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Andy Galpin: The science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play and Life. Welcome to Perform. I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor and scientist and the executive director of the Human Performance center at Parker University. Today we're going to be talking about exercise and more specifically, strength training for kids. Now, I've wanted to talk about this for a long time and it only hit me recently how ironic it is that I've never actually been asked about my views or how I interpret the research in this area in any public format.

Never been asked to give any scientific talks or really ever. This has come up in any podcasts I've done as a guest. And that's ironic because almost nothing else has filled my inbox, my DMs, my emails, more than this. Oftentimes, when I'm stopped in public or asked from friends and family, it is questions like this is it okay for my kids to lift?

If so, how and when? And who should I pay attention to? How do I determine a quality coach? I'm all for health and exercise, but I just don't know where to get started. So whether you are in the camp of thinking, of course this is great, it's a no brainer or you're concerned or you don't know or you're unsure, there's a lot of stuff we can unpack today. A recent publication in 2022, not 1994 or 1972, 2022 in the journal of American Medical Association Pediatrics. I want to read this quote from you directly and you'll understand why this is so confusing to many people, whether this is consumers, parents or even medical professionals.

The paper was trying to advocate for more physical activity in kids. This is something we're all supporting. But despite that, they said, I quote, weightlifting is not appropriate for younger children because the strain may be too high for developing muscles, tendons and bones. That is as untrue as we could possibly imagine. The data are clear on this and specific, and so this is why we need to continue to cover topics like this. If you're already a supporter, great, awesome, keep sharing the word. But you can have a little bit of empathy.

Why it is confusing again, even to medical practitioners when things like this are put out in the scientific literature. We're going to cover five things today. First, we're going to go over some of these common myths and misconceptions, whether they are positive and negative, so that we're all on the same page with what the current state of the evidence actually shows us. After that I want to get into some of the documented benefits, whether these are the cognitive, mental, as in mental health and or physical benefits that have been associated with exercise and specifically again resistance exercise. If you are a consistent or previous listener to the Perform podcast, you will know what I mean when I say we'll cover the three I's. If you're new, the first I we call investigate. So how do we actually measure this?

And you can translate that into thinking, well, how do I know if my kid is moving well or moving bad? What does that even mean? What should I test? How do I know if those scores are good? How do I interpret those data? Which would be the second eye? So we'll cover common recommendations.

What should you test? What should you look for? And then how do you interpret that? We'll then get into the third eye which is the intervene. In other words, what do you do about it? What are the do's and don'ts? So that's the stuff we're going to cover today when we get into all things regarding exercise and specifically strength training for kids.

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Hydration is critical to performance, both physical and mental performance. Countless studies have shown that even a slight degree of dehydration, even as small as 1%, can lead to decreases in physical output and mental performance. We also know that electrolytes are critical to proper hydration, which I've been harping on for years. But you can't do that proper hydration by only drinking water. You need to get the right amount of electrolytes in the right ratios, and that's why I'm a huge fan of elementary. In fact, many of you will probably remember that I featured element in my YouTube series on optimizing hydration nearly five years ago. I featured Element in these videos because their blend of a thousand milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium really is unique and different than any other electrolyte on the market, and it has great scientific support.

I use Element constantly, particularly when I'm sweating a lot, and I routinely make it a part of my clients optimization programs. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinklmnt.com perform to claim a free Element Sample pack with the purchase of any Element Drink mix. Again, that's drinklmnt.com perform to claim a free sample pack. Let's get started by going all the way back to the beginning, I can finally answer this question that I have been hounded with for many, many years now. And that is simply where did some of these misconceptions get started? Why do people think it's bad or dangerous for kids to lift weights? And probably the most common one, which we will talk about.

Why do we think it stunts growth? I'll give you a spoiler alert. It doesn't. But where does even all get started? Well, most of the time there's a direct and simple reason, and in this case it's no different. You have to go all the way back to the 1960s. Couple things to pay attention to.

Number one, exercise science was not a field until really the 1960s and didn't really take off until the 70s and 80s. So upwards at that time pediatric medicine also wasn't really much of a field. And so prior to the 1960s we didn't have any information. And I think it's fair for parents and other leaders to be cautious about things when you have no data to go off of. And so from a starting default place, I think it was reasonable to say, we don't know if it's safe, therefore we're just gonna assume it's not safe until shown otherwise. And that's an okay default position. More specifically here, the very first paper that shot this thing off was a really renowned study in this field that came out of Japan again in the 1960s.

And what it found was an association between kids who were involved in high amounts of hard labor being shorter in life. Now, the ability to look back at this, you know, some 80 years later, obviously you can in your head and on all of you astute scientists now are able to think, okay, wait a minute. What are probably some of the confounding factors that are associated with this? Kids doing a lot of hard labor, probably other things going on. Malnutrition, environmental toxins, lots of other issues that are going to contribute to them not being as tall as they should have been. But at that time it was an association, and again, no other information. They just assumed then that even though, again, the study was not in strength training, to be really clear, there was just an association with hard manual labor in kids was going to stunt your growth.

And that myth persisted for decades, mostly because we just didn't have any other information. 1970s, 1980s, there wasn't a lot of research again coming out on kids. Not a lot of research at all, if any, on kids and strength training. By the time the 1990s came around, the National Strength and Conditioning Association, NSCA. I've spoken about this organization many, many times. The research was there, this organization was all over it advocating for strength training. The science was coming out.

And so now the general culture was, you can't really argue it's bad for kids anymore. But they weren't really strongly arguing that you have to go out and do it either. It was kind of just like a, well, it's okay. It's not as dangerous as we thought, so it's fine. But no one was really banging on the door to say, get kids in the weight room, get them to start lifting. Outside of the NSCA group, things changed dramatically. In 2008, this point, there was enough data and research that it was really, really positive for kids.

And so people had to start changing these policy statements. 2020, actually, a big update came from this policy stand. And now it is just inarguably that the benefits are not only small, but they are large, they are robust, and they cover a lot of different areas. And it is overall a fantastic and amazing activity for kids. And so that is awesome. But at the same time, remember just a couple of years ago, we still had statements like we didn't be strength training kids in that journal I mentioned earlier. And so it's hard.

It's just a confusing thing for people to pay attention to what most of us are going to agree on. Yes, it should be supervised. Yes, it should be progressed appropriately. And I will cover all of these rules in one moment. But if done well, these are really, really beneficial activities for kids to do. If not done well, then of course, don't do them. The first thing I like to understand are these handful of what we call the zombie myths.

Now, I stole this term from a guy named Dr. Avery Feigenbaum. Point of fun here. I tried like crazy to get Avery to come in himself and be a guest on the show to cover this topic. He maybe takes a little bit more nudging. So if you'd like to see him come in next season, let him know. But I asked him because I've seen him speak many times.

He is probably the world's foremost authority on strength training in kids. He's got dozens, if not hundreds of publications. He's on every position statement and stand you'll ever find and so forth. And I'm bringing him up now because of not only his contribution, but because he's the one that I've heard for a couple of decades now call these the zombie myths. And he calls them that because they are just myths that will not die. And so, as homage to you, Dr. Fagenbaum, I wanted to bring up some of the more common myths that just won't die regarding kids and exercise.

And I'm going to rip them off real fast here. Six of them I want to cover. I'm not going to get into the science of the physiology. I just want to make sure that that for you short attention span people, we know what these myths are and what the truth is. So let's go. Myth number one, strength training stunts growth or and otherwise is harmful for your bones and growth plates. I covered this in a previous episode of Perform, one that we did on bone health specifically.

And we could just be easy and clear here. This is insanely untrue. In fact, the research is gonna show you it is quite opposite. Strength training is generally very beneficial for kids and short for short and long term bone health. Myth number two, I told you we're going to blast past these ones here is that strength training or exercise in general is only for athletes. So if my kid is not an athlete, we don't need to worry about that. Well, if you've been paying attention to anything I've said the last decade and specifically something that we end every show with, if you have a body, you're an athlete.

I'm going to advocate strongly for this the entire length of our discussion today and I'll give you more context later. Number three, that you should wait until you're 12 years old to start lifting. Another kind of a similar one that I batched in here was this idea that kids actually can't get strong until they get to puberty. Neither of these are true. In fact, kids are ready to strength train as soon as they are ready to follow safety instructions. They can pay attention and they want to. Generally means something like the neighborhood of five to seven years old.

Could be earlier, could be later, but if they can do those things, they are physically ready to start strength training. Number four, that it makes girls bulky. This is a common one that lasts I guess through any age. Another myth. It is very hard for girls or boys to gain a lot of muscle mass, especially prior to puberty. They'll get a lot of benefit from it. They're mostly neurological and skill development and motor control.

But putting on a tremendous amount of muscle mass is very unlikely for girls or boys at this age. Number five. That it. This is actually funny because it goes the opposite. I've heard a lot of things about how it will actually start puberty early. Same thing with menses. It'll get the onset of it happen earlier.

I've also heard the opposite, that it delays it. None of those are true. It doesn't alter puberty at all. It'll be just fine. It is completely irrelevant to it. The final one is that this is all good and great, but it requires expensive equipment or high priced trainers and special coaches. Neither of those are true.

In fact, we're going to spend a lot of time in the next few minutes covering tons of examples, drills, resources, activities that can be done at free or low cost with your body weight and at home in local parks and so forth. So now that we've gotten all of those really common myths out of the way, let's step back and make sure we're actually talking the same language. And I'm doing this because I want to play a game with you. My guess is if I asked you all right now to sit down and think Very carefully. And I said, do you think it's okay for kids to play? Everyone would throw their hand up. Yes, of course.

What if I said the same thing about is it okay for kids to play sports? Well, maybe there'd be some hands that go, I don't. But most of you would say, yes, of course. If I said, should kids work on their coordination and have better body control? Again, all of you would put your hands up. But if I said the exact same thing, but I just changed the words or the terms, and I changed them to things like strength training, not as many hands go up, boy. Not sure.

I think so, but actually they're not. Or resistance exercise, weightlifting, plyometrics. We would have way less consensus across the board. One of the things you have to realize is I've basically said the same thing in all those cases. See, when you hear this topic and you think about strength training and exercising kids, most adults take an adult centric view rather than a child centric view. What I'm referring to is when I tell you to go lift weights and exercise, you think, I'm gonna go run for five miles. You think I'm signing up for a gym membership, I'm gonna do body part splits, I'm gonna do a 90 minute tricep routine, I'm lifting weights, I'm deadlifting.

That's how adults exercise. That's not how kids exercise. Right. When you hear things like strength, I'm not necessarily referring to weights at all. If I even say weights, I'm not referring to bodybuilding, I'm not referring to muscle hypertrophy. I'm not even referring to maximum strength training. You see, nowhere in this conversation have I said maximal strength until just now.

But many people, this whole time we're hearing maximum strength as if the only way and the only method we can use strength training for was to try to develop maximum strength. When you think strength training and exercising kids, the kid centric approach would be movement literacy. The primary goal of strength training for kids should be to enhance movement literacy. Now, that is a very specific phrase and we use it that way intentionally. I just want you to be more literate with movement. What that means better locomotion, more coordination, more control, better stability. Move how you want and don't move how you don't want.

Movement options, movement variety, movement choice, unique and independent and creative ways to solve movement problems. That's movement literacy. That is strength training for kids. It's not an hour and a half calf workout. It's not maximizing strength or powerlifting or competing. So hopefully that alone cleared up one of the biggest misconceptions we've got in this entire field, that when we say strength, that we're meaning things like that when we're actually meaning almost always movement literacy in kids, movement, quality, motor control, coordination. They're not direct synonyms for strength, but they're pretty darn close.

In fact, we actually know this. This has been shown scientifically that kids that are more coordinated, even those that think they're more coordinated when they're not. So their perception of coordination, are going to be more physically active as both kids and adults. You see what I'm saying? Getting your kids more coordinated will mean they're more likely to be physically active when they're adults. And so right there, from our bottom foundation, we know we have to enhance coordination in kids. So then the next logical step is, how do we best do that?

Well, again, this has been shown scientifically that strength is the key detriment, the biggest determinant of motor control function in kids. So when you. I say strength, if you need to translate that in your brain of saying, oh, he just wants my kid to be more coordinated, fine. We're actually on the same page. I like the word strength. If you don't like the word strength, fine. All good there.

By the same token, when you go to that your strength coach or when you go to your facility and you say, hey, my kid's just really uncoordinated, a really solid coach is going to hear that and go, okay, we got to get that kid stronger. And they're not meaning they got to work on their deadlift. Probably they don't need to maximize their overhead press, but that is just how the words will be translated. I really hope that helps us understand what we're saying, because oftentimes we are saying the same things from both sides here. But people just don't make that connection. That strength and coordination are incredibly overlapped, particularly at this age. I want to do another game.

Think about the difference between movement vocabulary and language vocabulary. In other words, I will go through this example almost always talking about language. I want you to translate in your brain. Also to go, how would I think about this differently if I switch this from language vocabulary to movement vocabulary? Again, that's why we use vocabulary. Okay, number one, language vocabulary. When do you start teaching your kids language?

I get this question all the time. When do I start teaching my kids to strength train? When do we start them in sports? When, when, when, when do I start? Well, when do you start language Development, you start at moment one. You start at day one. I've got children, I know this.

You are talking to your kids the moment they arrive. And you never stop talking to your kids. Now, you don't expect a lot of payback out of that. Initially, there's not a lot of return on investment. You're not seeing anything. But if you didn't talk to your kids for six months, they were not going to wake up at three years old speaking. It's not going to happen. You start it very early and it takes forever for improvements to make.

But that's because that development is so hard. Going from no language to one language is one of the most costly things your brain will ever do.

Okay, so when do I start? Day one. Well, how do I do it? It's age appropriate. You use language to your one year old or your one month old. It's short, it's one word, it's simple phrases. You're using a lot of facial expressions to try to convey a point, try to make context. Right. It is age appropriate.

You don't overwhelm them with language. You try to make it fun. You see the analogies I'm drawing here, right? So when do I start it? Immediately. How do I do it? Age appropriate, make it fun, so on and so forth.

Why do I even worry about it? Well, this sounds silly if I say why worry about teaching your kids how to talk? But again, doesn't sound as silly if I say, well, why do I even want to strength train my kids? I get that question a lot. I never have gotten the question, why do I teach my kids language? But think about it. You teach your kids language so that they can express themselves. Oh, interesting.

We know of the short and long term benefits or effects, I should say negative effects, consequences of being illiterate. We know how hard this is to be socially involved. You can't be a part of a community if you can't read. It's harder, you can't speak. Right. These are challenges. You have better job prospects, make more money.

I could keep dragging this on. You will find scientific evidence that makes the same connections to those exact same variables. And exercising kits. Exact same ones. Not to the same extent. I'm not going to argue that. But the same ones will be shown to be associated.

Now, how much do you do, how often do you teach your kids language? Same thing with exercise. You want to stimulate, but you don't want to annihilate. In other words, we read to our kids every day. And my kids kids have to Read to us every day, and every day it's a fight. My son can handle about five minutes at max. My daughter will.

Sometimes it's a page, sometimes it's a whole chapter a little bit older. I never let them off the hook. We push them, we drive them. We don't just say, oh, you don't want to read today, no problem. But we don't try to annihilate them either. Right now, I'm not saying I'm a perfect parent, but you get the point. I don't want to burn them into a situation where they hate reading, but I'm also gonna drive them and push them a little bit.

The analogies are completely extended here. You get what I'm going at with that one. So I know that was really long and drawn out, but I wanted to do that because if you honestly think about exercise and movement like you do language, the concepts are almost identical. And so if you ever find yourself in a situation where you're wondering if you're doing the right thing or going about it, so on and so forth, if you think, would this be appropriate for teaching language, there's a very strong likelihood it would or wouldn't be appropriate for teaching movement as well. I appreciate you sticking with me through that one. Another thing I wanted to go back to was something I started the show with, and that was this idea that, you know, I didn't lift my kids.

Don't need to. Kids have never done this before as a species. They're fine. Kids know how to move automatically, so on and so forth. And I told you I was going to make an argument that this generation is the very first where I actually don't agree with that anymore. And I think we had to go farther. Bunch of reasons why, but I'll be brief here.

Number one, you all obviously are aware of the chronic health crisis the whole world is facing. We're going to make a very strong argument that this starts with childhood. I've already alluded to some points. You can pick a lot of different areas. But you'll see routinely what happens to you as a kid is going to dramatically impact what happens to you as an adult. So solving the adult health crisis is starting by solving the children or childhood crisis. I'm not going to go over all the details, but, you know, childhood obesity is skyrocketing.

It's something like 400 million kids globally are considered to be overweight, and 160 million are obese. And I think in the states, it's like 20%. It might even be higher than that of all 2 to 19 year olds. Just probably, you know, 15 to 20 million kids are categorically obese. We also know that physical performance is dramatically lower. This is physical strength and motor skill and movement pretty much across the board. We're going down now.

This is happening for a lot of reasons. And this is the part where I think most people have not understood why that's happening. People are aware general physical activity in the world is down. We know that. Right. All right, well, why is it happening? Number one, it starts at home.

No big surprise here. But kids will model parents. Parents are less active than they've ever been and communities are less active. The activities your parents did as a weekend, as a family activity are just far different than what they are now. And so entire not just about you and your life, it's about what you're exposed to when you go to your friend's house and so forth. So overall physical activity way down. Kids play outside way less than they used to.

Physical activity itself is way down. The standards that we'll use in science are things like kids should be physically active for 60 minutes a day, but this is going to floor you across the globe. In the US as well, 80% of kids fail to hit that number. We're not missing the mark here. We're not even in the stratosphere. There have been, and depending on where you live, this may or may not be true. Huge reductions in PE physical activity in schools.

So your kids, unlike your generation, they're not getting physical activity in schools. So where you didn't have to go out of your way to take your kids after school to one of these specialized strength conditioning programs. You were getting it in school. They aren't. Recess is also way down in general. So calorie thing, but a movement literacy thing is happening on top of all that. Sports are phenomenal.

I'm a huge advocate. But sports alone, because of these first two things I just said lack of general physical activity and lack of activity in schools. Because of that, sports are no longer just enough. Sports participation is way down. The COVID pandemic crushed it. Prior to that, we were at all time historical lows. It is coming up.

People are recovering from that. That's fantastic. Depending on where you look at, you'll see as high as like 50 to 54% of kids in America at least will participate in organized sports. But that's not enough. We need that number to be higher. But the sports alone won't cover all your bases. In addition to just simple caloric expenditure. The. Well, first of all, the caloric expenditure in sports is not nearly as high as you think.

If we move all the physical activity away that I just done talking about. So you're not gonna get there with sports alone. So where in previous generations, sports alone might have been enough to cover your bases, I don't think it is anymore. And I think that the scientific evidence would again, generally support that conclusion. Now, with all that in your mind, what actual issues does this cause downstream? First obvious one, call it energy deficit. In fact, Dr.

Feigenbaum called this the exercise deficit disorder, EDD. But this is not moving enough, not burning enough calories, metabolic health and so on and so forth. The obvious one, right. But past that, more importantly are the second two points here. So the second big problem is what's called dynapenia. Again, this is a Dr. Fagenbaum special.

Typically we use that word in context of older individuals, but this is also true in young kids. This is basically, think about it as underdeveloped muscle and underdeveloped strength. Why does that matter? You combine number one and number two and you get number three, which is what I call the death spiral. Perhaps I'm being a little dramatic there, but this is physical illiteracy. I've been talking about physical language and being literate. What is illiteracy?

Here's the spiral. If you move poorly and you start to fall behind your peers, you lose confidence really quickly. And the research is going to suggest this hits young girls harder than it does young boys. Come back to that. But you lose confidence, you lose confidence, you stop having fun, you stop having fun, you become less active. Kids that fall behind physically fall behind really far, really fast because of this spiral. They know they're not good, they're behind everybody.

Young kids tease each other more often. You know how this goes. It's not the kid's fault. This is just what 4 and 5 and 8 and 10 year olds do, right? So they become less active, they get less confident, and then what ultimately happens? And he'd be surprised to know this, but it's very true. Kids that are less physically active, we'll get hurt more as adults.

So oftentimes you get this experience, oh, I wasn't good, I sucked at sports, I was terrible. So then I didn't do them because you didn't want to get made fun of, so on and so forth. Maybe no one is even making fun of you, but just your self confidence. You knew you were the worst player on the whole team, so you stop doing it. You withdraw from physical or typically from sports, which means then often you withdraw from physical activity, which means you stay further behind, maybe, hopefully. Then as an adult you catch up and realize, okay, I gotta start working out. But you're physically illiterate or your literacy is low.

You don't know how to move well. You don't have the tissue tolerance, you don't have the experience. You don't know how to creatively solve movement problems. You don't know what good technique is because you never learned that feedback, either directly from a coach or indirectly. You just never figured out how your body moves best. So then when you start moving as an adult, bada bing, bada boom, you get hurt more often. This is not, oh, you're old now, you're 25, you're 35, you're 45.

This is in large part, not exclusively, but in large part a physical illiteracy issue. And it started by poor movement support as a kid. So it harms them now or then, and as a child, and then it also harms them later in life. That physical downward spiral thing again has been shown multiple times and is a real issue. And there's ways you can solve it. Not every kid needs to be an athlete, not every kid needs to be good at sports. But when that happens, if that happen as it happens, we need to have other solutions that are not just, okay, the kid withdraws from all physical activity because that causes a cascade of problems.

So what are the benefits? I'm going to talk about all the benefits of again, mostly gearing on strength training or strength training related ideas from the physical body. We'll talk about it from the cognitive perspective as well as the mental or mental health. So from a physical perspective, this is very easy and very fast. Any positive benefit from exercise you see in adult, you basically see it in a kid as well. Lifetime physical activity. Kids that are more physically active will be more physically active their entire life again, on average.

Most likely they're more skilled, they're more confident, they're less injured. We just talked about why. Cardiovascular fitness, metabolic health, obesity, body composition, muscle mass, bone health. We've talked about that earlier in this show as well as our previous episode on bone health. The connective tissue, the ligament health, this is an easy one. Well rounded strength training programs, ones that perform everything from endurance and strength and motor skill and balance and agility, comprehensive programs, these things reduce injuries in kids by up to 50%. In fact, I saw some papers showing up to 60% reduction so your kids won't be hurt.

As often as kids and they won't be hurt as often later in life. The physical ones are easy. I could do an entire show on that. But I wanted to actually spend a little more time on ones that are less intuitive. And this is things like the actual intelligence. At least five different global areas across many studies now, across many years, in different populations, whether we're talking about really young kids, adolescents, somewhere in between. So I'm kind of summarizing, well, I'm summarizing a lot of literature here, but in general you will see a important, not huge, but an important clinically significant and statistically significant enhancement in intelligence with strength training in kids. That's true. Right? That is exactly what you think you just heard.

Couple things to think about. One, there is a very well documented benefit in executive function with endurance exercise. It's been long established. Executive function in this case is typically defined as things like working memory, flexibility. Again we're talking about mental flexibility and well as inhibition. So that's been well established. More recently we've learned about things like the more variety in sports and the more overall physical activities.

That's two variables. Just doing more variation in sports, playing more sports as well as overall physical activity. Both of those have been shown to enhance academic performance in schools. Big areas you see improvements in overall cognitive function, direct academic achievements as well as on task behavior. So a lot of direct, what I'll just again call intelligence benefits. The list of what one would maybe call mental health benefits is even longer and I'm not going to take the time to go through all of these because it is very, very long. It is everything from kids who play sports are oftentimes slightly happier than kids that don't.

Anxiety, depression, ADHD have all been shown to be benefited from resistance exercise, confidence and self esteem like we talked about, especially in females. These are huge ones. A perceived competence. We've mentioned this one before as well one more time. This is really important because one of the big drivers in physical activity involvement in kids is just how bad they think they are relative to their peers. Resilience, ability to get, demonstrate grit or develop grit, another really common measure for strength training. And again mental health factors.

So those things are all important to consider. The physical, the cognitive and the overall emotional or mental benefits of exercise. Lastly, stronger kids tend to be stronger adults. There's actually direct evidence looking at things like type 2 diabetes. Kids that are more physically active, strength trained more, played more sports are less likely to develop diabetes later in life. Right. You're talking about now years to Decades later, independent of what happened in that time, if you're more active.

And this is actually true after accounting for familial co founders. So this is research specifically looking at things like siblings. So it's not just saying, oh, kids are, you know, if you're in a more active family, of course you didn't get more diabetes. No, no, no. Accounted for something inherent to being active as a kid. Will protect you somewhat, won't totally save you of course, but will give you some protection about from developing diabetes. And we can be confident in this because there's lots of other similar research.

Similar things have been shown directly on atherosclerosis, heart disease. In fact, I'm thinking of a 40 year follow up study. The kids that were more active, you know, getting younger in life, 40 years later, directly measuring those same people, again, lower rates of atherosclerosis. Yes, there is some association here, but again, we're seeing it in multiple areas. Diabetes, heart disease. We're seeing it when accounting for family history. We're seeing it in direct follow ups, we're seeing it in intervention studies, we're seeing it in questionnaires, we're seeing it in epidemiology.

So when you start to see the same kind of thing across multiple domains of research design, multiple domains of dependent variables, multiple domains of magnitude of effect, it starts to paint a pretty clear picture that says, okay, there's something going on here. Second thing that's important here, this is nothing specifically to do with sports. So even if your kid doesn't play sports, you don't play sports, you're not into sports, you don't think your kid will ever play sports, doesn't matter. You need to be physically active in a broad sense of the word. For all of these reasons, I just established, not only for them as a kid, for their bones and their muscle health and their cardiovascular health and their current metabolic health and blah blah, blah, for their academic performance, for their mental health, but also because it sets them up with a much better future when they become adults later on in life. Today's episode is sponsored by AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral drink with probiotics, prebiotics and adaptogens.

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By this point, I hope I've convinced you of the necessity for these things. Regardless of the situation or scenario that you're in. I want to transition now and start getting into our three eyes. First ones we're going to tackle, investigate and interpret. And again, if this is new for you or your first time listener or perform, what I'm really just trying to say is how do you even test your kid? What should you test them on? What should you look for?

How should you set it up and how do you interpret? How do you know if your kid's way behind in gross motor or fine motor skills? How do you know if they're way ahead or on point and so forth, I wanted to give you a really simple system here. And so actually there are some resources. One of them that's available to everybody is called the Y Fit Right? That stands for Youth Fitness International Test Y F I T.

This is open access. This is peer reviewed, published, but anyone can go do it now. The benefit of this is it's simple, it doesn't take a lot of technical savvy, the tests aren't really complicated and so forth. So what they came up with is five unique tests. These tests are your height, your weight, and they can use those first two, height and weight, to then calculate what's called your body mass index or your bmi. No, BMI is not a perfect measure of body composition at the individual level. But if you're trying to run 30 or 50 or 150 or 1500 kids through something and you're trying to get a broad scope of where they're at.

Again, remember how this was developed and who it was for. The BMI is reasonable. So test one and two, height and weight. Test number three is actually a 20 meter shuttle run. This is a good way to get an overall understanding of their cardiovascular fitness. Number four is a hand grip strength test, so maximum grip strength. And then number five is a standing long jump.

And so you can see, all right, height and weight. Tell me a little bit about body composition. Tell me a little bit about metabolic health. 20 meter run tells me about my cardiovascular fitness, my grip strength tells me about my strength and my jumping ability. Tells me a little bit about my coordination and my power. If you want in that paper they have a handful of things, they tell you exactly how to do these tests. So you can literally print it out and follow the instructions, how to set it up, what the rules are, how to standardize it, all that I'm not going to walk you through them.

Now some people will care about this, others won't, but you can go pull that up. Will also of course have direct links to the paper as well as the standardization tables in the show. Note captions, you can always check those out. That's true for everything we're going to talk about. One of the things that's also important about this YFIT test is it comes with a national database. And so if actually if you go pull up the paper again, open access, meaning anyone can access it for free in the supplemental data they share with you, their normative value databases. So you can go test your kid or look at numbers there and then see where your kid stacked up on all five of those tests.

Another one that also gives out the normative database here, the normal values so you can compare and contrast is something called fitback that is F, I, T, bac, B, A, C, K. Again, this is open access. This was published just this year, I believe. Really cool paper where they walk you through exactly how this testing thing was built and how to do it. And the fitback program I believe is free. And what it allows you to do is you can go online. And I think it is.

