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Summary of Huberman Lab Podcast Episode: Maximize Recovery for Fitness & Performance Goals with Dr. Andy Galpin

Podcast: Huberman Lab
11 min. read

— Description —

Discover the importance of recovery in achieving real progress and results Learn about the cascade of delayed onset muscle soreness and the tools you can use for effective recovery Understand the strategic regulation of cortisol and the significance of heart rate variability in measuring recovery

Dont sell yourself short by neglecting recovery - build resilience and make changes based on what is normal for you.

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Maximize Recovery for Fitness & Performance Goals with Dr. Andy Galpin

Table of contents

Key Takeaways

Introduction

Importance Of Recovery

Understanding Soreness

Levels Of Training & Recovery

Recovery Strategies

Using Heart Rate & HRV To Assess Stress And Recovery

Putting It All Together: Recovery Calendar

How To Get Yourself Going When You’re Feeling Sluggish

Mirrors Or No Mirrors For Resistance Training?

Articles & Other Resources

Key Takeaways

  • Don’t underestimate recovery – it’s where the real progress and results emerge
  • Delayed onset muscle soreness (sets in 24-48 hours after exercise) cascade: the swelling response triggers the neural response which then triggers the pain response
  • You need a high peak for adaptation to occur but also need an extremely sharp recovery for change to take place
  • You don’t need to combine every single recovery strategy, here are tools to choose from: cold plunge, massage, breathwork, slow-paced music after exercise
    • Recover tools everyone should use: light movement, sleep
  • Avoid taking cortisol-reducing supplements prophylactically without knowing your cortisol is high – cortisol regulation needs to be very strategic because you want natural fluctuations throughout the day and with exercise
    • The key is understanding how quickly you return to the baseline
  • Heart rate variability (HRV) is a better marker of recovery than resting heart rate but only compare to yourself and not others – measure under the same circumstances every day (ideally in the morning), and take consistently for a month to understand trends before you use as recovery indicator or worry about changes
    • Don’t stress about daily changes, track percent derivation from norm
  • If you workout but never feel sore or need outside stimulus to get going, you’re selling yourself short – you want to get good at recovery so you build resilience and the damage lessens
  • Don’t compare your numbers to others or panic at every change in metric you see: go based on what is normal for you and what normal variations for you and your situation are – make changes when you deviate 4-6 days or more
    • Changes might be to stress management, nutrition, hydration, sleep, and training volume, or you may need to reassess the program

Introduction

  • Dr. Andy Galpin (@DrAndyGalpin), Professor of Kinesiology at California State University, Fullerton, and one of the foremost experts in the world on the science and application of methods to increase strength, hypertrophy, and endurance performance.
  • In this episode of Huberman Lab, Andrew Huberman and Andy Galpin continue with Part 5 of a 6-part series on all things fitness. Learn how to optimize recovery, avoid overtraining, the mechanisms of soreness and pain, why recovery is essential, and more!
  • Host: Andrew Huberman (@hubermanlab)

Importance Of Recovery

  • “Stress causes adaptation but only if you can recover from it.” – Dr. Andy Galpin
  • Recovery has to outpace stress input
  • Physiology wants to return to homeostasis – taking an insult (e.g., hard workout), causing a change, and bringing you to a new level of homeostasis
    • Your body is anticipating that the insult to the body will happen again in the future
  • Adaptation is a hormetic stressor – exercise is a stimulus causing adaptation
    • Immediately post-exercise, biomarkers and recovery scores might look bad but we’re pushing adaptation that may cause weeks or months to realize
    • If you are monitoring biomarkers, be aware of the magnitude of change to assess where you are
  • “If you’re optimizing for the current moment, you’re almost surely causing delayed adaptation.” – Dr. Andy Galpin
    • You’re choosing things that make you better right now with the hope you’ll see the adaptation down the road
    • Your maximum heart rate doesn’t change that much (barring age) but you can reduce your resting heart rate
  • You have to know what you’re training for: sometimes you’ll want to hedge toward recovery, sometimes you’ll want to hedge toward training

