86__transcript.txt

- Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast
where we discuss science,
and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman,
and I'm a Professor of Neurobiology
and Ophthalmology at
Stanford School of Medicine.
Today, I have the pleasure of
introducing Dr. Duncan French
as my guest on the Huberman Lab Podcast.
Dr. French is the Vice
President of Performance
at the UFC Performance Institute,
and he has over 20 years of experience
working with elite, professional,
and Olympic athletes.
Prior to joining the UFC,
French was the Director
of Performance Science
at the University of Notre Dame,
and he has many, many
quality peer-reviewed studies
to his name, exploring, for instance,
how the particular order of exercise,
whether or not one
performs endurance exercise
prior to resistance
training or vice versa,
how that impacts performance
of various movements
and endurance training protocols,
as well as the impact on hormones,
such as testosterone, estrogen,
and some of the stress
hormones such as cortisol.
He's also done fascinating work
exploring how neurotransmitters,
things like dopamine and epinephrin,
also called adrenaline,
can impact hormones,
and how hormones can impact
neurotransmitter release.
What's particularly unique
about Dr. French's work
is that he's figured out
specific training protocols
that can maximize, for
instance, testosterone output
or reduce stress hormone output
in order to maximize
the effects of training
in the short-term and in the longterm.
So, today, you're going to
learn a lot of protocols.
Whether or not you're
into resistance training
or endurance training, you
will learn, for instance,
how to regulate the
duration of your training
and the type of training that you do
in order to get the maximum benefit
from that training over time.
So whether or not you are somebody
who just exercises
recreationally for your health,
whether or not you're an
amateur or professional athlete,
or whether or not you're just
trying to maximize your health
through the use of endurance
and/or resistance training,
today's discussion will have
a wealth of takeaways for you.
There are only a handful of people
working at the intersection
of elite performance,
mechanistic science, and
that can do so in a way
that leads to direct,
immediately applicable protocols
that anybody can benefit from.
Dr. French also provides some
incredibly important insights
about the direction
that sport and exercise
are taking in the world today,
and their applications towards
performance and health.
Before we begin, I'd like to
emphasize that this podcast
is separate from my teaching
and research roles at Stanford.
It is, however, part
of my 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,
I'd like to thank the
sponsors of today's podcast.
Our first sponsor is ROKA.
ROKA makes eyeglasses and sunglasses
that are of the absolute highest quality.
I have spent my career
working on the visual system,
and I can tell you that everything
about the way that ROKA eyeglasses
and sunglasses were designed
was with performance in mind.
First of all, they're
extremely lightweight
so you actually forget
that you're wearing them
most of the time.
Second of all, even if you get sweaty,
if you're running or
biking or it's a hot day
or you're running around and just happen
to be perspiring quite a lot,
they don't slip off your
face, which is terrific.
They also have a great aesthetic
and they have a lot of
different styles to choose from.
The clarity of the lenses is superb.
I don't think there's
a match for the clarity
of ROKA glasses out there.
And if there is, I'm not aware of it.
They are absolutely crystal clear.
And that's true in any environment,
whether or not you're
working in a dim environment
or a bright environment,
the clarity is unmatched.
If you'd like to try ROKA
eyeglasses or sunglasses,
you can go to roka.com.
That's R-O-K-A.com and
enter the code "Huberman"
to save 20% off your first order.
Today's episode is also
brought to us by Helix Sleep.
Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows
that are uniquely tailored
to your sleep needs.
All of us have unique sleep needs,
and we should be sleeping on a
mattress that's ideal for us.
If you go to the Helix site,
they have a quick two minute quiz,
ask you a number of questions
about whether or not
you sleep on your side,
your back, your stomach.
Do you tend to run hot or cold, et cetera?
Maybe you don't have the
answers to those questions,
which is fine.
They'll match you to the mattress
that's ideal for your sleep needs.
I took that quiz and about 10 months ago
I started sleeping on
the Dusk Helix mattress.
That's D-U-S-K.
That's the mattress that's ideal for me,
and I'm sleeping better
than I ever have before.
So if you're interested in
upgrading your mattress,
go to helixsleep.com/Huberman,
take their two minute sleep quiz,
and they'll match you
to a customized mattress
and you'll get up to $200
off all mattress orders
and two free pillows.
That's helixsleep.com/Huberman.
Today's episode is also
brought to us by Headspace.
Headspace is a meditation app
that's backed by 25 published studies.
By now I think most
people have heard about
or experienced the benefits of meditation;
improved focus, better
sleep, reduced stress,
more creativity and insight.
There are just so many studies out there
that support those claims.
The challenge, however,
is sticking to a meditation practice.
And over the years, I
confess there have been times
when I've meditated regularly
and then I stopped meditating,
even though it always
provides benefits for me
the first time I do it
and every time I do it.
With the Headspace app,
it makes it very easy
to meditate consistently
because they have different
types of meditations
to select from, and they
come in different durations.
So sometimes I only have three
or four minutes to meditate.
They have those sorts of meditations.
They also have longer meditations
of 20 minutes or more.
If you want to try Headspace,
you can go to headspace.com/specialoffer.
And if you do that, you'll
get a free one month trial
with Headspace's full
library of meditations
that you can use in any situation.
This is the best deal offered
by Headspace right now.
So, again, if you're interested,
go to headspace.com/specialoffer.
And now, my conversation
with Dr. Duncan French.
Duncan French, great to see you again.
- Likewise, likewise, thank you.
I don't often have many
Stanford professors
in the Performance Institute,
so I'm really excited.
- Oh, well, this place is amazing,
and you have a huge role
in making it what it is.
The reason I'm so excited
to talk with you is that
you're one of these rare beasts
that you have been involved
in human performance
and athletic performance
at the collegiate level.
You are obviously very
involved in MMA now,
in the UFC Performance Institute.
And you also had the fortunate experience,
I like to think, of doing a PhD in...
What exactly was the PhD in?
- It was exercise physiology.
- Exercise physiology.
So, you're familiar also
with designing studies,
control groups, all the sorts
of things that in my opinion,
anyway, are kind of lacking
from the internet social media
version of exercise science,
which is that people throw
out all sorts of ideas
about how people should be training,
what they should be doing and eating
and not eating and doing.
And certainly, science
doesn't have all the answers,
but I just think it's
so rare to find somebody
that's at the convergence of
all those different fields.
And so, I have a lot of
questions for you today
that I'm sure the audience are going to be
really interested in.
- Well, listen,
I mean, I appreciate that.
It's very humbling, and yeah,
I've worked hard to get to where I am,
but I've always tried to be authentic.
And I think authenticity comes
alongside academic rigor,
and objectivity, and insight
and knowledge base, right?
At the end of the day, it's
about having confidence,
having expertise and being
able to deliver that expertise
to, in my world, to athletes.
And I think, and that's what
I've always tried to do.
I've tried to have many strings to my bow
so that I can talk with
many different hats on.
You know, one day I'm talking to a coach,
the next day I'm talking to an athlete,
the next day I'm talking to a CEO,
the next day I'm talking
to an academic professor.
And so, I think being able
to wear those different hats
is certainly a skillset
that I've tried to build
throughout my career.
And like you said, I've
been blessed to work with,
I think it was 36 different
professional or Olympic sports
last time I counted.
- Amazing.
- So, yeah, it's been a wild ride.
It's been great.
- Which of those sports
was the most unusual?
- I've worked with crown green bowling.
- Wait, what?
- Which I don't know,
as an American guy, I don't know-
- I've never heard of it.
- How well you'd know that,
but basically imagine a 20
foot by 20 foot square of turf
with a small raise in the
middle, i.e. the crown.
So, it slopes to the edges.
- Okay.
- And then, you throw out a
white jack, a smaller ball,
and then you roll out larger balls
to try and get closest to the jack.
It's a very European thing, let's say.
- Interesting.
- But yeah, sports performance
in crown green bowling, and there you go.
- All right.
[Duncan laughing]
Wow, and then to mixed
martial arts, fighters-
- Absolutely, there you go.
- And everything in between.
So, along those lines,
can you give us a little
bit about your background?
Where'd you start out?
Where are you from originally?
- Yeah, I'm from the northeast of England.
So I'm from a town called
Harrogate, which is in Yorkshire,
which is a northern kind of area
of the UK-
- Nice sunny weather
all year long?
- Yeah, you can imagine.
Yeah, with the two weeks of
summer that we get, you know?
[Duncan laughs]
But yeah, I mean, I did
my undergraduate studies
there in sports science.
I did teacher training to be
a physical education teacher after that.
Like most people I then
worked as a high school
physical education teacher.
You know, great experience
working with kids,
developing athletic qualities.
But something in the
back of my mind always,
I wanted more, I wanted
to be at the higher end
of elite sport.
I was a failed athlete like many people.
I represented my country in
different sports and things,
but I never made it professionally.
So, that little seed was sown
and as much as I then started
to reach out to different
areas to do a PhD,
whether it was in the UK or also,
chance my arm, took a punt,
see if I could get over to the states.
I mean, all my buddies
were going on gap years
after they finish university or whatever,
and going to Bali and
hanging out or whatever,
traveling through Thailand.
And I figured, well, I've
always loved the states
and can I go and kill
two birds with one stone
and do something academic,
continue my studies,
but also do it in a different environment
and get some life experience.
And many, many rejections,
as I'm sure you kind of aware
from different professors,
whether it was Roger
Noecker or William Kramer-
- So you wrote to these folks?
- I just cold called and send
out information and saying,
"Yeah, so have you got any opportunities?"
Pushed back from them all,
but dogged and kept asking,
and yeah, Dr. William Kramer,
who was at Ball State University
in Indiana at the time,
a muscle neuroendocrinologist
and researcher
in muscle physiology
using resistance training,
he basically said, listen,
I can guarantee your funding
for the first year of your
studies, but not the next three.