I'm not sure, I think it's fitback.com I'm not exactly sure. But the link to fitback will be again in the show notes. But this is cool and I liked it and I tinkered around with it a bunch because you can take your kids information, their results on all those scores, plug them in and they'll generate with you a custom report for your kid. So if you are working and you're maybe even volunteering and you're doing something like this, you can create custom little reports for all your kids and your parents, and the software will do it all for you. It doesn't take you a lot of time. You just enter in their scores and they'll plug it in completely free. So I thought that was a really nice resource, regardless of where you're at.

And so both of those papers and those resources are my best and strongest recommendations for going out and getting some testing done for every kid. You can also do them, you know, boys or girls, you can do them at any age and you can see where they stack up again according to their most relevant peers. Now, whether your kid is in sports or not, I really strongly encourage you to do this for a bunch of reasons. Number one, it's really hard to establish what's called return to play without normative data. What that means is if your kid gets hurt, your doctor's not gonna know if they're fully healed or not. Now, if they have an MRI or something like that, sure. But just because it doesn't have any structural visible damage, your kid may or may not be all the way back.

If you don't know what their normal vertical jump was or broad jump was, then you actually don't know if that knee is fully healed, even if it's not a serious injury. Even if it's, ah, yeah, it doesn't hurt that bad anymore, Mom. Okay. Are you sure? Well, if you go out and they're jumping as far as they possibly can, and they're still, you know, only at 85% of their max distance, then you know, they're not really back yet. And so having a baseline is really important. Number two, one of the things that people don't appreciate about youth development is development happens really fast.

Growth and development are not the same thing, though. Growth and development also happen in a non uniform fashion. Translation, you'll go through spurts. Your kids will get really strong, really fast, and then they'll stop for a while, they'll get really tall, and then they won't grow. They'll go. And it's not necessarily the same. Their quadriceps, the front of their legs may develop really fast and their hamstrings won't.

And so when your kid used to be normal, maybe you had tests done, they look great, they didn't have huge asymmetries, everything awesome. Well, now, three months later, they might have A large asymmetry somewhere because something grew in a specific area. Because the whole body doesn't grow uniformly, bones grow differently, structures grow differently, abilities, motor skills, muscles I just talked about. So for all those reasons and more, I would recommend some type of standardized testing. If you want to do the simple one like I just talked about with the YFIT test, great. If you have more access to maybe a quality strength conditioning coach or a physical therapist and you can do some more specific strength tests and, and movement tests or movement skills, that's great. Anything objective you can get, even if they're not an athlete.

For all these reasons and more, I'd recommend getting some baseline testing done. Other ways to think about this and the way that I actually like to frame this is say your kid's done some testing, maybe you've got all those stuff done. At what point are they ready to get a private coach? At one point, are they ready to focus more on, say, sport development right now? Again, I've got this question a lot. Here's kind of my answer to it. I'll give you nine or ten things Your kid is ready to have a skills coach, so that golf coach, or that pitching coach, or that kicking coach, or whatever you're trying to do, when and only when they can pass the following test, are they good at these few things.

If they're good at these things, they can do those skills coaches. Number one, can they skip in a straight line? You'd be stunned. You do not need a sprint coach or a speed coach or a shooting coach if your kid can't skip in a straight line, if they can't backpedal, if they can't do a crawl for 20 yards with low hips, right? So do a bear crawl without their hips going way up in the air for 20 yards. Can they do a crab hold for 30 seconds? Can they do a dead hang?

So grabbing a bar and hanging for 30 seconds, right? Can they do a one legged balance for 30 seconds? Can they do 10 lunges in a row without falling to the side consistently? Can they hop forward on one leg? You'll be really surprised how few kids can hop forward on one leg. Not in place, but actually moving forward. Can they do a cartwheel, a somersault?

Can they do a shoulder roll? Right now you don't have to do all of these things, but you get the point. If they can't do some of these basic rudimentary movement patterns, they probably shouldn't spend too much time developing specific sports skills. If your kid is active and involved and aggressive and mom, dad, I want to do more. And you're looking at this list and they want to, you know, practice golf more, play more, get their soccer coach or whatever. I would probably say great, we can do more coaching, kid, but we're going to work on this stuff. You need more foundational movement before we're ready to not necessarily do any skill coaching.

You can teach your two year old skill, right? I'm fine teaching whatever age skill, but the bulk of the training is what we're talking about. Don't do most of their training, don't do all their training if they're in this situation. Okay, so hopefully between that standardized test and this more non scientific test that I just gave you, this gives you a little more insights and is some help here. Outside of that, giving you more details about what to test and what to look for are incredibly hard. And that is fundamentally because kids develop at such wildly different rates, it's impossible to say, oh, a good leg press for a 10 year old is this. It just doesn't exist.

In fact, if you were to find those databases outside of the ones I gave you, I think you would see so much pushback from the scientists and the practitioners in this area of saying that's just an inappropriate way to frame it. You shouldn't look at your 7 year old and see how fast she can throw a softball in terms of understanding her development.

She's good, bad. That's a really bad way to think about it because again, kids are developing at such wild ranges. I can tell you normative values for a VO2 max for a 25 year old and I'm confident in those numbers. I can tell you how much muscle you should have as a 48 year old. I could tell you what a good vertical jump is for a 65 year old. I'm fine because most 65 year olds are pretty similar, or you should be, but most six year olds are not. There's no such thing as most 6 year olds.

I hope that point is coming through. The deviation is just wild. So while I would love to give you more direct exact tests to go do and more standardizations, I hope you can just follow those guidelines I gave you and say that is intuitive as we can get it. All right, it's now time for us then to move on to our third eye which is intervene. And at this point I'm going to talk about exact programs, how to lift, what to do, what not to do, and we're going to go over all the details as we understand it. Within the concepts and guidelines we have. So if you've been chomping at the bit to know, just.

Andy gave me the workout programs. I'll do my best. Right now, let's start off by understanding just what global physical activity should look like. Remember, this is all things human movement packed together first and foremost. The standard should always be positive experiences. We went over this countless times now. Fun, positive, set them up for the rest of their life.

Good relationships with exercise and movement. This is above and beyond anything else. Past that, you want to think about first and foremost, what we just call open play. When I hear strength training in kids, I honestly translate that to play for the most part. And most practitioners in this space do that same thing. So you want to think more play, less structure than you probably anticipate.

Child centric, not adult centric. Think about exercising kids the way kids think about it. Don't think about it how you think about it as an adult. Now this is especially true for the quote unquote kids that are not good at traditional sports. Have them do parkour, ninja warrior, obstacle courses, martial arts. If they suck at ball sports, find different ways to allow them to enjoy and be a part of physical activity that's just as good, if not better. Second thing, we gotta do our best to encourage and try to change overall philosophy on physical exercise and activity in schools. Pe. We've gotta keep it no matter what happens, we just have to keep it.

We're gonna have a hard time surviving as healthy adults if we eliminate PE from school. I understand why it happened. I understand why a few decades ago there was this big push to eliminate it. There's certainly the philosophy that my kids go to school to learn. I don't need to send my kids to school all day to play sports. We're not a sport family, we don't do sports. So on and so forth.

I get it. But I hope in the previous hour I've argued why that doesn't matter. That is irrelevant to the conversation. Physical education in schools is incredibly important to having a healthy, alive adult. And we're just not going to have the time to do that on our own. If we can do that. We're encouraging kids to play whether they're good or sports or not, especially ones that are not.

We're keeping and holding physical activity and exercise and physical education precious in schools. We're making sure recess is truly recess. Then if we're going to add sports on top of that. For those who wish to afford to. You want to choose a variety of sports we don't want to stick to just one. We'll talk more detail why. But big guidelines are more appropriate here than individual programs.

I will, I promise you, give you a sample program. But guidelines are more informative for everybody listening. What I mean by that, development in kids, like we said, is non specific and irregular. It doesn't happen linearly. The variance is enormous. Right. So classifying kids into programs based on age is suboptimal.

We will do it. I get it. You show up, you own a swim center, you have to give some sort of ways to group kids, right? You own a gym and there's basketball. You don't want your 4 year olds playing on the same basketball team as a nine year old. Great. Doesn't make sense.

But when possible, if it is at all possible, you want to try to group kids by actual skill rather than age. One thing that happens very often is late developing kids get left off, they get kind of ignored. And that's because they're continually the last person and there's no future there. And consciously or subconsciously, coaches, you know, probably don't put a ton of attention and the worst kid on the team, especially as we get into middle school and high school and so on. So by developing, making sure kids are always in groups based on their development, they always have a chance to be met where they're at. That's the guideline. So give programs to your kids that push them a little bit, but it's realistic for them in these situations.

I also can't give things like heart rates, I can't give zones. You don't hear us talking about zone one, zone two, zone three for kids. You don't hear us talking about percentage of 1 rep max. You're not gonna hear me talk a lot about this many repetitions. And that's because their physiology is different. I said this a little bit earlier, but I can say definitive things about muscle size and strength and performance in VO2 max for a 25 or 35 or 50, because for the most part a 25 year old physiology is the same. But a 5 year old's not example of this.

Kids are way more oxidative than adults are, which means they can recover from high heart rates like instantaneously. You'll see a kid get up to a heart rate maximum, five seconds later, be back down to normal where the rest of us are on the floor throwing up for 35 minutes. Right. And so the heart rate zones are irrelevant with kids. You can't use them. I can't say this much time at this heart rate. I can't say again from a strength training perspective, this much time, it's just the equivalents aren't there.

And so I know you want tangible examples as programs, but that's not how programming kids works. And if you look across again the practitioners and the clinicians and the scientists that are in this space, you're just not going to see much talk about that style of programming. That's an adult centric view rather than a kid centric view. Okay. The models that we like best are what are called long term athletic development models. Ltad. This is the scientific phrase to look for.

This is how we work now. Ltad. It does not stand for long term athlete development. It is athletic development development. The goal here is to teach every kid to be as athletic as we can. Whether you do sports and become an athlete, I do not care. So this is not an athlete development model.

It is a long term athletic model. Right? The National Strength and Conditioning Association, NSCA has a position stand on ltad. You can learn exactly what to do and not to do. Sample programs. All those things are in that. You can see that in the show notes.

What should you distill from it? Here's what I think. Number one, again, not all kids are athlete and we don't even care about that. But all kids should have a physical activity practice for the 12th time or 15th time already in our conversation. Number two, we want to start early. Remember, just like academics, movement, vocabulary, same thing. Number three, we need to create solutions for all ages, abilities and interests.

We've said that indirectly multiple times now and we don't like to use those arbitrary age cutoffs. It's all about the individual kid. We also don't want to abandon those late developers. I'm going to make a good argument for this a little bit later in terms of getting elite athletes by not forgetting the ones who are late developers. But number four, and this is probably the ones that stand out the most, a long term athletic development model LTAD will develop the whole kid, not just their athletic attributes. So this is the body, the mind, confidence, decision making, all those things. LTAD models encompass holistic, helping kids become better humans.

After that, you want to maximize that physical literacy. You want to think about things like strength, endurance, aerobic capacity, flexibility, agility, balance, power, speed, coordination and so forth. You do not want to focus only on one of those things. Don't worry about just maximum speed or worry about maximum strength. It's all of that stuff that is athletic development. And all humans should have those skills. In doing this, in building your program, you want to make sure that those skills are developed long term, not just short term.

That positive experience with physical activity is met. And then ultimately it leads to a reduction in injury rate. If your program does those things, I would say that that model is effective conceptually. This is what we're talking about now. The International Olympic Committee has its own long term athletic development model. Here in America we have our own. Canada has a different one.

They're all pretty similar. I'm just going to cover the one that's right in front of me. That is, of course, what's called the American developmental model. Not suggesting it's better than the Canadian or the IOC or whatever, but it's just one example we can go off of. Here's exactly what these models look like. They have five key principles. Principle number one, they're universally accessible.

Try to get these in a way that every kid can do it, or as many kids as possible. Number two, they're developmentally appropriate for the kid. They emphasize motor skills and foundational human movement. Again, you may be surprised. There's no maximum cleaning jerks here. There's no vertical jump. This is the stuff that athletic development model should be after.

Number three, it is multi sport participation. You'll be surprised to learn even the Olympic Committee here wants kids to play multiple sports. They do not want you to specialize early. I'm going to reiterate that point a bunch. They want multiple sport participation. Number four, they want fun and engaging and progressively challenging climates. And then number five, they want quality coaching at all ages.

And so their model has a stepwise system and it has multiple functions and criteria. So their model, number one, is called stage one. So stage one is what they call develop and learn and play. This is appropriate for anyone ages 0 to 12. What they're really saying here is, look, you might be 10 years old, but you have one year of experience. You start at stage one, you're not starting at stage three. And so rather than defining these stages by age or defining it by experience levels.

So stage one, develop, learn and play. Stage two, develop and challenge. So now you've probably been doing this stuff for somewhere between three and six years. You're generally a little bit older, maybe even up to 15 years old or something like that, and we're pushing you a little bit. We are challenging you. Stage three is true training and competition. You're now six, eight, ten years into active sports or engagement here and you're, you know, maybe even an 18 year old.

Stages 4 and 5 are more classically what you're going to think now. We're maximizing, we're competing, we're trying to peak, we're trying to become elite and specialist. And the experience is, you know, you've been doing things for 10 years or more. The top tier actually is going to surprise people. But in our athletic developmental model, stage number five, the top tier is what they call thriving and mastery for life is you coming back and being a mentor. It is you being active the rest of your life. And so their athletic developmental model encompasses.

We're not just going to let people walk out of this thing at 22 years old and they're broken and they're done and they're not engaged in activity for life. If we've done this model correctly, you are active your whole life, well past your sport years. You might even come back and mentor and you're having an active, healthy, phenomenal life the next 70, 80, 90 years. That is an appropriate long term athletic development model. Today's episode is sponsored by Momentous. Momentous makes the highest quality supplements on the market, Period. Many of you know me and you know that I do not trust the vast majority of supplement companies.

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So that's why I stick exclusively to Momentous. If you'd like to give Momentous a try, go to livemomentous.com perform to get 20% off your order. Again, that's livemomentous.com perform to get 20% off. So now that you got the bigger picture of what LTAD should look like in general, what are the concepts? I want to actually give you one example. Now, anytime you give a direct example, it is just that there's tons of ways to do it. What I actually did is I looked at a bunch of different models.

I talked to many people, and I kind of combined what most people are doing into one global model. But I know it is easier to conceptualize with your examples, so let's go ahead and do that. Before we get started, though, I want to thank a number of people. A guy named Pat Cullen Carroll, someone I've known for many, many years. I was fortunate to work with his son a little bit as a student. He's been around this for a long time. Rodri Lloyd, Avery, Fangen, Mama Mention, as well as very specifically a guy named Jeremy Frisch, I.e.

f, R, I, S, C, H. And I'm calling out Jeremy because I actually reached out to him directly. He gave me a bunch of material, shared with me exactly what he does in his programs. He was really kind and generous and made this process a lot easier. I love Jeremy's stuff. We're going to show more of it a little bit later. His websites and his courses and all that stuff can be accessed in the show notes.

But really wanted to thank Jeremy and everybody else who helped out. So what is this overall model? Well, again, as one particular example, ages I'll give you, but remember what I said earlier about ages, okay? Not a perfect way to go about it, but what I'll call babies. So kind of 0 to 5 years old. The focus should be on play. You're not coaching that much right now, if any.

You might be sharing safety rules and, you know, start when the timer hits this and things like that. But you're encouraging play at that point. There is no technical instruction happening basically at all at this range. You want them to be solving those movement problems themselves. You want them to figure out what helps them go faster, what they can do with their body to make them jump higher, what doesn't work. That's what we mean when we say solve the problems themselves. You also want enormous variety.

Walk, run, jump, roll, crawl, balloons, balls, big balls, small balls, implements, soft landing on the sand, on trampolines. And just everywhere that you can think, you're exposing them to tons of variety. After that, you move on to what we In America would call kind of the elementary school. This tends to be this 6 to 10 year old range at this point. With the previous Ltd models would call this the fundamentals. Right. So Jeremy uses a similar.

He has kind of some fun. I think he calls them speed demons or something at this age. But it's still fundamentals. We're expanding past the baby or the toddler age and we're doing the same kind of stuff. But now we're making competitive games. So we're doing some relay races, we're competing against a sibling or a peer. Sometimes we're jumping over hurdles, we're doing multiple step scenarios.

So this is jump over a hurdle and then spin around in a circle. It is an army crawl under three benches and then into a hula hoop. It is get on all hands and knees while you're holding that position. Or you're maybe doing a bear crawl while also dodge a ball. How do you dodge the ball? You could duck it, you could roll, you could flip over, you could do a somersault. You can see it's multiple steps combined and it's not, it's not a drill, right.

It's just a different activity. It's jump up and touch an object. It is attention, it is specific, it is multiple steps and so forth. Right. So that would be general fundamental principles at this point. We would now cross into again here in America what we call the kind of middle school. This is 11 years old to 14 year olds.

Just broad ranges here. Right. And now we're actually learning to be a multifaceted mover. So we're able to do probably more traditional strength conditioning at this point. Now just to be really clear, not many people are going to advocate waiting until you're 11 or 12 to start strength training. The general accepted position with strength training, as I said earlier, but to be really clear, you can start lifting weights as soon as the child is mature enough to pay attention to, want to do it and to follow instructions. Another way to think about this, if you can play an organized sport, you're probably ready to do some strength training.

Now what does that look like? Exactly what I'm talking about earlier, your strength training. Things like, you know, jumping, pounding, rolling, that's still strength training. So they're still doing those things. If you want to use kettlebells and dumbbells and barbells and machines, great, you can do that too. But it's the same kind of movements here, ideally as most of our training. Okay, so we only want to point that out because I didn't want people to think we're advocating for only starting traditional weight training at 11 years old or 12 years old.

You can start as soon as the person, the kid wants to, as soon as they can pay attention to safety rules. You're not going to obviously go after maximum strength or muscle growth and things like that, but you get the basic point. Okay, so moving on with again Jeremy's and colleagues, rough model here. Once we are in this 11 to 14 year old range, it looks probably more like a traditional strength and conditioning environment. We are more organized, there's less freedom in many aspects of the training, but there's still a ton of variety. Right. You're not just doing the same couple of exercises.

Your coaching technique very hard at this point. You start a coaching technique a little bit earlier, but you're really, you know, specific and focused on it now and you're doing more direct sporting related activities and exercises. More hopping, more skipping, more jumping, more lunges, more squats and hinges and things like that. Once you get into early high school, this overlaps again like with those previous ltad models. Early high school is when you're now becoming an athlete. So we are competing, we're trying to get stronger, we're trying to get faster, we are working on skill development of the individual sports and activities. Once you get to kind of late high school, this would be sort of 16, 17, 18 years old range.

You can become optimized for that sport. We can start really competing, emphasizing winning, what it takes to be strategic tactics, techniques, game plans, specialization, focusing on one sport now and so on and so forth. If you make it to college or sometimes you're any situation past high school now we're we're elite into specialization. You're basically optimizing everything you're doing for that individual sport or activity that you've chosen to. The final step, like always for every ltad model is then life and getting back to the basics. Lacking specialization, opening movement back up, being less precise with the programming and more varied, more movement patterns and so forth. So you can actually kind of see you're going back to the basics in one way to think about it.

If you want to think about some more specifics in terms of the exercise selection, we generally would call this movement skills rather than exercises. Again, child centric versus adult centric. Just a handful of concepts to think about. First one is, which I said one moment ago, you want to think about games rather than drills. An adult, you're going to go do this exercise a kid, we're going to Play this game, okay, in both how you're speaking to the person as well as how you're actually treating it, you're building games versus doing an exercise. Number two, you want to let them solve those movement problems themselves. They want to figure out what's faster, what's slower.

Where an adult you're going to be coaching, you're going to go right to the techniques that you know are going to be work, most likely for their body. Number three, in terms of the loading, you want to use a variety, especially doing your warmups. And so you really want to hit them with tons of different movements. Way more than you want to use a lot of variety with adults, but way more in children than you do later in life. Range of motion should be exceptionally high. One thing we want to be really careful of is not many coaches are going to spend a lot of time specifically working on flexibility in kids. And you don't necessarily need to.

You want to build range of motion through the activities that you're going after, rather than sitting down and doing static stretching. If you're doing a lot of variety and a lot of movement pains in the way we were discussing earlier, the range of motion should take care of itself. Obviously, the younger the kid, the less organized you are with range of motion. The wider range of activities, the older they get, the more organized you need to get, the more specific you need to get. You need to be doing dynamic warmups, but maybe now you're incorporating some static stretching based on an individual's needs or limitations or movement pattern restrictions or so forth. But the default setting for kids is a large range of motion possible. Once you get into those later high school years and you're becoming more specialized.

If you want to change and alter or shorten a range of motion for a very specific goal or outcome, that's fine. But at this stage, we're not optimizing for sport, so we should be optimizing for range of motion most of the time as our default strategy and setting. Last thing to think about conceptually, for these basic movement pattern skill development tools, you're rarely doing exercises at high volume. You want to go low volume, high intent, very moderate to low fatigue. Most of the time, you can do some fatiguing stuff. If it's. If, say, you're playing a game of dodgeball and kids are, you know, working really hard for 10 minutes, that's your conditioning, right?

Or you're doing some other game there where there's some fatigue associated. But most of the exercise, most of the lifting, most of the drills, there are a couple of seconds, there are a few repetitions. You're trying really hard, you're going really fast, you're focusing, trying to win, and you're resting and recovering. The goal is not at this point in their life to develop fatigue resistance. We're not trying to enhance fatigue resistance at this stage of life.

We're trying to develop better skills. That means they need to be somewhat fresh, they need a lot of practice, a lot of repetitions at it. They need a lot of repetitions at a lot of different scenarios, setups, situations and implements. And they need to do it with high intent, right?

Figure out what works for them. So those are the big concepts, some of the targets in terms of the skill development, things you want to go after a balance.

We said that earlier. Something people don't talk about a lot though is grappling. Grappling is a very important skill for kids. This is pushing, this is pulling, this is lifting and carrying. We would collectively again call that grappling. Locomotion is everything from sprinting and running and agility, jumping and landing, two legged, one legged, rotating. So jump and turn and land, jumping on things, jumping off of things.

These are actually fundamental skills for kids. Tumbling, rolling, side rolls, shoulder rolls, butt rolls, all of those things are important. You also want to incorporate target practice. So be able to throw, be able to catch, be able to hit something, be able to aim at something with the upper body and the lower body. Kids often get this with the upper body, right? They're going to throw a football at something or try to hit something, but make sure they're getting those same skills with the lower body as well. Climbing, very specifically, whether this is hanging from a bar, this is rock climbing, this is ninja warrior or parkour or climbing fences.

Fundamental movement skills that are a little bit different than everything that we've talked about thus far. Pay attention to rhythm. I said this really briefly earlier, but this is something that is oftentimes forgotten. So this is often. You think about this in drills where you have to do multiple things at different speeds. So imagine like a three part drill or game, I should say, Sorry, violated my own rule there, where the first part, they have to step over some hurdles that are pretty high. Now they can't do that very fast, so they're going at one particular speed.

They finish that and then they sprint 15 yards backpedal, 15 yards back. That'll be really fast. And then they get that and they do a fast foot drill on a ladder on the ground. Those are all gonna Happen at three different speeds. So they're practicing, learning to try as hard as they can to try to go fast. But the actual rate of movement, the rhythm, big steps, small steps, change of pace, not change of pace, open up the throttle, hold things back. These are all how you develop rhythm of movement, which is critical to overall skill development.

Spatial awareness, judging distance. Right. So being able to throw an implement. I actually was, funny enough doing this with my kids very recently, where you take an object and put them at many different distances and they have to learn to throw. In our case, we were throwing a medicine ball at, we were knocking something over. But one of them was short, one of them was a long ways away, one of them was close. And so they're starting to realize and figure out how do I manage force input to give me a very specific distance.

Same thing with their own body, figuring out how close I am to another kid. So we'll do activities where we're in close environments and you can't hit somebody. So spatial awareness, kinesthetic awareness, distance judging, hitting a ball that's coming at you. Right. Hitting a volleyball. You get the idea, right. Reaction time is another independent one.

You all know what reaction time is. And then a similar one, but that's actually uniquely different, is what we actually call decision making with speed. And so this is something like, you know, you're going to, your coach is going to give you signal and you have to interpret that signal and make a decision fast as you possibly can. This happens naturally in many sports, but not all. But that's a different thing than just reaction alone because now we're enhancing the cognitive demand. Make the right choice and then give me the physical reaction as well. I could go on and on, but that was 11 or 12 or 13 different targets to go after.

So as you're either designing your own program or you're really watching your kids program, you're watching what your kids are doing. You can use a list like this and go, hey, geez, we're only doing, we haven't done any tumbling in forever. We don't do any climbing, we haven't done any spatial awareness. And then you maybe you can add something, one or two things to what your kids are doing overall and give them a more well rounded physical training approach. That's the best way, I think, to use information like I just covered. Look at what your kid is doing and what you're having them do or what your coaches are doing. Then it may be, say, ah, geez, we have some big things we haven't filled in there and see if we can add a drill here and there or a game here and there or an activity at home to fill in some gaps.

One of the things that's also nice about a list like this, as I said at the beginning, none of this takes special equipment. None of this takes highly trained skilled coaches or trainers.

Everyone can do this. Not every kid will be great at all these things. You shouldn't do this all every day. But almost anyone in the world, regardless of access, can look at a list like that and just try to get a bunch of these things done. And if you were to do that and you were to do it often, as often as you can or as you're willing to do, it's going to be a huge help and you're going to get most of the things we talked about earlier for overall physical development and be in a really good spot with free or zero cost for you at all. I think it'd be nice for me to cover one actual direct example. The way I'm going to do that is I looked at an actual program from Jeremy that he was able to share and I said, okay, if I were to take the concepts and apply it to one individual kid, what could that look like?

So I've sketched up a program here based on again, Jeremy's actual program as well as some concepts, made some modifications. And I just said, if I had a 7 year old, what would one day of a workout look like for that 7 year old? I like Jeremy's approach because in that model he has everything from what is the drill, what is the intent, what's the coaching cues and strategy, how long is it going to take and what's the actual outcome is really high, really highly organized stuff. I'm not going to share all that with you, just drag on a little bit. But I love that part of the model. So I'll share with you the first couple. So let's say the kid walks in.

7 year old kid, right? Nothing else we know about the individual, but seven years old, roughly, we're always going to start with some sort of warm up. Now the goal to warm up, balance, stability and reaction time in addition to having some fun. Again, you could switch out these goals, but what is the goal? Okay. Therefore we know those are the four goals we identified. How long we can invest. Ten minutes. Got it.

What's the coaching cue? You want to be relaxed and semi structural. So you one more time as the parent or the coach or the individual going through it, they're warming Up. You want to coach, but you don't want to be all on them. You know, really grilling them with the details. So it's relaxed, get things going and semi structured, but a lot of freedom as well. What are the actual exercises ones that I saw actually videos of Jeremy doing one called a get up to hop.

This is the kid is laying on the belly and either the kid does it or on a, you know, a stopwatch or a start or you know, ready, go. The kid gets up from their belly and goes immediately to one leg and starts hopping on one leg.

So it's a multiple step approach. He showed examples of doing that as well with a hop to a turn or hop to a twist, hop to one leg, hop to another one. But it's a multi step thing that is a dynamic warmup. We've already checked balance off because we're hopping. We check stability up because we're hopping on one leg. Right. Reaction time because we're listening to the coach's cue and it's pretty fun.

It's also pretty safe. Not a huge injury risk there. There's not a high load or velocity or fatigue. Not multiple steps when the kid isn't ready for it yet. Pretty simple instructions. I think most 7 year olds, regardless of athletic ability, we'd be able to be execute that just fine. And you do that for 10 minutes.

Right now reality is you'd probably do two or three or four or five of those games. But I just picking you one for an example from the warmup, you then move on to step number two or stage number two, which is coordination. So the focus is to work on coordination. The more specific goal is movement efficiency and power. Maybe spend 15 minutes here. The coaching is fast and loose, right? You're picking things up a little bit.