Understanding Soreness

  • There’s a physical and mental component to pain and soreness because it’s subjective to some extent
  • Delayed onset muscle soreness which sets in 24-48 hrs after exercise and is the result of a combination of inflammation from immune response and pain receptors in muscle – not necessarily muscle damage as many have been trained to think
    • Delayed onset muscle soreness cascade: the swelling response triggers the neural response which then triggers the pain response  
  • Muscle spindles sense stretch and help keep you in balance – one theory is that the pain signal is generated from pressure being applied to nerve signals of muscle spindle
    • This is why low-level movement is best for sore muscle
  • Why you’re not as sore after aerobic exercises: you don’t have mechanical tension pulling on muscle fibers causing damage to the cell wall

Levels Of Training & Recovery

  • Level 1 – acute overload: fatigued, acute performance is down
    • Recovery is minutes to days
    • If you’re too sore, pay attention to volume recommendations – you may have increased too quickly, misread the program, didn’t warm up well, or not nourished properly
  • Level 2 – “functional overreaching” (golden target): if you continue training under overload, you will push into “functional overreaching” where you’ve reached past what you can currently do and it results in enhanced performance
    • Recovery time is a few days to a week – this is when you’ll want to de-load for a week
  • Level 3 – “nonfunctional overreaching”: if you continue to train under overload beyond functional overreaching period, you’ll enter “nonfunctional overreaching” – where there is no positive benefit once recovery allows
    • You’ll need weeks to recover and will just end up back at baseline
    • You see this in people who push harder when they don’t see results
  • Level 4 – overtraining: takes months to recover from
    • If you recover in a few days, you’re probably in nonfunctional overreach and not overtrain
    • If you take a month off to come back to baseline (mood, desire to train, biomarkers), this is true overtraining
    • The kicker is we don’t really know when we’re overtraining until it’s too late; there isn’t a big red flag or clinical diagnosis
      • Signs of overtraining: performance decline, resting heart rate increase, HRV drop, decreased motivation, lower adherence, biomarkers trending in the wrong direction (cortisol:DHEA ratio), etc.
    • You may be able to do significant damage even in a couple of weeks if training is extreme but it’s rare to happen so quickly

Recovery Strategies

  • Recovery begins immediately after the workout
  • Listen to slow-paced music
  • Use downregulation breathing to shift the nervous system away from stress – try box breathing (5-second inhale, 5-second hold, 5-second exhale, 5-second hold) for 3-10 minutes
  • Wearing compression gear helps prevent some soreness (the tighter the better; wear during or after exercise)
  • Massage or percussion instrument
  • Ice/cold bath though it blunts muscle growth, might be worth it if you are so sore you can’t move or it impedes activities of daily living
    • It should be cold enough that you hate being in it but can do so safely – either be really cold (35F) for a short time or kind of cold (55F) for a longer time
    • A cold shower is going to do very little because it’s not hitting enough of your body; a bath is better but still might not be enough – as best you can, make the water circulate for enhancement
  • Heat is good for recovery, but play with it for your body – it can induce a bit more swelling because it’s encouraging more blood flow to the area
  • Longform recovery from nonfunctional overreach and overtraining:
    • Step 1, try not to end up there in the first place! Be mindful of training load and monitor along the way
    • Wearables and trackers try to show you where you’re vulnerable so you can address it accordingly (but don’t put too much weight on a few off metrics once in a while)
    • Look at three unique markers to identify where you are along the training route: (1) time is going in the wrong direction (e.g., taking longer to complete the same run); (2) heart rate or heart rate variability (HRV) is trending in the wrong direction; (3) check symptomology – are you having performance sacrifice? Sign of overreaching? Unable to recover?
      • Find something you can easily track, such as one broad jump distance at the beginning of a session – you’re better off looking at speed-based tests over performance-based tests to determine overreaching or overtraining
  • Sleep! Dial in high-quality sleep
  • Supplements:
    • Ashwagandha: reduces cortisol (but remember you want spikes in cortisol in the morning, after exercise, etc. but you also want quick recovery)
    • Rhodiola rosea: reduces the perceived threshold of how hard you’re working (so you can work harder) and modulates cortisol
      • Monitor use, some studies show it may enhance strength gains but reduce muscular endurance
      • Remember, cortisol is supposed to fluctuate throughout the day and blood markers will identify the amount in the moment – if you measure, take it a few times throughout the day
    • Don’t take these supplements prophylactically without knowing your cortisol is high – cortisol regulation needs to be very strategic
  • You want to get good at recovery so you build resilience

