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This was a monster episode - 3 and a half hours of dense discussion on a variety of fitness-related topics. For that reason, I split the summary up into two parts. You can find Part 1 here if you missed it.
Part 2 will cover breathing practices, how to train for endurance, hydration, hot and cold exposure, and recovery.
1-paragraph summary
Endurance training is another important aspect of a well-rounded fitness routine. Get as much general movement throughout your day as possible, and round it out with both long-duration cardio sessions and interval sessions. Recovery is equally important, because anytime your training stress outdoes your recovery capacity, you're looking at going backwards.
Key takeaways
Post-workout breathing
Immediately after your workout, use a calming, down-regulating breathing technique (i.e., nasal breathing with a long exhale, physiological sigh, box breathing). You can lie down and close your eyes if you want to.
Doing this for 3-5 minutes after workouts can help cut down on fatigue immediately after the workout and later on in the day.
Training for cardiovascular endurance
When selecting your exercises you’ll do to train endurance, make sure to avoid movements that are heavy on eccentric loading/landing if you’re not used to it (i.e., jogging is heavy on the eccentric landing, and this can cause tremendous soreness and interfere with the other work you’re doing for strength and muscle – unless you’re already acclimated to jogging). A better option is to choose concentric-based activities like cycling, swimming, rowing, pushing a sled, or running/walking uphill.
You can also do weight-based circuit training to work on endurance, or break up a cardio session into a few different machines to keep from getting bored (i.e., 10 minutes of incline walking, 10 minutes of biking, 10 minutes of rowing).
As far as frequency of steady-state cardio, you can do it daily if it fits your schedule. Steady state cardio has almost ZERO potential to interfere with your hypertrophy training, unless you’re doing excessive amounts of it. You can even do it the same day as your strength training without fearing the “interference effect.”
Recent research has shown that the interference effect is greatly overblown, especially when your endurance workouts are held at an easy pace (i.e., you can still hold a conversation throughout the workout). The caveats are that cardio activities with high eccentric loading (i.e., jogging) can interfere with strength and muscle gains to a greater degree than concentric-biased activities. High volumes or really long endurance bouts can interfere with strength and muscle gains to a point. Another caveat is that your calories need to be high enough to accommodate the increased energy expenditure from doing both endurance and strength workouts. But if all of those things are accounted for, you shouldn’t have anything to fear from the “interference effect” of concurrent training.
Here are Galpin’s general protocols for endurance training:
Get as much low-level movement throughout the day as you can get. Try strategies like taking phone calls on your feet, moving around – pacing back and forth, walks around the block, shadow boxing. This is low-level, long duration movement while still able to breathe through your nose and maintain an ability to talk.
1x per week or every two weeks, when you’re fresh– work up to a maximal heart rate (start with a goal of 220 minus your age). You could do uphill sprints, intense bodyweight movements like burpees, sprints on the straightaways on a track, or something similar. Just push to max heart rate and stay there as long as you can stand, then stop. Repeated (4-8) bouts in that session is ideal, but even just doing one set of this is much better than nothing.
This will ensure you’re getting maximum cardiovascular benefits while complementing hypertrophy training well. Doing them at the end of a strength training session is fine, or on a different day.
Key quote: “Stress is what causes adaptation…If you did 25 minutes of steady state, you’re not challenging the same thing as [pushing your max heart rate]...If you understand the point of physiological failure, then you understand the place of adaptation.”
2-6 minute bouts of moderate intensity around 80% of max heart rate (i.e., a mile repeat), with an equivalent amount of rest in between intervals. You can repeat these intervals for as long as you feel like you can maintain the effort.
Recommended exercise selection: kettlebell circuit, sled pushes/pulls, heavy carries, Strongman work, anything that helps you get to the correct intensity.
Muscular endurance (as opposed to cardiovascular endurance) is important for general maintenance of joint function.
Fast-twitch fibers are generally bigger and contract at a higher velocity, while slow-twitch fibers are generally slower and contract at a slower velocity. Each individual muscle has a mix of both slow and fast twitch fibers.
Muscular endurance training maintains the health of your slow-twitch fibers. This is crucial for maintaining joint integrity. Having this baseline makes your heavy strength efforts more effective and less painful.
Hydration
There’s a “hormesis curve” that applies to hydration – too little water causes issues, and so does too much. There’s a sweet spot in the middle where you want to be.
The “Galpin equation” for hydration: drink half your bodyweight in ounces of fluid per day (i.e., if you’re 150 pounds, drink 75 ounces of fluid per day).
If you’re exercising that day, you will also want to replenish the fluids lost during exercise. The general rule of thumb is to drink 125-150% of the amount of weight you lost as fluid during the workout.
If you’re not weighing yourself to know how much fluid you lost during the workout, drinking 12-20 ounces of water post-workout will get you in the ballpark.
A whole-food based diet gets you ahead in the hydration game, because the water content of your food is much higher than if you were relying on processed foods.
We don’t currently know the optimal amount of sodium someone should have – the same curve applies as with water. Too much causes harm, and too little also causes harm.
A good rule of thumb for someone who has a consistent baseline of good hydration is to take 500 mg of sodium before a workout and 500 mg afterwards. If it’s a long workout in extreme weather, include electrolytes during the workout as well and consider increasing sodium to 750 mg before and after the workout.
As far as water during workouts, use this equation for a starting point: divide your bodyweight in pounds by 30, and drink that amount in ounces of water every 15-20 minutes during the workout (i.e., 200 lb person would drink 6-7 ounces of water every 15-20 minutes).
Cold and Heat Exposure & Training
Ice baths (where you’re completely submerged up to your neck) immediately after a hypertrophy training session is going to be very detrimental to your muscle gains. Waiting at least 4 hours post-training is probably more ideal.
Cold showers post-training are probably not going to blunt the muscle building response as much as ice baths. Doing cold exposure BEFORE training is probably the most ideal time to do it, or on days off from hypertrophy training.
Cold exposure MAY enhance the benefits from endurance training, but the data are not clear.
Dry or wet saunas between 180 and 220 degrees Fahrenheit immediately after strength training can potentially enhance hypertrophy because of the increased blood flow.
The only real downside is that you’ll need to pay extra attention to hydration and electrolyte levels.
Sauna is not a substitute for exercise, however.
Recovery
Key quote: “Any time the total stress load outpaces recovery capacity, you’re either going backwards in your physical ability, or you’re reducing adaptability.” You can only really improve from stressors that you’re able to recover from.
The solution in this type of situation is to either reduce the stress load or increase recovery capacity. This is when it’s crucial to know exactly what type of adaptation you want, so you can drive the stress into the areas you really want to adapt in and lay off the areas that aren’t as important to you. You can’t improve everything at once.
The best strategy to improve your recovery capacity is to remove the things that are dragging you down, not necessarily to push harder.
Simple, at-home ways to test recovery capacity that can be done daily and tracked: grip strength test, vertical jump test, finger tap test, HRV, carbon dioxide tolerance test, daily pulse rate (Google them for details!).
Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) taken before a workout can delay both perceived and real fatigue by creating a more alkaline environment.
Start with a ½ teaspoon of baking soda in water about 45 minutes pre-workout and work up from there – watch out for gastric distress, which can happen suddenly!
Creatine monohydrate is “the Michael Jordan of supplementation.” Creatine is not just for muscle; it also has effects on mental health, brain health, and the neurological system.
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