- Sounds like a typical academic response.
- Yeah.
- I can take care of you,
but not that well necessarily.
- Right.
- Right, yeah.
- Yeah, so, I spoke
to my parents and said,
"Hey, can we take a punt?"
And they were great in supporting me.
And yeah, long story short,
came out to begin my PhD at Ball State.
After a year, Dr. Kramer
transferred to UConn,
Connecticut, in Storrs,
in the Northeast there.
And I transferred with him and yeah,
four great years with my
PhD and getting my PhD
with a really prolific
research group that looked at
neuroendocrinology, hormonal work,
but using a resistance training
primarily as an exercise
stressor as a major mechanism,
and then looking at all
the different physiologies
off the back of resistance training.
- Yeah, you guys were
enormously productive.
I found dozens of papers
on how weight training
impacts hormones and your
name is on all of 'em.
And it's remarkable.
I have a question about this.
I'll just inject a question
about weight training and hormones.
You hear this all the
time that doing these big,
heavy compound movements
or resistance training
increases androgens, things
like testosterone, DHT,
DHEA, and so forth.
Does anyone know how
that actually happens?
Like what is it about
engaging motor neurons
under heavy loads sends a
signal to the endocrine system,
"Hey, release testosterone."
I've never actually been able
to find that in a textbook.
- [Duncan] Yeah, well, I mean-
- And how can I do more of that?
[both laughing]
- Yeah, as much as I know, and again,
I'm digging out into the
annals of Duncan French's
kind of brain now, but yeah.
I mean, I think it's a
stress response, right?
It's mechanical stress
and it's metabolic stress.
And these are the downstream
regulation of testosterone
release at the gonads comes
from many different areas.
My work primarily looked at catecholamines
and sympathetic arousal.
- So things like epinephrin, adrenaline?
- Correct, yeah, epinephrin,
adrenaline, and noradrenaline,
how they were signaling;
the signaling cascade using the HPA axis,
releasing cortisol,
and then looking at how
that also influenced the
adrenal medulla to release
androgens and then signaling
that at the gonads.
- That raises an interesting question.
So, in presumably weight
training in women,
people who don't have testes
also it increases testosterone.
- Yes, yeah.
- And is that purely
through the adrenals?
When women lift weights,
their adrenal glands release testosterone?
- Absolutely.
I mean, that is the only area
of testosterone release for females.
And yes, it's the same downstream cascade.
Obviously the extent to which it happens
is significantly less in females,
but there's good data out there that shows
females can increase their
anabolic environment,
their internal anabolic milieu
using resistance training as a stressor.
And then they get the
consequent muscle tissue growth,
whether it's tendon,
ligament, adaptations,
the beneficial consequences
of resistance training,
which is driven by anabolic stimuli.
- Yeah, I have two questions about that.
The first one is something
that you mentioned,
which is that the androgens,
the testosterone comes from
the adrenals under
resistance loads in women.
Is the same true in men?
I mean, we hear that the
testes produce testosterone
when we weight train for
men that have testes,
but do we know whether
or not it's the adrenals
or the testes in men that
are increasing testosterone
more or both-
- Yeah I think that-
- A little bit from each?
- The field is divided presently
in as much as understanding
the acute adrenergic response
in terms of anabolic response
to exercise in an acute phase
and the exposure to a stimulus
that is stress driven,
which might be partly
from the adrenal glands,
partly from the gonads,
versus a longitudinal exposure
to anabolic environments,
which is primarily driven
by obviously the gonads
and the endocrine
environment from testosterone
release at the gonads.
So, the field is split in terms
of how exercise is promoting
hypertrophy, muscle tissue growth.
And whether that is very
much an adrenal stimuli,
or if that's significant
enough in these acute responses
versus the longitudinal
exposure to just elevated
basal levels of anabolic
testosterone habitual level.
- So, it sounds like with most
things, it's probably both.
It's probably the adrenals-
- Absolutely, yeah.
- And the gonads.
And then you mentioned that testosterone
can have enhancing
effects or growth effects
on tendon and ligament also.
You don't often hear about that.
People always think, testosterone, muscle.
But testosterone has a lot
of effects on other tissues
that are important for
performance it sounds like?
- Yeah.
- Yeah what's the story there?
- Yeah, absolutely, I think
the testosterone hormone is...
I mean, listen, there's androgen receptors
on neural tissue on neural axons.
- Pretty much everywhere.
Yeah.
- Exactly, so,
the binding capacity of
testosterone and influence
in different tissues within the body,
I touched on muscle tissue,
but the ligaments, the tendons,
even bone to some extent,
testosterone has potential
to influence that
in terms of removing osteopenic
kind of characteristics, et cetera.
So, yeah, it's a magic hormone let's say,
and with many end impacts
in terms of adaptation.
- I definitely want to get
back to your trajectory,
but as long as we're on the
interactions between androgens,
testosterone and its derivatives
and different tissues,
from the work that you
did as a PhD student
and throughout your career,
could you say that there
are some general principles
of training that favor
testosterone production,
in terms of that somebody who's not
an elite athlete could use?
Somebody who's already adapted
to weight training somewhat,
like they know the difference between
a dumbbell and a barbell,
and they know the various movements,
they're not going to damage themselves.
But once they're doing that, I mean,
I've heard shorter sessions are better
than longer sessions, but
in rep loads, weight...
Now, there's a lot of parameter space.
But if you were going to throw
out some of the parameters
that you think are most
important to pay attention to
for the typical person who's
trying to use weight training
to build or maintain muscle.
- Yeah.
- Lose body fat, so body
recomposition and/or stay strong
and healthy for sport of a different kind.
- Yeah, so the work that we obviously,
I was exposed to back in my PhD,
it was a double-edged sword.
And as much as testosterone
is really stimulated
by an intensity factor
and also a volume factor.
Now, growth hormone is
a little bit different.
That's largely driven by
an intensity factor alone.
- Oh, really?
- Correct.
- I always thought the growth
hormone was driven my volume,
which just goes to show you.
- Maybe I've got that wrong.
- No, no, no, no.
I think you're probably right
which just goes to show you
that most of what's out
there on the internet-
- Right, right.
- Is completely...
Not only is it wrong,
it's usually backwards.
So, no trust-
- I trust my instinct.
- No, trust your instinct
because I think people
just make this stuff up.
- Right.
- Because it's very hard to measure
growth hormone and testosterone.
And I can't imagine most of
the stuff that I see out there
they're taking drips and
measuring free versus bound
and all this kind of stuff,
but that's what you do in laboratories.
- Right, yeah.
- Yeah.
- You look at total composition
and you look at how much
of that is free circulating-
- Yeah.
- In the system, how much is bound,
and therefore biologically
active bound to receptor,
creating an adaptation.
- Right.
- But yeah, coming back
to testosterone in terms
of the training strategies,
it's largely driven by both an intensity
and a volume factor.
So if you look at many of
the exercise interventions
that we use to try and investigate
and interrogate testosterone,
it was usually a six by 10 protocol.
So, you're touching at about-
- Six by 10 meaning?
- Yeah, six sets of 10 repetitions,
which is quite a large...
60 repetitions is quite a large volume
for a single exercise.
And that was usually
pitched at about 80% intense
of one repetition max intensity.
- Okay, so 80% of the one
rep max, six sets of 10 reps,
separated by rest of like-
- Two minutes.
- Two minutes,
which is actually pretty fast.
- Yeah.
- At least to me.
Anytime you see these
two to three minutes,
when you're actually watching the clock,
those two minute rest
periods go by pretty fast.
- By the third, fourth set
you're dying for more, yeah.
- Yeah.
- And I think we formulated
that kind of exercise
protocol to really target
the release of testosterone
and try and drive up
these anabolic environments to study
the endocrine consequences.
But I think that's the type of protocol
that is most advantageous for
driving anabolic environment.
- And that was it for the workout?
That was it?
- Yeah, I mean,
we would do that in a back squat.
So, a multi-joint, challenging exercise,
multi-muscle, multi-joint,
80% load of your one repetition max.
And then, six by 10.
We did play around with your
classic German Volume Type,
10 by 10 kind of protocols,
but they were just
unsustainable at that 80%.
The key to what we also did was
we always adjusted the loads
to make sure that it was 10
repetitions that were sustained.
So if the load was too high
and an athlete or participant
had to drop the weights
on the sixth repetition,
we would unload the bar and make sure
they completed the 10 repetitions.
- I see.
- Bringing me back
to the point of it's an
intensity and a volume derivative
that is going to be most advantageous
for testosterone release.
- That's really interesting.
And one thing that you mentioned there
is especially interesting to me,
which is you said when
you go from six sets
of 10 repetitions to 10
sets of 10 repetitions,
it's not as beneficial and
might even be counterproductive.
But to me, the difference
between six and 10 sets
is only four sets.
It doesn't even sound that much.
So that sort of hints at the
possibility that the thresholds
for going from a workout
that increases testosterone
to a workout that diminishes testosterone
is actually a pretty narrow margin.
- Yeah and I think it comes back
to that intensity factor then.
What we saw were that 10
by 10 protocol really sees
pretty significant drop-offs in the load.
And again, we're trying to
stimulate with intensity,
with mechanical strain through intensity,
as well as metabolic
strain through volume.
And I think that's the paradigm
that you've got to look at
is that the mechanical
load has to come from
the actual weight on the bar,
and the volume is the metabolic stimulus.
How much are we driving lactate?
How much you were driving glycogenolysis
in terms of that type of energy system for
executing a 10 by 10 protocol?
And what we often saw was
just a significant reduction
in the intensity capabilities
of an athlete to sustain that.
So we shortened the volume to try
and maintain the intensity.