Using Heart Rate & HRV To Assess Stress And Recovery

  • Heart rate and HRV will reflect that you didn’t just work muscles hard, you influenced physiology
  • Pros and cons of using resting heart rate as a metric: it will elevate with excessive stress (whether physical, emotional, or both) but it’s not sensitive to smaller stressors
  • Heart rate variability is a better measure than resting heart rate: it’s associated with a sympathetic/parasympathetic state – high HRV means better recovery
    • Tips for using HRV: track for 4-6 weeks consistently to understand trend; monitor percent derivation from norm instead of daily changes; is lower score one-off or has it happened 3+ days; what stage of training are you in? (if you’re in high adaptation, you expect lower HRV)
  • If HRV is reduced 3+ days in a row: ignore if you are in the adaptation phase but watch carefully; introduce another performance test
    • Take action if it’s been 7 consecutive days – assess sleep, try heat/cold, work on social connection, journal, assess nutrition and hydration
      • If all else fails, evaluate the training program and maybe back off until you recover

Putting It All Together: Recovery Calendar

  • Take HRV at the same time every day or most days; if you don’t have a wearable use the CO2 tolerance test – this will capture systemic stress
  • Take DALDA questionnaire (comprehensive survey) monthly or at the end of training blocks
  • Take a body fat measurement monthly or quarterly depending on goals
  • Hidden stressors: quarterly bloodwork (cortisol, testosterone, cortisol: DHEA ratio), semi-annual bloodwork (glutamine, glutamine: glutamate ratio, TNF alpha, neutrophil: lymphocyte ratio)
  • Subjective measures: monitor mood, libido, appetite – remember, all of these things should only be compared to yourself and not someone else
    • Some of these measures will fluctuate naturally, seasonally, and with exercise program stage – don’t panic if you notice changes; monitor and take action when changes in the wrong direction are sustained
    • Don’t automatically assume that you need more testosterone if libido is low – many things impact libido and jumping to supplements can cause more harm
  • Grip strength test daily
  • Speed tests are more accurate than strength tests at gauging recovery – try vertical jump and measure daily to see where you are (warm up a little)
  • Go based on what is normal for you and what normal variations for you and your situation are – make changes when you deviate 4-6 days or more

How To Get Yourself Going When You’re Feeling Sluggish

  • Try upbeat music
  • Remember your “why”
  • Use upregulation breathing: this time, accentuate inhaling and restrict exhaling
  • Motivational quotes or social media accounts your share
  • Repeat personal mantra  
  • Change your mood with something you love, which could be comfort food, playing brain games, playing a fun activity with a gym buddy
  • Increase your lighting
  • Place a physical barrier: you will not cross the line (into gym) half-ass, tell yourself you commit to high-level performance once you cross the line
  • Be strategic about when and how you use these tools – like everything else, the novelty will fade and they’ll have diminishing effects over time

Mirrors Or No Mirrors For Resistance Training?

  • Like everything exercise related, it depends –
    • If training for hypertrophy: looking at yourself and flexing can actually be advantageous
    • If you are enhancing movement learning: you don’t want to look at yourself because you can’t see yourself in time to make the adjustment that fast
      • Mirrors also remove the ability to understand and feel the movement – the endpoint needs to be that you understand the movement
  • Instead of a mirror, record yourself or take a picture of movements you are having particular trouble with but make sure you advance from there

Articles & Other Resources

  • Articles
    • Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal (Cell Reports Medicine)
    • Altered brown fat thermoregulation and enhanced cold-induced thermogenesis in young, healthy, winter-swimming men (Cell Reports Medicine)
  • Other resources
    • Carbon Dioxide Tolerance Clip (Galpin Guest Series Episode 3)
    • SHIFT Breathwork Assessment
    • BMJ tool for visualizing the variability of lab test results

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