Assessing & Improving Fitness: Insights from Dr. Andy Galpin | Huberman Lab Guest Series 

In this episode, Dr. Andy Galpin ( @DrAndyGalpin ) gives an overview of the 9 different types of exercise adaptations and low-cost tests to assess all aspects of physical fitness Host: Andrew Huberman (@hubermanlab)

People generally have two major goals in mind: aesthetics and functionality

The most important questions for assessing your fitness goals: How do I know which area I need to focus on the most? Why am I not achieving these goals? How can I get there more effectively?

The methods are many, but the concepts are few Andy’s goal for this episode is to cover the essential concepts and then a whole bunch of different methods

Exercise can create physiological adaptations that can be bucketed into 9 areas: 1) Skill/technique Learning to move more efficiently (specific position, timing, and sequence) Skill development examples: running more effectively, practicing shooting a ball, swinging a golf club, etc. 2) Speed Moving at a higher velocity or with a better rate of acceleration 3) Power Speed multiplied by the force 4) Force/Strength The maximum thing you can move or what’s the maximum amount of force you can produce one time It’s not how many repetitions in a row you can do 5) Muscle hypertrophy How big is your muscle 6) Muscular endurance How many repetitions can you do It is almost always local muscle 7) Anaerobic capacity Synonymous with maximum heart rate Total physiological limitation 8) Maximal aerobic capacity 9) Long-duration training Your ability to sustain submaximal work for a long time with no breaks, no reduction A lot of people just think of this when they think of “cardio”

Health-based protocols are based on our current status or limitations in physical fitness among these nine areas

Fat loss & general health benefits are reasons why a lot of people exercise They are not specific training styles, they are byproducts of these nine protocols

If you understand how fat loss occurs, you’ll realize some of these nine protocols are effective for fat loss and some are not Same for general health benefits “When we understand what it actually means to be healthy from a physiological perspective, then the rationale for what to train for is going to determine itself.” – Dr. Andy Galpin

If you want to maximize health and overall functionality throughout time, it needs to be a combination of strength and endurance To highlight this, Andy talks about a study he did at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden The Karolinska Institute in Stockholm is one of the founding places of all exercise physiology

For the study, they worked with people who were competitive skiers in the 1940s and 1950s The skiers were now in their 80s and 90s living alone and healthy. They compared them to a group of individuals in America around the same age but who were not exercising Both groups did a whole bunch of VO2 max tests

If your VO2 max is below 18 milliliters per kilogram per minute, your fitness is so low, you’ll probably need to be in some sort of assisted living home If you are in VO2 max of 20 or 21 or 22, you’re on that threshold The group from America was right around that number The group of competitive skiers was closer to 35 to 38 milliliters per kilogram per minute They had a 92-year-old individual with a VO2 max of 38, which was in their estimation, a world record, the highest VO2 max for somebody over the age of 90

The study clearly showed that lifelong endurance exercisers are markedly healthier than people who don’t exercise Endurance exercises are very important for chronic disease management, but they are not sufficient for overall global health This is because they do almost nothing for leg strength or any other marker of health

Andy’s experiment with monozygotic twins; the perfect scientific experiment for exercise you could ever create Monozygous twins (identical twins) are the perfect exercise for scientific experiments, they have the same DNA They took stool and blood samples, vertical jump tests, maximum strength tests, MRIs of muscle mass, VO2 max tests, efficiency stuff, genetic testing, an IQ test, etc. They wanted to look at everything to figure out what differed between the twins, and by how much

Again, they had another example of a classic endurance-only training paradigm, compared to a non-act One of the twins was a lifelong endurance athlete, the other one didn’t exercise at all The exercising twin was significantly better at things like a lipid panel, resting heart rate, blood pressure, VO2 max

The interesting aspect was the things that were in the middle Their total amount of muscle mass was almost identical The difference in actual body weight was due to body fat The muscle quality was not in favor of the exerciser The findings were almost identical to the Sweden study It highlighted the fact that if you want to move forward with optimal health, focusing solely on endurance exercises (cycling, running, etc.) is not gonna get you there If you want to progress and move for high functionality, you have to do something besides just running

There are generally two types of muscle fibers: fast twitch and slow twitch Selective reduction in fast-twitch fibers is a hallmark of aging It’s difficult to activate them unless you’re doing high-force activities

Slow twitch fibers stay around because we activate them doing almost any activity of daily living

That’s a problem because when you look at things like the need for leg strength through aging, the ability to catch yourself from a fall Without fast-twitch muscle fibers, you don’t have the speed to get your foot out in front of you on time, and you don’t have the eccentric strength to stop the fall from happening