- Interesting.
And you could imagine just
taking very long rest,
keeping the session, being a big,
lazy bear in training.
- Right.
- I sometimes do this.
I tell myself I'm going
to work out for 45 minutes
and then two hours later, I'm done,
but not because I was huffing
and puffing the whole time,
but because I was training really slowly.
- Right.
- Is there any evidence
that training slowly can offset
some of the negative effects
of doing a lot of volume?
- Well, it's an old adage of...
Two responses to your question.
I mean, the first one, I
would say there's a difference
between 10 sets of six and six sets of 10.
And I think that comes back
to the volume conversation.
Six sets of 10 is driving
up metabolic stimulus.
If you're doing 10 sets of six,
you can probably take it
to a higher intensity,
but you're not going to get
the same metabolic load.
You're not going to get the same
internal metabolic environment
that drives the lactate release,
that they will then signal
further anabolic testosterone
release because of the
lactate in your body.
That's a key consideration.
The rest is often the
consideration that's overlooked
out there in general population,
and in many sporting environments.
That the rest is as important
a program and variable
as the load and the intensity of the load,
the volume, et cetera.
And yes, if you extend the volume,
if you extend the duration
of your rest periods,
what you're ultimately
doing is influencing
that metabolic stimulus again.
You're allowing the flushing of the body,
the removal of waste products,
lactate to be removed from the body,
and then the metabolic
environment is reduced.
- So, if I understand correctly,
you want to create a metabolic stress.
- Absolutely.
- So, the way that I've
been training, slow and lazy,
is not necessarily the best way to go?
I could, in theory, do a
45 or 60 minute session
where I pack in more work per unit time.
I'm not going to be able to
quote unquote perform as well.
I won't be able to lift as much.
- Yep.
- I might have to unweight
the bar between sets or
maybe even during sets
if I have someone who could do that,
but it sounds like that's the way to go.
So, the old adage of high
intensity, short duration
is probably the way to go.
- Correct.
And in layman's terms,
if the same objective,
the same training goal is
just muscle tissue growth,
and we're not talking
about maximal strength
or any of those type of parameters,
we're just talking about growing muscle.
If there's an athlete A
and they do six sets of 10
with two minutes rest,
and there's athlete B
that does six sets of 10
with three minute rest,
athlete A will likely see
the highest muscle gains.
- Hm.
- Muscle hypertrophy gains
because of the metabolic
stimulus that they're driving
with the shorter rest periods.
- Interesting.
And for all the years that I've spent
exploring exercise
science and trying to get
this information from the
internet and various places
that this is the first time it's ever been
told to me clearly.
So, basically I need to put my ego aside
and I need to not focus so
much on getting as many reps
with a given weight and
keep the rest restricted
to about two minutes.
- Yeah.
- Get the work in, and then
I'll derive the benefits.
- I mean, you've absolutely
nailed it to be honest.
And again, if you think about human nature
and how we approach, we're
inherently lazy, right?
As humans, we want to take that rest.
We want to take the time out
to recover and feel refreshed,
but we're trying to create
a training stimulus.
We're trying to create
a very specific stimulus
internal to the body,
and that is often driven by
the metabolic environment
at that moment in time.
Now, if we allow the metabolic
environment to change
by extending the rest periods,
we're not going to see as
beneficial gains at the end of it.
- Very interesting.
- So, it is very much
a motivational and ego
thing rather than saying,
"Okay, I'm going to push
my loads as high as I can,
and really challenge maximal strength,
do fewer repetitions, take
longer periods of time."
It's a completely different
approach to training.
It's a different end goal.
- Interesting.
And you mentioned lactate,
so it seems still a bit
controversial as to what
actually triggers hypertrophy.
You hear about lactate buildup or people,
the common language is the muscle
gets torn and then repairs,
but I don't know, does
the muscle actually tear?
- I mean microtrauma.
- Okay, microtrauma.
- Yeah, disruption within
the muscle tissue for sure.
- Interesting.
And we're talking now about
non-drug assisted people-
- Correct, yeah.
- Whose, let's just say,
let's define our terms here.
That whose testosterone
levels are within the range
of somewhere between 300 and
1,500 or whatever, 1,200,
because it does seem that
athletes who take high levels
of exogenous androgens can do more work
and just get protein synthesis
from just doing work.
- Yeah.
- I've seen these guys in the gym, right?
The telltale signs are
not that hard to spot
where they're just doing a ton of volume,
not necessarily moving that much weight,
they're just bringing
blood into the tissue.
And then they're loading up on,
they're eating a ton of protein,
presumably 'cause they're
basically in puberty part 15.
- Right.
- Right, they're on their
15th round of puberty
where during puberty,
you are a protein synthesis machine.
I mean, to me, that's
pretty clear about puberty.
Interesting.
So, and then, in terms of,
because I know the audience
likes to try protocols,
so you described a protocol very nicely.
What about day-to-day recovery?
I mean, the workout that you described
is intense, but short,
how many days a week can
the typical person do that
and sustain progress?
- Yeah, I mean, I think that
comes back to your training age
and your training history.
Obviously there's a
resilience and a robustness
with an incremental training age.
So, that's not a protocol
that I would advise
anyone to go out and start tomorrow.
- They'll be mopping
them off the gym floor.
- Right, but at the same time,
it's also relative, right?
So 80% of your maximum at a
young training age is still 80%
versus I've been training
10 years, it's still 80%.
But yes, the mechanical load
is going to be significant,
it's just more tonnage, right?
But yeah, I think a protocol like that,
we would look at two times a week,
something that's pretty intensive
like that, because again,
it comes back to the point you make
is that you really need to
be, for want of a better term,
suffering a little bit
through that type of protocol,
both in terms of the
challenge of the load,
but also being able to
tolerate the metabolic stress
that you're exposed to.
It's a bit of a sicko feeling
because of the lactate
that you're driving up.
So, I wouldn't promote an athlete doing
that type of modality
multiple, multiple times unless
you are from the realms of bodybuilding.
And then, you really,
that's the sole purpose
of what you're trying to achieve.
Most athletes in most sports
have diverse requirements
in terms of outcomes that
they're trying to achieve.
They're not just targeting muscle growth.
Muscle growth is a conduit
to increased strength,
increased power, increased
speed, obviously.
So, yes, trying to get a
bigger cross-sectional area
of a muscle means that
we can produce more force
into the ground or wherever it may be,
if we're a locomotive athlete.
But usually, sports, men and women,
are not just purely seeking muscle growth.
They look for different
facets of muscle endurance
or maximal muscle power, muscle strength.
So, then you've got to be very creative
in how you build the workout.
If it's a bodybuilder,
absolutely they're chasing
muscle growth and they're going to do so
with these types of protocols,
which sees high intensities
and high volumes of workload
on a pretty regular basis.
If it's just somebody, a
weekend warrior that wants
to keep in shape and
look good, I would say,
two times a week for a really
challenging workout like that,
and then flex the other types
of workouts within the week
to have more of a volume emphasis,
where you reduce the intensity
and you might just look
at larger rep ranges
from 12 to 15 to 20.
Another workout where you're
looking at reducing the volume,
but increasing the intensity
and really trying to drive
different stimulus to give you
more end points of success.
- Mm hm, great.
No, that's really informative.
Along the lines of
androgens and intensity.
When I think intensity, I
think epinephrin, adrenaline.
And since you have a background
in catacholamines and testosterone,
last time I was here at the
UFC Performance Institute,
we had a brief conversation,
and I want to make sure
I got the details right.
That in the short term, and a
big increase in stress hormone
can lead to an increase in testosterone,
like a parachute jump.
- Correct.
- But so, stress can promote
the release of testosterone?
- Yeah.
- That was news to me.
- Right.
- We always hear about stress
suppressing testosterone,
stress suppressing the immune system,
all these terrible things.
But in the short term,
you're saying it can actually
increase the release of testosterone.
So, I have that right?
- Correct, yeah, yeah.
- Okay, and so then
the second question is,
does my cognitive
interpretation of the stressor
make a difference?
In other words, if I
voluntarily jump out of a plane
with a parachute, does it
have a different effect
on my testosterone than if
you shove me out of the plane
against my will?
Well, presumably with a parachute too.
- Right, I mean, so this
was what all my PhD work
was looking at was the
exposure to a stressor,
and the pre-arousal of
how your body essentially
prepares for that stressor,
and then how it manages it throughout
the exposure to the stress.
And it was actually motivated
from parachute jumpers.
There was an older study looking
at parachute jumpers into combat.
And then, they were studying the cortisol,
the stress response, and
the epinephrin response
of these parachute jumpers.
So, it got us thinking about, hold on,
there's certain workouts
that you do that are just,
they're daunting, you know?
It's like, okay, it's squat
Saturday or whatever it may be.
Oh my gosh, this is going to destroy me.
- Or I have to talk to this
person I don't want to talk to
or you know, right?
- Exactly, yeah.
- I mean, something, or
a PhD dissertation exam-
- Exactly or speaking-
- Or something, yeah.
- Giving public speaking
or whatever it may be.
Now, we used an exercise,
we used a resistance training
protocol that these athletes
knew was going to be
very, very challenging.
There's going to have
some anxiety to doing it,
they knew there were going
to be some physical distress
from doing it.
And therefore, their mindset
of how they were going to
approach that was already set.
So what we saw 15 minutes
prior to the start
of an exposure to the
workout, the epinephrin,
the noradrenaline, the
adrenaline was already starting
to prepare the body sympathetically
to go into what it knew
was going to be a very,
very challenging workout.
So, that brings you back
to exercise preparation,
competition for certain preparation...
Preparation for certain
competition, excuse me.
Pre-workout routines, the use of music,
all these different things
that we know can now
anecdotally in the gym we put into place,
but the data that I
presented showed that...