You're trying to be competitive because you want them to work on some power. So they got to move with high intent exercises. Things like a bear crawl through different hoops, hula hoop to a cone throw drill. So you're literally doing a hula hoop and then doing a throw relay. Maybe multiple kids at a time. You got a couple of groups going. We've knocked off movement efficiency, we've knocked out power and we've added we, we made intent, stay high because they're competing.

That's what got the kids to try to throw the thing as hard as they could or go as fast as they could. Okay, so warm up. Then coordination. Then we're going to move on to movement skill. So in this case, movement skill was a focus on speed, agility and reaction time again, maybe now 10 minutes long. Something a little bit shorter. The exercises, a tennis ball catch coach reaction drills.

You could fill in a bunch of them here. You're getting the point, right? You guys can kind of see how this model is working. Again, really highly structured, but probably isn't landing in your head like the way you think about it. When you get your workout programs. Adult centric, kid centric. Okay, fourth final thing we'll do is a game.

This is a five minute fun finisher. You want to get the kids leaving with happiness and joy and remembering the fun part. Develop athleticism. Coaches are going to serve as the referees and maybe you play a competitive game, you know, flag tag where you each kid gets a little flag in their back and you try to grab it from them. You can do this in a lot of different ways. One legged hops only so that the kids aren't just the biggest, fastest, strongest kids are going to kind of always win. You could make the game really ridiculous if you will.

But you get the point. We have some structure. We're going after multiple outcome goals. Here's how we put it together. We're doing it in a short time domain. Nothing is to maximum fatigue, nothing is maximum load. Complicated movements, multiple steps.

And we got a lot of stuff done in a total of, I don't know, 40 minutes including warmup, cooldown. We can't walk away from this entirely without talking about plyometrics. Just because I get a trillion questions about that. Plyometrics is a fancy way of saying like jumping and landing. It's really crazy people. For years. I remember actually I showed this in class for probably a decade.

I think it was like WebMD. Yeah, it was WebMD where you would go on and they would just show you all the dangers about plyometrics and kids and don't do it and so forth. It's probably still up there.

Honestly, I didn't check. So I bring it up for these exact reasons. Here's the rope. With plyometrics. We've already covered it all. It's common sense.

Kids jump and land every day. It can be dangerous. Like anything can be dangerous. Riding a bike can be dangerous. Playing baseball can be dangerous for my kids. Riding with a pencil can be dangerous.

Who knows, right? There's no danger to plyometrics. There's a danger to too much volume. There's a danger to playing 12 months a year of a sport and then adding a bunch of plyometrics on top. That's the danger, right? So just use some common sense here and it should be fine. Kids are meant to jump and land.

They do it all the time, all day. Normal plyometrics are not any different from that. So don't want to spend too much more time on that. I do want to spend a little more time though, specifically on what I call the 10 rules of lifting weights for kids. You know the concepts already. What are things that are specific to weights and free weights and strength training and resistance exercise for a kid? Let me run you through my personal list of 10.

Number one, and stop me when you've heard this before. We're going to focus on quality, positivity and fun. I will give you numbers, but this is not how I have ever coached kids or, or ever had any of my students. And I've actually mentored more than a few master's students who went on and did their projects in this area of kids strength training. So I'm pretty familiar with the research. And again, speaking to many people, this is always about quality. Repetition ranges are really rough guidelines for adults and they're hyper, hyper rough guidelines for kids.

I've made that point now and you're probably sick of it. But number one again, is that number two, something I have not brought up yet. Make sure the environment is safe. In other words, the equipment. Don't have kettlebells laying around, don't have dumbbells on benches. Kids will find a way to get hurt. So strength training will hurt kids if that part isn't taken care of.

And way more important to do it in kids and youth than it is for adults. So make sure the environment is safe for those little squirrels. Number three, generally we're looking at for strength training, two to three times per week, 20 to 30 minutes per session. Now the model I laid out a minute ago was probably more like 40 minutes, but that was a warm up and a cool down and different activities and games. The actual lifting part, you're probably talking about 20 to 30 minutes at max. Start off more conservative two days a week. As they get more competent, build up to three.

Number four, full range of motion with good technique. Now that we're introducing load, we're going to put more of an emphasis on technique. When a kid is moving his own body, I'm going to let her do whatever she wants for the most part when she's putting a load on. Now more rules come into play. Not going to restrict everything and get everything really tight, but you get the point, right? More sense, more load on the Bar more load on the, on the implement, rather number five. We're always still going to start with those dynamic movements and we're going to try to instill warm ups and movement quality like that.

Number six in terms of the actual number of sets, probably one to three sets with somewhere between six to 15 repetitions at a light load. What's light? I don't know.

Call it less than 60%. Maybe counterintuitive, but you can do a one rep max with kids. You're not gonna do it for every exercise. A one rep max is not gonna be the same. You're not gonna rip smelling salts and, you know, really take them up to the end. But you can get a rough sense of what their maximal strength is in program like that. But think about it.

You're doing two sets, 6 to 8 to 10 to 12 reps at 40, 50, 60% of their max. We're not here to maximize muscle growth. We're here to just use weights as a way to develop tendons, bones, muscles, movement capacity, motor skills, focus, movement literacy. It's just another tool in the tool bag. So it's a different outcome goal that we're looking at entirely. We'll increase load 5 to 10% as they become more competent. If they're not, then we don't.

We're not going to hold tight to specific numbers. You're watching every repetition and you're. When you think the kid has learned enough for the day, then we're done for the day.

That's all we're after. So we're not going to push more than moderate fatigue. You can push to pretty high fatigue when you're playing games and you're out there moving around. But when you got loads and we're strength training moderate fatigue at best at this age range. At times you can go past these numbers so you can get to maybe, you know, 80% of your one rep max in certain kids, if they're ready for it. But you're only going to dip into that pretty infrequently. And you're going to do it for small doses.

You want to, you know, kind of run a check and see where they're at. You want to actually do some more advanced strength training because they've got, you know, two or three or four years behind their belt. Okay. But it's going to come in small doses. Most of your time is going to be spent at those much lighter loads. You can go at a lower repetition range below this 6 if you're working on technique or if you're working on speed and power. At that point, it makes sense to do three or five repetitions or something close to that.

But for the most part, most of our time with these kids is going to be spent again, 1 to 2, 3 at most sets per exercise, 6 to 12 reps at a pretty light load. Past that, we want to be working on some basic movement patterns. So you want to do upper body, you want to do and lower body rather, you want to do multi joint exercises. We're rarely doing isolation work, right? We're looking at squatting and hinging and pressing and pulling, horizontal, rotational, vertical, big movement groups. A couple of exercises per day and then get out of there. If you identified a particular weakness and asymmetry has developed or you're concerned about one, then you can add a couple of corrective exercises.

Those can be a little bit more single joint, a little bit more isolation, depending on what's going on there. But that's the appropriate dose. So you add all that stuff together, you do it in a large variety, right? So we want to alter the stimulus, you want to alter the position and everything that we can. You're in and out, you know, in 20 to 30 minutes of actual lifting. You're doing that a couple of days a week. You're progressing somewhat conservatively.

You do all those things, you're very, very likely to have a high quality result, low likelihood of negative consequences and injury, and you probably aren't likely to burn the kid out anytime soon. So those would be my again, 10 rules of lifting weights for kids. If we go past physical activity, which was where we started these guidelines, and then we went into strength training, I want to go all the way up to now. What about exercise and sports specifically? Generally, five recommendations here for youth athletes. Again, we're now talking about people in competitive, organized sports. Very first thing we want to recognize is you don't want to come into your sport after large periods of inactivity and then just start competing.

What's the most common one you will see? University injuries in kids goes way up in the fall. Why kids go off in the summer. They don't do anything. They show right back up. They immediately jump into football practice or soccer practice or whatever they're doing. So they go from periods of really low activity to really high activity and boom, injuries start to happen.

So don't do that. Number two, you still want to focus on foundational movements more and skill development less direct. Example, let's say that you're getting ready for football season or basketball, baseball season. Whatever the case is, we're in baseball season right now, spring training. The mistake here would be oh, I got hurt, my shoulder got hurt. Oh really? What happened?

Well, I threw a bunch, you know, getting ready for season. So throwing a baseball would be a sport specific preparation. But that said you should still spend more time working on running and jumping and sprinting and landing. So if your only preparation for season is the sport technique, you're not fundamentally developing everything you need to be to actually be ready for the loads that will happen in your sport. And so overemphasizing skill development and under emphasizing move and development is still going to potentially leave you in a spot for a bunch of problems. The rule of thumb here roughly is what was say two to one. You don't want to spend more than two times the amount of hours or volume or however you're thinking about it in sport as you do in playtime.

If your sport to play breakdown is 3 to 1, 4 to 1, 5 to 1. Now we're going to have problems because we're under developing those foundational movements. If it's closer to at least 2 to 1, you still got an okay chance. Again, numbers will vary based on individual and age, but it's a really really so and and that number actually is directly from research that was actually been sussed out to figure out like that is seems to be the number kids that have a higher ratio of the of 2 to 1 sport to play end up getting hurt more often. So important to know there another important guideline for youth athletes. Similar things it's this is what we call no permanent seasons. Eight months is roughly the number you generally don't want to spend more than eight months in a year playing a single sport.

You see this routinely. Kids go through their their local school season and they go into special season or AAU or club and they end up having these like perpetual seasons. We have seen this with golfers, we have seen this with baseball players and volleyball players. We've seen this with runners, cross country going into track and then off season and indoor and you end up at a 12 month long season for kids. Eight months is the rule. Can't exactly tell you why, but the research is going to say that's the breaking point where longer than that we start seeing a greater increase in injury risk. So something to keep your kid aware of at that point.

Lastly, here's what we call no early specialization. Below 16 years old kids should be participating in more than one sport. After that, if you want to specialize to one, you can, but, but the more sports the better. And at minimum 2 below the age of 16 if you can pull it off. At this point I've probably gotten myself into a lot of hot water regarding this specialization. I have actually talked about this in small parts before in the past and man, the Internet got mad. And so I do want to make sure we're all really clear when we talk about early specialization in sports, since we're right here.

Firstly, it does not harm your ability to become an elite athlete by playing multiple sports. I can say this a bunch of different ways, but that is obnoxiously clear. If you have your kid play more sports, it will not compromise their ability to be a world champion at all. Pick the data point you want here. There's a fun thing that happens every year during the super bowl where they will report right before the game the amount of people playing in the super bowl, how many were multi sport athletes and how many only played football. You want to guess what that number is? It varies year to year, but it's Generally somewhere between 91 to 96% of the athletes on those rosters were multi sport athletes.

So that point alone should end the conversation. Very rarely do people become world champions at the highest level in sports by only doing one sport. In fact, the data will show the exact opposite. Second point, if I didn't convince you right there. Specific studies have shown kids who play three or more sports from ages 11 to 15 are more likely to play in national versus club level teams by the time they get to the ages of 16 to 18. So if you have your 12 year old and you think your 12 year old is something special, hopefully they are all the best of luck to you. But if you want that 12 year old to reach the highest level possible, have that 12 year old playing in three or more sports.

That will give you a stronger chance to be truly elite by the time that 12 year old turns 16 or 18 than staying in the one sport routinely shown. All right. Now obviously there's some correlation there and associations, but second piece of evidence, right? Third piece of evidence, a recent meta analysis. And this is really about the most concrete thing I can tell you. This Meta analysis covered 51 different studies over the course of it.

It was about 6,000 kids. And what's cool about it is it included almost 800 world top performers. So who actually becomes the best or close in the world? World top performers usually differentiated as things like again, who made the world championships versus only national championships, who made Olympic teams versus just national teams, who made Club teams versus hiring. So like that's oftentimes how they break these things down. Handful of things that came out of that meta analysis 1. The best kids played the most multi sports.

It's just really clear you will not stop your kid's ability to be the best possible by making them play multiple sports. In fact, more likely you're giving them a better chance to become elite by giving them a more well rounded experience physically and cognitively. In my opinion that is the most important stuff for us to understand for exercising kids. We talked about just from a general physical activity perspective, from a lifting weights, directly from a motor development, from an overall sport perspective. The last little tidbit I wanted to throw at you here was what we know about how to motivate kids. You could use a different term if you'd like, but how to just get kids to be more physically active when they don't want to be. Some kids are just more into movement and sports and others are not.

What do you do if you're that parent thinking how do I get them moving? I don't want to push them too much. Right? You don't want to do that negative thing and have them get mad and so on and so forth. What's the right amount of pushing? What are some strategies? Well, number one, just be more active yourself.

That is always a good thing. If your kid is not active and you are not active, that is the easiest way. Kids will model parents, so kids will model community. So that said, the second one is get them in more environments where more kids and more adults are moving. If your community, your friends, your family is on tv, is on phones and stuff all day, they're going to mimic that. If they're just in different environments, they will mimic that. Those are the two biggest steps you can take.

You yourself as well as get them in peer groups of kids who are more active. Doesn't mean you can't let them be friends with their kids who want to play video games all day anymore. But you get the point. Put them around environments where people are just more active. 3 and this is actually something that has worked a lot with my kid. Try different physical environments. This means play on the ground, play in the snow, play in the water, go into the forest, go into playgrounds, going to gyms, going to courts.

Get them in different environments. Maybe they hate sport courts, but they love to play around in the forest. Great. Maybe they are cold and they hate the outdoors. Awesome. Try an indoor pool. Whatever you can do to change the physical environment, maybe something will Resonate and hit with them there.

That hasn't resonated in the sports that you liked or the activities that your spouse or your family liked. Another thing, similar idea. Try different movement modes. If they don't like running because they don't like playing soccer, they don't like playing football or basketball. Try swimming. Try in the water. Make them move their body differently.

Put them on a bike, put them on a board. Have them do skateboarding. Do different things that are different. Not just you moving your own body. Other stuff may do it. I can tell you right now, my daughter absolutely goes bonkers over swimming. Great. I hate swimming.

Hate it personally. Don't like it at all. She's all into it. Fantastic. I will take that kid to the pool anytime she wants to go and we can take her there. Right? Her brother doesn't like it at all. Awesome. Whatever it takes.

Different environments, similar concept. Try different implements. So bats, different rackets, different balls, long things, short things, sticks, flags, whatever.

You're getting the point, right? Just try different exposures. Try another thing that's worked a lot. Try different play partners. One thing that happens with kids being so far behind other kids, if they're around their peers only, they tend to withdraw and fall back if they're below them or delayed. So having them always compete against the same kids who are better than them may not be your best option. Play with them directly yourself.

A lot of little kids don't want to play with other kids for that reason. But they will play with you. So you'll be the one to play catch with them. You'll be the one to play the sports with them. And not only are you modeling the behavior, but they actually are more comfortable not being good at something with you because they don't have any reference point. They know mom and dad are better. They just know uncle's going to be better.

They know auntie's going to be better. So they don't have that negative experience. Being the worst one in the group like that. If they have siblings, same thing. Maybe don't have them play with the sibling if it's causing that negative dynamic. Or cousin or whatever the case is. Or the neighbor, so on and so forth. Or themselves.

Maybe the best scenario is have them play with themselves. More practice by themselves rather than in front of the other ones if that's causing the problem. Finally, try to make things a differentiator between task goals versus sport goals.

Here's what I mean. Maybe the kid has no interest in sports, but you can get them to build a Fort. You can get them to do something where, hey, we got to get all these rocks into the water over there. Great. They're still going to be playing sports, but they don't care about winning, they don't care about points on the board, but they will do something like that. Maybe it wasn't the best example, but hopefully you can come up with your own example there where you're getting them to do different things. Have a start, a stop. Here's what we're trying to do.

We're going to accumulate points, but the points are different. It has an outcome that they like and it's not just reward based. It is just actual intrinsic reward. We did our thing, but the thing is now not a sport or a score. It is great. We build that cool deck. Awesome. We put that bridge across the water.

Now we can go all the way over. You get the idea. I hope that was informative and I gave something for everybody. We try to do our best to stick to what we know from the literature as it stands. I also wanted to cover a lot of different options to meet you at your individual needs, your kid at their individual needs and make sure we've got tools and tactics for everybody. Last thing I wanted to mention and I will go over this stuff briefly and I'll put them all directly in the show notes. And this is just what I'm calling additional resources.

I promised this earlier. There are a handful of books that I know. I have personally read certifications and courses that I thought were great and I wanted to directly mention those. More again will be available in the show notes. But from a textbook perspective, the NSCA's High School Strength and conditioning book is fantastic. If your kid is at that age, you want to know direct exercise examples, programs, how to teach the exercises, the techniques, all that stuff. It's wonderful. Patrick McHenry.

I've known Patrick for a long time. Mike Nitkin. Mike is just a legendary figure in youth strength training. They both wrote that book with a bunch of other people. It is fantastic. Avery Fagenbaum, I mentioned multiple times he has a book called Youth Strength Training also awesome. And then finally the American College of Sports Medicine has a book called Essentials of Youth Fitness written actually by Avery Fagenbaum, Rodri Lloyd and John Oliver, again, three super prominent scientists and practitioners in this field of ltad.

They actually have a certification as well called the Youth Fitness Specialist certification. All of those are available. Jeremy Frisch, who I've mentioned multiple times now has a master's course. All of these books I mentioned including Jeremy's course are all $50 or less. And so again, not everyone can afford that, but many folks can. And these are great resources. If this is a field you care about.

Something completely different that I couldn't do this episode without mentioning is something my friend Jim Davis created out of Chicago. It is called the Good Athlete Project. This is a combination of leadership and mental health and psychology smuggled into an exercise and sport program. The Good Athlete Project is phenomenal. I've done some stuff with it in the past. I've known Jim for some time now and it is great. And Jim is great himself.

Lastly, and this is a really big one, another group that I have been a part of and I'm actively a part of this is led by a guy named Brian Finnegan. Brian spent a lot of time in Amazon Sports department. This is called the Global Youth Sports Innovation Challenge. And Brian specifically is running a project called the Future of Play. Now, why this is important, this innovation allows funding of research. So if you're a scientist in this area and you're looking for funding, you can go there. If you're a donor and you want to contribute, they have a mechanism for that as well.

They also allow you to pitch companies, big ones, the biggest of the big ones in youth sports, whether it's your project, your activity or whatever you're trying to do, you can get in front of these groups and tell them how you're trying to enhance youth sport quality in America at least. Lots of awesome stuff happening by Brian and his group. And again, it's called the Future of Play Initiative. If I had to take these last couple of hours and summarize them all down to 10 things, here's what I'd say. Number one, unfortunately, we are just in a position in our human history where your kids need specific exercise and strength conditioning for their short and long term health. And this is probably the first generation where I would truly say that, but I just don't think we can argue that anymore. Number two, while many people, and probably my circle knows a lot of the things I talked about or at least conceptually agreed with me, we still need to keep spreading the word.

This is a very important topic to share, as evidenced by the amount of misinformation that is out there, the misconceptions and some of the things that are still prevalent in the scientific, clinical and practical field regarding specifically strength training in kids. Number three, always, always make sure whatever you're doing, you're promoting a positive relationship with human movement, physical activity and exercise in kids. Number four, differentiate between developing an athlete and making sure we're developing overall athleticism. Everybody has a body, so everybody's an athlete in their own right. This may look, feel and smell different for everybody. That's fine. Nobody has to play sports, but everybody should have the ability to be athletic. Number five.

This is all about movement literacy for life. We want big movement vocabularies. You can solve a lot of problems. You can give yourself a lot of options. The bigger your vocabulary is. Number six. You start maximizing that vocabulary at birth.

Of course, everything is appropriate to age, desire and abilities. But this thing starts as soon as we can move because we've started moving. So we need to start working on movement and we need to get better at movement. Number seven. Each kid is their own athlete. They are one of one. It's not always possible.

I get it. I've taught summer camps before. I've taught kids, I've taught the middle school. 50 plus groups of kids at a time. You gotta do group stuff, you gotta bucket however you can. I get it. That's realistic.

But when possible, try to meet every kid where they are at and treat them as a one of one. Number eight, all this starts with you. The more you can do, the more you can model, the more you can help promote these activities, the more likely it is your kid or your nephew, your neighbor is going to have success in those things. Number nine, don't over specialize, especially early. We can do that later in life, probably a lot later than you think. There are some exceptions.

Gymnastics peaks at like 12. Yes, I get it. I hear you out there. But for the most part, as a general rule, we want to specialize later in life and spend more of our time on foundational basic human movement principles and concepts and loss on sports tactics and skills for younger kids. And 10th and finally, if we can fundamentally frame this as games and not drills, as fun and not workouts and not exercises. We re switch our brain. We take a kid centric rather than a adult centric approach to how we think about how we program, how we implement and how we coach strength training in kids.

We're going to be more effective in the short and long term. I want to leave you on one final thought. And that is a quote from former President of the United States, Franklin D.

Roosevelt from 1940. And he said, effectively, we can't always build a future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future. Thank you for joining for today's episode. My goal, as always, is to share exciting scientific insights that help you perform at your best. If the show resonates with you and you want to help ensure this information remains free and accessible to anyone in the world, there are a few ways that you can support. First, you can subscribe to the show on YouTube, Spotify and Apple. And on Apple and Spotify you can leave us up to a five star review.

Subscribing and leaving a review really does help us a lot. Also, please check out our sponsors. The show would not exist without them and their exceptional products and services. Finally, you can share today's episode with a friend who you think would enjoy it. If you have any content, questions or suggestions, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I really do try my best to read them all and to see what you have to say. I use my Instagram and X profiles also exclusively for scientific communication, so those are great places to follow along for more learning.

My handle is Andy Galpin on both platforms. We also have an email newsletter that distills all of our episodes in the most actionable takeaways. We have newsletters on how to improve Fitness in the VO2 Max, how to build muscle and strength, and much more. To subscribe to the newsletter, just go to performpodcast.com and click newsletter. It's completely free and we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you for listening and never forget, in the famous words of Bill Bowerman, if you have a body, you are an athlete.

This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors.

Andy Galpin

The science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play and Life. Welcome to Perform. I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor and scientist and the executive director of the Human Performance center at Parker University. Today's guest is Dr. Brett Contreras.

Brett has a PhD in sports science, a master's degree in exercise science, and is a certified strength and conditioning coach. Brett is known popularly as the glute guy, and that's because he spent the last 30 years of his career focusing on the science and application of maximizing muscle growth and strength development in the lower body and specifically the glute or butt muscles. We'll talk about that a lot today. You'll learn a tremendous amount about how to optimize training for the glutes, but we'll talk about much more than that. You're going to learn a lot about anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, and other things as they apply to practical recommendations. Brett does a phenomenal job and has over his career of weaving these things into conversations, not so that you learn unneeded or unnecessary mathematic principles, but so that you can really maximize your understanding of why certain exercises do certain things and others do not. This is going to allow you to leave this conversation, whether you're coaching people or just here for your own personal needs, having a much better understanding of how.

How to choose the exact right exercise based upon what you're trying to get and what you're not trying to get. So Brett has spent a lot of career on people who are training that want specific development in a particular part of their lower body and not in others. You'll learn a lot about how to do that. You'll also learn about how to make sure that that exercise is doing the right thing for you personally, that you're wanting it to do. So you're going to have a lot of fun. You'll take a lot away from this. I hope you can extend these learnings again from just females to men as well, from just the lower body to the upper body as well.

And so overall, you can enhance the precision, accuracy and effectiveness of your training and fitness routines, specifically regarding developing strength and muscle size in the lower body. That all said, please enjoy my conversation today with Dr. Brett Contreras. Dr. Brett Contreras, thank you so much for being here.

Brett Contreras

Thank you for having me.

Andy Galpin

The world knows you, for the most part, as the glute guy, and we will certainly talk about the glutes today. But I know you as the guy who used to write extensive articles on the Science of strength training mechanics. I don't know how many of those things you wrote and I read many years ago before social media existed. But it's very funny for me to hear people talk about you and then my perception of you is like, this is the science guy. This is not the glute guy. This is the deep, passionate love for science guy. So I don't know where our conversation is going to go today, but I certainly know we will definitely talk about the glutes and how to train and why and all those things like that.

But I'm personally a little bit more interested in kind of the other science stuff. So that is a little bit of my lead in. I don't know how you view all that stuff, but that's my perception of Dr. Brett Contreras.

Brett Contreras

Appreciate that.

Andy Galpin

To get us started, we're gonna play the hits, right? We'll talk about the glutes and all that. But what I was really hoping to go into very first, is you made a post fairly recently that I thought was really insightful. And actually I've changed how I do stuff now permanently because of a single post that you made. And that was referring to the difference in how to train women versus men. Now, my answer, which I've changed my tune on typically is because I've trained a lot of female athletes, is there's not that many things that are different, but you actually gave some incredible insights into things that are different and how you do differently. And someone who's trained, I don't know, 80% of your clients over your career have been female.

More, I don't know. What's a fair number there?

Probably 90, 90 plus percent. What are off the top of your head, some of the major differences in coaching females. And I'll give you context for you. We're talking about strength training or strength training related activities, not endurance running and like all things like that. So kind of within this wheelhouse, how do you think about this?

Brett Contreras

It's just mainly their goals and so men can't seem to wrap their head around it.

Andy Galpin

Like, it's funny you're saying, because this was literally me.

Brett Contreras

Yeah, it's most men because we want hypertrophy everywhere. If you were like, hey, Andy, you mind if I slap a little muscle on your traps?

You'd be like, I'll take it. Each Delt. Head. Sure. Bis. Tris. Sure. Pecs. Upper. Lower. Yep. Lat.

Andy Galpin

You can't name a muscle right now that I'm not gonna say yes to.

Brett Contreras

Say yes to everything. We want to Grow everything. And so, therefore, when we do our leg days with squats and deadlifts and lunges, and that tends to grow a lot of quad and additive and glutes.

But here's the deal. A lot of women, if they lean out, if they get lean, they like the way they look. They might want a little bit more quad and not too much, but they want a lot more glute. That's the goal, is to have large glutes. In fact, now surgeries are becoming very common because of that, because it's hard to get glutes through training. Even through proper training. Some don't get the glute mass they desire.

So women want glutes. Okay, say a man wanted arms as bad as women want glutes. We said, look, we want you to get, you know, I say, I'm a man. I want the biggest arms possible. You wouldn't say that like, you wouldn't go, andy, quit doing isolation lifts and just free weights.

Andy Galpin

Only do the complex movement.

Brett Contreras

Just do. You know, you're going to get big triceps if you develop a strong bench and. And weighted dips and close grip bench. And you know you're gonna get big biceps if you do weighted chin ups and pull downs, supinated pulldowns. Right? Every guy knows that. If I said, I will give you a million bucks if you put two inches on your arms in the next six months, what would every guy do?

They'd start training it at least three days a week. You'd throw what you know out. You wouldn't go, oh, train a muscle one day a week. You'd say, no, I'm gonna train it.

Andy Galpin

I don't care what the study's saying.

Brett Contreras

You might even venture into training it every day. You might be like, I think I some curls every day. And you'd use variety. But you'd be going, I'm going to get as strong as possible at close grip bench and weighted dips. I'm going to get my weighted chin up, but that's going to make up maybe a third of your volume. Two thirds are going to be curls and tricep extensions. Now use that exact same strategy for women with the glutes.

Yes, they're going to do the squats, they're going to do their lunges, they're going to do the Romanian deadlifts, Bulgarian step ups, et cetera, and they're gonna try to get strong at those. But if that's all you did, you're leaving a lot on the table. Your maximum recoverable volume for glutes is probably 36 to 45 sets a week if you split it up properly. But here's the deal. Cause if you said, andy, you're only allowed to do breathing squats, one set to feel like where you're, you know, you grind it out, you can do squat. Squats to failure, deadlifts to failure, and like walking barbell lunges to complete failure. How many sets could we squeeze in a week and recover from it still, you know, maybe 10 sets a week tops.

Like where you're to failure, especially when.

Andy Galpin

You'Re not 22 years old and on, you know, potentially recovery aids.

Brett Contreras

Yeah, it's going to be tough. No peds.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

And you're not, not, not 18 years old anymore. Okay, so you're going to do that still. You're going to still do your compound list. But then you think hip thrusts. If all you did was barbell hip thrusts, you could easily do them every other day. They don't beat you up much. They would work you at short muscle lengths.

