumps out to mind is early in his career he did this really awesome protocol um where he had people squat 100% of their back squat Max every day for two weeks so you come into the gym and and I think this first one was on a machine and you did a one rep max and then you came back in every single day for two weeks so these are what we would generally call kind of like that short to moderate range overreaching and by definition some of them ended up actually being true over training because it would take the individuals sometimes two to up to eight weeks to return back to their one rep max at the end of these protocols um so some of them were non-functional overreaching or some combination of that well along with that he took uh a lot of blood samples as well as muscle biopsies to try to look at what\'s happening endocrinologically um neurologically muscle physiology wise to pay attention What\'s happen so a couple of things that jump out there um one of his initial studies actually I think the very first one he did did um when they ran that first uh squat everyday protocol what they found was camine levels changed quite significantly um and depending on kind of what you wanted to pay attention to there whether it was epinephrine or nor epinephrine um or even uh some other markers they basically increased by somewhere between two to three fold and so a little bit of understanding of sleep physiology if adrenaline is extremely high epinephrine you\'re going to have a hard time sleeping so that alone was was first indication this is like wait a minute something\'s actually happening here that\'s just beyond muscle soreness there\'s some sort of systemic fatigue happening and as you rightfully pointed out is not the adrenal glands becoming fatigued that\'s sort of a bit of tongue and cheek and pedantics it is cortisol disregulation and general stress syndrome um but it\'s really can be noted in in blood in terms of epinephrine and norepinephrine ano