It was a first of its kind to
show that this link between
epinephrine and norepinephrine
release and arousal,
and then consequent performance.
So, force output throughout the workout
was intimately linked.
- So, what was the takeaway there?
Is it beneficial for people
to get a little stressed
about the upcoming impending event?
Whether or not it's a lift in the gym
or whether or not it's talking
to somebody that you might be
intimidated to talk to, or an exam?
Is the stress good for
performance or is it harmful?
- Yeah, and I think
that's a great question.
And I think I can only
talk to physical exertion,
which is what we were exploring.
And I don't want to tread on
the toes of the psychologists
with flow state and these types
of things, because clearly-
- I think you're in the
position of scientific strength
on this one.
- Right.
- I think you have the leverage.
- All right.
- I mean, I have a lot
of friends in that community
as I'll just say as a buffer
to the answer you're about to give,
that there's very little
science around flow,
and there's very little neuroscience
related to most
psychological states anyway.
So I think we've got a lot
of degrees of freedom here.
- All right, I can breathe easy.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Thank you for that.
- Anything you like, credit Duncan,
anything you dislike, send
the mean comments to me.
- Yeah, I think from my data, certainly,
the greater the arousal, the
higher the performance was
from a physical exertion perspective.
And I think that was the
intriguing part of some
of my findings were there's definitely
an individual biokinetics to some of these
hormonal kind of releases.
And as much as those
guys that had the highest
androgenic response in
terms of epinephrin release,
norepinephrine release
also sustained force output
for a longer period of the
workout than those that didn't.
So, the individuals that
had a lower stimulus
of the sympathetic arousal, let's say,
certainly didn't perform as
well throughout the workout.
Now, the intriguing thing
then becomes is okay,
and I think this really segues
into what we're doing here
with combat athletes, with
mixed martial artists.
There's a philosophy, there's
a paradigm now for myself
in terms of the exposure, repeat exposure.
You know, the more you do
that challenging workout,
do you get the same
psychological stimulus?
Do you still get the same stress response?
And the assumption is unlikely.
You accommodate, you become
accustomed to the stress
or your body will therefore adapt.
And that's the classic
overload principle, right?
You then need to take the
stressor down a different route.
But I think when you look at the athletes
that we work with here,
it's a fist fight at the end of the day.
There's nothing more stressful than that.
But I think just the exposure
to the rigors of training,
to understand the bad
positions, the bad situations,
to know that they can get
out of certain situations,
out of certain submission
holds or whatever it may be,
I think that really ties
in with some of my PhD work
in terms of what these guys do to approach
what is a really
challenging sporting arena
in mixed martial arts.
- Yeah, it's definitely the
extreme of what's possible
in terms of asking does stress
favor or hinder performance?
Because yeah, like you
said, at the end of the day,
it's someone trying to hurt you as much
as they possibly can within
the bounds of the rules.
- Right.
- And you're trying to do the same.
So, I find your thesis work fascinating.
Were you never to be at the
UFC Performance Institute,
luckily they made the right
choice and brought you here,
but were you have never to come here,
I was still fascinated by
this because over and over
we hear that stress is bad,
stress is bad, stress is bad,
but everything I read from
the scientific literature
is that stress and
epinephrin in particular
is coupled to the testosterone
response to performance
and to adaptation, provided
it doesn't go on too long.
So, unless I'm saying
something that violates that.
- Absolutely, I agree.
- I mean, that's your work.
So it's a really important
and beautiful work.
And I refer to it often,
so I'm just glad that-
- Thank you.
- We could bolt that down,
because I think the
people need to know this,
that that discomfort is beneficial.
Now, there's another side to
this that I want to ask about,
which is the use of cold, in particular,
things like ice baths, cold showers,
or any other type of cold
temperature exposure.
In theory, that's stress
also, it's epinephrin.
And so, how should one think about
the use of cold for recovery?
So, if colds causes stress,
then how is cold used for recovery?
That's what I don't understand.
And maybe you just want to
share your thoughts on that.
- Yeah, no, and I think
it's a great question,
and I think the jury is
still out there, certainly,
knowing some of the conversations
that we've been having.
But I think, when we talk about stress,
it's your classic fight,
flight or freeze approach.
And throwing your body into
a cold tub, an ice bath,
or whatever it may be
certainly is going to have
a physiological stress response.
Now, people are using that
for different end goals.
And again, I think that's
where the narrative
has to be explained.
If you are using the stress specifically
to manage the mindset,
to use it as a specific stress stimulus,
that's the same as me
doing six by 10 at 80%.
You're just trying to find
something to disrupt the system,
to do something that's very,
for want of a better term,
painful, discomfort, whatever.
You're just finding a
stressor and then being able
to manage the mindset.
But if you're using cold,
specifically from a physiological
perspective to promote
redistribution of vascularity,
of blood flow to different
vascular areas of muscle
that you feel have gone through a workout,
that are damaged or whatever it may be,
I think we've got to understand
what that stress mechanism is.
And the data, the literature
is certainly still out there
with respect to
cryotherapy and cold baths,
and some of these cold exposures
in terms of what they do
at the level of the muscle tissue.
If that's the target,
if you're trying to promote
a flushing mechanism,
or you're trying to promote redistribution
of the blood flow,
what you've got to understand
is that cold is going to
clamp down every part
of the vascular system.
And we've really got to
understand how the muscle
would be redistributed
to areas of interest.
So, I think the stress
response is a real thing
with respect to cold exposure.
But I think the narrative around
what are you using the
cold for has to precede
the conversation because yes,
it's like putting your hand
over a hot coal.
That's a stress the same way as jumping
in a cold bath is.
- Yeah, I think most
people don't realize that.
You're going to get the
epinephrin release from holding
your hand too close to flame.
- Absolutely.
- And you're going to get it
from getting in the ice bath.
- Your body doesn't know
the difference, right?
Your body does not know the difference.
It has a primordial kind
of physiological response
that it's created over
millions and millions of years.
And I think that that
physiology is not changing.
And it's fixed in a
particular way right now,
that it doesn't understand
the difference between whether
it's six by 10 doing a
challenging workout over here,
whether it's putting my
hands on the hot coal,
whether there's a lion stood
in front of me or whatever,
that epinephrin response
from the level of the brain
down to the whole signaling
cascade is the same.
- Mm hm, and cold, I've
heard can actually prevent
some of the beneficial
effects of training.
That it can actually get in the way
of muscle growth, et cetera.
- Yeah, there's some pretty
robust data out there now
showing that it definitely
has an influence
on performance variables like strength
and power in particular,
but absolutely in terms
of muscle hypertrophy.
And there's a big kind
of theme in the world
of athletic performance right now,
in terms of periodization of cold exposure
as a recovery modality.
- Interesting.
- When do you use cold?
Should you be using cold
for recovery in periods
of high training load when
you're actually pursuing,
it might be general preparatory work,
or are actually trying
to pursue muscle growth?
Well, that's usually where
you get the most sore.
It's usually where you
feel the most fatigued,
but it's probably not the
most beneficial approach
to use an ice bath in that scenario,
because you're dampening,
you're dulling the mTOR pathway
and the hypertrophic signaling pathway.
Whereas in a competition
phase where actually
quality of exercise and
quality of execution of skill
and technical work has to be maintained,
you want to throw the kitchen
sink of recovery capabilities
and recovery interventions
in that scenario
because the muscle building
activity should be in the bank.
That should have been done in
the general preparatory work.
And now you're focusing
on technical execution.
So, you're absolutely right.
- No, it's interesting.
So, if I understand correctly,
if I want to maximize
muscle growth or power
or improvements and adaptations,
then the inflammation response,
the delayed onset muscle soreness,
all the stuff that's
uncomfortable and that we hear
is so terrible is actually
the stimulus for adaptation.
And so, using cold in that situation
might short circuit my progress.
But if I'm, I don't know
that I'll ever do this,
but if I were to do an
iron man or something,
or run a marathon, under those conditions,
I'm basically coming to
the race, so to speak,
with all the power and
strength I'm going to have.
And so, there, reducing
inflammation is good
because it's going to allow me to perform
more work, essentially.
- Absolutely, yeah.
You have to be strategic
about when you use
some of these interventions.
And the time when you
preparing for a competition
is not the appropriate time...
Excuse me, is the appropriate
time when you want
to drive recovery and make sure
that your body is optimized.
When you're far away
from a competition date
or out of season or whatever it may be,
and you're really trying to just tear up
the body a little bit, to
allow its natural healing
and adaptation processes to take place,
well, you don't want to negate that.
You want the body to optimize
its internal recovery
and that's how muscle growth
is going to happen, so.
- So interesting.
- There's a time kind of
consideration that you need to make
with these interventions, for sure.
- At the UFC Performance Center,
are the fighters periodizing
their cold exposure?
Or are they just doing cold at will?
- Well, it's not just the UFC.
And again, I talk about
my personal experiences
with different sports.
I think just education
around where science is at
and our understanding of concepts
like the use of cold exposure
for recovery, ice bath.
Everyone wants to jump in an ice bath.
But I think as we've
stepped back and scientists
have started to figure out
and look at some of the data,
we're now more intuitive about, well,
actually that might not be the best
or the most optimal approach.
And I think that's any given sport.
So, yes, certainly here at the UFC,
we're trying to educate
our athletes around
appropriate timing.
And it's the same with nutrition,
it's the same with an
ice bath intervention,
it's the same with lifting weights,
it's the same with going for a run
or working out on the bike.
There's tactics to when you do things
and when you don't do things.
And I think stress and cold exposure,
we have to have a consideration
around that as well,
but it's not just MMA
fighters, that's any athlete.
And I think it's the best professionals,
the most successful professionals
do that really well.