And people will say, well, they don't grow. They work you at short muscle lengths. They're not as effective. Hold on now. We got three studies. Now we have the Plotkin 2023, we have Cassiano 2023, and now we have Bartolomeu 2024, all indicating that they're just as effective as stretch position movements. Okay, so we don't.

The jury's out on glutes for glute growth. So the jury's still out.

We need more specific research. But it seems like they're just as effective. So if they don't beat you up as much and you can do more volume, why not add those in? The other thing is, it's like delts. How much delt volume could you handle per week? It's a different thing when there's different subdivisions. So every set of bench incline military dips that you do is front delt.

And if you're in the frontal, if you're in the frontal plane, it's side delt too. People think military press, especially behind the neck press, activates the lateral delts very well. But. And technically, every pull down and row you do works the rear delts. But I know personally, I grow my rear delts way better when I perform specific movements for them and it's noticeable. So anyway, yes, you got all your compound lifts, but you could throw in. If all you were trying to do was grow your delts, you could probably do some isolation work for all three heads every other day.

Now, with the glutes, the, like, women want the shelf. They want their upper glutes too. Well, so there's the glute medius. That's a separate glute medius.

And minimus is a separate muscle. So that volume doesn't. That's separate volume. But also there's some evidence about, you know, with regards to the upper and lower gluteus maximus. We need more research because the only training study was Plotkin, and it showed the same upper and lower glute growth versus between vertical and horizontal.

But we have some EMG evidence. Like when you put bands around your knees and do hip thrusts, it tends to activate the upper glute max, not the glute medius. By the way, women will do it for the glute medius. And it doesn't activate the glute medius more, it activates the glute medius less, but it activates the upper glute max more. But not the lower glute max more. We're lacking a lot of research, but my point is you can do a lot of volume if your main goal is glutes. So quit thinking about bro splits.

Quit thinking about, you know, a man decided one day, look at the human body. Look at it. Imagine on an anatomy chart, okay, I'm going to split this upper half into five, five different days. I'm going to split this lower half into just one day for everything.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

Now, you see some bodybuilders over the years who did do break their lower body into a quad focus in a hamstring focus. But bodybuilders, bodybuilding is not about male bodybuilding is not about glute development now. And so most of the male bodybuilders, they don't. They just. If you do steroids and train your legs, you end up with fine glute development. And it's about getting shredded glutes. That's diet and conditioning.

So they don't train for maximum glute hypertrophy. If they did, they would have separate glute days. And so they don't care about that. The women care about that. And then male, some men care about maximizing glute size. Like me, a guy who never had any glutes. That's why I became the glute guy.

I had to study my butt off to grow, to grow them. Because I'm like, I'm doing these exercises, I don't feel them working my glutes as, as, you know, as well as I should. So that's the main difference with women, they want glute development is their number one goal. So they're going to train glutes three days a week, most of them.

Andy Galpin

Okay. You threw out so much gold right there. We're going to take a very long time unwinding and packing a lot of the things. There's a lot of terminology in there that I followed along with it.

Probably missed some people, though. I want to make sure everything you just said, people can grasp how helpful and important that was. So we're probably going to spend a large chunk of the next few minutes here going back through some of those things. But to summarize the initial question again, the context I laid out for you was women. This is the strength training side of the equation. This isn't mobility. This isn't necessarily body composition or fat loss or endurance.

This is simply if women want to lift weights and men want to lift weights, what are some of the things we should think about that differentiates them and the case you made pretty eloquently. There is oftentimes certainly not everyone.

Brett Contreras

Real quick, this is important. I want to give some shout outs, some credit. You said this is about. This is about hypertrophy mainly. Like, this isn't about athleticism. But I would have never came up with these methods that I've popularized if it weren't for my strength coaching background.

Andy Galpin

We're gonna get into that here right.

Brett Contreras

Now, submerge into that world. But they were doing three lower body workouts a week and recovering from them. I'm going. Bodybuilders tell you to train legs one day a week. And I'm like, they're doing knee dominant movement and a hinging movement every training session. And then they're doing glute activation work. And I'm like, why do you have to do glute activation work?

Well, you have to wake up the glutes in all three planes. Why can't we turn those into strengthening movements? Why are we using little bands and doing 10 glute bridges? Let's load those suckers up. That's what gave me the idea. So anyway, it's interesting that I came up with my ideas of hypertrophy because of the strength coaching world, but keep going.

Andy Galpin

Yes. Okay, so the summary for training men versus women, in this case, what you're honing in on is the fact that we don't necessarily, on aggregate, as a general statement, not every woman, not every man. Right. Just. You're saying you've trained probably tens of thousands of women at this point, have been through your programs and things like that. What you're just saying is, on average, most people that have come through your systems want more glute development, want to have bigger glute muscles, where men also maybe want big glutes, but also want bigger arms and things like that. The other thing that you would want to think about here is there's often a case when women don't want hypertrophy in certain areas.

So they will oftentimes will want bigger glutes, but not want bigger thighs. Right. So part of what you're talking about here and all the. The exercises and the methodologies you just laid out are ways that can help you potentially grow the glutes without also then growing the. The. The thighs and other parts.

Did I have that?

Brett Contreras

And. And by the way, that was a blog post I wrote in 2010, and I realized this is a thing. And say you don't have big glutes and you're a woman. And then from the side view, I go and get your quads and hamstrings bigger.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

And then your glutes don't grow. They look even smaller now. It's proportion.

Andy Galpin

Right.

Brett Contreras

And that's something that men can't seem to fathom, because why would you not want big quads and hammies? But if you have a certain aesthetic. You know, a lot of Asian women that I've trained who have muscular quads, but then flat glutes, they don't want to do more squats. And I'm trying to get them to. I'm going, squats are good for your glutes. And they go, no, they grow my quads. Brett, you have me front squatting155, and my quads are huge.

I don't want to do squats anymore. I've learned this over many, many decades of training women. So you actually make their glutes proportionally look smaller when you do that. So it depends on the. If you train the thin person that needs muscle everywhere versus the person who has big legs and flat. So. And we all have the right to train.

I mean, every man does it. Every. Every bro has problem areas and strong points. And so you look at all everyone who, you know, there people's training splits, and we all have a preference that we throw in that makes our training unique compared to everyone else's.

Andy Galpin

All right, so you're not necessarily saying there's a difference in physiology or anything like that.

Brett Contreras

It's just goals.

Andy Galpin

It's the goals.

Brett Contreras

The physiology, I think, doesn't. You don't even really need to take that. Yes, you, you, you know, all of it, all the differences in hormones and everything and the recovery differences and stuff. But I don't think that the. That has to change much at all. It's just a matter of preference. And then some women who are listening to this will be like, why would you not want to grow the quads and hammies?

Or I don't care about glutes. I get. I just want to be strong.

And that's fine. But we're talking about the masses. And most women, they look at the human body and they go, I want to split it up this way. I want to. They look at the lower body and say, I want to do that three times a week. And upper body, they typically do. Some do none.

Yeah, Some do twice a week, two. Two upper body sessions. Some just do full body training and work it into their. I would say with my programs that are right for like Booty by Brat, it's three full body days. But here's the deal. You do one press, one compound press could be vertical, could be horizontal. You do one pole compound, whether it's a chin up, a pull down, or a row, and you do that three times a week.

That beats what most of them are doing for body part split training. And I don't want to go off on a big tangent here, but with like Booty by breath, I. I will tell them I want to get in 10 chin ups eventually. And they're like, what? I can't even do one. Well, keep doing negatives. But having that goal will do more for your upper body development than having your one back day a week where you do these wimpy pull downs and put it on £70.

Yeah, because that's what all my girls will want to just put on 60 and 70. They don't go to 80. 90. I'm like, you're. You. What do you weigh? I weigh one. 130. Then you need to be doing 130.

You want to be able to do chin ups. You better be doing 130 for reps. Yeah. And anyway. But that tends to develop their upper bodies really, really well. And then, you know, a lot of women, especially in bikini, they want the side delt. So throw in your lateral raises.

But it depends on the women. They tend to want to do upper body twice a week. And some of them will have a back day and a shoulder day. And I don't think that's as wise as having two upper body days because of frequency. But anyway, they always have at least two lower body workouts a week. Always two, sometimes three. And some girls go crazy and want to train glutes every day.

I got creative in how to make that work because they're obsessed. And I get it, we've all been there. But they're like, I want to train glutes every day.

How could you do that? Well, it's doable. It's just you got to do more shortened short muscle position stuff, more band work, and then people will say, bands suck. Okay, how come during COVID people's upper glutes grew like crazy because they got a glute loop around doing tons of abduction because they're bored as hell. So they work.

Andy Galpin

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But if you're interested in supplements, it's important that you get them from the highest quality providers. You don't want mercury in your fish oil or lead in your whey protein or anything like that. So that's why I stick exclusively to Momentous. If you'd like to give Momentous a try, go to livemomentous.com perform to get 20% off your order. Again, that's live. Momentous.com perform to get 20 percent off. I'm. I'm very familiar with the Booty by Brett program.

My wife does it. She loves it. It's three days a week of total body every day. And then you have.

Brett Contreras

If you have to listen to my voice, if you hear it in the.

Andy Galpin

Background, I don't know, you're. If anything, it helps me. It's three days a week, total body. And then there's two additional bonus days that are just for the glutes that you do. So that's what you're referring to when your program is such that if you only want to do it three days a week, fine. If you also want to do four or five, you can sort of add those things on. And the way that you've gotten around that, as you just mentioned, is those additional days, you just call it a pump, but it's non damaging, non fatiguing things that will stimulate a little bit of growth, but it's not going to crush you your next workout.

Because those three workouts are when you're getting your true maximal mechanical tension and stimuli and things like that. So I want to walk through that whole program.

Brett Contreras

But before we go, side note on mechanical tension, I just called Brad up. I'm like, brad, why do we say mechanical tension? What else could it be? Psychological tension. Let's drop the word mechanical. Is it just tension? Muscular tension on the muscle.

Why do we have to say mechanical? Anyway, keep going.

Andy Galpin

Okay. All the way back, though, you started off your career, you mentioned a little bit of your backstory I've heard, you know, before you didn't have large glutes as a kid. You wanted to develop them, so you kind of got focused in this area. I, I said initially where I had first saw your stuff was again, I don't even know, probably before 2010. I don't know. When did you start writing for. For things.

Brett Contreras

2009.

Andy Galpin

For teenage, right? Yeah, teenage and stuff all the time over there. These, like.

It's very funny. The strength conditioning nerds are going to understand this. The rest of you probably won't. But these things, like T Nation were like the only thing we had.

Brett Contreras

T Nation was the greatest. And like early 2000s, some of the.

Andy Galpin

Articles were wild on there. And then there'd be people like you. And I'm like, my God, this is a, like, this is a dissertation.

Brett Contreras

This is references all the top strength coaches. You wanted to be a top.

Andy Galpin

That's how you earned your stripes.

Brett Contreras

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Actually, like a little bit of a side note, you're the example I also give of people think that, wow, you got a million followers. Because you did.

No, no, no, no. Like you were famous in this whole field way before Instagram existed. From things like putting your Chops in on those articles, speaking at scientific conferences before you had a PhD, I don't even know if before you had a master's degree, but you were using science as best you could in applications. So you spent, I don't know, what was it? At least 10 years, just purely coaching and writing for the most part. You have probably 25 years of lifting.

Brett Contreras

Yourself, 33 years of lifting. 28 years of coaching.

Andy Galpin

28 years of coaching. And this is a lot of high volume personal coaching. You have to be in the top half a percentile of people with a PhD in the field in terms of coaching hours.

Brett Contreras

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Like, not that many people there. Right. So at what point in that journey did you get super focused on the glutes? You mentioned why the personal side? And then I'm gonna ask this, inflammatory on purpose. When did you, Brett Contreras, invent the hip thrust?

Brett Contreras

Okay, so.

Andy Galpin

And I'm a little bit smiling when I say that. I know some of the backstory, but I actually don't know the whole answer here.

Brett Contreras

Yeah, I think you'll be pleased to hear it. Okay, so when I was 16 years old, so I'm 48. So when I was 16, it was 1992. I'm. I. I wanted to lift weights for two reasons, and maybe every guy does this in the beginning, to stand up to bullies and to get laid. I look, I would look at my body in the mirror.

My friends were like athletes and they were developing, and I'm like, I'm this scrawny. What girl would ever want to see me naked? I. I wish I had the confidence that other people do that, don't care that just have the gift of gab and women love them. But I was like, I was insecure. I was like, why would anyone want to ever hook up with me? I'm so scrawny.

And I hated being bullied more than anyone. I remember getting my, like, back when we grew up, it was kind of worse now. I was a teacher for six years. I taught high school math for six years.

It's not as bad. Yeah, they have anti bullying policies, thank God. But back then, I'd have some kid come up and slam my head into the locker or something. And one time I was out at an event, and then some guy's like, I don't want to hear you talk. If I hear you talk, I'm going to hit you in the face. And he was the toughest guy in the school. I didn't speak the whole night.

And all of a sudden someone's like, brett, Brett. And I'm like, I can't talk. And then I answered them and he happened to be coming up and he just hit me in the jaw. And I was like, oh, I wish I was bigger than him. I wish I could bully him. And that's what I really fueled me to start lifting weights. But I heard two specific instances, I heard these girls saying, I can't wait to go to football practice and watch the guys training.

I love staring at their butts. And I'm like, oh, great, I'm going to be a 40 year old virgin.

You know, women want glutes. I. I don't even. I look so bad from behind my butt. And then, and then the next story is I'm playing golf with my sister's boyfriend, bending over to swing. We're on the ninth hole and he's like. And it's so funny because he became so descriptive.

He was like, you know, Brett, your back goes right into your legs. It's like you're missing the gluteal musculature. Most people have like a prominence that juts out and you're just, your back goes right in your legs. And I'm like, why do you feel so comfortable talking about my biggest insecurity? I remember just going, I am not okay with this. I'm going to do something about this. So I started reading everything I could.

And in the bodybuilding mags you had just read their leg day, they didn't talk about glutes. It was, what does Ronnie Coleman do for his quads and hammies? Because they will not mention glutes. It's like the muscle whose name shall not be mentioned. It's bizarre. They still to this day have this homophobic association with glutes and with hip thrusts. It's weird.

I cover a lot of it on my Instagram, like my idols, you know, Tom Platz, the first thing he ever posted on his Facebook page was drop the useless hip thruster. I'm like, he didn't want to make a post about. And he's my Tom Platts legs. Sure.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

Like, Lee Priest just made a. I just responded to an interview. And he's like, bashing hip thrusts so bad. And if you're a, if you're a man doing hip thrusts, take your tampon out.

And it's funny. So I had to learn about glutes through other, basically through bodybuilders, what they did for the leg days, but also through other resources. And When I was 19 years old, my cousin bought Me this book, the Complete Guide to Butt and Leg Development. And that was 1995. I still have the book. It's on my coffee table in Vegas. I still flip through it.

It's still in mint condition, but I read it on Christmas. I just left the party and went into my room and read it for, like, two hours. Came back to the party. I'm like, this is my favorite present.

How did you know? And he goes, dude, I've never met someone so obsessed with the glutes. And, you know, it was 1995, and since then, my enthusiasm for glutes has never diminished. I'm still just as excited, but it was because I had no glutes. And no one becomes the glute guy if they just born with good glute genetics. Because if you have good glute genetics, guess what? You never need to do an isolation movement.

You just squat. And then you're the guy going, lol. Just squat.

Quit doing that stupid kickback. Quit doing that stupid exercise. Just squat. You know?

Andy Galpin

Yeah. I'm going to be real honest. Like, that was definitely me for a good decade or more. That's a part of my physique that it, you know, grows very easy and very well. And so I definitely dismissed much of these things. In fact, more than that, I was pretty aggressive earlier in my career. Like, you don't need any of these things. Just squat. Just squat.

It took me age, like, it does everybody else to go, oh, you know what? Not everyone's like me, right? So I don't need to emphasize.

Brett Contreras

And as you age, you get injuries. Injuries are what taught me a lot. Half of what I know is by working around, you get an injury and you work around stuff, you're like, oh, my God, I like this. Or, oh, my God, I came back stronger. I was missing something. So you asked about the hip thrust.

So it's October 10, 2006.

Andy Galpin

There's a date, exact date.

Brett Contreras

I'm watching UFC. UFC fights with my girlfriend. At the time, her name was Jeannie. And, you know, UFC fights in Phoenix, Arizona or Scottsdale. Come on.

At like, 9, 10 o'clock. So we're watching the fights, and I'm. I didn't care who won. It was Ken Shamrock versus Tito Ortiz, their third fight. I don't care who wins. I just want it to be a good fight.

Cause I, like.

Andy Galpin

I was in Phoenix on that fight, by the way.

Brett Contreras

Really?

Andy Galpin

That's crazy.

Brett Contreras

We were within a few miles of each other.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, I was at athlete's performance.

Brett Contreras

Really? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I know exactly where that, that, that was back before it was X exos or whatever. And so I'm watching the fights and I'm like, man, Tito, you know, mounts him.

And I'm like, ken, do something. Don't just lay there. Because I had a twin brother growing up and we would always, you know, grapple and you'd straddle the person. You'd be kick bucking like a bronco. Eventually you buck the person off. I had done a couple years of jiu jitsu training. I know the jiu jitsu guys can say, oh, if you have your hooks in.

But in mma, they don't have their hooks in. You can if you're really freakish strong, a hip, a good hip bump or whatever they call it now. But a powerful glute bridge can help get you out of that. And glutes help in a lot of ways in mma. But anyway, I started thinking at the time, I'm like, that should be an exercise now. At that time, I'm reading articles on teenage from Eric Cressy and these guys saying, do these glute bridges and I would do them. And I'm like, I love these.

I love the way it feels. But I could do a hundred. So I was going, how could you load that? Also, you're limited by the ground. How could you sink deeper? I went out to my garage, I had an idea, and I thought, I'm going to move my glute ham developer a few feet away from my reverse hyper. I called Jeannie, Jeannie, come out here, help me.

She gets out there, she's like, why can't we do this tomorrow? And I'm like, fine, I'll do it myself. Yeah, I'll do it myself. And I'm trying to move this GHD across the floor, but I did it. And then I'm like, a male weighs.

An average male weighs about 180 pounds. That's four 45 pound plates. I didn't think of the idea to use the barbell for a long time. I took four plates, I put a dip belt. It was so hard because I stood in the dip belt, tried to get up to my legs, and then I had to lay back on the glute ham developer, shimmy the weight belt up to my lap and put my feet on the reverse hyper.

Andy Galpin

Oh, this is super safe.

Brett Contreras

Oh, good. They could split apart and you'd fall. I know. Immediately I sunk all the way down, Thrust it up 1. I remember I got to like 15 and I felt my left glute start to. I felt like it was gonna. I was gonna pull it.

I was like, God, it's. I'm worried I'm gonna tear this thing if I keep going. So I set the weight down, and I'm like, oh, my God. I have a pump from one set. I had never felt that feeling before in 2006.

And I went. I went out to my front yard, looked up in the sky.

I'm not religious. I'm not even very spiritual. And I looked up in the sky. I go, I'm going to spend the rest of my life making this exercise as popular as humanly possible. From this point on, my whole life changes.

And I knew it. And it was just this random where your life is going this way and now it's going this way. And so people will say, so this is crazy. So I start giving it to all my clients. I'm giving it with body weight, and then I'm like, figuring out different ways to load it. And then my aunt says, you should. I said, I want to write an article for teenage.

And I think I'm ready now. This is going to be my first article, which it was dispelling the glute myth. That was my first article.

Andy Galpin

That was your first article.

Brett Contreras

That was the article heard around the world.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

Because I come out of the gate strong, and I said, I didn't know.

Andy Galpin

That was your first one.

Brett Contreras

And so I'm like, this is the way you build your glutes. I have me hip thrusting 405 people around the world. Start doing it right away. That's the time when people would have said, this is awkward, Brett. We're doing that. That was heard round the T nation back then. They had that forum.

Of course, I was meeting guys down the road. Like when I went and got my PhD, this guy from New Zealand, this guy Sam, he's like, do you remember the day you post that article? I went and did them. I did 405. And because he's a powerlifter, he's like, it was awesome. Do you remember? That was me.

So the very next day, guys in New Zealand, guys all over the world were doing it. If someone was doing them, that would have been the time. People don't like Brett. This is awkward. We're doing this here. No one was doing hip thrusts. They never existed.

But now the weirdest thing happened in the world at that time. I saw it took me a while to think of using a barbell. I told my aunt about it. She goes, sounds like you need to. Invent something. And I go, I don't know how to invent anything. And she goes, sure you do.

You were always good at drawing. Draw some up right now. I did. I applied for a patent. I still have the patent.

I don't enforce my patent. I could probably make an extra $2 million a year if I enforced it. I feel guilty because I want there to be as many hip thrust machines as possible. And so.

But, yeah, they're all.

Andy Galpin

So you have the actual patent on the hip thrust?

Brett Contreras

I have the patent since I think I was awarded in maybe 2009. And you can pull it up. You can Google Brett Contrera's patent comes up on Google. You can see my original patent, all my drawings. But it took me a while to think of the barbell hip thrust. So my first invention was a scorcher. And it was like that idea, the rounded back pad.

I had a angled foot plate, but it was this monstrosity. But that's. So I opened up lifts. My first gym in Scottsdale. That's all we did for hip thrust was always off the scorcher, never anything else. And we did three types of hip thrusts. We did band hip thrust because I said you need bands, and it needs to be anchored low, so there's tension at the start and tension at the top.

So the thing was elevated. And then there was band tension from way down low. But you get to the top, and it was, like, insane. So we did band hip thrusts. We did single leg hip thrusts. And I gave a unit to Gunner Peterson.

He trained JLO back then. He's like, Brett, this is JLo's favorite exercise. But you need handles on this. I wonder if he remembers this. You need handles on this so they don't wobble around. So I put handles on the unit. It was great.

Single leg hip thrusts off the scorcher are amazing because it actually changes the strength curve. It's hardest at the bottom.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

And you can do that off two benches. If you get two benches and you actually go all the way down to where your butt touches the ground and then comes up, it is hard off the bottom. So we would do single leg sinking really deep coming up. And then we do barbell. But the barbell were hilarious. This is what we did in my first gym. Trainer on this side, trainer on this side.

So we'd have to have to. Every time someone did barbell hip thrust, they'd be like, coach, I'm ready. And we'd have to run over. We'd be training, like 10 people at a time we'd run over two trainers, pick the barbell up, the person slides underneath, gets in position, drop it in their lap, they do their set of hip thrusts. Then we pick the barbell.

You get out of it. And we did that for two years. And by the way, I remember when I said, why can't you use the barbell? The thing is, it would hurt. You need padding. And I Googled thick bar padding.

I Googled this in, like, you know, 2008. And Hampton was the only one making this thick barbell pad for squats. And that became. So I made Hampton a lot of money until people started making their own.

Andy Galpin

Oh, wow.

Brett Contreras

Squat sponge. The squat sponge came out, and then, like, we started making ours. And. But people also use the Eric's balance pads, so we'd use those too. Those were the game changer for the hip thrust. So. All right, so now I decide to write an ebook.

Cause when I blogging was popular back in the day. You blogged, but you needed a money maker. So I made an ebook. I'm like, I can't be telling people do these hip thrusts off the scorcher.

They don't have a scorcher. How can I make this mainstream? Well, they could do it off a bench. When you've only done the scorcher and then you do it off the bench, you're like, I don't feel it on my hammies. I don't feel like I'm sinking deep enough. It just doesn't feel right. But then you get used to it.

So whatever you do the most you like, and then everything else kind of feels weird. But anyway, we start doing off the bench. Cause I'm like, I need to teach everyone how to do it using regular equipment. No one did a barbell hip thrust off a bench for a couple years now. I didn't just think of the barbell hip thrust. I also thought of the barbell glute bridge and the single leg hip thrust. And you're sitting here going, brett, you're looking me in the face saying, no one ever did a single leg hip thrust. No. No one ever sat on a bench and did a single egg hip.

There's at least. There's no evidence of it now. Okay, so prove me wrong. So when I wrote my glue ebook, I did my research. You know, I'm a researcher. I'm not lazy. I searched for a whole week of my life, like, eight hours a day.

I thought of every term you could come up with for the first term. Could be pelvic. Floor, supine, glute, hip, whatever. And then the second term could be raise, lift, thrust, bridge, push up, like. And I, and I did every combination of those. And I searched 30 pages deep. I go to forums and search.

I did see like someone glute bridging a keg. I found, later on I found some evidence. So here's. If you're a Brett Contrez haters, I'm going to give you four pieces of evidence you can use against me. Okay, the first piece is the evolution of the bench press. So I have this book from 1924, Super Strength by Alan Calvert, and it's 101 years old. So anyway, real quick, I'm going to fast forward to modern day.

If I made a post right now, like if you post this clip. If we were to collaborate on a post, there'd be at least 10 people that write LOL. I was doing those in the 90s, I was doing those in the 2000s and they remember it that way. I'm not doubting that they think that. I'm not saying they're lying.

They don't have good memory. They were doing that after 2009. Or they'll be like, my dad was doing that. And I always say, okay, I'm a historian, I would love to talk to the people.

How'd you do it? What padding did you use?

What set rep schemes? How frequently? How strong were the people? But there's no evidence. And what they will always say, this is crazy to me because we've reached a period of time where people are so insanely stupid that they think that we don't have history of anything before camera phones. So I'll say prove it. Like, give me evidence.

I'm happy to. I'll send out a newsletter. Hey, turns out I didn't invent the hip thrust.

This person did. I will give credit and they'll go lol. Like, we had camera phones back then. And I'm like, oh my God, I have a book that's 101 years old with 200 pictures in the back of it in black and white. A hundred years ago we had cameras. We brought cameras to the gym. We have a whole history before camera phones exist.

And these people are so like, inexplicable how insanely stupid they are. They are the dumbest.

Andy Galpin

So anyway, it's not that you necessarily maybe didn't invent the hip thrust, but you have yet to find any evidence.

Brett Contreras

Trainer invented the hip thrust in 2003. That's the only evidence I have. She used a stability.

Okay, so I'll go for the four pieces. Number one is Beyonce in 2003.

She's on a VHS. Is that the VH1? VH1, VH1.

Andy Galpin

There you go.

Brett Contreras

MTV's. Yeah, the MTV channel.

Like the counterpart. VH1 had a series called Rockin Bodies. And someone sent me this and I'm like, this was not.

This was after 2006. No, it was not. And she's on a stability ball and she's got a little barbell and she's doing hip thrusts. That's the only time I've ever seen a barbell hip thrust being performed. But it is with like a 30 pound barbell. And she doesn't have the best form. But I'd never seen it until.

I didn't see that until a few years ago. So you could say Beyonce's trainer. It shows her in the video. There's a little extra. So whoever this is, she could be given credit for inventing the hip. Gross.

Andy Galpin

You could find her name, Right?

Brett Contreras

And then if you look at the book, okay, that book I told you about in 1995, it has pelvic raises. It shows glute bridges and single glute bridges, but it doesn't show them with weight. But if you go to the back of the program, the back of the book has programs and it says in one part, weighted pelvic raises.

Andy Galpin

Okay.

Brett Contreras

But it doesn't show how to weight it.

Andy Galpin

Gotcha.

Brett Contreras

Now, that would be off the ground, but that would be a weighted glue bridge or whatever. But it doesn't say how. Now you look at the book.

Super Training by Mel Siff. Classic. There is some pictures from 1977, credit to Yuri Verkhoshansky, this Russian sports scientist. Rest in peace. And these are all hip thrusts. It looks like Kama Sutra drawings, but they're all hip thrusts. And you can see these are single leg hip thrusts.

There's one, the person against a bench and they're pushing against their hips. That's an isometric hip thrust. And then there's single leg, where you've got your foot on a kettlebell on your foot, and you're doing single leg hip thrust. And they're special exercise to develop sprinting. Who would have known that 50 years later we'd now have evidence that hip thrusts are actually better for sprinting than the vertical hip extension exercises? So that was ahead of its time. But these are hip thrust variations.

