00:04:36 · Andrew Huberman
[00:04:36] S0: No. Okay. No. Phones Very disappointing. Phones out of the room while I sleep. If I didn't love, love, love my eight sleep so much, I would figure out a way to have no WiFi on in the house at all at night. Interesting. So I woke up, I'm groggy like everybody else, my mind starts going places, you know, it's discombobulated on waking. I don't think I've ever woken up and just done a big yawn, and been like, life is so good. I wake up and I think, I have this to do, I have that to do. So the first thing that I do is get up, use the restroom, and then I go do... These days, I do a five minute meditation. I set my phone for five minutes, and I do a standard meditation of just breathing. This I think is an extremely important practice that I haven't talked a lot about. If for no other reason, then it gets you very aware of what the inputs to your brain are about to be, and it also makes you very aware of how chaotic it can be in our minds. And after talking to a number of people who worked on the science of meditation, in particular folks out at University of Wisconsin who've done a bunch of the brain imaging, it's very clear that the real benefits of meditation come from not quieting the mind, but from being able to just observe how chaotic it is, and see that as something slightly separate from the quote unquote observer. And we have circuits that we think underlie the observer versus all the monkey mind stuff, as they call it. But I always thought that meditation was about achieving a really peaceful state. Turns out, it's about observing the chaos. And so the best way I can describe this practice in terms of its utility is just as with exercise, if you get a burn in your legs or the final repetitions of lifting weights, that's what triggers the adaptation. With meditation in terms of consciousness, and focus, and awareness, I think the lactate of the mind, as it was described to me, so I didn't come up with that phrase, the lactate of the mind is to be able to experience that chaos, observe it, and not do anything with it. That's what allows you to move into your day with, I think, more awareness Mhmm. Of what is a meaningful thought or reaction and what isn't. Okay. So I do that five minutes. These days, I find the buzzer goes off without me going, when is this over? When is this over? And then I get sunlight in my eyes.
00:06:51 · Andrew Huberman, Daisy Wolf
I'm absolutely religious about that. Sometimes I go up on my roof. Sometimes I go for a walk. [00:06:57] S1: Were you home yesterday? [00:06:58] S0: I was. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I take some water with me usually, drink some water, get some sunlight in my eyes. Today, I woke up in a hotel. I was facing east in the morning, so it was great. Got to actually see the sunrise, but cloudy day, overcast day, I'm getting sunlight in my eyes first thing. If I wake up long before the sun is out, I have a 10,000 lux artificial light, and I'll get in front of that thing just as I make coffee in the morning or do my thing. I then... If I'm going to exercise, I drink caffeine right away. I think this is something that I've tried to be clear about, but hasn't always been clear. If I'm gonna exercise, I need caffeine, so I'm not waiting even thirty minutes. Mhmm. I'm gonna drink caffeine, so I drink yerba mate, which is my preferred source of caffeine for a long time now. And then I exercise. And my exercise routine is very simple, and I might just share it because I've found that it's been very beneficial not just for me, but for women I've trained with, men, people of all ages. I've followed it for thirty five years, and I think it's the most time efficient and effective exercise program. [00:07:57] S1: Mhmm.
00:07:57 · Daisy Wolf, Andrew Huberman
[00:07:57] S1: Mhmm. [00:07:57] S0: And it's really straightforward. Three days a week lifting weights, two to three days a week doing some sort of quote unquote cardio. The cardio, I'll just explain first, something where you get your heart rate way, way up safely. So could be the rower, could be the air dime bike, the one with the push pull with the arms while you're pedaling, could be running. Pick something that you can go close to max effort without hurting yourself. This is a really big deal, especially now that I'm 50. It's like I feel quite proud of the fact that I've never had a major injury, and I feel great at 50, mostly because what I didn't do. A lot of people are talking about all the things they did do. It's all the things I didn't do. I never hopped on someone else's workout just because I was challenged. That's how you hurt yourself. [00:08:39] S1: Mhmm. [00:08:40] S0: And and I picked things that felt right to me. Cycling doesn't feel good to me. Running and the air dime bike do. So warm up for a minute, pedal easy in my case, then go twenty seconds all out effort, ten seconds rest, repeat that eight times. You're done. That's one cardio workout. You're getting max heart rate, close to max heart rate. This is v o two max type stuff, and you're... It's so fast. Okay. [00:09:04] S1: So yesterday was Sunday. What is Sunday?