They listen, number one,
they educate themselves,
and then they build structure.
And I think at the most elite level,
we always talk about it here at the UFC,
but at the most elite level,
you're not necessarily training
harder than anybody else.
Everybody in the UFC trains hard,
like everyone is training super
hard, but the best athletes,
the true elite levels are
the ones that can do it
again and again and again on a daily basis
and sustain a technical
output for skill development,
therefore their skills can improve,
or physical development,
their physical attributes can improve.
So that ability to reproduce
on a day-to-day basis
falls into a recovery conversation.
Now, when is the right
time to use something
like an ice bath and when isn't,
is part of the high-performance
conversation, for sure.
- So really they're scientists;
they're building structure,
they're figuring out variables.
- Yeah.
- But it sounds like
the ability to do more
quality work over time
is one of the key variables.
- I mean, it's fundamental.
I mean, garbage in, garbage out.
Quality in, quality out.
But in our sport, I talk
about mixed martial arts,
it's truly a decathlon of combat.
So there's so many different attributes,
whether it's the grappling,
whether it's the wrestling,
whether it's the transition work,
whether it's a standup striking.
So, the different facets
of a training program
in this sport are significantly large
compared to something like
a wide receiver in football.
And that's no disrespect
for wide receivers,
but they run routes.
They're going to run a
route, a passing tree,
and that's all they need to do.
These guys have to be on the ground.
They've got to be great on the ground.
They've got to be great standing up.
They've got to be great with
the back against the fence.
So there's so many different
kind of facets to our sport.
So managing the distribution
of all the training components
is one of the biggest
challenges of mixed martial arts
and the best guys get that right.
They allow their body to
optimize the training.
And remember, why are we doing training?
We're doing training for technical
and tactical improvement.
Now, if your body is
fatigued or you just can't
expose yourself to more
tactical development
or technical development,
then you're essentially
doing yourself a disservice.
You're going to be behind the
curve with respect to those guys
that can reproduce that
day-in and day-out.
- On the topic of skill
development, regardless of sport,
we hear all the time and it
certainly is intuitive to me
that the person who can focus the best
will progress the fastest.
But it's kind of interesting,
sometimes I talk to athletes and they seem
a little bit laid back about
their training sometimes,
and yet they obviously
know how to flip the switch
and they can really dial in the intensity.
Do you think that there
are optimal protocols
for skill learning in terms
of physical skill learning?
Like, could it ever be parametrized
like the six sets of 10 reps?
And this gets to the
heart of neuroplasticity,
which is still, it's not a black box,
but it's kind of a black box
with portions of it
illuminated, I like to say.
But what are your thoughts
on skill development?
For somebody that wants
to get better at sport,
do you recommend a particularly long
or short training session?
Does intensity matter or is it just reps?
- Yeah, I think, no, it's
not a volume driven exercise.
It's a quality driven exercise.
And listen, my expertise
is not in motor learning
and motor skill acquisition.
I tend to default to
Dr. Gabriele Wulf here
at UNLV for that.
She's one of the leading
proponents in this area.
But if you look at true skill development,
it is about rehearsal
of accurate movement,
accurate movement mechanics.
And as soon as that becomes impacted
by fatigue or inaccurate movement,
you're now losing the motor learning,
you're losing the accuracy of the skill.
People can call it muscle memory
or whatever they want, right?
But essentially you're
grooving neural axons
to create movement patterns
and they're situational
throughout sport, right?
Whether it's a Cruyff turn in soccer
or a jump shot in basketball,
or a forehand down the line,
you can carve out that particular posture
and position and skill,
and you can isolate it,
and you can drill it
again and again and again.
Now, as soon as fatigue is
influencing that repetition,
it's time to stop.
And the best coaches understand that.
They understand that it's
quality over quantity
when it comes to skill acquisition.
So to answer your question
in a roundabout way,
I would say, yes, it's shorter sessions
that are very high quality.
And I think the best
athletes in my experience
are the ones that
consciously and cognitively
are aware of it at every
moment of the training session.
They should leave the training session
not necessarily just physically fatigued,
but mentally fatigued because
they're completely engaged
in the learning process.
The problem then becomes okay,
if we just do lots of 30 minutes sessions,
we've got to do a lot of
30 minutes sessions to get
the volume exposure of the repetition
and the rehearsal of this skill
again and again and again.
So, it's a bit of a paradox.
It's a bit of a double-edged sword,
but a three hour session
versus a 90 minute session,
we'll take the 90 minute session any day
when it comes to skill acquisition,
because that's going to be
driven by quality over quantity.
- Yeah, training and skill learning
is incredibly mentally fatiguing.
I've often wondered why
when one works out hard,
whether or not it's with
run or with the weights,
why it's hard to think later in the day.
- Right.
- Yeah, there really does
seem to be something to it.
And I've wondered is it depletion
of adrenaline, dopamine?
I sometimes think it might be dopamine,
and here I'm totally speculating.
I don't have any data to support this,
but if you hit a really
hard workout or run
early in the day, oftentimes
the brain just doesn't
want to do hard mental work.
Which gives me great
admiration for these athletes
that are drilling their mind and body
all day, every day, with breaks.
But so what are your thoughts?
What leads to the mental fatigue
after physical performance?
- Well, again, I don't want to talk out,
I'm talking to the man here, you know?
- Well, we're just two scientists-
- Yeah, yeah.
- Speculating on this point.
Up until now, you've
been giving us concrete
peer-reviewed study based
feedback on my questions.
But if we were to speculate,
I mean, I think this
is a common occurrence.
People think if I get that
really good workout in
in the morning, I feel better all day.
- Right.
- That's true,
unless that workout is really
intense or really long.
- Yeah.
- And then you just,
the mind just somehow won't
latch on to mental work
quite as well.
- I mean, just philosophically
and I think coming back
to this kind of stress consideration,
like public speaking or taking an exam.
I mean, if you have an amazing
coach who is setting up
training in a particular
way, it's challenging,
there's a strain related to it,
and I'm not talking physical strain,
I'm talking figuring things
out, figuring out the skill.
And I think that can be stressful.
Like the learning
process can be stressful.
So, we've touched on stress.
I also think if they
hit the right technique,
that reward center in the brain,
that dopamine shot is
going to fly up there.
And there's only so many
times that we can get that
before that becomes dampened.
And I think there's an
energetic piece to it.
There's the fueling of the brain.
There's the carbohydrate fuel
in exercise that actually
the strategy around how
you fuel for learning
and fuel for physical training
is actually pretty similar.
- Glucose.
- Yeah, it's glucose,
it's sugar at the end of the day, right?
So, are you fueling accordingly
around your training sessions,
be that very physical,
because everyone thinks,
okay, I'm going to jump on a treadmill
and I'm going to bang out
15 sprints at max effort,
and I'm going to be dropping
off and laying on the floor
at the end of it.
I need to refuel.
Well, what about the
refueling of the brain
in a very demanding
exercise or drilling session
where you're looking at technique,
that you're trying to figure out,
that's very challenging
for your mind to figure out
the complexity of it,
that still needs to be fueled
or refueled afterwards.
And I think that's obviously
might be an area where athletes
do themselves a disservice
by not appropriately fueling
from what might be considered to be
a lower intensity session,
but the cognitive challenge
has been significantly high.
- So, they're skill work or drill work,
and it's taxing the brain.
- Correct, yeah.
- And they're thinking, oh,
I wasn't pushing hard lifts
or doing sprints, and so I can just go off
into the rest of my day, but
then their mind is drifting.
- Yeah, I mean, I speculate.
- Yeah, that sounds very reasonable.
I mean, I know that here and presumably
with the other athletes
you've worked with,
nutrition is a huge aspect of that.
And I think the general
public can learn a lot
from athletic nutrition
because at the end of the day,
the general public is trying
to attend to their kids,
attend to their work, whether
or not they're lawyers
or whatever, they need to focus.
Nutrition is a barbed wire topic.
- Oh yeah [chuckling].
- But since we're free
to do what we would do
if we were just sitting
in each other's offices,
which is to just speculate a bit,
for the typical person,
do you think these low
carbohydrate diets...
A typical person who
exercises, runs, swims, yoga,
lifts weights, maybe not all those things,
but some collection of those,
pushes themselves to do those
things and to do them well,
but isn't necessarily a
highly competitive athlete.
Do you think that nutrition
that doesn't include
a lot of glucose, doesn't
include a lot of carbohydrates,
is a problem or is it okay?
What do you recommend for athletes?
What do you recommend for typical people?
- Yeah, again, disclaimer,
I'm not a dietician, but I-
- That's okay, the dieticians don't know
what to recommend to athletes either.
And I say that from
having spent a lot of time
with the literature now,
it's a complete mess.
- Right, yeah.
- It's like, I thought
we didn't understand
anything about the brain,
the nutrition science stuff
is all over the place.
- Right.
- So I think we have, again-
- We have some freedom.
- Large degrees of freedom.
- Right, right, right.
I mean, I think it comes
down to metabolic efficiency.
So we would never advocate a high...
I never say never, okay?
But we rarely advocate a
high performance athlete
in a high intensity
intermittent sport, like MMA,
being totally ketogenic or-
- You do not recommend that?
- No, because at the end of the day,
some of those high intensity
efforts usually require
carbohydrate fueling for
the energy that's produced
at those high intensities.
So, we try to navigate around that.
Now, listen, there are fighters
in the UFC and elsewhere,
Matt Brown is a great example,
who promotes the ketogenic
approach and it works for him.
But we look at the science and the nature
of the characteristics of our sport,
and we don't necessarily promote that.
- Can I interrupt you real quick?
What about ketones for people
that are ingesting carbohydrates?
This is an interesting area
because people always hear
ketones and they think,
oh, I have to be ketogenic
to benefit from taking ketones.