Looking across the aging literature, it’s very clear that maintaining strength and fast-fit fibers over time is important Can you change your fiber type with exercise? Yes, the limits of physiological adaptation are almost boundless given enough exposure

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movies (Pumping Iron, Conan, the Terminator) changed how people viewed weight training Peter Karpovich’s studies showed that strength training was safe and had many benefits, leading to a shift in the fitness industry

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, people began to understand the impact strength training had on physical appearance. This realization led to the formation of the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) and an increase in the use of strength training in sports

When you’re isolating muscle groups, that means a good part of your body is really not doing much throughout the day People start realizing they don’t feel fit; they are out of breath just walking up the stairs All that training does nothing for your cardiovascular fitness, nothing to improve heart rate, oxygenation, blood flow Lifting weights is single joint, often machine, often slow, often high volume isolation stuff

That approach left a giant opening for CrossFit and kettlebell-type stuff, circuit training The same or better results in under 30 minutes You won’t get so beat up because the volume’s lower The time is much lower You get multiple adaptations at the same time

It was a brilliant solution for a lot of the problems the classic bodybuilding hypertrophy introduced They got away from isolation movements and got people doing big movements, which are more effective, generally better It got people doing things fast and explosive. That’s more athletic That is more important for longevity. It solved a lot of problems like joint health

The problem with that though is less focus on movement quality and overemphasized scores Exercise quality is more important than rep range, load, or time

Going to a physical therapist or movement specialist is the best route for assessing movement skills

The four-step solution for assessing movement skills involves going joint by joint The major joints to assess are the shoulder, elbow, low back, hip, knee, and ankle

How to do a representative movement for a well-rounded approach to exercise: Do an upper body press, an upper body pull, a lower body press, and a lower body pull If you bench a lot, use the bench. If you do pull-ups, use the pull-up. If you squat, do squats, etc. Record a frontal view and a side view of the movement Do 3 to 10 repetitions per angle Slow and controlled, you don’t need any body weight Look for 4 key things at every joint (focusing on the ankle, knee, and hip)

4 key things to look for when doing a squat Look for symmetry (is one moving further ahead than the other one, is one fidgeting and twitching around differently) Look for stability (if your knees start shaking, that’s an instability issue) Can you do the movement slowly? Be aware Did you realize your heels were supposed to be on the ground all the time when you squat? Full range of motion

According to Andy, a speed test is not so important because you can assume about speed from a power test and a power test is easier to do as well as easier to train for most people

The cost-free version here is a simple broad jump Normal position, jump out as far in front of you as you possibly can and measure the distance between where you started and the back of your heel where it lands You’re gonna stand still; no running You can swing, and bounce as much as you’d like to do Measure the distance from the tip of your toe Stand behind the line and then the furthest point back where you land A basic number to look for there is your height; you should be able to broad jump how tall you are If you’re 5’5″, you should have 5’5″, 6’5″, etc. For females, that’s gonna ratchet down a little bit We’re not looking for optimization in this particular test. What you are looking for red flags If you can jump your body height, you’re gonna be just fine

Classic vertical jump for a more accurate number You can just measure two of your hands, and put them together so that both of your middle fingers are touching Overlap them and put them directly over your head Then you want to reach up as high as you can get and mark that on the wall Then, you’re gonna jump with those two hands and touch as high as you can up And you’re gonna measure the distance between your standing reach and the actual height that you jump there The reason you’re doing it two-handed is that if you do it one-handed, you can reach pretty high by offsetting your shoulders No running approach here. You can dip, you can drive, you can do all those things. You can swing your arms Look for a number of 24 inches or higher If you’re past the age of 50, that number can come down a little bit to closer to 20 For females, it’s gonna be ratcheted down about 15% If you’re a middle-aged female and you’re jumping 20 inches, you’re in a pretty good spot

If you can do that on a force plate, that’s even better And these are very interesting because they’ll tell you not only how high you jump, but they’ll tell you how much force you put into the ground and how long it took you (rate of force development)

There are two easy ways to measure your grip strength: dynamometer and dead hang

A hand grip dynamometer is anywhere between $20 to $100 Those are going to give you a value in kilograms Look for a minimum score of 40 kilograms Ideally, 60 would be a really good score

You want to make sure that there’s no less than a 10% variation between your left and right hand Your non-dominant hand shouldn’t be much weaker in this test If you are a male and you’re under 40 kilograms on a hand grip dynamometer, you will need to work on that For females, about 35 kilograms is the cutoff point

For a dead hang, find a bar that is thin enough to where you can wrap your whole hand around it In general, you should be able to hang for a minimum of 30 seconds 30 to 50 seconds is good but could be better Above 60 seconds is the sweet spot for dead hang Dead hang is a good example of when females tend to be better Grip strength in women tends to be strong and they can hang for quite a long time Be wary of weight; if you are exceptionally large, this thing doesn’t scale perfectly