00:09:06 · Andrew Huberman
[00:09:06] S0: So day one, this could fall on a Sunday or Monday for someone, doesn't matter. But the first day of the week, I train my legs with resistance training. Mhmm. Takes about an hour. That's the hardest work of the week. And if I were to only do one workout per week for the rest of my life, it would be that. Okay. For lots of reasons, largest musculature, effects on hormones and metabolism, etcetera, etcetera. After leg day, I typically take the day completely off. I'll try to do some sauna cold alternation on those days for recovery. We can talk details there. Then depending on how well I've recovered, it might be just one day off, it might be two days off. Then I do some sort of push pull thing for the torso. So some chest presses, some shoulder presses Mhmm. A pull up or pull down type thing if someone can't do pull ups or pull downs, and some sort of row. Maybe some stuff for the neck. If somebody has bad posture, oftentimes men will... Their shoulders will start getting wider and they're not training their neck. First of all, it looks kind of disproportionate, but then they'll start getting rotator cuff stuff. Training the neck is very important for stability of the entire shoulder girdle. And then I'll take a day off, and then I'll do some arms, calves, abs type smaller body parts. So those are three separate weight training days. Mhmm. All of them follow the same approach, and this is where I think people go badly wrong, but the data and what you're hearing online is starting to finally catch up. You could warm up for a couple minutes on the bike or some jumping jacks if you wanted, but I recommend doing one light set. So 10 or 12 repetitions, very light just to get blood flowing for the first movement. Then the second exercise... Or the second set, excuse me, is a moderate set. So a set that you probably could do 10 repetitions, you do three. You're just preparing the nervous system for the heavier load.
00:10:48 · Daisy Wolf
[00:10:48] S1: Mhmm.
00:10:49 · Andrew Huberman
[00:10:49] S0: Then you do two work sets, spaced maybe three minutes, four minutes rest in between, which is long, but those worksets are all out worksets in perfect form, taken to momentary muscular failure. Two two two sets only. So this might be a leg extension for the quads, and then you would move to something else, some sort of movement you can do safely, a squat, a front squat, a leg press. I mean, there's so many variations. Right? Yeah. Some compound movement, and then something... The the same thing for the hamstrings. The point here is that it's light set, medium set, many fewer reps than you could do even with the medium set than hard work for two sets. Write down what you did and either increase weight or increase repetitions every single workout. And I do this for every single thing I just described regardless of body part. It ends up being two exercises per body part, maybe three. So the total volume of work is very low. You leave these workouts, even leg day, feeling not completely rejuvenated, but you're not crushed. Mhmm. Your recovery is very fast, your nervous system isn't as taxed, and you make progress at an amazing rate. A woman that I suggested this to, who was a d one athlete, was soccer... You know, played soccer for years, came to me the other day and she's like, I can't believe this works so well. It's a third of the volume I was doing before. You can just put more into these individual sets. So I could go on and on about this, but then somewhere in the week, I find a way to do the the six minute, what turns out to be about about six minutes of the, you know, the twenty seconds all out, ten second rest. And I find another day to do some sort of long hike. It used to be a jog. Nowadays, I like to, you know, throw on a weight vest or a... Or just a backpack and hike, where my heart rate's up and I'm I'm breathing a bit. And if I'm really ambitious and I'm getting enough sleep every night, I might do also a twenty to thirty minute run-in the middle of the week. But those three weight workouts will get most people what they want in terms of body recomposition, strength, and not just offsetting muscle loss and strength with age, but feeling much better posturally, mobility wise. And of course, you can stretch, but you can do that while you watch TV in the evening or something. So that's the kind of framework of that.