- Right.
- But there are a number
of athletes and recreational
athletes now as well,
taking liquid or powder-based ketones,
even though they do eat rice and oatmeal
and bread and other things.
So are there any known
benefits of ketones,
even if one is not in a state of ketosis?
- So, the use of ketones
that I'm primarily aware of
in our sport, is after the event.
In terms of the brain health with athletes
that are potentially taking
trauma to the brain, et cetera,
and looking to maintain the fueling
and the energy supply to the brain.
But yes, it's probably a
little bit out of my remit.
So I don't want to talk
on that because I'm not
fully familiar with that.
- Well, I've heard that
ketones after head injury
can provide a buffering component.
- Correct.
- It's not going to reverse
brain damage, but it
might be able to offset
some of the micro-damage.
- Right, so that's how we use it,
just to sustain the
energy supply to the brain
that might be compromised
through brain trauma.
So that's why we use ketones.
To come back to your original question.
If it's a general population then yes,
I think there's a place
to argue that actually
being on a ketogenic diet at times,
and maybe it's a cycling
exercise, maybe not...
I don't mean cycling a
bike, I mean cycling ketosis
is beneficial because I
think it's going to lead
to better metabolic management
and metabolic efficiency,
at those lower intensities
where we should be fueling
our metabolism with lipids and fats.
Clearly the Western diet
and the modern day diet
is heavily driven by processed
foods and carbohydrates
that people become
predisposed to utilization
of that fuel source
above lipid use, fat use,
at intensities that are very low.
So, some of our data with the
fighters shows that as well.
But I think the challenge for
us is that we're working with
a clientele that require high
intensity bouts of effort.
So, fueling appropriately
is very important for that.
Now, we use tactics here where
we essentially have athletes
on what you would say,
kind of is a largely
a ketogenic diet, but then
we will fuel carbohydrates
around training sessions.
So, we'll do very timed
exposure to carbohydrates.
So it's not-
- Post-training?
- Post-training, immediately pre, during,
and then immediately post.
And then the rest of their diets,
breakfast, lunch, and dinner,
are what would look like
ketogenic type approaches.
So we're trying to be very
tactical in the exposure
to maximize the intensity for the training
and then return to a
metabolically efficient diet,
which is heavily reduced in carbohydrate
because we've fueled the
sessions that need it.
- I'm smiling because
once again, this place,
the UFC Performance Center is
doing things scientifically,
which to me, the idea, and
I'm pleased to hear that,
because to me this idea
that the ketogenic diet
is the best and only diet or carbohydrates
and low protein diets are the best diet.
It's just, it's ludicrous.
- Right.
- Then you mentioned metabolic efficiency.
I think some people might
be familiar with that term,
some perhaps not,
but the way I understand
metabolic efficiency is that
you teach the body to
use fats by maybe doing
long bouts of cardio, maybe
lowering carbohydrates a bit.
So teaching the body to
tap into its fat stores
for certain periods of training.
And then you also teach the
body to utilize carbohydrates
by supplying carbohydrates
immediately after training
and before training.
You teach the body to use ketones,
and then you use them
at the appropriate time,
as opposed to just deciding
that one of these fuel sources
is good and all the others
are bad or dispensable.
Do I have that correct?
- You've nailed it.
I mean, from Bob Seebohar,
formerly of USA Triathlon,
is the guy that kind of came up with
the concept of metabolic efficiency,
but yes, you're absolutely right.
I mean, at low intensities of exercise
or just day-to-day living,
we shouldn't be tapping into
our carbohydrate fuel sources extensively.
That's for higher intensity work
or the fight or flight needs of stress.
If athletes or any individual
has a high carbohydrate diet,
they're going to start to
become predisposed to utilizing
that fuel source preferentially.
Now, at low intensity,
that can be problematic,
certainly for an athlete,
because if they preferentially
use carbohydrate
at lower intensities,
when the exercise demand
goes to a higher intensity,
they've already exhausted
their fuel stores.
They can't draw upon fat
because the oxidation
of that fat is just too slow.
So they're essentially now become fatigued
because they've already utilized
their carbohydrate stores.
So what we try to do yes,
through diet manipulation
and a little bit of exercise
manipulation is as you say,
teach the body or train
the body to preferentially
use a specific fuel source;
fat, obviously at lower intensities,
and carbohydrate at high intensities.
And we will look at
specifically the crossover point
between the two, tell us a lot in terms of
how an athlete is ultimately,
how their metabolism is working.
- Well, again, I'm smiling
because I love this
because it's grounded in
something real and scientific,
which is that we have these
different fuel sources.
The body can adapt to use any
number of them or one of them.
I think most people are looking for that
one pattern of eating, that
one pattern of exercising
that's going to be best
for them or sustain them.
And they often look back
to the time when they felt
so much better switching
from one thing to the next,
but the adaptation process
itself is also key, right?
Teaching the body.
So if we were to just riff on this
just a little bit further, if somebody,
I'll use myself as an example,
since I can only speculate
what other people's
current nutrition protocols are,
but if somebody is eating
in a particular way
and they want to try this kind
of periodization of nutrition,
could one say, okay, for a
few weeks I'm going to do more
high intensity interval
training and weight training,
and I'm going to eat a
bit more carbohydrate
'cause I'm depleting more glycogen.
Then if I switch to a phase
of my training where I'm doing
some longer runs, maybe I'm training less,
maybe I'm just working at
my desk a little bit more,
then I might switch to a
lower carbohydrate diet.
Do I have that right?
And then if I'm going to enter
a competition of some sort,
certainly not UFC-
- Right.
- Or MMA of any kind to be clear,
not because it isn't a wonderful sport,
but because that wouldn't be
good for my other profession.
But if I were going to do that,
then I would think about
stacking carbohydrates,
ketones, and fats.
Do I have that more or less right?
- Yeah, you've said it eloquently.
At the end of the day, you're
consciously understanding
what the exposure to physical exertion is,
and you're flexing your day
accordingly and I think that-
- So, it's need-based eating.
- Exactly, for want of a better term,
you can call it whatever fancy terminology
there is out there, but yes,
it's needs-based eating,
but you're very conscious and cognizant
of what is my current exercise status.
If I'm taking some time off,
then don't gorge on the carbohydrates.
We probably need to be cut,
it's going to be lower intensity work,
or even just habitual
day-to-day walking around,
doing your groceries.
That doesn't require massive
amounts of glycogen storage
and carbohydrate fueling.
So, you can potentially go
more ketogenic in nature,
oxidizing lipids for that fuel.
If you are in a high period
of high intensity training,
then you have to consciously
flex your diet to support that.
That's not normal, you've made a change,
you've elevated the demand.
So, the fueling requirements
for the regenerative,
not only fueling the exercise,
but the regenerative
requirements of your body
after that type of work is going to be
really important as well.
So, yes, take on more carbohydrates.
So, I think it's consciously
interpreting the nature
of your diet against where
you are at any moment in time.
- Yeah, I like that.
I think the listeners of my podcast
generally are experimenters.
- Right.
- They are scientists of themselves,
which makes me happy obviously.
And I like to think that
they're paying attention
to the changes they're making
and how they're affecting themselves.
And they seem more open to trying things,
provided they can do it safely,
and seeing what works for them.
And I'm certainly going to
try some of the change up.
I also am really a creature of habit.
And I think that talking to you today,
I realize I'm probably
doing a number of things
truly wrong in my training,
but also that I don't
tend to vary my nutrition
with my training quite
as much as I should.
I'm just locked into a protocol.
We covered a number of things related
to your PhD thesis work,
but I cut you off early on
related to your trajectory.
After you finished your thesis.
- Yeah.
- I know you were
at Notre Dame for a while.
Was that your first spot
after your PhD thesis?
- No, no, I basically finished my PhD
and I dropped into the
British Olympic system
for about 14 years.
- Oh my, okay.
- I've done three full Olympic
cycles with different sports,
largely as strength and conditioning coach
as a practitioner.
I was always working in
universities and academia alongside,
in terms of continuing
to publish and write
and do research and teach as well.
'Cause I enjoy teaching.
- That explains the huge
volume of publications.
- Yeah [chuckling].
- I don't think people
realize all the work
that goes into getting a quality
peer-reviewed publication.
It's not, what do they call
it now on Instagram, anecdata?
Where people would do something once.
- Right.
- They have this experience
and then they put it in
the world that it's a-
- Yeah.
- Anecdata are,
I don't even know that
we should call it data.
So, 14 years in working with
the British Olympic team.
- Yeah, so whether it was GB boxing,
primarily with the Beijing cycle,
but also lightweight
rowers and gymnastics.
And for the London Olympic games,
that cycle I was the lead
strength and conditioning
and physical performance
coach for British basketball.
So, GB basketball.
I had about three years in
the English Premier League
with Newcastle United and the soccer team,
and then for the Rio Olympic cycle,
I was with Great Britain Tae Kwon Do.
So, again, another combat sport.
After I'd finished there,
I kind of moved to the
University of Notre Dame,
where I went into more
of a managerial position
working across all the
different technical services;
medical, nutrition,
strength and conditioning,
sports psychology and sports
science, whatever it may be,
as the Director of Performance Sciences
for Notre Dame athletics.
And then, after about 16 months there,
the UFC came knocking
and they recruited me
out of Notre Dame.
So, it's been a great ride,
and I've got lots of
athletes have taught me
a lot along the way, lots of coaches.
Every day is a school day,
I still try and keep that mentality.
And in this world we call
it white belt mentality.
I'm a PhD, I've got 25 years of experience
in high performance
sport, but I still learn
every single day from these
people out on the mats
and in the ring and it's
impressive to see what they do.
- Yeah, it certainly is.
I got introduced to MMA
just a few years ago.