And then another piece was from the late 1800s, early 1900s, the invention of the bench press. So they didn't always have benches. So what they first started in the strongmen back then, they'd have to kind of do a pullover and press.

You just were laying on the ground. You just had to get the bar over your head. Then they started making bigger discs and you could roll it over, which is what I ended up doing with BC Strength, with hip thruster plates. Even bigger. But back then, they had to get it over their head. And then they do a press. And then people started realizing if I.

So it was like Arthur Saxon had the record, then George Hackenschmidt, and then this Joe Nord Quest. And he did it from a. He would elevate his.

Because you could bend. You could. If you turn it into a glute bridge and turn in a decline, you were even stronger.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

And then some guys started realizing, hell, I'm just gonna. They call it a belly toss.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brett Contreras

So they would put it on their belly and toss it up and lock it out. So then that was the belly toss method. And then some guy named George L. Rich, he was so flexible, he could just go and bridge it all the way up to lock out, put his hips down.

Andy Galpin

Oh, nice.

Brett Contreras

And then at that point, they're like, this isn't even using pressing muscles. This is silly.

So the powers that be. Hoffman. What is Hoffman's name?

Andy Galpin

Bob Hoffman.

Brett Contreras

Bob Hoffman. Bob Hoffman decided this is stupid.

Let's get away with all this. Yeah. Let's just do the strict floor press. And that's when benches start coming along. So they were doing, like, belly tosses, but for one rep, not for reps. And it wasn't with the goal of building glutes. It was to have a stronger bench, which is what you'll see high school kids doing now in gyms, doing anything they can to get a stronger bench press.

Andy Galpin

Right.

Brett Contreras

And interestingly, back then, bench press is some of the same criticisms are what you see of hip thrusts today. Quit being late. They were a lazy man's exercise.

Andy Galpin

Right.

Brett Contreras

Standing exercises are functional. This is how you build the real functional muscle. Who wants to artificially expand the pecs? These aren't, you know, functional muscles. The real muscles are your shoulders and your biceps. And you should. You should be doing curls and overhead presses.

Who lays down to do an exercise? And then bodybuilders, you know, started doing the bench, and then it took off and then. But it was criticized in the beginning. And it's going to be bad for your posture. It's going to be non functional. It's going to lead to injury, and then people ignored them. And then it now is the most popular exercise today.

And the same thing is happening with hip thrusts now with the invention of these plate loaded devices and these selectorized devices. Those are the best selling pieces of equipment right now.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

It's like you're a modern gym. The ladies want the hip thrust machines.

Andy Galpin

I would be hard pressed to believe nobody in the history of the world ever did a loaded hip thrust before Brett Contreras. But of course, that's not what you're really saying.

Brett Contreras

Well, that's why I tell people then, because I had a coach tell me he was doing. I go, how come you never posted about it? Why didn't you? You didn't realize it was going to be popular.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, yeah.

Brett Contreras

It's just like that's the way history works.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. It just wasn't very popular at all before you. So at minimum, we could say you were the one that brought it to the lexicon.

Brett Contreras

Sure.

Andy Galpin

You were not doing it in every gym. It was not certainly in studios. Now you can't go to a gym that doesn't have a hip thrust machine of some kind.

Brett Contreras

Yeah. So, yeah, no one will argue that Brett cantrip popularize it.

I just don't. I just don't like being, like, basically being called a fraud, as if I take credit for something I never did. In fact, back in the day, people were like, calling it the Contreras hip thrust or two bloggers calling it the cht. And I'm like, don't make it about me. I want this to be popular on its own. Everyone knows I invented it, and then now no one knows I invented it. Because the world changed.

Social media kind of became a copycat game. Back in our day, we gave credit. We always gave credit. If you didn't give credit, you. You were, you know, dead in your tracks.

Andy Galpin

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That's parkerseminars.com I can't wait to see you there. Okay, so really fast, before we go into some more details about how to train and some of the things, walk me through the difference between a hip thrust and a glute bridge. You mentioned single leg glute bridges. You mentioned different loading strategies for people that are thinking like, I don't know the difference here. What is that difference again between a glute bridge, a hip thrust? Why does it matter?

Brett Contreras

If you're on the ground, It's a glute bridge. You can do that one leg, two. Two legs. Best way to do is off the Smith machine, though, because you're on a bench. It's plate loaded. You just load the plates up and you can go all the way down to the ground. You can always go sit on the bench sometimes if the plates.

If you're a smaller person, you don't even get to touch down before the plates touch down.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

Okay.

Andy Galpin

So your back is on the ground, your feet are on the ground, and you're elevating your hips up in the air with some load on your hips. That's a glute bridge.

Brett Contreras

That's a glute bridge.

Andy Galpin

One leg, two leg.

Brett Contreras

And if you elevate your feet from that position, it's a foot elevated glute bridge.

Andy Galpin

So you put your feet up on a bench.

Brett Contreras

Yep.

Andy Galpin

Which allows you to get your hips up higher and increase the range of.

Brett Contreras

Motion, but doesn't increase the quad activity. Right. If. If you. Now you elevate your shoulders, that's a hip thrust.

Andy Galpin

So now you're putting your back up on a bench.

Brett Contreras

Put your back up on a bench. And now if you elevate both your shoulders and feet, that's a dual elevated or foot elevated Hip thrust.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

So, yeah, basically, hip thrusts are going to build your quads a little bit more, probably. If you want all glute growth and no quad, no hamstring, no adductor, then the glute bridge is probably your lift. Because the thing is, you could say, do kickbacks, do these exercises, but these are not exercises easy to progressively overload over the years. Glute bridges, you can. And hip thrust. That's why they're so effective. They're very conducive to progressive overload.

Same with squats, deadlifts and bench press, the most effective exercises. You can keep loading them, you can have a standardized range of motion, a way to perform it. You do it this way every time. When you get stronger, you're utilizing progressive overload. You should be growing muscle over time. Yes, there are neural effects and coordination effects, but you should grow muscle over time. And that's why I say make it a goal to hip thrust.

315 for 20. That's your best bet to getting glutes and people.

Andy Galpin

315 pounds for 20 reps for a 250 pound man.

Brett Contreras

So it doesn't matter. Yeah, it's kind of crazy because you think every other lift you're like, well, size matters.

What do they weigh? But I found that when you're bigger, like hip thrusts, it's easier to hip thrust. When you're smaller, it's just more comfortable. You know, when you're bigger, your belly gets in the way, you're just cramped in there, and body weight adds to it. So I, I would like to say, you know, maybe 2.5 times body weight for 20 reps.

But really, 315 for 20 is very simple. Probably the best metric, if there had to be one. But obviously with genetics. Yeah, yeah, genetics are super strong.

Andy Galpin

I want to linger on that really, really fast. Again, what you're saying is, you personally having trained, again, thousands, if not tens of thousands of individuals, not NFL players, 90% female, probably most of them sub 200 pounds. What one or two of them have ever been able to hip thrust?

315 for 20. Like how many?

Brett Contreras

Every client I have, Ken.

Andy Galpin

Every client you have.

Brett Contreras

And not just, all right, you go to an Olympic weightlifting gym, what are you going to see?

Andy Galpin

Snatches and cleaning jerks.

Brett Contreras

Well, what equipment?

Andy Galpin

Oh, yeah, you're going to see barbells.

Brett Contreras

Well, you're going to see plates, squat stands.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. Platforms, power racks. That's it. Yeah.

Brett Contreras

What are you going to see if you go to glute lab? Hip thrust stations in San Diego, we've got like 12 against the wall, just against the one wall in the Astroturf.

That's what we do here. And the other thing is. Yeah. If you trained at Westside back in the day, do you think you would have been stronger?

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

Well, if you train at glute lab, you think you're three. Fifteen for five is impressive. And then you look at these girls and they're freaks. Yeah, freaks.

They're doing 4, 4 95. They're doing 585.

Andy Galpin

Didn't you have a girl just to 800 or something like that?

Brett Contreras

So there's a. There's. I have not. I've seen one legit 800 pound hip thrust from a woman.

Her name was Daria. Now, the problem is people don't lock it out.

Full legit lockout. I've been watching hip thrusts, millions and millions of reps. I'm very skilled at seeing. Did you reach full hip extension? They have these Guinness Book of World Records and like, contests now, you see, And I get tagged in them. Like they didn't even come close to locking it out. Yeah, you got to reach full hip extension.

This girl Daria, she did 810 or 800. I think it was 800 legit. In training, she had done one of my strong lifting competitions. The thing is, hip thrusts are last. So you've already done squats and deads. She. She didn't get seven.

I think it was like 7:35 or something. She.

Andy Galpin

Well, nonetheless, call me still impressed.

Brett Contreras

At £700, she hit 765 legit. Full lockout.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

One of the coolest experiences of my life. And I think she could have done 800. There's another girl, Katie Soniero, I think could get to an 800 pound hip thrust legit. She's doing the rotisserie one now that's using the rotating pad that's on.

Andy Galpin

Oh, that slides with. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brett Contreras

That's on my thruster 3.0. The girls like it more. That also changes the torque angle curve to where it's hardest off the ground. The lockout becomes easy.

Andy Galpin

Oh, because you can roll back.

Brett Contreras

Yeah. It just changes it to where I did it the other day because I did it for the first time. It was always hard at the bottom. It feels. I'm too.

I got a belly, you know, it's too. I'm too wedged in. So I did like, I did it with bands and I did. I think I did 4, 405 for 12. And my client Dre is like, lol, coach, I'm stronger than you. I'm like, dre, it's my first time I did him. I'm still stronger than you.

I hope I'm stronger. I'm.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

Literally twice your size. So I did it again, and it was. It's. It's. It's really hard at the bottom, and then it gets easier as you come up. It's really different. In fact, at the top, I'm like.

I feel like I'm going to tip over. It's kind of. You're kind of scared that you're going to flip over. But that's an interesting debate because now you're changing. So with that rotating pad, you. A lot of the men who criticize the hip thrust say, well, it's easy at the bottom, hardest at the top. Well, you can make it with this design.

You can change that around.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

But anyway, now there's that. Katie's doing like 900 pounds for four reps or something. It's crazy. Or, yeah, maybe it's 800 for four, but she's crazy.

Andy Galpin

It's a lot.

Brett Contreras

Anyway, there's. Women can get stronger than men at this.

I would love to. Relatively. Relatively stronger. I have never seen a man legit lock out a thousand. Well, maybe this guy. I posted it. There's one guy who looked like he had a legit lockout.

But you see the strongest powerlifters in the world, they never lock it out. And they're doing like, you know, they can get to 7,800 pounds. But it's really interesting, and I think it has to do with that. Women have possibly better leverage at lockout, especially with their adductors, some of their muscles. But maybe their glutes can get. Their glutes can probably get relatively. Maybe a little bit bigger, or at least they're training glutes three times a week.

It's going to get bigger. But I think they're maybe because they're not training their hamstrings and everything, too. So their lockout strength tends to be amazing. And I always think it's funny, what, 10 years ago, I'd have all these girls that are like, I saw this bodybuilder in the gym, and of course, that bodybuilder has a crush on one of my girls. So they're flirting, and then they see them doing hip thrust or glute bridging. They're like, oh, let me see if I can do that. And they can't do it.

And that's because they have strong glutes down deep in a hips flexed position.

Andy Galpin

Totally.

Brett Contreras

They can do half reps for days, but then you have them come up all the way and lock it out. They lack that lockout strength, which is something you will hear.

What's his face? Nautilus inventor Arthur Jones talk about how when people would start to use the machines, they're so strong in the stretch position.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

They're so weak here. It takes them a while to, you know, they're so weak here. There's this massive imbalance throughout the range of motion. So.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

So I, I, I do think that there are some anatomical differences that make women stronger at hip thrust. But also just comes down to, for women, the hip thrust is their bench press. Yeah. You know.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, of course.

Brett Contreras

Guys ask you how much do you bench women, how much you thrust, you know.

Andy Galpin

Right. Yeah. So, so you've mentioned now a handful of anatomical terms and you've, you've peppered in a little bit about how to train them differently. But I want to complete that picture if we can. So just give me the really basic overview of the glute anatomy. Right. The couple of different muscles there.

And then what I really want to get to on that is how do I train them differently if I need to? So if I want my glutes to get bigger, do I need to be having bands? Do I, should I not use them? Like, give me that whole picture of saying, okay, Brett, I want my butt bigger. Do all I have to do is hip thrust? Do I need to add anything else? What are adductors?

Complete that whole picture about what am I looking at anatomy wise? And then what implications do I have for training?

Brett Contreras

Okay, so anatomically you have attachments at the ilium, the sacrum, and the coccyx. It's mostly the sacrum. Like, so the glute max will tailbone. Yeah. Attaches a little bit to the pelvis, you know, and then the sacrum and a little bit to the coccyx. And then it inserts onto the gluteal tuberosity of the femur, but also onto the it band.

Andy Galpin

And it's attached to the back of your thigh. Like the back of your thigh muscle.

Brett Contreras

Kind of the lateral edge of it though.

Andy Galpin

Right.

Brett Contreras

There aren't many muscles like the glutes. It's like a, it's like a quadrilateral. Is that, why don't I remember this? I used to teach geometry. It's, it's a, it's, it's almost rectangular shaped in a way.

Andy Galpin

Right. Well, if we contrast this to the, like the quadriceps muscle groups.

Brett Contreras

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Those all come into the patella. Have one insertion point on that front of your knee. That's that knob down there.

Brett Contreras

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

So what you're talking about is the glutes are different because they don't have that single point of landing, broadly being.

Brett Contreras

A fan of attachment, because they attach. Okay. So because they attach to the floor, femur and pelvis and sacrum, that alone is a big deal. But now you look at their fascial attachments. So first of all, there's some fascial attachments to the pelvic floor, giving us some implications with that kind of like urinary and cons in, like the pelvic floor function. Then you have the attachment onto the it band, which then attaches down to the tibia. So now it's almost like that can be considered a tendon.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

So it makes it. That would make it a biarticular muscle, you know.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. Meaning it's going to both extend your hip and rotate it out. Right. Because it is attached to the outside.

Brett Contreras

It attaches to the tibia. Not just.

All right, like. Okay, so you're talking about when it contracts. I'll get to that in a second.

Andy Galpin

Okay.

Brett Contreras

But it also attaches to the thoracolumbar fascia, to the glute medius fascia. A lot of stuff kind of blends in together. So if you consider the thoracolumbar fascia into the latter and the lat on to the arm, you've got kind of the glute max, possibly affecting things up and down the chain from the arm to the lower leg.

Andy Galpin

So your back, shoulder. Right.

Brett Contreras

Yeah. So for that reason, these people tend to over exaggerate and act like these, like, anatomy trains and stuff. And the fascia is everything and these myofascial meridians and everything.

But I do think it's. If you looked at. If you took a step back and looked at the human muscular anatomy chart or like, picture, you'd be like, the glutes are the keystone. They are the keystone muscle. That's why I'm okay being the glute guy. I would not want to be the pet guy who's got the keystone. They're the planteris guy. Yeah. So they.

They affect a lot of things. And it's like that centerpiece. So. So then you look at the subdivisions. Okay. So the glute medius that's been separated into anterior and posterior divisions. Subdivisions. It could have.

It probably has anterior, middle and posterior glute Medius isn't talked about that much, but it's. It's. People act like you can target them one, one or the other. And I like they're they over the glute medius overlaps the glute minimus. How do you target. They'll be like, kick out at this angle for glute me and this angle for. For glute. Glute min.

Andy Galpin

Right. So you've got glute max is the big one we think of as glass.

Brett Contreras

So the glute meat and min are.

Andy Galpin

Up, upper outer, up on outside. Right below your hip bone.

Brett Contreras

Yeah. And then the glue max is a diagonal shaped. And the fiber directions are, you know, around 40 degrees. Ish. They all, they, they change between. I can't remember. There's a couple papers looking at the exact fiber directions, but it's like.

And then when it contracts, you can see bodybuilders squeezing their glutes, posing. They become pretty horizontal.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

When you. So people will say. I've heard people say, oh, glute max is just a hip extensor. It's just. If it was just a hip extensor, why wouldn't they be vertical? More vertical? Yeah. They do three things.

They abduct, but it's only the upper fibers. The abduct.

Andy Galpin

Yep. Meaning it takes your leg away from your midline.

Brett Contreras

Yeah. Frontal plane abduction. So frontal plane abduction. If you're standing up, think jumping jacks.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

There you go. Abducting the legs. So the upper glute max fibers abduct, but the glute me and men are the main abductors. TFL as well. But glute me is like an amazing abductor. Super strong at abduction. Frontal plane, the lower glute max. There's evidence that it's an adductor, but I have not found any EMG activity with adduction.

Now here's what's interesting. Okay. There's the upper and lower subdivisions of the glute max. They seem to have be, you know, activated uniquely through emg. And the whole glute max externally rotates. The whole glute max extends the hip, but only the upper abduct. Some people say the upper is more effective in external rotation.

I think it's the entire glute max is very effective in hip external rotation. And when we swing a bat, you think. Because I used to just think of these things as distinct actions. Think about swinging a bat, you're loaded up kind of in the stretch position a little bit, and then you contract the Glutes, it does three things. You are going to extend the hips, you are going to abduct the hips and you are going to rotate laterally the hips. They do all three things at once during swinging, striking, throwing. So that's what they're called. Triplanar. Now when you bend over and you're in deep hip flexion.

Now the glute med and min are, are not their moment. Arms change where they're not even effective, very effective at abducting the thigh anymore. Maybe the posterior are, but not the middle and anterior. But now the glute max becomes a better abductor of the thigh.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. So if you think about this, like if you were to be standing up vertical and I just said, you know, do it, the jumping jack action, right. This is where you're lifting your leg out to the side. If you were to do this as a common exercise, where you like lay on your side and you lift your leg up in the air. Right. Now in that position, what you're saying is those small upper glute muscles, glute, glute medius, glute minimus, things like that might be adding to that action. But if you were to bend forward and now so like I'm standing here and I'm hinging forward, I'm doing a.

Brett Contreras

Like a seated hip abduction, seated hip thing, leaning forward.

Andy Galpin

Now if I do it, those muscles aren't really active anymore.

Brett Contreras

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Now that entire action has to come from my glute max. Right.

Brett Contreras

Well, I think or likely when you said may the. From the sideline, the glute meat is the main hip abductor.

Andy Galpin

There you go.

Brett Contreras

No argument about it. From bent over position, I think the posterior subdivision would be activated. Well, you're going to get some activation of the hip. Extra rotators now become horizontal plane abductors. And also the glute max.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

How efficient are those at building them? We don't know, but I do include those in the program.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

So now you said, how do I build glutes? Well, because the glutes have, first of all, the glute max has upper and lower subdivisions and some people even say there's the, you know, the iliac fibers, the sacral fibers and the coccygeal fibers. They might even separate the glute max between three subdivisions, but definitely upper and lower. And then the glute mead has multiple subdivisions in the glute man. To maximally development them, you're going to do combine a lot of different actions. There's two studies One looking at the glute glute size of Olympic weightlifters and it shows that their glute max is larger than control sub than sedentary subjects. But their glute meat and min are not.

Meaning squats do not grow your glute medium in also, the Plotkin study showed that squats and hip thrust, neither one of them grew your glute medius and minimus. If you want to grow your glute meat and men, you should treat it like any other muscle and train it dynamically through a full range of motion. And there's one guy, this chasm pointed out that we're all doing ab junctions straight out to the side. You really should look at the pelvic shape and kind of go in the plane of the glute medius, which is diagonal at 30 degrees. If you look at how the pelvis is shaped and how the glute medius you should kick out. The problem is it's really hard for people to get that right. Yeah, you have a nice way of showing it in like an instructional video.

You look overhead and you tell them turn this foot in and then drive back. But it's really hard. People, they end up bending over.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

And then they're involving the glute max more. So it's really hard. And then do their foot go in front or in back? And then they end up at. So I have ways of teaching it, but basically for sometimes when it gets, when people keep screwing up, just go straight out to the side. But because the glute mead and men have multiple subdivisions, you probably should do different angles of abduction. You should go straight out to the side.

You should go at a 30 degree angle back. You should also do maybe seated hip abduction. Straight up might develop the posterior heads more. But also on the seated hip abduction machine, bridge up. Do them bridged and do them leaning forward. Because leaning forward for the glute max bridged up, you could put blocks like yoga blocks underneath you or just maintain the bridge position for the glute med.

Okay, what about glute max? You're going to get the most bang for your buck with hip extension. Hip extension exercises take them through the most range of motion. But now you start talking about how to put together the most comprehensive program I know in 10 years, especially if I team up with you and we start doing studies using this MRI stuff. But God, we have a lot of questions that remain. So right now, my optimal program, the scientific studies we have to guide us are few. We've got Kubo from 2019 showing deeper squats are better than shallow squats.

Andy Galpin

For glute max.

Brett Contreras

For glute max growth. But that just looked at knee angle. They were probably hinging over and yeah, they were probably. No, the beginners doing the shelving squats were probably staying vertical. And we don't have a study looking at super deep squats versus parallel. I think parallel would either be more effective or same. I don't think you need to go past parallel for glute growth.

There's two studies on quads showing you deeper is not necessary. That Kubo study showed same quad growth, but it showed greater adductor and glute growth going deep. And then we. So that's the study that people cling to about glutes being worked more in the stretch. There's also an unpublished study that should. I don't know why it's not published yet by Mao. So in kickbacks grow more glute in the stretch position.

But it's a straight leg kickback. Kind of weird. Who does straight leg kickbacks? You're not stretching it the most. You're not. And they. And they only went to neutral.

They didn't go into hip hyperextension. So that doesn't have a lot of ecological validity with like how we do things in the field. So the best anyone who's scientific right now, who trains people in real life and works with people and then also tries to incorporate the science. All right, this is what a reasonably. Because you get these crazy in every aspect of social like every field, every. There's these politics. You look at anything even in your world more the physiology and performance world.

You'll get these coaches saying this way and this way. You'll get people saying just train glutes in the stretch position. Every muscle grows best from the stretch position. But that's a fascinating area. I have every study on it categorized into the folders. The verdict is not out on every exercise and depends if you're a beginner or trained and how long is long enough. But what that whole category of research has not looked at is combining them into basically what you can recover from.

Because it might be that if you just could do one set a week, what would be the best thing to do? Maybe it'd be a set of walking lunges to failure. All right, if you can do two sets now, what if you have all the time in the world and you don't mind doing whatever it takes? Well, then I would say train three days a week at least. But what if what if you could do hip thrusts every day? You'd probably get some people developing overuse injuries. But my point is you could recover from that.

Would that be more effective than training long muscle lengths twice a week? Yes, it wouldn't be as efficient, but possibly. It wouldn't be as efficient, but you could recover from way more. What if you don't create any muscle damage after a while and you just stimulate hypertrophy and you can expedite the rate at which muscle, new muscle is laid down? We don't know. There's a lot of these questions. We don't know yet.

So right now train the glutes three days a week and follow the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is something I came up with to illustrate this concept. When you're doing vertical exercise, those are the most demanding on the central nervous system. Well, it's funny because if you've seen the research on that, we really don't have a lot of evidence that it's more demanding on the central nervous system.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, I'll hold my tongue, but go ahead.

Brett Contreras

I don't. We need evidence of that because people know what it means.

Andy Galpin

My vertical exercise, your mini squats, things.

Brett Contreras

Like that, squats, deadlifts, lunges, step ups, Bulgarians squats, skater squats, pistol squats, good mornings and all their variations. Those are the vertical exercises. The horizontal are hip thrusts, glute bridges, you know, your single leg hip thrusts, your back extensions, 45 degree hypers, your kickbacks. But within those there's. This is what makes it so complicated. You can make exercise, you can make things more knee dominant or more hip dominant, even kickbacks. What if you did kneeling kickbacks?

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

Then you almost. It becomes like a step up. So I'm talking about an upright kickback. Yeah, you know, so. And then a back extension off a ghd is horizontal, that's pure horizontal.

45 is halfway between. But we call it horizontal because it works the squeeze position more than the stretch. Those exercises do not beat you up. In fact, after you've done them for a while, they don't beat you up much at all. They don't create nearly as much muscle damage. So those can be done more frequently. Frequently and with more volume.

And then lateral exercises, those are like penalty free volume because you never do too much. Those are going to work more of your glute medius and stuff. If you lean forward, yes, you're going to work more glute max, but they don't beat you up. We just do, you know, two to six sets at the end of a. Depending on someone's goals, typically at the end of the workout. But if someone really wants to grow their upper glutes, I might say do start with abduct. I mean think about it.

If you're really wanting to grow your upper glutes, begin with a frontal plane abduction movement and maybe end with one.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

So then you do the rule of thirds. You do around. So and then here's another simple, simple system. Three times a week, pick one exercise from four categories. The first category is your thrust bridge. And this could be in any order. The second is your squat lunge.

And when I say squat lunge, it means split squat, step up, single leg leg press. And then you pick a hinge. And the hinge, this is where it's kind of. It could be vertical like an RDL. It could be like a 45 degree hyper, it could be a reverse hyper, but it's more straight leggedy hip extension. And then pick a, an abduction movement. The abduction could be frontal plane, it could be horizontal plane leaning forward.

It could be hip external rotation still. So I call it abduction like lateral rotary. So you do your vertical, your horizontal, your lateral rotary. But pick an abduction, but also include abduction. There aren't many hip external rotation exercises.

We do two of them. The cable cuff where you spin.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

Those are hard to master, they're hard to teach. But anyway, when you do that system, you will fully develop your glute max and glute meat and min the you. Because when you do pick one from.

Andy Galpin

Each of those four, that's how you do it.

Brett Contreras

Do it three times a week. Don't do the same exercise every time.

Andy Galpin

That's lots of variation to make sure if there is an effect of range of motion, if there is an effect on activation, that you're covering all your.

Brett Contreras

Bases and it's more fun. And that's when, when, when I see people be like, just do RDls.

Do you imagine RDL? These girls train three times a week. First of all, you can't recover from doing squats and RDLs three times a week with intensity, with, with sufficient effort. But also, yeah, it's boring. And it's you, you better be throwing in single leg RDLs that are not as taxing on the low back.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

So what I found is you cannot do too much. These guys that are telling people, here's a, here's a science based glute workout, they don't train women because I'm telling you, most of them train three days a week. They train Lower body three days a week. These programs would crush people, would absolutely crush these women. I get carried away sometimes. So I don't do drop sets anymore. I don't do these crazy burnouts.

I don't do crazy super sets. I'm not trying. I don't even. I even do lower reps now than I used to because we used to get carried away. I even used to do like sumo deadlifts with the deadlift bar and touch and go.

Oh, that's like these girls can. I had girls doing 315.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

Back in San Diego, Ashley got 19 reps, Dominique got 11 reps. Like, because touch and go, you can bounce that bar up.

Andy Galpin

You can move.

Brett Contreras

Everyone's cheering you on. Cool. You did something good and then you're sore for like a week, a month. You can't duplicate that for a month.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

Because you're so beat down. And that's what I mean. So maybe it's muscle damage. Maybe it's like damage to.

To fascia, to discs.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

Something Chris Beardsley pointed out to me. When you do a conventional deadlift, you're doing a concentric lift, right?

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

But what happens to the erectors? You lie, you line up in the arch.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

You go to pull the hips shoot up a little. The background's a little bit. You pull it up. The. Before the bar left the ground, the erectors went into an E. You're activating it, it went into an eccentric. So that can create more damage, more something about the spine.

When you really do squats to failure, deadlifts to failure, those beat jumps. So you need a good mix within those categories. Within the squat lunge category, some should be bilateral, some should be unilateral, some should be more quad dominant, some should be more hip dominant. Meaning you can do a high bar squat with the feet elevated, but that's going to be more quad. You can also do a low bar vertical shin box squat sitting back. That's more hip dominant and then that. So you want to have variety within those.

With the deadlifts you want to do. Sometimes you might do a conventional sumo deadlift, sometimes an RDR or stiff leg D, but sometimes single leg variations. Single leg and even good mornings, you can do good single leg good mornings. Off the Smith machine, you can get good at good mornings, too. People say they're dangerous, but that's because they don't start off light and work their way up. Good mornings are good variations to do, but the hinge variations should mix between deadlifting good mornings and then also 45s and reverse hypers and back extensions. And then the abduction should be blended between frontal and transverse plane.