Leg extension test-one rep max Use repetition conversion equation; put on a load that is close to your maximum and just do it for as many reps as you can As long as it’s under five reps total, you can then actually go online and enter that into any number of calculators anywhere

Front squat or a goblet squat hold Hold a weight in front of your chest (kettlebell, dumbbell) Hold about half of your body weight, go all the way to the bottom position, and try to hold that for about 45 seconds It’s a pretty good indicator of your position, core strength, and low back stability It’s more difficult than the leg extension, but it’s quite a bit more functional and it’s gonna give you insight into a lot more areas than just the quadriceps

Don’t do any exercise to exhaustion or maximum strength if you’re not comfortable with your technique If you’re not comfortable with the front squat, do the leg extension Never utilize maximum testing if it’s gonna come with the consequence of serious acute injury

Whenever you do these tests, you want to make sure that that warm-up protocol is standardized

The best way to do a hypertrophy test: Any sort of body composition test can do this (DEXA scan is a gold standard) Pay attention to FFMI (fat-free mass index), and use an online calculator to calculate your FFMI score

Your FFMI should be at least 20 for men and 18 for women, assuming you are reasonably lean That’s going to tell you if you have sufficient muscle mass All you need to know is your total body weight, your body fat percentage, and then your height Enter those three numbers and then they’ll tell you your FFMI score

You can do any number of tests here, but a standard push-up is a good testament to muscular endurance If you can’t do a single push-up, that’s not a muscular endurance issue, that’s actually now a strength issue

25 consecutive push-ups for a male is a standard Something like 10 is kind of minimum categories If you’re sub-five, you have a problem When doing a push-up; full complete lockout of the elbows on the top and a full chest touch or close to it at the ground

This one’s more challenging because you either have to go to a laboratory and do something like Wingate test protocol, or Bosco protocol If you can’t go to a lab, you can do this on any protocol you want (e.g. sprinting, air bike, rower, etc.) Anything where you can exert maximal effort and don’t have to worry about technical problems

This is a 30-second maximal test where you’re going to see how much work can you do in that 30 seconds You want to think about how to get close to your predicted maximum heart rate Get up to a maximum heart rate and then test your heart rate recovery You should be looking for about a half a beat recovery per second Get up to a place of terrible exhaustion, maximum fatigue. Test your heart rate and then count. You should have a heart rate recovery of 30 beats per minute

The gold standard here is to go into a laboratory, put a mask on and get this thing done

If you don’t have access to that, you can do a couple of tests: One of them is called a 12-minute Cooper’s test Run for 12 minutes as far as you can, and record the distance you covered You can go online to any number of calculators, enter that distance in, and that will tell you your estimated VO2 max

The goal is to get the maximum distance covered in 12 minutes That’s anywhere between a mile to 2-plus miles Aerobic capacity is 8 to 12 minutes where you’re going to see a real true test of that VO2 max You simply can’t get that in under a few minutes A little gentler version of that is a one-mile walk test Use a stopwatch or ideally a heart rate monitor

Maintain a consistent workout for over 20+ minutes Can you maintain moving at a nonwalking pace without stopping? That’s all it needs to be

20+ minutes of work with no breaks, no intervals, no downtime Ideally, you should do this with nasal breathing only

Andy recommends making the entire list once a year, within a week A 3-day split here is probably the best

What is the testing order? The non-fatiguing test you can do whenever This is the body composition scan, the FFMI, the body fat composition, all this stuff can be done wherever Andy prefers to do that as your very first activity because acute exercise can heavily influence things like body composition measurements (due to inflammation, water storage, etc.) It’s easiest to just get that off of a 48-hour rest You want to make sure you don’t do any hard exercise the day before a body composition test and probably 48 hours before

Your movement test can be the same thing You don’t want to try to assess how well you’re squatting if you’re sore from a squatting test

For men, a minimum number is 35 milliliters per kilogram per minute For women, it’s about 30 You can push a lot higher on those things in reality; Andy wants to see men above 50

What these metrics mean is how much oxygen can you bring in per kilogram of body weight per minute It is a volume of oxygen per your size in a time duration The way that you calculate it is you multiply your cardiac output by what’s called your AVO2 difference Your cardiac output is your heart rate times your stroke volume; how much blood you’re pumping out per pump is your stroke volume You multiply that by your AVO2 difference (artery minus vein difference) It’s the amount of oxygen in your arteries minus the amount of oxygen in your vein This tells you how much you took up in your capillaries, in your muscles VO2 max; you take those two factors and multiply them together