I think the first time I came
out here was one of the first
times I'd heard of MMA
'cause I was kind of
in my laboratory, nose down.
And it's a really interesting
sport because it incorporates
so many different types
of movement as you said-
- Right.
- It's not just
stand up boxing, it's not just kicking,
it's ground game, everything,
and I'm still learning about it.
But as you mentioned, going
in with that beginner's mind,
the white belt mentality,
what has been the most
surprising thing for you
in terms of being exposed
to MMA in particular,
as opposed to other sports?
Like what's unique about MMA fighters,
besides that they have this
huge variety of tactical skills
that they have to learn and perfect?
- Yeah, that's a great question.
I would say two things.
I'm going to answer two questions.
One actually reiterates
what you've already said.
Like the degrees of freedom
in mixed martial arts
are exponential, like no other sport.
We've got 11 different weight classes.
We have men's classes.
We have women's classes.
We have kickboxers,
wrestlers, jujitsu fighters,
judoka, karate fighters.
The stylistic backgrounds are infinite.
We're a weight classification sport.
There's a whole issue
relating to making weight
and then rebounding to
fight about 24 to 30 hours.
Like just the variability in this sport,
the considerations that you
have to make are unprecedented
compared to any other sport
that I've worked with.
And a lot of them go against
and are the antithesis
of what you would expect
for high performance.
In terms of we don't
always have a very clearly
defined competition schedule.
Once these guys fight,
they don't necessarily know
when their next fight is going to be.
- What's the closest spacing of a fight?
- I mean, listen, I think
the record is around,
it's just over a month, I believe.
- Oh, my goodness.
- So, you know, that's a quick turnaround,
but most of these guys are fighting
three or four times a year,
three times a year is pretty normal.
The bigger fighters,
maybe two times a year.
But invariably, the guys
don't know when that next date
is going to be.
So we're in this gray area
of, okay, what do we do?
Like, are we taking some time off?
Are we just going to do
some general prep work?
Are we going to try and keep the
knife sharpened in case I get-
- I didn't realize this.
In that way it's a lot
like special operations.
- Absolutely, you don't know when the call
is going to happen.
- They have to be ready
at all times.
There isn't this, like, let's
get ready for the season.
- Right, yeah.
Like when I was with the
British Olympic Association,
I knew it was the British
Open, the Spanish Open,
the French Open, the
European Championships,
the Israeli Open, the American Open,
the Canadian Open, the Olympic games.
- It's a circuit in your brain.
- Right, yeah.
- I can tell, yeah.
- You just plan like you know
where all the targets are going to be.
Here, it's a moving
target because you might
be just hanging out doing
some general prep work,
and then you might get
a short notice fight.
They give you a quick call
and it's in six weeks or five weeks.
And okay, I've got to ramp
everything up really quickly.
So, that's a real challenge
in terms of just managing
all these different components
of a mixed martial arts alone.
To come back to your question,
the other thing which is truly fascinating
about these individuals is
just their mental resilience.
And again, we've touched
on it in the talk,
but the ability to do what
they do on a daily basis,
to look at all the different skillsets
that they have to try and engage in
and bring into their training.
To do that and embrace the grind,
embrace the process of just learning,
the physical side of our
sport is unprecedented.
But the mental side, we
have a funny saying here.
We always say it's 90% mental
apart from the 60% that's physical.
So, it's just more and more and more.
And these guys' ability to
just do that on a daily basis
is very impressive.
Like their resilience,
their internal drive
and their resilience is
really impressive to see.
- Yeah, all the fighters I've met here
have been really terrific.
It's interesting every
time I meet a fighter,
I shouldn't be surprised when they're
often very soft-spoken.
- Right.
- [Andrew] They're
always extremely polite.
- Yeah, yeah.
- You know?
And fighting is such a...
It comes from a very primitive
portion of the brain, right?
But a large portion of
the brain, nonetheless.
- But I think that's another
skill is that switch.
And again, that's the
recoverability piece, right?
Like you cannot be Taipei
or you cannot be like super
charged 24 hours a day
because you're going to
just fry your system, right?
And I think that's something
else where we're really trying
to manage this whole process,
be it through nutritional interventions,
be it through education around sleep,
be it through training program management,
be it through psychological interventions.
You could look at fighters and
say like, these guys are go,
like they're red alert and
they'll run through a brick wall,
but actually again, their
ability to turn it on and off
means that they can do what they do.
They can bring it down and be very normal,
very polite, very accommodating.
- Maybe even better than most people
because one of the reasons I'm obsessed
with human performance,
and high-performance,
and people like fighters,
and elite military,
or even bodybuilders for that
matters that they experiment.
- Yeah.
- They find the outer
limits of what's possible.
But one of the things
that they have discovered,
as you're describing, is
this ability to toggle
between high alert states and calm states.
Most typical people can't do this.
They see something that
upsets them on the internet
or something on the news
or some external event
pressures down on them
and they're stressed
for many, many days and weeks,
and sometimes it goes pathological, right?
And I don't say this as a criticism,
it's just that most human
beings, within our species,
most members of our species never learn
to either flip the switch
or to just voluntarily
toggle between states.
I think athletes learn how
to do that extremely well.
And it sounds like MMA
fighters do that even better
than perhaps many other athletes.
- I mean, yeah, there's the odd one or two
that would struggle with,
but I think in terms of
that chronic exposure,
we see that coming from challenges around
cyclical weight cutting,
and metabolic disruption,
and metabolic injury,
not necessarily from
the psychological drive.
They do understand that
this is a job for them.
And the time on the mats,
most of them can turn it off a little bit
and downgrade things when
they're off the mats.
It's impressive to see, because again,
like, as a layman, just
looking at the fight game,
you think it's going to be crazy chaotic,
100 miles an hour every hour of every day,
but that's clearly not the case.
They manage their energy and
their efforts pretty well.
- So it's a little bit like science.
Although maybe scientists
could take a lesson from-
- Yeah, that evidence-based practice
or practice-based evidence, right?
- Oh, I like that.
[Duncan chuckling]
That's good.
A couple more questions,
I can't help myself.
I know we talked about temperature earlier
when we discussed cold,
but I can't help myself,
I have to ask you about heat.
Because earlier we were
having a conversation
about heat adaptation,
about how long does it take
for the human body or
athlete or typical person
that's maybe exploring
sauna or things of that sort
to learn to be a better sweater?
It sounds like something
none of us would want to do.
We all want to stay
cool, calm and collected.
But one of the reasons to deliberately
expose oneself to heat is for things
like growth hormone release, et cetera.
We can talk about this,
but a couple of questions.
One, is heat exposure
stress in the same way
that the ice bath or
cold exposure is stress?
The second one is, is there any difference
there that's important?
And the other one is
how does one get better
at heat adaptation or at
least what are you doing
with the fighters to get them
better at dealing with heat?
How long does that take?
So the first question,
just 'cause I threw
three questions at you,
[Duncan chuckling]
is heat stress like cold is stress?
- Yeah, I think it is.
And I think heat shock
proteins for example,
are driven by that stressful exposure
to a change in environment.
So, I think we do graded response in terms
of heat acclimation strategies, but yes,
we've touched on it earlier
in the conversation.
For me, heat is still a stressor.
And if it's managed incorrectly,
you can have detrimental responses
rather than beneficial responses.
- So barring like hyperthermia and death,
like I mean, obviously you
heat up the brain too much,
people will have seizures and
die, but you lose neurons.
But what's the right
way to acclimate heat?
Taking into account
that people should check
with their doctor, et cetera.
We do all these disclaimers,
but let's just say,
I want to get better at dealing with heat,
or I want to extract
more benefit from heat.
I mean, how many minutes a day are people
typically exposing themselves to heat?
How often and over what periods of time?
- Yeah, so, we normally start with
about 15 minutes of exposure.
Now, if someone's really
lacking acclimation to heat,
you can do that in three,
five minute efforts.
Do you know what I mean?
And actually take-
- This is a hot sauna?
- [Duncan] Yeah, hot sauna,
take time to step out-
- 200 degrees or something like it?
- Correct, yeah.
- Fahrenheit, yeah.
- 200 Fahrenheit, yes.
And we try to work up to 30 to 40 minutes
to 45 minutes in the sauna continuous.
Now, we have to understand,
what's the advantage of heat
acclimation for our athletes?
Ultimately their ability to
sweat and to lose body fluids
is going to be advantageous
to their weight cut process.
So, their ability to make weight.
It is a technique that
some of these guys adopt.
So, if you don't have high sweat rates,
it means you're going to
have to sit in the sauna
for longer and longer and longer
to get the same delta in sweat release.
So the more acclimated you are,
the more your body is
thermogenically adapted,
the more sweat glands you
have, there's more pores,
you can sweat more and
therefore you'll lose
that fluid quicker, and you
spend less time in the sauna.
So, that's why we do it,
to try and promote...
To limit the exposure.
And it comes back to your first
question, is it a stressor?
It absolutely it's a stressor
if you've got to spend
two hours over a four hour period,
two hours of it sat in a sauna.
- Yeah, where the phone-
- Because you just don't
sweat enough.
- Doesn't work, so you can't.
No, I'm just kidding.
- Right.
- People, divorce them from their phone
and that's a stressor in itself.
- Right, I mean, yes, I think there's a...
What we do is like anything,
we build up in temperature,
but we build up in volume of exposure.
So, we start with 15 minutes
and then we just try to add on
and add on across a time.
And now, for us, we kind of
found about 14 sauna exposures
starts to really then
drive the adaptations
that we're looking for.
So it's not a quick fix.
A heat acclimation strategy
has to happen long before
fight week or long before the fights.
This is a process that has
to begin eight to 10 weeks
before the fight so that we can actually
get that adaptation and that
tolerance to the stressor,
to the exposure of heat.