And there's so many abduction movements. There's side lying, hip raises, extra range, sideline hip thrust. My favorite are glute medius hip thrusts and glute medius kickbacks. You can google those. But basically then the hip thrust variations should blend between. You could do double leg, you could do single leg and B stance, but mostly double leg. But vary on between barbell, Smith machine and plate loaded devices.

But also you're getting plenty of work in this system. You're getting plenty of stretch position work. So with the hip thrust, it doesn't always have to be emphasizing full range or you can emphasize the lockout in a few different ways. We do a lot of pauses at the top. We do a lot of bar plus band. Where you connect the bar to bands makes the lockout even harder. And you can do pulses where you're just doing the top range of motion.

If you only did hip thrusts and that was all you ever did, then you should probably do some bottom pauses, bottom range, among ways to make the bottom harder. But you get those when you do the lunges, the squats, the rdl. And this is the best system I've come up with. It's the most scientific way to train the glutes. As we know right now. Any reasonable person would say that. Because if you said to. If you said to like a bro.

Okay, if you put 2 inches on your glutes in the next few months. Yeah. You think they'd train it one day a week? No one would train it one day a week. You train it a few times a week. But you gotta recover from it and you can't get carried away. In fact, a lot of times when I train my girls, if I have them do reverse lunges off the Smith machine or the lever squat, the plate loaded squat, and they do two hard sets, I'm like, done sometimes one hard set, I'm like, just be done.

You set a pr. I'm like, you're going to be sore from that. And sometimes they're like, coach, I was so sore. Thank God I only did one hard set. That's something no one knows to do anymore. They don't. They always just do three to four sets.

Sometimes one and two sets is fine as well. You gotta be able to recover. And if you don't recover, then what happens is this happens in my gym a lot, typically on Fridays. And which sucks is because Friday, if you train Monday Wednesday, Friday you have an extra recovery day. So it'd be nice to be fresh on Friday. Train hard. Cause you got two days to recover.

So optimally that would be your day to push hard. But sometimes they're like, coach, I push myself hard on Monday. Wednesday I am beat down. So what they do is they do a, a short muscle length day or like a, they, that's when they film their, their influencer workouts. And they did, I'm like, you didn't even do that workout. But that got the most likes. So they do variety, they do their fufu, wimpy movements that the men arguably.

So they get pissed at. That's when they do just some kickbacks, some abductions, some light bands and bands and stuff. And then they, they do that on Friday. They rest Saturday and Sunday and come back Monday and they crush it. Yeah, because they did a wimpy workup. But that's auto regulation. That's how they periodize.

But ideally you wouldn't, they wouldn't have done too much on Monday and Wednesday to begin with, so that Fridays could have still crushed it. But that's an art onto its own. How to nail your training so that you don't have to de load so much and you don't have to do radical things. But that's something we, that takes a lot of years to master.

Andy Galpin

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You haven't said these words directly, but it's clearly come through in all the examples and the information you provided. Consistency is incredibly important. Right. And so all the rationale you're going back on here is we got to be able to do this more often so we can continue to progressively overload. And that's really been a backdrop here. So as somebody who's probably been responsible for more butt growth than anybody on the planet, I think that's a pretty powerful message from you that says like, just do enough to stimulate growth here, but don't annihilate so that you can keep training for months or years. And that's where you're going to see these big, big increases.

Brett Contreras

Yes.

Andy Galpin

You also used variation to get there. That is another way to keep yourself in the game. Right. You can use, you call them short moment arms. Right. These are again, things short moment, short muscle length. Short muscle length. Right. Thank you.

These are different exercises that you've said don't beat you up. Right. And what that means is your joints and the tissue itself won't be as hurt or sore, but you'll still get a lot of results from them. So you can continue with your progressive overload and you can be consistent. Right. One quick clarification on that little system, right? So you pick one exercise for the four different bucket areas three days per week, and you said maximize variation.

Am I picking, say from bucket one, one exercise for Monday, one exercise that's a different one on Wednesday and then a third different exercise on Friday? Or are you saying like every single workout, pick a totally different exercise per category?

Brett Contreras

That's such a good Question. So ideally, what you would do is, okay, so this is the component of the system. I didn't talk about rotating focus. We've read about periodization our whole lives, right? And whenever you read about periodization, it's about changing volume and effort or like.

Andy Galpin

Load and intensity, some variations.

Brett Contreras

Intensity. What does intensity mean?

Load or effort? So I don't even say intensity anymore. But like, we basically, you start off with more volume, lighter loads and do more sets.

And then as you. As you go up in weight and use more and more weight and train harder and harder and closer to failure, you do less, you know, so volume and so it makes an X.

Volume and effort make an X. But it was always assumed to be like, what? I'm always going, like, what exercises? The periodization is kind of like, there aren't good books on it. If you want to read up on periodization. Like, I think my book Glute Lab is one of the best because I talked about all the nuances and stuff, but, like, they never talked about rotating the exercises. And I tell all these powerlifters, and I don't presume to know more than the bodybuilders about bodybuilding and the powerlifters about powerlifting, but I do think powerlifters could get stronger because guess what?

Squats and deads compete with each other. You could say they build each other, but they compete. Everything competes up to like, you know.

Andy Galpin

Generally don't see people that hold world records in both. Yeah, it's usually one or the other. We have the total as well, but that's because they're ahead and one of them really fall.

Brett Contreras

So, yeah, if you can't tell me that this lifter wouldn't have gotten better at squats if he quit focusing on deads for a while and vice versa.

Andy Galpin

You see the same thing in weightlifting, by the way. Snatch and clean. A jerk.

Brett Contreras

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

It's hard to be best of both. One of them runs away and the other one. And you try to win that way. Right.

Brett Contreras

So take some time. I did this just recently. I went, God, when have you ever prioritized your hamstrings for like two months? So I started every workout with either a deadlift, like a stiff leg deadlift, or a good morning. And then I do two different isolation movements for the hamstrings. When have you ever done three hamstring movements in one workout? I start doing that.

Oh, my God. It got scary for a while. I'm doing good mornings with 345 pounds for 15 reps. I think I could have gotten 20, but I stood rounding a lot and I'm like, how fast can I keep going here? But it's, it's. I went, oh, my God. I've never really prioritized.

You're always doing squats first or deads, but never stiff leg. And you're, you're never really doing as much hamstring work. So anyway, I'm going to tell how I think this applies to bodybuilding, but I'm going to tell you what I do in Booty by Brett.

Booty by Brett. I was realizing, okay, and I got this one time, I had this epiphany. I'm like, someone asked me how many chin ups I could do.

Like, what's my max? You know, weighted chin up. And I'm like, well, I can do 12, but I could get more if I trained for it. Well, why don't I train for it? Well, what would I do if I trained for it? I'd probably do chin ups every day. And then I started thinking about all the different lists.

What if you wanted to become strongest at your bench press, what would you do? What if you wanted to get strongest at your squats, what would you do? How often would you squat? I'd probably squat twice a week, but I can't deadlift hard. Not to failure twice a week. So I realized every lift has its own rules.

And I got. And then, then I created strong lifting. And those are the base. Stronglifting is like powerlifting, but with six lifts.

Squats, bench, deads. So the three power lifts and then chin ups, military press, and death and hip thrusts. Those are my six favorite lifts.

We got really good. In fact, I would say I'm the world's expert at getting you strong at all six lists because that is all my girls did. What I will tell you is it's rare, like, it's hard to have 100 pound military press. Strict.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, yeah.

Brett Contreras

But to have 135 is insane. That's, that's, that's like elite for a female. What I will tell you is having, if you lift, if chin up, you take your body weight and you add the toes, you add to it because you're pulling your body weight up. So if you take your six lifts, your one rep max, and I'm talking strictly, people all lie squatting below parallel. You know the, the, the powerlifting rules.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

For the three powerless and then with a chin up, not starting from here, starting from a dead hang and touching your chest to the bar, not just getting your chin over chest to bar.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

Military. You can't use your legs. They're locked out from here overhead. And hip thrust, full lockout, which people just lie. Yeah, they'll add 100 pounds of their hip thrust because they'll get it 80% of the way up and call that a hip thrust. It's very rare to get a 12 times body weight total. You get a 13 times body weight.

There's only one person in that class so far. Yeah. And it's a cool thing because I think that's probably the best thing you can do for your physique is your relative total on those six lifts. And bodybuilders will say, who cares about when we're at max strength.

Strength, does it matter? It does matter for natural lifters. And yes, you can get good physique from just doing lots of variety and mind muscle connection and focusing on slower tempos. But in my opinion, that only gets you so far. You've got to get strong. My girls with the best glutes are very strong. Strong at hip thrusts, strong at squats, deadlifts.

I mean, if I wanted my pecs to get bigger at age 48 after all these years of lifting, guess what? I better build my bench. I can't just get there doing all the flies and all the machines. Yes, you can theoretically increase volume, but there is, you know, tension on the muscle is paramount.

And so you gotta. And not, not, not one rep max. But you got whatever you're set of six, you're set at 10, something you gotta be setting PRs and getting stronger. So anyway, what I will say is like, yeah, those power lifts. I started realizing, well, if you wanted to get your deadlift as strong as possible, quit prioritizing the squat. Don't go for PRs, do squats still. But don't try to progressively overload.

Andy Galpin

Save some gas.

Brett Contreras

Save the gas for the deadlist. So what I started doing with Booty by Bread is I had this rotating focus. It's a periodization method I came up with just for Booty by Bread. I wanted to publish it in the Method Just based on Strength and Conditioning journal because I think it's very innovative. So month one you prioritize is a well rounded month, okay, that you're, you know, and we've changed it.

We've changed a bit. The original Booty by Repeaterization was a month one. It was a well rounded month. In a well rounded month, guess what you do. Monday you squat, Wednesday you hip thrust, and Friday you deadlift. So that works out well because you recovered for all of them, squat, hip thrust, deadlift, and then bench, chin up, military. And then if you do three full body days, you're going to do a compound upper body press, a compound upper body pull, a squat, a hinge and a thrust.

So five exercises per day for full body strength. And then the abduction for the upper and lower body are for you throw those in. Because of the psychological, everyone wants the upper body abduction for the side delts, the lower body abduction for the upper glutes. Okay, so after this well rounded month, now you've been pushing everything, now it's time to specialize. Month two is a squat focused month. So if you're trying to build your squat, all three full body days can be the first lift can be a squat pattern, but one of them will typically be, some people can handle squatting three days a week, some people can't. Why risk it?

People get fai, they squat deep, people get knee pain, low back pain. So to have two squatting days like Monday, Friday squatting and Wednesday, a single leg, a step up, a reverse lunge, a Bulgarian split squat, something like that. Okay, then what happens after the squat focused month? Your knees are going to be feeling it a little bit, so it's a perfect time to transition to the hip thrust. Okay, so now you focus on the hip thrust for a month. Every day starts out with the hip thrust variation. Typically it's barbell hip thrusts on Monday, straight sets, pause reps on Wednesday, bar plus band on Friday or pulses or something, or one and a quarter reps.

But two of the three are more focused on lockout work. Now, each one of these months, you're still going to do, you're still going to, you're going to squat, hinge and thrust. Every month just one is on the focus, the others are on the back burner. Okay, and then what happens at the end of the hypdos month? You're feeling good again. All right, now it's time for a deadlift month and then deadlifts. You can't deadlift.

Well, you can deadlift three times a week. If you do like stiff legs, single leg, RDL and rdl, but actual full deadlifts like a sumo or conventional or even a trap bar or semi sumo. No, but if you do that, have one day, typically like say day one, Monday might be stiff leg or rdl, real strict light and stay, stay a couple extra failure. Wednesday could be a hinge still, but it's a single leg hinge. And then Friday is your heavy deadlift day because you got two days to recover. So now after the four weeks of heavy deadlifting, guess what? Your low back is taking a beating.

Your overall system now it's perfect time for a single leg month, single leg and dumbbell month. And that's what I love about it.

Andy Galpin

So by definition, you're taking intensity out. You're still going to get burns and you're going to feel good, but you're taking intensity out because you cut load down. Cause you're on a single leg period.

Brett Contreras

And two studies have shown, one with step ups, one with Bulgarians, showed they built squat strength just as well as the bilateral lift. Yeah. So you're still keeping your strength up.

Andy Galpin

At minimum, you're going to keep. You're going to maintain where you're at.

Brett Contreras

You're not going to go backwards, you're going to maintain. You can even build. So it's kind of cool because some people are like, I grow my glutes during the hip thrust month. I grow my glutes best during the single leg month. I grow my glutes best during the squat month. Maybe squats are good for them. Or maybe it's because during the squat month, hip thrusts are third and you're doing them with a mind muscle connection. Who knows?

There's so many moving parts, but there's. It's more fun training this way. So that's how I did Booty by Brett. Then I started talking about, you know, what about bodybuilders, if we've been talking about this? What if you said, brett, can you grow your delts? I just did it this year when lengthened partials became popular. I'm like, I'm so sick of doing dumbbell lateral raises.

I'm even sick of cable lateral. I want to see if I can grow doing lengthened partials and doing basically more variety. So I started training delts three times a week and they got bigger than they've ever been, I think. And yeah, so some days I'm doing heavy dumbbells, sometimes cable, but a lot of times just doing the bottom partial. And then I got really scientific like, how do you maximally stretch this? You really should have the cable facing kind of this way and just go to here. And with a dumbbell, I don't want to do side lying, but basically I don't want to go all the way up because after here there's no tension.

But I would just lay on my side and just do half halfway up length in partials. And just from the greater volume, I grew my delts. Guess what? You get so Sick of delt day. You get so sick of training your delts. So, yeah, do it for a month. But what if we did that?

Because maintenance is easy. So I made a video, and I don't even know if I ever posted it because it was the sexual innuendos. But I'm like, imagine having six balls. And this is what progressive overload is. But not just I'm saying six balls because each ball represents my favorite lift.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

My six favorite for full body strength and musculature. And even the six you've listed earlier.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

This six I listed earlier. So imagine trying to juggle six balls. It's really hard. But what if every time you gain strength, you set a pr, the ball grew a little bit? So each, every time you set a pr, the ball gets bigger. It gets to a point where you can't juggle all six of them. They're knocking into each other.

They interfere with each other. And you try to go up on six lifts every month of your life, you will get nowhere. The balls will all fall to the ground and you stagnate. You get nowhere. But what if you have six balls laid out and you take two of them and you're like, okay. And they get bigger. It's okay.

It's easy to juggle two balls and these four on maintenance mode. Guess what? The literature shows it's very easy to maintain size and strength with minimal volume.

Andy Galpin

So these four one time a week. Yeah, one time a week. A very minimal sets a week or even every other week.

Brett Contreras

Yeah. So you can maintain your strength and your size with lower volume. So I started thinking, maybe we're doing it wrong. Maybe the bodybuilders could have seen better results had they, oh, had they switched the focus from month to month. So one month you're doing body parts. Well, I thought about it. One for upper, one for lower.

Because what bodybuilder has ever had prioritized glutes and glutes and adductors go together because when you go deep, the adductors in deep, deep hip flexion actually have better leverage. So it's really, really hard to do deep stuff and not work your adductors because they have such good leverage.

Andy Galpin

And hip flexion adductors, by the way, are the opposite. What we're clearly saying here is a DD adductors versus abductors. So if the abductors, a BD or the jumping jacks adductors are the ones that you're pulling your leg close right together.

Brett Contreras

So doctors add to the body abductors take away.

Andy Galpin

Right. So what you're saying is in magnus.

Brett Contreras

Is a huge hip extensor down deep, deep hip flexion.

Andy Galpin

So your groin muscles. So if, if you are squatting, say for example, and you're doing a lot or a lot of squatting at type of activities and say you only go a quarter of the way down or halfway down and then you change it and you go really far down, you're very likely to notice really sore adductors. Right. You're groin. And this is exactly what you're talking about. Because in that position they start actually adding to hip extension.

Brett Contreras

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Where in a, in a. The top position. They don't actually do that.

Brett Contreras

They have the best leverage in deep hip. Slightly better than the glutes. Yeah. On average.

Andy Galpin

Which is why again you can train your groin area, if you want to think about it that way, by doing full range of motion all the way to the bottom. Squats. If everything else works and you don't have other issues with it, you will see tremendous.

Brett Contreras

So you pair adductors and glutes together. So one month for the lower body you're focusing on glutes and adductors, one month you're focusing on quads and one month hamstrings. Then the other stuff goes on the back burner. And then for upper body it's hard to do all of them because arms, arms. So I said one month focus on pecs, one month on the back and one month on the delts. What about arms? Okay, well then you have four months and then I think you, I think three months of breeding.

Three months, then you're back. So I thought about a really effective system. I was going to start like Body by Brett to be for guys, but I don't know, I don't know if I could. I'm busy with Buddha, but it's hard. Anyway, I thought that would be a fun system. And then I thought, well, instead of having every person has their system and they have all these theories, it would be. How would you test that?

Well, you'd have to do a few cycles of it. So it'd have to be a nine month study. You can have the control group do just regular body part split training and then this new method where basically the muscle you're prioritizing, you're training it three times a week. It's hard to train chest three days a week, you know, quads three days a week. It can be done, but that's the primary focus. That. And then you have an upper body muscle and then Everything else goes on the back burner goes on maintenance mode.

Would you see better hypertrophy results? Blasting and cruising.

I don't know. It's just a theory, but it's a. It's a strong theory. A strong argument could be made.

Andy Galpin

Yep. I want to go back one thing to make sure we, We. We finished the loop on this one. You mentioned, what did you call it, the rule of three or something like that? What was the rule of thirds? Exactly. Again, what was that?

Brett Contreras

A third of your exercises should be vertical in nature, vertical hip extension. One third should be horizontal, and then one third should be lateral rotary.

Andy Galpin

All right, perfect. Okay, great. Thank you for that.

Brett Contreras

When you do that, interestingly, when you do that, it's not just best for the glutes. You also, because the vertical exercise are going to hit the quads and the hammies. The horizontal will get some hammies too. And, you know, so it's like you're going to get. Or that. Or that system I talked about where you pick a squat lunge, pick a hinge, pick a thrust bridge, pick an abduction. The squat lunge movements develop the quads and adductors, the hinge movements develop the hammies, and then so you get nice develop.

It's a good system to use for.

Andy Galpin

Overall development if you want to develop all the lower body of those things. Okay. In your. Whatever it is now, 20 plus years of focusing on the. The hip thrust and the glutes and hip extensions and all things kind of in this area. I'm sure you've interacted and had plenty of people, women or not, come up to you and say, I've tried to grow my glutes. I've tried, I've tried.

It's not worked. Are there any themes that have popped up over those years and those interactions of kind of most common mistakes that they've been making? In other words, people have been like, I've been at this for a year. It's not working.

What am I doing wrong? Brad?

Brett Contreras

Yes, great question. Because those types come to me and they can get results. It's really hard for some people to get stronger. So when I talked about the environment in glute lab, like, yeah, you show up to glute lab. Yeah. You're not. You're proud of your.

Because you're the strongest person in your gym, because you hip thrust three plates per side. And then you come in and you see, you know, in Florida, you see Dre, you see Vika, you see Diane, you see Masa, you see all these girls doing Five plates per side, and you're like, oh, my God. And not sloppy reps. That's the thing about.

I said 315 for 20. Not slapping sloppy reps.

You control it. Full little slight pause at the top, all the way down, all the way up. Rep 20 looks a lot like Rep 1. It's not like arching and not. Not, you know, hyperextending your spine and anterior tilting and only getting 80% of the way up. And jerking, though, it's a smooth tempo through a full range of motion. That is a great indicator of someone who's going to have amazing glute development. But. But, yeah, I would say most people just can't get strong without a trainer.

And I will tell you what fuels me, because I travel between Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, and San Diego. I was just in San Diego right before this, and they call it the bread effect. They independently came up with it in Fort Lauderdale and in San Diego, and they just think, brett, I don't know what it is. I've been hearing this for 20 years, 28 years. I can lift so much more when you're around. I don't know what it is. And I joke that it's my pheromones.

Andy Galpin

Absolutely.

Brett Contreras

But it's having someone who trusts you. You know, hey, I want you. This. This happened the other day. Lili, she. She's. She's, like, warming up.

She's hasn't ever deadlifted above 365 in training. She hit 405 at a competition. Then she had a back injury, and she's been.

Anyway, so I. I just. You. When you've coached for so long, you know, so much just based off bar speed, I don't know what the bar speed actually is. I'm just watching, you know, what it looks like. So you have these indicators when. When I could watch my client allegro.

When I can watch Lili and I. I watch her go 275, and it goes, boop. And she's just accelerating on the way up. You can tell when it looks. I go, you could have done that for 37 reps. I could go, 3:15. She goes, boop.

I go, you could have done that for 37 reps. Okay, I don't know why I said 37, but I go. She goes, what do I do next? I Go, go, 385.

She's like, what? Go three? Don't warm up in between. I go, what do you want to do? She goes, I want to do whatever you tell me. I go, then do 385, let's. And then I announce it.

I'm like, everyone. Lily's going for 385. And then everyone's watching. And then, you know, and I always tell with Sumo, watch Defi Cohen. The bar doesn't fly up.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

It doesn't rip off the ground like conventional. Take your time. Could take four seconds for the plates, but that means you got to maintain good posture. You panic and you. You round and you shoot the hips up. And now the lockout on Sumo becomes so infinitely harder. So she.

She pulls it. She hits three. If I put sound, she's so happy. This has happened for so many years that it fuels me. I love. And I love it too, because when that. When I'm. When I.

When I'm not around. So I travel back and forth when I'm not around. They don't go for PRs. When I am around, they go for. They're like, yay, we can PR again. And it probably works out in my favor because you don't want to crush them every week.

So it's great. So you train at my gym just because everyone's so strong. Yeah. Like, if you went. If you and I trained at some gym where everyone's doing muscle ups and 20, like, we'd be like, shit, I better do. You can probably do a muscle up. I can't.

But anyway, never tried. If everyone were doing 20 pistol squats and I'm like, I can barely do a pistol squat. I better get my active if I ever want to do Nordic ham curls going up and down. And every person could do bodyweight Nordics for five reps and we'd be like, I can't even do one. We'd be secretly doing Nordics. So a lot of it's to do with your environment. So. So these girls can't get strong on their own.

They just don't know what they're doing. Even you can tell them. That's why trainers have a job. That's why, you know, as of now, personal trainers have job security. Because it's so hard to do on your own, something's wrong. A lot of times it's the effort they're putting forth. They think they're training hard, but they could really do five more reps if they really wanted to at the end of the set.

A lot of times they're sabotaging themselves because, God, trainers around the world, when they hear this, are going to be nodding their head. Men and women both do this. They do it differently. Women will want to combine and this will Piss women off if they hear this clip. But they want to combine weights with yoga, Pilates, spin, everything else. And they'll say, well, why? Oh, your heart isn't important.

Your heart, health. Oh, it's not important to be flexible. Yes, but you have to prioritize. So if you want hypertrophy and you want glutes to grow and you're doing all this extra exercise and you're not really training recovered and you're not prior, you're not, you're so busy trying to fit in all those, yeah. Six balls in there. You're trying, you gotta, you gotta train at the right time. I like to think about it.

If I said you gotta and you gotta give yourself every opportunity to pray. What are you going to do? You're going to make sure you got a good night of sleep. You're not going to go do an hour of cardio before you go. Try and do that lift, try, hit a bench pr. You're going to eat the right amount, just the right amount, the right foods that agree with you before your workout, the right time. Some people like to eat an hour before, some people like to train fasted.

But you're going to show up feeling good, you had your pre workout a half an hour before your coffee or whatever makes you gives you the best chance. And that's what you got to do day in and day out for lots of years. And what I see is when you're just squeezing in your workout at the end of the day when you're already stressed and you have already and then you're just going through the motions, you're not going to grow like maximally, you might see some results and then too much variety, too much program hopping, trying to do every exercise. I love all the exercises. Trust me, in my gym for I love quads and hammies too. So it's hard because in my gym I've got hack squat machine, the pendulum squat machine, leg presses, Smith the machine, the V squat. Like I've got it all.

What do I do? You know, I want to hit quads. Sometimes you're like, I've been so distracted, I haven't done squats in a while and you're going, okay, I got to get back to squats. Oh, I also have belt squats. I have all the. Yeah, they're all amazing and they transfer to each other, which is cool because sometimes you take your focus away. Same thing with hamstrings.

I've got every leg curl machine. I've got plate loaded, 45° hyper selectorized 45° hyper. Now you don't even have to grab a dumbbell. You just hold on to something and pull the reverse hyper. I've got plate loaded deadlift apparatuses, the hammer strength, I've got the pitch shark, we do stick legs off that and, and all these gizmos too, like our T bell and on the blocks, our sliding leg for the rolling, the, the hammy track and roller and all these cool things. And you can be distracted because it's like you want your hamstrings to grow, try and get really strong. It's stiff legs or, you know, and then, and then a leg or seated leg curls or something like.

So trust me, I get it. But they're doing too much variety. They're not prioritizing, you know, progressive overload, load and PRs and doing all the things necessary to give themselves the best chance of PR like adequate sleep, adequate protein, adequate or optimal calories, etc. Sometimes you'll, you'll go to women and, and kind of try to gauge how much protein they're taking in. Sometimes it's like they're eating 50 grams of protein in a day and they weigh 120 and they see great results when you take that to 90, 100, 110, 120, 130. They see better results that way, like some people. It's like magic.

So yeah, got to get so inadequate protein, inadequate sleep and stress levels, program hopping. But the most is lack of effort and trying to make up, trying to compensate with effort, with volume and variety and it doesn't, it doesn't compensate for it. You can't just do all the exercises. And doing 20 sets with 5 reps in the tank probably doesn't beat doing one awesome set to true failure and writing it down in your logbook or on your app or in your notes on your phone and then trying to beat it. Because that requires a mental challenge too. When you know you've hip thrusted 3, 15 for 15 and you're trying to get 20 and you're like, how the hell am I going to get 16 and 7? How am I going to get to 20?

And then you know, you're hip thrusting tomorrow you're going to be like, okay, I better eat optimally today, I better sleep optimally today and what time am I going to train tomorrow? I'm going for 16. This is going to be tough. It's hard to do and it doesn't always work linearly like that. That's another complication. So that's why you have variety, because, yeah, you can't just go, I got 15, 16, then 17, then 18, then 19, then 20. Usually you get 15 and then you take a big break and you do all the things and then all of a sudden you gear up for 20 again and it happens.

But, yeah, that's another story.

Andy Galpin

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I would imagine that many people are trying really hard, but their efforts are misplaced. This is the example of doing too many different things. So lifting, maybe not lifting frequently enough, maybe not waiting long enough. It's only been a month, right? You need probably several months or you're adding in different forms of exercise and things like that. So you're trying really hard. Your effort is super high, but there's not enough focus on stimuli to drive that adaptation.

There's too much distraction in the training, Right. Another distraction you mentioned was changing your programs too often, right? So again, this is where effort could be high. You could be really getting a burn and really getting tired after the workout. But you did 50 different exercises or, you know, you changed them and because of that, you probably potentially did some maybe lower, less effective exercises. So your selection wasn't great. You are doing maybe all body weight or all light bands.

And what you're saying is you might be better off picking one set of one exercise, going pretty heavy and then just getting out of there. Right.

Brett Contreras

That would actually be a fun. That would be hilarious to do like a training study where you just have them pick one set to go to third and then you can do 15 sets. But we're not going to track. Just do the mind muscle connection with those. You know, squeeze as hard as you can.

Andy Galpin

Who cares, right?

Brett Contreras

Squeeze. Feel the, feel the glutes moving the weight. But that would be a good system because it's hard. When you say progressive overload, it's hard to pin that down for people. Does that mean do you go up on all four sets?

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

Do you. How do you go up?

Andy Galpin

Another thing that came to my mind here, I don't know how much you've experienced this or not in terms of. Again, let's think with the same of. I've tried to grow my glutes. By the way, I should interject here. We've been talking way more about the glutes than I thought we were going to today. But you could change out glute for anything else. It doesn't actually matter.

