This episode I explain the science of heating and cooling the body, a process called thermoregulation-- and how to apply that knowledge to significantly improve physical performance. I describe the three areas of our body that can remove heat (or bring heat into the body) faster than anywhere else, why that is so, and how proper cooling of these areas with specific protocols can allow people to perform 200-600% more volume and repetitions of resistance exercises at the same weight loads, or to run, cycle or swim significantly further. I also describe how to use directed cooling of so-called glabrous skin: the bottoms of feet, palms and face, to significantly enhance recovery times from exercise. Also, why the common practices of trying to heat up or cool the body via the torso or whole-body submersion in cold can be inefficient and/or dangerous-- and the better alternatives. Finally, I discuss the temperature-effects of caffeine, alcohol and anti-inflammatory compounds. The information in this episode is focused on mechanisms and tools for increasing athletic or exercise performance.
For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com.
<h2>Thank you to our sponsors</h2>
AG1 (Athletic Greens): https://athleticgreens.com/huberman
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<h2>Supplements from Momentous</h2>
https://www.livemomentous.com/huberman
<h2>Timestamps</h2>
(00:00:00) Introduction
(00:00:31) Sponsors: AG1, LMNT
(00:05:08) Physical Performance & Skill Learning
(00:06:40) Optimal Learning Protocol (Recap): 4 Steps
(00:08:31) Variables Impacting Physical Performance
(00:10:00) Temperature Is the Dominant Variable
(00:12:08) Understanding Mechanism Is Key
(00:13:42) Heat: The Enemy of All Performance (& Why)
(00:16:30) Blood Flow & Sweating & Piloerection
(00:22:35) Heat Is What Limits Effort: Even If You Feel Fine/Motivated
(00:25:29) Proper Cooling Can Double, Triple, Quadruple (Or More) Your Ability
(00:26:42) Heat Induced Confusion & Death
(00:30:02) The Three Body Parts Best For Heating & Cooling Your Whole Body
(00:31:38) Face, Palms, Bottoms of Feet; Glabrous Skin
(00:33:00) Arterio-Venous Anastamoses (AVAs) Are Super Cool(ing)!
(00:37:15) Palmar Cooling Can Supercharge Your Athletic Performance
(00:38:35) ATP, Pyruvate Kinase & Heat
(00:40:55) Palmer Cooling Outperforms Anabolic Steroids Several-Fold
(00:43:45) Increasing Endurance, Willpower & Persistence
(00:46:33) Cardiac Drift, & Moving the ”I Quit” Point
(00:50:44) Deliberate Heating: Myths and Better Protocols
(00:53:20) Protocols For Self-Directed Cooling To Vastly Improve Performance
(00:59:23) How To Use Cold To Recover Faster & More Thoroughly
(01:02:05) Ice Baths & Cold Showers Can Prevent Training Progress: mTOR, etc.
(01:06:29) Alcohol, Caffeine, NSAIDs: Their Temperature Effects Matter
(01:09:44) Are Stimulants Counter Productive For Performance? It Depends.
(01:12:00) The Caffeine Rule & “Caffeine Adaptation”
(01:14:20) NSAIDs for Training: Performance Enhancements & Risks
(01:17:00) The Best Way to Explore Your Own “Parameter Space”
(01:18:35) Tools: How To Try
(01:21:35) Cost-Free Support, & Additional Support & Resources
Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac
Disclaimer
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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. This podcast is separate from my teaching
Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring you 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.
Is Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is an all-in-one vitamin mineral probiotic drink. I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2000.
So I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens
I like Athletic Greens once or twice a day is that it helps me cover all of my basic nutritional needs.
Any deficiencies that I might have. In addition, it has probiotics, which are vital for...
Microbiome health. I've done a couple of episodes now on the so-called gut microbiome and the ways in which the...
Biome interacts with your immune system, with your brain to regulate mood, and essentially with every biological system relevant to health throughout your brain and body.
I get the vitamins I need, the minerals I need, and the probiotics to support my microbiome.
- Try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman and claim a special offer.
Five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2.
A ton of data now showing that vitamin D3 is essential for various aspects of our brain and body health. Even if we're getting a lot of sunshine, many of us are still deficient in vitamin D3.
And K2 is also important because it regulates things like cardiovascular function, calcium in the body, and so on.
Go to athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim the special offer of the five free travel packs and the year supply of vitamin D3 K2.
This episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the exact ratios of electrolytes are an element.
And those are sodium, magnesium, and potassium, but it has no sugar. I've talked many times before on this podcast about the key role of hydration and electrolytes for nerve cell function, neuron function, as well as the function of all the cells
And organ systems of the body. If we have sodium, magnesium, and potassium present in the proper ratios, all of those cells function properly and all our bodily systems can be optimized. If the electrolytes are not present and if hydration is low.
We simply can't think as well as we would otherwise. Our mood is off, hormone systems go off, our ability to get into physical action, to engage in endurance and strength and all sorts of other things is diminished.
So with element, you can make sure that you're staying on top of your hydration and that you're getting the proper ratios of electrolytes. If you'd like to try element, you can.
And go to drink element that's lmnt.com/huberman, and you'll get a free element sample pack with your purchase. They're all delicious.
If you want to try Element, you can go to elementlmnt.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up. Waking Up is a meditation app.
That includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and NSDR, non-sleep deep rest protocol.
I started using the Waking Up app a few years ago because even though I've been doing regular meditation since my teens, and I started doing yoga nidra about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an app, turned out to be the Waking Up app which could teach you meditations of different durations and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place the brain and body into different states and that he liked it very much. So I gave the Waking Up app a try and I too found it to be extremely useful because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate, other times I have longer to meditate and indeed I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain and body into lots of different kinds of states depending on which meditation I do. I also love that the Waking Up app has lots of different types of yoga nidra sessions. For those of you who don't know, yoga nidra is a process of lying very still but keeping an active mind. It's very different than most meditations and there's excellent scientific data to show that.
And something similar to it called non-sleep deep rest or NSTR can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy, even with just a short 10 minute session. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, you can go to wakingup.com/huberman and access a free 30 day trial. Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman to access a free 30 day trial. This episode marks the beginning of a new topic.
For the Huberman Lab Podcast. As many of you already know, we go deep into a particular topic over four, sometimes even five episodes. We just closed out the episodes on.
Now we are going to talk about how to optimize physical performance and skill learning. We're going to look deep at the science behind this as well as specific practices. In fact, today you're going to hear about specific.
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