- This is interesting, until today,
when we were talking about
this earlier, and again now,
I didn't realize that,
but it makes perfect
sense now that I hear it,
that heat adaptation is possible,
that you basically can train the body
to become better at cooling itself,
which is what sweating is.
- Yeah.
- I mean, I should have known that before,
but you don't see that in
the textbooks and so, yeah.
- I mean, listen, it's the same
as the ketogenic conversation.
You're training your body to
be more metabolic efficient,
you're training your body
to tolerate heat more,
you're training your body...
Like the body as an organism,
as an organic system,
it's hugely adaptable,
it's hugely plastic.
But I think the skill is
understanding the whens,
the whys and the whereofs in
terms of changing the overload,
changing the stimulus to
drive specific adaptation.
And philosophically that's
how we go about our work here.
We talk about adaptation-led programming.
Now, adaptation-led programming fits into
every single category,
not just lifting weights
or running track.
It fits into nutrition.
It fits into sitting in the sauna.
It fits into being in a cold bath or not.
It fits into so many
different things because
we're driven by scientific insights.
And that's how we really want
to go about our business.
- I love it, I love this concept
of adaptation-led
programming and doing that,
not just in the context of
throwing another plate on the bar
or something like that,
but in every aspect of one's
training and performance.
And I think there's a lot
here that's applicable
to the recreational athlete, too.
- Yeah.
- Would you say that,
what comes to mind is 12 weeks.
It feels like 12 weeks is a
nice block of time for someone
to try something in terms
of to try something new,
see how they adapt, adapt,
and then maybe switch to something new.
I realized that it's very
hard to throw a kind of pan
timeframe around something,
but in terms of if someone
wanted to experiment with heat adaptation
or experiment with cold adaptation
or change up their
training regimen or diet,
and look at metabolic efficiency,
do you think 12 weeks
is a good period of time
to really give something a thorough go?
And gain an understanding of how well
or how poorly something works for oneself?
Or would you say eight is enough?
Or three?
- I mean, that's the how
long is a piece of string
kind of response, right?
- Yeah.
- I mean, yes, if we're just
talking arbitrary numbers-
- Recreational experimenter.
- Yeah, like three months
exposure, 12 week training strategy,
12 week intervention is
more than adequate to say
for 99% of things that
change within the body,
that physiologically adapt
to a training stimulus
or an overload stimulus,
you're going to start to see
either regression or progression,
beneficial or detrimental
effects within three months.
Absolutely, I would say so.
Now, listen, I say that in as
much as we do training blocks
here that are three weeks long.
- Right, well, that's
because of this constraint
that sometimes people suddenly have to,
they get the call to fight.
- Correct, yeah.
So it's like super condensed.
And in that scenario,
we're always conscious of is
their body or this individual,
do they have the ability to
tolerate that super overload,
that super condensed exposure?
Now, we might be doing that purposefully.
We might be trying to do
an overreaching strategy
where we're really trying
to damage or flex something.
And I don't mean like negatively damage,
but like we're trying to damage tissue
to really get an adaptive
response versus a more drawn out
12 week strategy, which is more coherent,
more planned out, more
structured in nature.
But yeah, for all your listeners,
I would say 12 weeks
to engage in a process
of trying to change and adapt your body
or expose yourself to something
is more than sufficient
to see if it's going to be
the right approach for you.
And I think, the
individual interpretation,
it always has to be considered.
And I think that's where
it comes back to be
a thinking man's athlete or
be a thinking man's trainer,
like someone that's
going through exercise,
you have to consciously
understand where your body's at
any moment in time, you know?
You've got to be real with yourself.
You create a journal, create
a log of your training,
create a log of your feelings,
your subjective feedback
of how you felt, your mood, your sleep.
- Do your athletes do that?
- Yeah, yeah.
We try to promote that because again,
that's part of this process, you know?
It might be 12 weeks for you,
but I might get the same
responses in eight weeks.
And I think that's another
critical theme here is that
we could put 15 guys on the mat
and give them the same workout,
and there's going to be
15 different responses
to that same workout
because the human organism
is so complex.
And in nature, it's going
to adapt differently.
Some people will tolerate it.
Some people are going
to be challenged by it.
Some people have got a metabolic makeup
that's going to promote it.
Some people are metabolically
challenged by it.
There's just so many different things
that we have to consider.
And that's what we try to do here.
It's the cross we bear is
that we try to understand
on an individual level how to
optimize athletic performance.
- I think it's terrific,
and the athletes here are
so fortunate to have this.
And most people out there,
I've certainly been
trying to encourage people
to learn some science and some mechanism
and become scientists
of their own pursuits,
whether or not skill learning
or athletic pursuit, et cetera.
As sort of a final question,
what are some things about
the UFC or something about
the UFC that perhaps people don't know
in terms of its overall mission
or what you guys are trying to do here?
I mean, I think, I've become a fan of MMA
and I am more and more as time moves on.
Some people might be into MMA,
some people not into watching MMA,
but what are some things
that the UFC is interested in
and doing that most people
might not know about,
and certainly I might not know about?
- Yeah, I mean, I think,
we try to be cutting edge.
We try to be super progressive.
We think we've got an
amazing platform here,
particularly at the Performance Institute
to do some really cool things that can
inform many different people.
And that doesn't just mean
the 600 or so athletes
that are on our global roster.
What we're trying to do is,
is influence global community
around optimizing human performance.
So, any moment in time,
we're engaging in different technologies
with different vendors,
different partners,
exploring opportunities
to learn more, share data,
understand what's the best mechanisms
for interpreting your body,
interpreting how your body's
responding to training,
interpreting your nutrition
or whatever it may be.
We're in a really privileged
position to do that.
But we've also, hence
you being here today,
we're also trying to venture
into some really cool areas
of science and research
that's got applicability,
that you can take from
high performance athletes
and apply to yourself, to Joe
Blow walking down the street,
out there that is really interesting.
And that's everything
from whether it's CBD
and psychedelics, through
to different technologies
for thermal monitoring and
Bluetooth heart rate monitoring
or whatever it may be,
through to data management, et cetera,
and anything in between.
We've got some great partners
on the nutrition side,
on the psychology side, on the data side.
And I think we always try
to just push the envelope
a little bit more.
I think we keep our core
mission with our athletes,
but I think a lot of what
we do, hence your podcast,
an amazing platform, you
do such a great job of it,
that we can all learn
and take from the elite
and interpret how it might help us,
and just in the general population.
So, I think that's our north
star is to provide our athletes
the best integrated service of care,
but we also want to influence
just the global community
and put the UFC at the forefront of that.
- That's great, well, you
guys are certainly doing it,
and we can't let the cat
out of the bag just yet.
But the things that we're gearing up
to do with my laboratory-
- Yeah, I'm excited.
- And the work together,
hopefully we'll be able
to talk about that and share
that in the year to come,
but we're very excited about that.
And, Duncan, look, I have
this filter that I use
when I talk to people,
academics or otherwise,
which is some people,
they open their mouth,
and it doesn't make much difference,
but when you speak, I learn so much.
I'm going to take the protocols
that I've heard about today,
I'm going to think about how I'm training
and how I could train
differently and better,
how I'm eating, how I could
eat differently and better
for sake of performance
and just in general.
Thank you so much for your
time, your scientific expertise,
the stuff you're doing in the
practical realm, it's immense.
So, hopefully we can do it again.
- Yes, thank you.
This has been a blast.
I appreciate it and yeah,
keep doing what you're doing
'cause I know there's a
lot of people out there
that love the platform.
So, thanks for the invite.
It's been awesome.
- Oh, thank you.
Thanks so much.
Thank you for joining
me for my conversation
with Dr. Duncan French.
I hope you found it as insightful
and informative as I did.
If you're enjoying this podcast
and/or learning from it,
please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Please also leave us a
comment or a suggestion
of a future topic or future guests
that you'd like us to have
on the Huberman Lab Podcast.
In addition, please
subscribe to our podcast
on Apple and Spotify.
And on Apple, you can leave
us up to a five-star review.
Please also check out the
sponsors that we mentioned
at the beginning of this episode.
That's a terrific way
to support this podcast.
We also have a Patreon.
It's patreon.com/andrewhuberman.
And there you can support the podcast
at any level that you like.
Many previous episodes of
the Huberman Lab Podcast
we discuss supplements;
supplements for sleep,
supplements for focus and for
other health benefits as well.
While supplements may
not be for everybody,
if you're going to use supplements,
you want to make sure
that those supplements
are of the very highest quality.
For that reason, we've partnered
with Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E,
because Thorne supplements are
of the very highest quality
and the amounts of ingredients
listed on the label
of Thorne supplements precisely matches
what is actually contained
in those capsules,
bottles and pills and
powders and so forth.
This is extremely important.
A lot of analysis of supplements
and supplement companies
have shown that what's listed
on the bottle is often not
what's actually contained in the bottle.
Thorne's stringency is unmatched.
They've partnered with all
the major sports teams,
with the Mayo Clinic.
And so, there's a lot of
trust in Thorne supplements
for all the right reasons.
If you'd like to try Thorne supplements,
you can see the supplements that I take,
you can go to Thorne,
thorne.com/u/huberman.
There, you can see the
supplements that I take.
You can get 20% off any
of those supplements.
And if you navigate into the Thorne site
through that portal, you can get 20% off
any of the supplements that Thorne makes.
I'd also like to mention
that if you're not already
following us on Instagram @hubermanlab,
you might want to do so.
There I do brief science
tutorials and offer science-based
protocols for all sorts of
things that are often separate
from the protocols and information
covered on the Huberman Lab Podcast.
We're also on Twitter as hubermanlab.
And last and certainly not least,
thank you for your interest in science.
[light music]