Some of the details here do matter, the specific studies and the research. And I'm going to ask here in a second about how the glutes are different from other muscles. But I hope what you're gleaning from this is not just. Only if you're sitting here thinking, I don't care that much about glutes or whatever. This is scientific principles. This is how do you answer research questions. This is specific and precision. Right? So you're talking about not all exercises are the same, not all muscle groups are the same.

We've dug in on the glutes. So again, the answers might be different, but this is exactly how you should go about answering it if you care more about the triceps or the quads or the calves or anything else. So this is a system that you developed over again almost 30 years now that can be applied to anything else. So I really hope that people listening are gleaning this out of it and going, okay, maybe you do don't have some variation of love for the glute, but this is really the nuance that goes into getting better results for a very specific question that you've really formulated a career out of. So hope that that message is coming through. Now. That said, the question on this last particular topic is, again, I'm training hard.

I'm trying to grow my glutes, but mine aren't growing. I'm eating protein. I'm doing all those other things out the field. It's not hormones. Like, how does one at home, whether they're a trainer, a coach, or the actual person, how do you go about figuring out which of these variations work based on your body type and what are the things that you should be thinking about and paying attention to before I then throw an exercise out and I can say things like, okay, great. A new study came out. It did show that the.

Let's just say goblet squat is. Is not as effective for going the glutes as a barbell high bar back squat is. But I did the high bar back squat for six months and I got nowhere. Like, how do I go about that system of figuring out what works for my mechanics and my physiology?

Brett Contreras

That's such a great question. I know I used to do EMG on all my clients.

Andy Galpin

And just to clarify, you said this in multiple. EMG is where we can go on and directly measure the muscle activation. So electrical signals for muscle activation.

So go back. As you've heard Brett say that a bunch of times. What he's saying is direct measure of muscle activation.

Brett Contreras

Yep.

Andy Galpin

But continue on.

Brett Contreras

Now, the problem with EMG for estimating hypertrophy, it does a good job of measuring activation. The neural portion of it, the active portion, but not the passive portion, the stretch.

Andy Galpin

And which is another way of saying just because a muscle is activated, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to grow. Yeah, there's some crossover there, clearly.

Brett Contreras

Well, think about this, because I feel like the long length got carried away for a while and it was all about stretching and long length. That's been the trend in 2024 was all about. It was the year of longer muscle lengths. Yep.

Andy Galpin

Trained over a full range of motion.

Brett Contreras

Versus a pendulum can swing too far. Think about this. There are numerous studies that show you can stretch a muscle and it will grow pure stretch. Pure stretch. Now, when you stretch a muscle, yes, you probably get a little bit of activation just from like protection and guarding, but, like, it's mostly all just passive. You're just stretching it, you're not activating it. And it grows through purely passive mechanisms.

You can also just slap muscle electrodes on and activate a muscle without stretching it, and it grows. Ems. And that's something that I was skeptical about years ago.

And now the. Have you looked at the research on this over the years?

Andy Galpin

I have a catalyst suit. It's awesome.

Brett Contreras

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

So it's fantastic.

Brett Contreras

It grows muscle. Yeah. Just activating the muscles through muscle stimulation. Now if you're doing a program like Booty by Brat where you're covering all your bases, should you do EMS on the side? Should you be stretching a muscle? Can all muscles grow through stretch? What if I wanted to stretch my delts?

What do I do? I can't, I'm blocked. You could stretch your rec fem, but can you stretch your vasties enough? So when people talk about stretch, I'm like, okay, hammies, yes. Pecs, yes. Calves, yes.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

Not every muscle I think could benefit. And then, but like with, with that system I told you about earlier, putting muscles on the back burner, when, if you did the prior, the rotating focus, that would be a good time to say, all right, I'm gonna slap electrodes on the other muscles that are not prioritizing.

Andy Galpin

Oh, there you go. Keep the maintenance mode, right? Yeah.

Brett Contreras

And help add to the stimulus because there's a lot of research showing that EMS grows muscles.

Andy Galpin

The first time I did the catalyst suit, I got so sore. Now part of it was because I pegged it like I just went literally to the end of the contraction capacity and did like a 30 minute thing on it and got so brutal.

Brett Contreras

That's where it's activated on the way. And you're fighting, you're moving against.

Andy Galpin

You stand there. Right, I'm standing there basically wearing a full body intens unit. Basically. Right. It's over there and it's like everything is squeezing and I just like went to the wire and like squeeze as hard as you can for 20 minutes and turns out that's a lot of muscle contraction.

And I got sore. Everything.

Brett Contreras

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

So user error on that. Well, it wasn't user. It was. I knew what I was getting into, so.

Brett Contreras

So that's muscle growth through activation and no stretching, no passive. So none.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

Clearly there are more multiple. That to me shows that there have to be. There has to be multiple mechanisms leading to Rome, leading to muscle growth. So there has to be a mechanism that's more passive and a mechanism that's more active because they're separate stimuli. So this is an awesome question. I will just mention briefly that I measured muscle activation back in the day with all my clients and I learned so much with different people. Like I had this client, Sammy, she could do squats with 285 pounds back squats.

But if she did a goblet squat with 50 and 70 pounds. She got more glute activation. You're moving through the same range of motion though.

Andy Galpin

So how glute activation with 20% of.

Brett Contreras

The weight with her about having the load. So then same with a deadlift. If she had a barbell she could do 225 pound or I think might have went up to 315. And then she did 106 pound kettlebell and a 203 pound kettlebell. And something about having the load centered more just activated glutes a lot higher. Not everyone is like that.

Andy Galpin

Measuring her muscle, her glute activation.

Brett Contreras

Glute activation in different areas.

Andy Galpin

It was the same with a 50 pound goblet squad. 50 pound goblet, which traditionally should activate the glutes less.

Brett Contreras

Right.

Andy Galpin

Because it's a front loading squad and all that.

Brett Contreras

Well, something about load being centered makes it. I think, I think when you have kind of like lanky and you're folding and you don't have the best squat form, you're battling butt wink. You're battling having a keep a neutral spine. You might have things shutting off and stuff. You know, we can't always assume. Anyway, I had this girl Aaron at the same time and she started doing all this. Well, she, I, I put bands or I had to do band seated hip abduction.

And I'm like okay, this is activating all the areas, even leaning forward, even getting your lower glute max. You're getting as high of activation doing these than you. Higher than doing one rep max squats. Well, how many one rep max squats can you do per week versus band seated hip abduction. So I showed her the results. Like I said, you're getting higher band activation. Like higher activation on bands than anyone I've ever seen.

I think you should do bands every day. A lot of band will get raised. So she got carried away. I eventually starts bringing 20 different bands to the gym. I made a post another crazy band lady, but her glutes grew a ton. So when you have these individualized prescriptions, I think you can see better results. But, but basically I don't have a system for that.

The only thing I would try is a long length focus twice a week. So I'd say look, you've been doing something like Booty by Brat. Let's switch to two days and let's focus on glute dominant squats box low bar box squats sitting way back to parallel vertical shin. The shin doesn't have to be vertical, but it's as vertical as possible while still feeling right. And then glute dominant, step ups. Bulgarians lunges, meaning like not, not a knee dominant, not an upright, letting your knee go way forward, keeping the shin pretty vertical, leaning. And then, and then rdls.

And let's do those good mornings rdls. Let's do these exercises for a while, but hit them hard, but just twice a week. See if you grow better from that. You're going to know within a couple of months. And then if that doesn't work, let's try a short length focus. Let's do four or five days a week. We're only doing hip thrusts and bands.

I did this with my client Beth. Beth did powerlifting, but she had a coach that was all about the power lifts. And I said, have you ever focused on hip thrusts? No, my coach hates them. Have you ever done band work? No, he thinks those are wimpy too. All right, just do hip thrusts and band work for like six months and do them as frequently and as much as you can.

See how that works. And her butt blew up.

Yeah, blew up. So when all these people are like, she was gone. She was strong at squats and deadlifts. They weren't working for it. And so you'll hear so many anecdotes. And these scientific people, I could call them all out right now, these scientific people, and they don't care about anecdotes and that's. And to me, they're not scientific because you can say, look at this person.

They will just shut it out. They'll go, well, that doesn't mean anything. What if she wasn't doing squat? Okay, I'll show you a video of her squats and deadlifts. She had good form. What do you say then? Like, they just don't want to reconcile the two.

So they want to stick to one, you know, one rigid method. And you got to be flexible if you want to be a good personal trainer. So that method worked better for her. So I would do the two extremes. Two days a week of, of long length glute work versus like five days a week of shortened position glute work.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

It could be a genetic.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

Reason or just anatomy. You tolerate these because if you don't tolerate an exercise well and it gives you pain or fear, inhibition, you're not going to maximally activate your glutes. So anyway, maybe there are frequency versus, like, some people respond better frequency, some people, even your anatomy. What if your moment arms are terrible in the stretch for glutes and really ideal. And I also think you can change through training. When you do concentrics or shorter lengths, you will lose sarcomeres in series. When you do eccentrics or longer lengths, you will add sarcomeres in series.

So maybe you can change the way even. And that might affect neural activation too. The muscle says we've caused this muscle to be more effective at longer lengths or more effective at shorter lengths. And there could be. We just don't know enough right now. And that's what always frustrates me about social media right now. It's rewarded these bold claims camps where you're very strong.

Like this is the method, this is what yields the best muscle growth. It doesn't reward uncertainty. It doesn't reward scientific claims or cautious claims.

Andy Galpin

Evidence based as well.

Brett Contreras

I get mad because I'm like, if I don't know the answer to this, like then you don't know the answer to this. You know, because no one does the research of this stuff as much as me. And I see these people making these bold claims. Like we don't have the evidence for that yet. We don't know enough. We need. There's so many studies.

Deep squats versus pedal squats, sumo versus conventional. There's not one training study on sumo versus conventional hip thrust. Should you do full range, should you do partial, should you use bands, should you. You know, there's, we don't have, we need, we need like 30 glute studies to be able to speak confidently about what works best. Until then it's theoretical and we should be cautious about what we think we know.

Andy Galpin

What do you think about a system I just sort of jotted down based on what you're saying. Checkpoint number one, if you're trying to grow your glutes and whatever exercise you're doing, whatever your program design is, it's resulting in pain. Not muscle soreness, but pain. Your back is getting hurt, your knees hurt, right. Then pretty obviously stop that.

Brett Contreras

Don't do that.

Andy Galpin

Right. So the checkpoint you could run through in your head is if in your program you're then getting injured. Whether we mean like a true injury or it's just simply the kind of pain you don't want, then we need to change your program. That seems to be like a pretty intuitive first start. So don't always why we don't need to be in pain. And then two, this would be the consistency play. We're going to lose training volume over time.

Brett Contreras

Yep.

Andy Galpin

After that. And this is where like I just sort of made this up. The second thing I would think about in my head, is. Is the actual exercise feeling like it's working? How much credit do you give or not? Should people feel their glutes working in the workout? I'm sure it doesn't have to be 10 out of 10. But if.

If I'm doing hip thrusts and I don't feel my glutes getting a pump, if I don't feel them getting tired, should I be concerned that that's not working for me, or am I okay there?

Brett Contreras

So let me play devil's advocate and then tell you what I really think. We looked at that in The Plotkin Study, 2023, Daniel Plotkin, the researcher, asked everyone, which exercise do you feel your glutes more in, hip thrusts or squats? All 20 some subjects said hip thrusts, and they grew the glutes the same.

Andy Galpin

They were a good one.

Brett Contreras

Well, so. But I do think it is because, yeah, if you don't feel your glutes much in hip thrust, it's probably not the best exercise for you. Or you should find a way, a variation, a way of carrying it out or, like.

Andy Galpin

Right.

Brett Contreras

Maybe you like the Smith machine more. Maybe you like. Maybe you feel it more.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, you're feeling it too much in your quad hamstrings.

Brett Contreras

How could that not help? Yeah, that's always been a thing when, since the dawn of bodybuilding, try to feel it and every person tweaks their figs, figures out a way to feel it more. That has to help.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

But it's. But it's also when I was getting the advantage of being a bro, we wanted to get strong, you know, and when we're in college and we're like, everyone's stronger than you. You're, like, wanting to get stronger. We weren't focused on filling my delts during a military press. You know what I mean? I just wanted a stronger shoulder press.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

And guess what? You get really strong with pretty good form and everything develops. And that's the argument. I hear both sides of the argument. The people will say, oh, tell me how you do a squat without activating your glutes.

But come on. I can, like, I mean, when you're walking upstairs, be super upright and you'll feel your quads more and then lean in and, like, let the hips come up a little more, and you'll feel so much more glute walking upstairs. You can't tell me technique doesn't matter.

Andy Galpin

No, it does. And we saw that in our trap bar versus conventional deadlift study. Right. So the aggregate results are different than the individual results because some people, when they did a trap bar deadlift, actually kept the exact same position that they did in their conventional deadlift. Others went super vertical. It was basically like a leg press.

Brett Contreras

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

They're standing straight up where their deadlift they were much more so guess what happened with EMG activity. On average, no difference because it washed out.

Brett Contreras

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Right. But the individual person, depending on their arm length primarily. Right. That allowed them to stay in the same position or not. Yeah, it completely changed. So for some of our participants in that study, the trap bar deadlift was way more quad activation. But for others, it literally changed nothing whatsoever between conventional and.

Brett Contreras

Brad Schoenfeld and I did a rear rear delt study. The first EMG study he did. He just got his Naraxin unit.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

And we wanted to see what's better neutral or pronated grip. Because back then everyone said if it's not pronated, it won't grow your rear delts.

Andy Galpin

Oh, yeah.

Brett Contreras

Well, neutral grip on average outperformed it. But there were huge inter. Inter Individual differences. Some people getting way higher one way versus the other. So go with what you feel the most. Because if you're moving a muscle through the same range of motion and getting similar stretch, then the. The. The technique that activates it the most, in my opinion.

Well, but sometimes that technique can influence the stretch. So under.

Under the same. All right, if passive tension is equal, then the higher active tension wins out. But you can't have a technique that increases activation while decreasing passive. And I think that's the argument for sumo deads. Well, it gets you less stretch, but it gets you more activation in a lot of client. A lot of clients, a lot of studies not. There's only one study by Escamilla looking at EMG with sumo versus conventional, and they showed similar activation in the glutes.

But there's probably 12 studies at this point on squats and other exercises and sumo in general, you get greater glute activation, but you're going to get lesser glute stretch. So there needs to be a training study and then we need to see for ourselves. But right now people should just be cautious. They should say, I prefer conventional because you get a little bit better stretch.

Maybe, you know, but. But don't be like, sumo is all adductor and zero gluteus maximus. Sumo's got to be the dumbest thing ever, because then you get all the tiktokers and all the. They repeat your stuff and then it becomes fact before we've ever even Looked into it. Yeah.

Andy Galpin

So okay, back, back to my list here of kind of five things. Number one, start off, don't get in pain. Two, hopefully you feel something either in the muscle you're trying to train that day or potentially some amount of soreness the next day. Obviously we know that more sore is not better.

Brett Contreras

Feeling it, getting a pump, getting sore. These are indicators that you worked the muscle though.

Andy Galpin

Seems reasonable. If you're not in pain, you're feeling it, even getting a huge pump on the day and you're still not growing then potentially think about going heavy. A general problem people have had, you've sort of mentioned this earlier is they don't realize that hey, you know, three sets of 50 with the band like that may not be the jam to grow every muscle. Right.

Brett Contreras

You may have to focus on progressive overload.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, progressive overload. Right. My gut is most people will be done by, by this one in terms of you're going to start growing at this point. But let's say I got that box check.

Brett Contreras

Focus on my muscle now.

Andy Galpin

Focus on potentially frequency.

Brett Contreras

Frequency.

Andy Galpin

Right. So now I've done. I'm not in pain, my glutes are getting pumped. I'm going really heavy. I'm at 315, whatever the numbers are. Now maybe think about adding in that extra day volume, frequency. You could kind of play what like one game here, right?

Brett Contreras

Sure.

Andy Galpin

So those would be kind of like 4 and 5 volume or frequency. So maybe need to add another day with those less damaging ones. This is where more bands could come in.

Brett Contreras

Yep.

Andy Galpin

It's just a way of getting you more volume.

Brett Contreras

Sure.

Andy Galpin

But how does that kind of like five step checklist progression sound for somebody struggling. Reasonable approach. There is anything else you would add to that?

Brett Contreras

I would say have a one in there where you really focus on mind muscle connector activation somewhere in there saying what if? Because there's evidence, there's evidence that it makes brain changes in the cortical the read the, the motor cortex.

There's a couple. There's at least one, maybe two. I think there's a recent one too showing that you get actual changes in the brain responsible for activating that muscle. So maybe if you have a little month where you focus on mind muscle connection, not even going to focus, squeezing the out of the muscle and really trying to target in your brain. You know in that study they looked these bands and it was isometrics because they thought isometrics would build greater brain changes because you're focusing harder and that might make a difference.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So making sure that again, if those progression strategies aren't working, that you're just trying to be more connected directly to the muscle, those connections more right and getting more out of it makes a ton of sense. We've gone on quite a journey thus far. I got a couple things if you've still got some energy left.

Brett Contreras

I can go for hours.

Andy Galpin

I know, I know. You can't to finish up on. So one of them is the very first question I asked you is how do you think about training men versus women? And you laid out a lot of stuff to think about. I just want to double tap on them if I can. One relating to recovery. And so I'll ask this from the scientific perspective as well as, and potentially even more important, your years of experience.

So what do we understand about men versus women, the context of strength training here regarding things like recovery? Have you truly seen that women recover more than men in general? Do they need more volume? Those are like kind of two separate questions. And then a third one I'll smuggle in here is are there any other things physiologically like menstrual cycle phase or things like that that you have found to either be big considerations or things you put a lot of effort into and then panned out to not really matter too much?

Brett Contreras

Awesome. Yes, yes and yes.

So, but, but also it could be that the women are on a permanent specialization program. Glutes Booty by Bread is a glute specialization plan.

Andy Galpin

Not a groot only, but it's a.

Brett Contreras

Specialization full body with like we, we hit quads, adductors and hammies, but we don't do a ton of leg extensions, seated hip adductions, or leg curls, because that would just take away from what you could potentially recover from with the glutes. You can't just hit every. What if you trained every muscle like you did with Buddha? Brett, we do where you did 36 to 45 sets a week of glutes of with quads, with hammies, with adductors, calves.

It's too much. You could never recover. So it's. Maybe they. I just think they can recover better because they're on a glute specialization because they have reduced volume of the upper body muscles and even the quads and hammers.

Andy Galpin

And you've intentionally, as you said earlier, built in a day that is a more recoverable day. So the exercise selection by default is easier to recover from.

Brett Contreras

So makes sense. Yeah.

Andy Galpin

So.

Brett Contreras

But I don't think it's just that early on in my training career, I'm like, man, these women can do these workouts. I tried to do1once, 2007, try to do what I give my girls. I was on the ground laying there for half an hour. I was like, is it possible to have a heart attack at 28? It goes 30, 31 or 2 or something, like. And I remember just sitting there like, wow, that made me gain respect for what I put them through. So it could be the influence of hormones and estrogen, and they have bigger type 1 fiber hypertrophy, they have higher estrogen.

Maybe that leads to better muscle damage repair. If you put a guy through the workouts they do, it kills them and. But the girls can bounce back quicker. I know there was a study I read back in the day on bench press guys, it would take two or three days to get back. Like, say they did a one rep max, or took them two days to repeat that. The. The women could repeat that the next day.

And you could say, well, that's because they're not as strong relatively, but with women, they are as strong with a lot of these glute exercises as men. Relatively. They're stronger. Relatively. Women are stronger at hip thrusts than men. And again, you could say, absolutely, yeah, almost. Absolutely. As well.

You could say, well, that's just because they do it a lot too. But I think there might be something with the anatomy. But anyway, I think they can do more volume. I think they can recover slightly quicker. So their programs can be a little more.

Andy Galpin

You think they need more volume? In other words, if. Do they have the same effect if they were given the same.

Brett Contreras

When I give them, when I train? Okay, do they need more volume? I think the better question is, what's. Is. Is there a different optimal volume for them for hypertrophy? I do think it would be slightly shifted upwards for women compared to men, but not double. You know, it might be that for men, Hypothetically speaking, say 12 sets was optimal for a muscle group for a man, whereas Maybe would be 16 for a woman. But. But also we talked about earlier. It depends.

Every answer is it depends. You have the people who can recover better than others and who push themselves harder too. You have the people who. There's also some weird thing about tempo. Like, you have those people who, like, on chin ups, they're like.

And you're like, okay, they're done. Somehow you do another rep. Yeah. And you're like. And then they get three more.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

And you're like, what? How? Because I'm done. Like, people always go, wow, you had three more in the tank. I'm like, no, I was. I wouldn't have gotten one more. It just looks like that because I'm a very explosive lifter.

Yeah, I either explode up or it don't. Won't go up at all.

Andy Galpin

But anyway, I'm the same as you.

Brett Contreras

For the record, some of those people, I think the more grinder you are, that's tough to recover, those are harder to recover from than the. But anyway, there's a lot of factors at play, but it's how hard you push yourself versus your muscle damage and recovery genetics. So I do think they can do a little more volume and a little more like what's optimal volume and frequency for them is slightly higher. They don't seem to get as damaged and beat down. They seem to get beat down from trying to juggle too many forms of exercise, too many things. They tend to want to jam pack their schedule and they're like, I don't know if men are. I'd be curious to see if modern day men are like that.

Because me, I'm kind of like, I don't want to plan as many things, you know.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

But anyway, I think that that adds to their stress and. But if they had no stress in their lives and that way they could recover even better. But. And their relationship stress, they are, they care so much about their relationships. It really weighs on them. So anyway, there are a lot of different factors and I'm probably going to get some stuff for that comment because whenever you say there are differences between men and women, you get in trouble. And I'm like, man, I could never raise a kid not on my own like a woman can.

I could never do half the stuff they can do. And multitasking they seem to be better at. I have so much respect for a lot of my women. I could not do what they do. I could never do it. Life is so hard. And then you add a kid to the mix and then you add two kids and you're breastfeeding and you're getting woken up at night.

I don't know how the hell they do it. So I have the utmost respect. But I think there are definite differences and we shouldn't try to be the same.

With regards to training. The biggest differences are goal related. The physiological differences I think are worth mentioning. Like you said, I think they recover faster, can handle a little more volume. And then you said the third piece was menstrual cycle.

Andy Galpin

Menstrual cycle train differently during different phases of the cycle.

Brett Contreras

So this research got popular. And then Lauren Colenso simple came around and just squashed it. I love it because I was like, you're gonna get.

Andy Galpin

She was in my lab. You know that.

Brett Contreras

Yeah, she's great.

Andy Galpin

She's awesome.

Brett Contreras

Yeah. But here's the deal. On average, strength doesn't fluctuate that much throughout the menstrual cycle, et cetera, but does on the individual level. Just what you talked about with the trap bar deadlifts. I have women that are, especially if they're not on birth control.

And when they. It's crazy because a lot of women, the day their period starts, they're. They're weakest. But some are their strongest at that point. And I'd be like, I had this client, Camille, in Phoenix, and I'd be like, did you start your period today? And they're like. She's like, how'd you know?

I go, because you just crushed your deadlift pr Every time she would start her period, she was a monster. Other women don't even want to train when they start, especially hip thrusts. They don't want pressure on their abdomen. You got to know these things. You have to be aware of them and be sympathetic to it, because everyone's different. Some are stronger, some are weaker. Some don't want to be there.

They don't want to train. So you bargain with them. You say, oh, you start your period, you don't want to hip thrust. Don't hip thrust.

Let's do kickbacks. Let's do this. Give them stuff that doesn't feel bad, so at least they make it in the gym and they feel good about themselves. But, yeah, these. These are factors that men don't have in their lives and don't have to think about. It's an additional variable with women. And it definitely matters on the individual level because some women get so nauseous, so irritable, they don't even want to.

We don't have to deal with that. That is a factor that should be considered in your.

In your program design by just on.

Andy Galpin

A personal coaching level.

Brett Contreras

Personal level, not a group level. I don't change my programs to. To. To reflect that. But in person, I definitely change things up. If it. If. If the person is.

Has really bad periods or period cramps and emotions associated with it, you absolutely have to change things up.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. So a factor to pay attention to. But perhaps no set rules that should be automatic based on generic cycle phases.

Brett Contreras

You look at the. I wonder if.

Andy Galpin

I think Lauren's research would agree with that.

Brett Contreras

Yeah. But I wonder if hormones changed are unique because you look at the graph and it's like, here's testosterone, here's estrogen, here's progesterone. And then you look at, like, premenstrual. Of course, progesterone is highest, I think. And then estrogen, testosterone are lowest, of course. Like. Or like. Right. It makes sense that that would.

You'd be your weakest there. But it doesn't on a group level. Well, maybe hormones are different depending on the person, too.

Andy Galpin

That's the thing.

Brett Contreras

I also will tell you that, like, my girls are. My San Diego squad is all natural. Right? My Florida squad, most are all natural. They're very. But I always tell them, like, when girls get mad, when I say all natural, they'll be like, they have breast implants. That's not what all natural means.

That's not what all natural means in our world, Natty means you don't take gear. You don't take anabolic steroids. You don't take sarms, you don't take peptides. I don't even think peptides really are a factor now, depending on how peptide you talk hormones. So I'm so close with these ladies. I've been training them for seven years in groups. When you train, when women in groups, they talk.

It's like I'm. It's like I'm a gay friend, but I'm not gay. Like, that's how I get treated.

Andy Galpin

Right?

Brett Contreras

They will talk about.

Andy Galpin

You're the inside.

Brett Contreras

They will talk about anything in front of me because they're very comfortable. So I hear everything. And they'll be like, coach, my testosterone levels came back.

It's at 14. And I'm like. And then I'm like, okay, like, you're super horny. That's all you talk about is sex. And you're strong as hell. You can deadlift, you know, 385. You think you have a 14 testosterone level.

Check it again. Yeah, but enough of them came back. I swear. Like, my average testosterone level of my clients is, like, not even 20. It's like, probably in the teens. How they're strong as hell. I start to wonder if really intense training lowers women's testosterone levels, because normal is 6 to 90 for women.

That's a 15 fold difference. But you think some of these girls, they have these amazing physiques. Can I get someone in the 40s or 50s or 60s? Yeah, no one's at a 90. Yeah, but they're in the teens.

Andy Galpin

A lot of things going on.

Brett Contreras

They're in the teens. So, yeah, that's A whole other thing that I would love to look into is if should we be paradising to let their testosterone come up or anything?

Because I'm like. Or maybe that they're all just getting false readings because these places are lying down to try to get them on trt. Because I'm in a constant battle saying, you don't need trt.

Look at you, you look amazing. So, yeah.

Andy Galpin

Okay, well, thank you. Those are really good insights. That's a question that is. That comes up a lot. And there's the research on that. That's great. People can interpret that.

But it's always interesting to hear perspective of somebody who's, you know, been in the trenches with people trying to get as strong as they can, trying to grow muscle and seeing how that played into your coaching. And I think that was a very helpful answer. And I know a lot of coaches and a lot of individual people are going to go, okay, great, now I have freedom to take the best option for me, depending on where I'm at. One last real technical question here and then I got a couple more. But the technical one is regarding the glutes versus other muscles. Right. You've mentioned this several times now, but I want to make sure this was really clear because I thought it was really helpful.

We talk about training as if all of our muscles respond to training the exact same way. Right. And so this much intensity, this much load, this much frequency, this is how you progress. But have there been any themes over your career that you've noticed about the glutes as a collective musculature that are, you know, significantly different than the delts or the triceps or the pack string like that, Anything that jump out of either, maybe things to do or things not to do. That's special about the glutes.

Brett Contreras

I just think they're more simple. A lot of, a lot of muscles are simpler because. Well, what, what I like is comparing the glutes to the delts.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

They're both ball and socket joints. You know, a lot of movement, a lot of range of motion around them. But delts, you have three subdivisions, anterior, middle and lateral. And it's. You really target one division over the other. So when you talk about delt volume, when you train any upper body pressing movement, be it dips, decline, flat push ups, bench incline, shoulder press, behind the neck press, every one of them will train the anterior delts. And then going out in the expanding on the frontal plane more is going to activate the, the middle delts a lot.

The side delts but not rear delts don't get super high on pressing. But then the rear delts get. Do get activated during all the row, all the pulling motions from pull downs to angled pull downs to rows, to even, you know, even rows upright, like more upright. So the rear delts will get. The rear delts will get activated with a lot of pulling movements. So they can handle a lot of volume because you can also add in isolation movements. But you, if you wanted to, you could do three sets of rear delt raises three times a week.

If you really wanted to, you could do three sets of laterals three times a week. With variety. You could do three sets of front raises three times a week and you could be doing presses and pulls. So they can handle a lot of volume. The delts can, but they do, you know, they do, you know, shoulder flexion, abduction, you know, and then the, like the shoulder extension and in different planes too, in different angles and stuff. So, so they're very versatile muscle group. When you look at the glutes, the, the glutes aren't just the glute.

It's the glute max, the glute meat, the glute min. And they carry out hip extension, abduction, external rotation, posterior pelvic tilt. But also posterior pelvic tilt should just be thought of as like short arc hip hip hyperextension. But anyway, like you can bend over in the. And do abduction in the, in the transverse, like being knees to chest, abduction versus upright versus leaning back, like frontal plane. So they do a lot. They do several different joint actions.

And then you can vary the exercises to work more in the stretch position, to stretch you more, to work the stretch more, to squeeze you more, to have more hip hyperextension, to work more in the stretch position. It's complicated, but just how complicated you want to make it, it's like for glutes, okay. Just get really strong at Bulgarians, Romanians and hip thrusts and you're going to have pretty good glute max development. And then throw in some abdomen, do some lateral band walks three times a week to warm up and you'll be fine. But no, there's more to it. Okay, well, let's think of other muscles. Quads. Well, it's so simple.

It's pretty much just the knee is a hinge joint. All right, Just get really strong at either any one of these or a variety of them. But I would say they all probably build the quads very effectively. The first is squats and probably high bar. Even better. Heel elevated, even Better front squats, high bar squats, whatever. But get strong at squats.

You're probably going to have nice quads. But now add in hack squats or, or pendulum. The pendulum squat or belt squats or leg press in a quad dominant fashion. How can you not have big vastis? But what about the rec fem? It's a two joint muscle. If you want to maximize rec fem development you now you need to add in a leg extension type movement, a single joint.

Well, so you add in leg extensions. But leg extensions are even better when you lean back. They're probably even better when you stress the stretched position that's on like that prime machine that really you can change the load if you have a plate loaded that's just pure plate like the titanium.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

Then you're only working the squeeze. I actually like to do that because I'm like everything we do works the stretched position. I like working the squeeze position. But anyway, you could also do sissy squats or you could do reverse Nordics and you might maybe you need to do some hip flexion too to maximize rec fem growth.

But it's not as. Not quite as complicated as as the glutes. Hamstrings can be complicated because there's a lot of studies hamstrings there's a ton of research on because of hamstring strain injuries.

Andy Galpin

Injuries. Right.

Brett Contreras

And these range from EMG to.

Andy Galpin

It's my favorite muscle for the record. And it is the one I think people train the least and should train more of.

Brett Contreras

Yes. Because completely underrated foot position like with leg extensions doesn't seem to alter vasti recruitment. But it does for hamstrings.

Andy Galpin

Boy knee pain and other foot injuries and back injuries. Man, hamstrings people just don't train them.

Brett Contreras

So you have knee flexion movements and you have hip extension movements. With hip extension you could go squeeze position with back extensions like loaded 45s and back extensions. And you can go in knee flexion. You can work them in a stretch with seated hamstring. So with seated hamstring curls you should be leaning forward if possible or just at least as upright as possible.

Don't be leaning back. You want as much stretch. But also make sure that pad is down far and you make sure it's working all the way up into full knee extension. So you're getting the maximum stretch. But then you can do lying leg curls, kneeling leg curls. And they all seem to work different, maybe like slightly different areas. Variation is a good thing for hammies. Okay. Calves, calves Are probably the simplest exercise to train because what we're finding is seated calf raises don't appear to add to the mix and neither does the squeeze position.

Like, there are now a few studies showing that calves almost don't even need to come up all the way. You can just do the stretch position. But if you do come up all the way, extend the set with some length in partials or just do more sets. But yeah, if you just want to do, you know, a quick three sets of calf raises, you know, just do standing.

You don't need to do seated. That tends to. It seems to build the soleus just the same. And.

Andy Galpin

But the seated is going to make it hard for your gastroc to get involved at all. It's going to basically be zero right on the seated. The calf raise.

Brett Contreras

So seated then shown to not. It doesn't add to the equation when you're doing straight legged. I don't think I've seen us during like donkey carriage. Does that add? I don't think it does. There is some evidence that turning the toes in versus out can help.

Andy Galpin

Sure.

Brett Contreras

But yeah, like basically this calves are probably the simplest muscle to train because just do standing calf raises. Work the stretch position, you're good to go. Can the calves handle the vol. Do you. Do you need the variety in calves when you do that? You can with glutes. The cow pretty much they just do plantar flexion.

So you don't really need. So it's like. And then you look at the pecs. Okay, there's the upper, middle and lower fibers. If you just get strong at like low incline press, you probably get most of your bang for your buck. But then you're like, okay, should I work all the angles? Should I do weighted dips?

Should I do incline press? What. What incline? Should I vary the incline? Should I do 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90? Obviously not 90 degrees. 90 degrees would be mostly all front delts.

But like, what about now your pec isolation movements. Okay, should you do flies or pec deck or cable crossovers? Should you just focus on the stretch? Just do dumbbell flies. Do you need to come up all the way? Why you lose tension. Just do length and partials.

Okay, well, so flies, do you need the squeeze? Should you do crossovers? Focus on the squeeze pec deck where you really focus on. I don't. We don't have enough research, but to me it just makes sense.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

It just makes sense to be strong throughout a full range of motion and to incorporate a lot of Variety. But we, you know, it's like the more divergent the muscle, the bigger the muscle and more subdivisions, the more complex and the more joint actions, the more complicated it becomes. Lats do we need, does the stretch help a lot? They have better moment arms like coming up all the way. How do you stretch the lats the most? How do you stretch the pecs the most? Like this re.

This scientist named chasm came out and said you, you stretch the pecs more with kind of like with a 45 degree arm angle.

Andy Galpin

Right.

Brett Contreras

All right. But maybe what about when I do guillotine? You know, because you can lower the bar, I feel some of the fibers, upper fibers stretching more that way. Should we be doing guillotine work that doesn't agree with some people's shoulders? And it's like, what about the lats? Okay, how do you stretch the lats the most heavy chasm would say do a cross body.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

Cross body motion. That might stretch the lats the most arguably. So. But you know, sometimes you can have, if you're big muscles, you might not get the full stretch of your anatomy. Might your rib cage or for me, I can't seem to get over that much on these. But would it stretch my lats the most? And then you start altering your, your spinal and your scapula and stuff and all that and you can get a better stretch.

And I think this stuff is very important. We should talk about it for what's optimal or not. What happens is everyone starts focusing on optimal, optimal, optimal. And then the pendulum goes too far this way and you have these nerds ripping on bent over rows and weighted chin ups and stuff. And I like it because it's funny because interesting, I contradict myself. I've always liked sumo for glutes compared to conventional, but I've always liked supinated narrow for lats compared to wide grip.

Andy Galpin

Oh yeah.

Brett Contreras

And it's like. But I'm not consistent because I'll say, well, supinated stretch you more, but wide grip activates a little bit more.

Andy Galpin

Then why don't you.

Brett Contreras

In my opinion, for lats, you should probably do some stuff in the frontal plane, some stuff more in the sagittal plane, some stuff that goes full overhead in the full stretch. Even though the lats don't have moment arms or activate here that much, you should just always use a variety. Yes. Some muscles, Cassia, with the lats you've got different divisions. Upper, middle, lower. And how do you build?

Maximize the size of each. And it's like, I like Analyzing everything, geeking out on the biomechanics. Just don't let it take away from, like, the basics and, like, getting strong at the basics. Because, yeah, if you look at, like, the way Tom Platz trained his quads, he was an animal. He got super strong at squats and hack squats. He'd go. He wouldn't go down.

He'd turn the hack squat into a squat.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

And this leg extension, you're seeing him, like, flying up on these leg extensions, screaming, and he'd go. Until he'd do. He was doing length and super sets 30 years ago, before they were a thing. Like, before they were popular. It's that intensity. But, yeah, he had the greatest quad development of all time.

Andy Galpin

They're absurd.

Brett Contreras

And that was before they were even now. Now, you see, since then, tell me a body part that's bigger on a guy 30 years ago than. Yeah, today only. Platts with his legs, his quads.

Andy Galpin

Yep, that's it. Okay. Awesome. That was really, really, really helpful. Last thing I want to get from you here is, you know, I was telling you this before we started. You're a unicorn in the field for many reasons, one of which is I think you're one of the very few people who I really respect and enjoy who has actually built themselves. It's not fair.

But mostly on a single brand, right? So this is your company names, this is your. Your exercise equipment, your Instagram, your social media is the glute guy, right? You, despite the fact you have a PhD and you've done all the things we talked about earlier, you've pushed into a single brand. And why that matters is how do you handle that? Then when research comes out and it says your brand maybe isn't great.

Brett Contreras

Right?

Andy Galpin

So in other words, what I'm saying is if you were to be the. The lemon juice guy, and then all of a sudden, research comes out and says, hey, lemon juice is actually not great for you. And like, oh, my God, what do you do? Your career. This has happened many times in your career, right? There have been many, many studies come out that, as you talked about earlier, have countered maybe what you've thought before. And I think you've done such a beautiful job over the years of being so overt, so honest with that.

You're the first guy I hear about when new studies come out on the hip thrust that show negative results. Not because you're criticizing the study. You're like, if that is true of the study, you'll bring that up. But rarely do you do that. Almost Always. It is a. Hey, guys.

Updating our thinking here. Turns out I had this idea. It doesn't work anymore. Now it looks like that's not the case, and this is sort of how we're modifying it. So the question that I'm eventually smuggling in here is, how have you handled that? How do you think about that? And then secondarily, what are the most known criticisms of the hip thrust?

What has been shown scientifically? What is it not good at? What is it limited in? What are the downsides? Because I don't want this entire discussion to feel like just a big, you know, glutes is great.

Hip thrusts are great. And I don't mind bringing this up because you have done this more than anybody in your career about what looks like sabotaging your own brand. But to me, it's only elevated you even more because when you do say things that are positive about the hip thrust, I feel like you generally give a fair representation of literature and you don't run away from when things don't support your brand. So what do we know about the downside? There's no really cons. That's probably not a. There's no negatives of a hit thrust.

But what are the limitations? What are they not good at? When is it not the best choice? And then how have you handled that? When that's happened in your career and saving your brand? If that's probably not a word that resonates with you, but, you know, great questions.

Brett Contreras

I. If I was the hip thrust guy. Yes. I'm the guy who popularized it. If I was the hip thrust guy, I'd be screwed. Because, like, well, I don't know if we had enough studies. You're going to find it's useful for some things, but it's not. Yeah. Then I'd be like, oh, God, I said this.

But being the glute guy, I just need to flow with the research. And what I want to do is be the first to notify my people of a study. So if. If no one will care.

Like, and I want to fund this. I want to carry out the studies, because then I'm the hero either way.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

If I do a study on full squats versus parallel squats for glute development. For glute development and full squats wins, all the Olympic weightlifters are like, hooray. Contreras saves the day. And then if it's to parallel, the power lifters get to say, see?

Suck it, Olympic lifters. We told you. But if I. Yeah, the plotkin study, Menno Hanselman and I funded that.

80 freaking grand. We spent of our own money like 40 grand each. Props to Menno.

Andy Galpin

We wanted MRI lab too. He's great.

Brett Contreras

Yeah, we wanted MRI because we don't fully trust ultrasound for glutes, for other muscles. Yeah, but glutes, it's tricky. So anyway, I was so glad that I got to present that and helped be involved in that because it was a needed study and I was wrong. Now the first time, what you're talking about is with hip thrust, with speed development. So the first study on the topic was from my PhD thesis. It looked at adolescent male rugby players and it showed that front squats led to greater vertical jumps, but hip thrusts led to better acceleration, improvements in sprinting. And that was in line with the force vector hypothesis.

Andy Galpin

Right.

Brett Contreras

You want to jump higher, put more force on the ground that way. You want to run faster, put more force on the ground that way.

It's common sense. And then you see this in the research, kind of like you see boom and then boom. And then with hypthoros it went back again to here. So the first study showed great results. So then a couple of researchers designed studies. Here's the deal.

Andy Galpin

I know you got hammered on the force vector theory.

Brett Contreras

Eventually I got hammered on it. And now it's like legit.

Now it's, it's back. Yeah, it's back. So the next couple of researchers who study. I gotta look back at these papers. Chris Bishop was one of them. And there was one Chinese or Japanese baseball study. We, we, I think was the lesson.

But anyway, like that baseball study showed that like hip thrusts grew. The, the baseball players squats squat strength just as effectively as squats did. And that's what I found in one of my, I did a twin study and the hip thrust, the, the, the hip thrust twin grew. Her squat like went from a 95 pound squat to 135 pound squat without squatting just in six weeks of hip thrusting. And it was crazy. It was. And it cleaned up her form too.

Like she hip thrust. So but you, you look at those two, those couple of studies, I want to look back at two things. I don't know why I don't know this.

Number one, their tempo. If they're doing like a two second up and four second down, that is the slowest hip thrust known to man. People. This is one of the most, the biggest things people are wrong about in the industry is that tempo matters so much for hypertrophy. It doesn't look at a Lot of these bodybuilders are heaving away. They're using momentum, they're exploding because intuitively they know a lot of them were doing like length and partials too, just doing bottom position stuff. They were.

They're sometimes ahead of the curve, sometimes they're dead wrong. But sometimes the bros had it right. Anyway, these people out there, and they'll swear by it. It's like they think that, like, the slower the tempo, the better it is for muscle growth. And a review paper by Schoenfeld and Krieger I think showed two to eight seconds led to the same muscle growth. But I'm telling you it's more than.

Andy Galpin

That, by the way. I think it's like 2 to 15, like it almost doesn't matter.

Brett Contreras

The only thing is when you have like a 10 second concentric, there's. I think there's only one study on the Super SL method. I think it was 10 seconds up, 5 seconds down. And that led to less growth. But you can get a variety of results. But also a new study on cheating momentum. Brad Schoenfeld did this study too.

And they showed with curls and I don't know if it was triceps, but basically heaving away at curls versus very strict curls. And they had the same biceps growth. So the strict people can say, ha. This is what I love about presenting the research, because you're the champion. The strict people get to say, see you went lighter, used less load and got the same muscle growth. And it's safer. Clearly it's going to be safer.

You're going to have less injuries. And the heaving crowd can say, see, you went heavier, heaved away. You're probably going to grow other muscles because you're using some front delt and.

Andy Galpin

Some connective tissue development. And it's more athletic.

Brett Contreras

Yeah, it's more athletic. And they grew the same biceps. You didn't need to go light and. And super slow.

Andy Galpin

Train like an athlete, right?

Brett Contreras

So that's what I like about being.

Andy Galpin

That's funny you said that, because my initial instinct was that, right. Being on more the athletic side generally, I'm like, I know I've been like this whole don't use momentum thing I've been against for forever because I'm like, no, like, move, learn to move. It will, you'll develop.

Brett Contreras

And the bodybuilders were heaving and using momentum back in the day. Look at Ronnie Coleman. Look at these guys. They're. And they're not going super slow negatives. And I don't think super slow negatives help with Muscle growth either?

Andy Galpin

No, but they are very tiring in terms of like, they will suck all your recovery resources.

Brett Contreras

I think it's good to do for variety. It's good to do for. Maybe. Maybe it does some of these things lead to growth initially, but then you don't.

You just revisit them. But anyway, I think hip thrusts are like one rep per second at my gym.

Maybe one and a half. Say what you want, criticize me all you want, but scoreboard. Let's look at before and after pictures. And I don't mean to be cocky, but like, I get annoyed when look at my girl's glute development. Do you think we're lacking and we're doing explosive hip thrusts. Okay, so what I think those initial studies, I gotta look at two things. Number one, were they still sprinting?

Because if these were athletes and you have them stop sprinting for eight weeks, then this is a detrain. This is to see if hip thrusts counteract the effects of detraining.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

If they didn't get faster, but they didn't get slower, that's huge. You can hip thrust and while you stop sprinting and retain your sprint speed. That would be cool to know.

Andy Galpin

And speed is, as we know, is the first thing to go. So not sprinting for six weeks, if this is actually the case, which it may not be, that would be enormous. You would expect a significant loss. Yeah.

Brett Contreras

But also if it's a slow tempo, that. That doesn't have ecological validity. And that's my problem in the research.

Andy Galpin

Is another way of saying that's not how people do it in the real world.

Brett Contreras

No. So, and so I'd like. So I think maybe some of the other studies that came after that. So then you had a couple studies show that hypdos didn't build sprint speed. And that's when I came out with my blog post saying I was wrong. I thought I was ahead of the research. I wasn't.

Everyone respected me for that. And now it's years later. Now there's actually a lot of evidence that hypdos are better than squats. And then. But in general, horizontal exercises seem to be better at developing sprint speed. But this is interesting because the plot can study showed similar glute growth, but the squat group had more quad and adductor growth. Twice the quad and over two times, two and a half times.

I think the adductor growth neither grew the hamstrings or glute medius minimus. So you can't tell me in sports, quads and Adductors aren't important. So I would never say stop squatting because you need quads, you need adductors, you need glutes, but you do need strength through a full range of motion. And squats probably get you more hip. More glute strength in the hips flexed position, hip thrust in the hips extended position. But there's something about explosive movements. And there's even a study showing that bands might be more effective than free weights because you explode up.

So I think we need to look in more into. I have a few different glute. In the first room in glute lab, Fort Lauderdale is our hip thrust room. But I have in there a kneeling. The glute builder has a kneeling glute isolator. It's kneeling hip extension.

Andy Galpin

Oh, yeah.

Brett Contreras

You're bent over, you're kneeling, and you do back extension. Like it's like Sorenex's back attack machine, but kneeling. Okay. And then you have the reverse glute ham. That's a Rogers piece, where you're laying on your back and there's a pad and you. It's almost like a, like, it looks like a leg curl pad, but you move it in hip extension the whole way. Well, when I do 20 rep set of hip thrust versus the kneeling glute isolate versus the reverse glute ham, a 20 rep set will take not.

Not even 30 seconds. With the hip thrust, it might be 25 seconds. A kneeling glute isolator might be 35, 30, 35. And the reverse glute ham will be 40 to 60. It's gonna be like 60 seconds.

Andy Galpin

It's a long time.

Brett Contreras

And so these people talk about tempo and they don't consider the range of motion. So how to tell. Tell me you don't know about weight training without telling me you don't know about weight training. Mention that all exercise need the same tempo.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

What do people do with calories? What about shrugs? Am I supposed to do shrugs with two seconds up, four seconds down? No, shrugs are one second.

You don't need to. So anyway, I think that helps with athleticism is these rapid, like with hip thrusts, boom, explode up. They don't beat you up as much.

They don't cause much muscle damage. They're explosive concentrics. You don't have to control the negative. And you can say the negative is huge. Is it for acceleration? When you're leaning forward, accelerating, it's pure concentric. There's not an eccentric phase with acceleration.

Sprinting, I think concentric is king and I think you need to power through the whole stride and that's why hip thrusts are great.

Andy Galpin

So you're not saying it's the only exercise to do?

Brett Contreras

Oh hell no. You look at what just one, you.

Andy Galpin

Look at what of the many what.

Brett Contreras

The sprint popular sprint coaches have always drawn. What is us ATF or what are the track and field, what have they always done? Vertical, like Olympic squats, RDLs, Olympic lifts. But like Charlie Francis was thrown in the reverse leg press. That's a kickback, you know. And so add in some hip thrusts, but just make sure you're not overdoing the strength training because I would become the coach and I would over prioritize strength that I'd actually make them all slower.

I'd make them slower. Yeah, because I'd be obsessed with getting them stronger at these exercises. And really you need to save your juice for the explosive stuff, the sprinting, the plyos.

Andy Galpin

Just like you said at the beginning, don't forget the priorities. Right, yes. Like make sure that the goal is there. You're just saying that potentially you could consider adding a horizontal movement. If horizontal speed is.

Brett Contreras

Is the priority, is the goal. Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Okay, so.

Brett Contreras

But real quick, so. So that's the first time I had to say I was wrong. But then I kind of end up being right. Anyway, I need to update that.

Andy Galpin

Not a good start to your own criticisms here, but okay.

Brett Contreras

Then later on with that hip thrust versus squat study, I thought for sure hip thrusts were going to win. And this is what annoyed me when in terms of squats for glute growth.

Yep, they tied. They tied for upper, middle and lower glute max. And so then it leads to the next hypothesis. Well, we equated volume. You don't have to equate volume. In the real world you can handle more volume. What if we would have done more volume?

Blah blah blah. We need more studies. But I was wrong because I thought hip thrusts would beat squats. And they tied. It was on beginners. Beginners seem to have more stretch related growth due to sarcomerogenesis, which tends to stop at around say six, eight weeks. Whatever. But I did make a post saying I was wrong.

Well, why didn't all the other guys make posts saying they were wrong too? Because they all thought squats would annihilate hip thrusts. I thought hip thrusts would beat out squats. We were all wrong, but I was the only one to say it. So anyway, that's the secret. To answer your question. How do you pivot?

I guess as new research comes out, you be the first to announce it, and then you change your programming to reflect that. You learn and you evolve. And that's the secret. No one's mad at you. In fact, they trust you more. But it's really hard for guys to do. It is so hard for guys to say I was wrong.

It's okay for guys to admit they're wrong like five years later. Oh, back in the day, we used to think that squats grew your arms because we'd say, do squats and it raises your testosterone growth hormone. Your arms are going to get jacked.

Andy Galpin

And now we know what you're saying, by the way.

Brett Contreras

Really? No, that's not true. The hormone hypothesis. It was probably smart. I like that we told people that, but we were wrong. But yeah, we got them to squat and deadlift by pretending it was going to build your arms.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, I used to say that all the time.

Brett Contreras

I used to say it too. I came across a document I gave out to my first gym and it was like, so pseudo scientific. It was, yeah, it was full of pseudoscience. But anyway, it's fine for guys to admit they were wrong five years later, ten years later. But at the time, it's hard to say, guys, this study just came out. Looks like I was wrong. I've been telling people that.

And you can say, okay, I'd still like to see it in advanced lifters. I would still like to see. But if you say front squats suck because you're not building quads, you're just limited by upper body. Your quads could keep going, but you cave and you fall like, and then this study comes out saying front squats and lead to the same quad growth as back squats. You should tell your people, if you're a scientist, you tell your people. If you're a zealot, you don't mention that study. You pretend it never existed.

If you say hip thrusts suck and a study comes out showing hip thrust, tight squats, you need to come out to your people and say, looks like I was wrong. Hip thrust. There might be more to hip thrusts. Yeah. But either way, you should be saying we should do both. I still think squats are better than hip thrust for glute length. Or I still think hip thrusts are better than squats, but as of now, we should probably be doing both.

Especially since these, they kind of combine to form comprehensive glute strength through a full range of motion, full spectrum glute strength, and especially because they don't beat each other up. Like one doesn't Beat you up as more one's more full body grows the quads and additives two. One is more isolation. And guys will look you straight in the face and say, don't do any glute isolation work. And I wish women could say, oh, I shouldn't do hip thrusts. No. I shouldn't do kickbacks. No. I shouldn't do abduction. No. Well, what do you do for your chest?

Do you just do bench? Oh, you do pec deck, too? What do you do for your arms? Do you do curls? Because you could just grow.

I'm doing chin ups and close grip bench. You do curls and tricep extensions. Oh, what about your side delts? Do you do lateral raises? Because you could just say, just do military press out to the sides. Oh, you don't even believe. So you're giving me advice you don't follow yourself, you weird hypocrite.

Do you not realize that? You weird man. I don't know why guys do that with glutes. But anyway, that's how you navigate that throughout your career, is you be the first to announce it to your people. You admit it, and then they just like you more because they go, this guy's always going to update us. This guy's always going to give us the science. And then if you disagree with it, like, fund your own study and look into it, you'll just learn.

All we can do is learn and grow from it. And then if you're the first person to point out that hip thrusts were not needed and I could pivot, I'm still the glute guy. I just said, hey, it turns out we didn't need to do squats. We just needed to do these. Throw electrodes on your glutes.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

And I'd be the hero, because people would be, we didn't need exercise. But I don't believe that.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

And then the second part to your question was, what are the pitfalls with hip thrusts? I do believe when you're an expert on a topic, you should.

I could be the number one. I could write the best article to convince you that hip thrusts are amazing. But I could also write the most convincing article to say that they're worthless. I should know both sides of the argument. I should know it better than anyone. So people will say, takes forever to set up. It's a pain in the butt to set up.

How did we all used to set up these stations back in the day? I don't like if I go to a gym I don't want to do. I Don't want to set up the station.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. It is the number one reason I don't do it.

Brett Contreras

Yes.

Andy Galpin

Literally the number one reason.

Brett Contreras

But if you have a plate loaded device.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

If you've got the hammer strength, the BC strength, the nautilus glute drive, the.

Andy Galpin

Booty builder, these are all different Hip.

Brett Contreras

Thrust machines machine even with a bench nearby it. Because sometimes they put the bench right near the or sometimes some gyms are putting benches right by their platforms so people can quickly. And it also matters how strong you are. If there's a bar with one. At my gym, it's so easy because I got the BC strength thruster setups, there's bigger plates. The bar is sitting there loaded with 135. You want to add on plates.

We got plates with handles on them. So you slide them on. You got the glue loop there to connect it. If you want to do bar plus band, you got the pad on the bar. You have a even an air exped to sit on. If you're shorter and it's all right there, it makes it so much easier.

Andy Galpin

I don't know if people realize what you said a second ago, but you, your company, you specifically make weight plates that are larger in diameter. And the reason you do that is because then it makes it much easier to do hip thrusts with them.

Brett Contreras

Yeah, you just slide the bar over. When you have big legs and you have standard plates and I gotta slide.

Andy Galpin

Myself underneath, it's a giant plate.

Brett Contreras

And then you go to get in position, you're like, oh. And it's crushing you and you have to kind of like climb. Hip thrust.

Andy Galpin

When I saw you came out with those, I chuckled so hard because I'm like, oh my God. Of course you would, of course you would make a person to change weight place in 50 years.

Brett Contreras

No, I got that idea from Mark Bell, came up with his wagon wheels. Oh, and some of my, my, my coaches at Glab were hip thrusting off of them. And at that time, at that time I was rolling the bar up onto rubber mats. Just the 2 inch rubber mats that I've got from Elite FTS, we'd roll them over the mats and I'm like, the mats aren't necessary if you have plates that are 2 inches bigger in diameter or actually 2 inches bigger in radius. Sorry. So yeah, we came up with the bigger plates. The hip thrust station is huge.

And my girls, Fort Lauder, they like the rotisserie station the most. The barbell, the standard, they like the rotating pad the most. Then it would be The Thruster Pro, which I use the hammer strength model because only hammer strength. Almost got it perfect. But why did they make this tiny plate peg you only fit four plates on? I've got girls that are stronger than you. Get a strong man, they're using six, seven plates.

So I made the plate pegs bigger, and then I made the foot plate bigger to accommodate five footers. That's something no one does for women. These poor women out there, they finally get a hip thrust. And these gym owners are. The gym owners are so bad at knowing what the best equipment to buy. And the manufacturers don't even test it on a shorter woman.

Who is the market with.

Andy Galpin

Right.

Brett Contreras

Glue machines.

Andy Galpin

Yep. So the outside of the criticism of setting it up in the pain, what would be maybe the next just pain? Hip pain.

Brett Contreras

Oh.

Andy Galpin

Like the bar on my head.

Brett Contreras

Super strong.

Andy Galpin

I bruised the hell out of myself there many times.

Brett Contreras

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

You think I, of all people would have the best padding? It's hard.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, it's. Well, I mean, you're still putting. I don't care what kind of polyurethane or whatever material you have foam, you're still going to put several hundred pounds through that foam.

Brett Contreras

Yeah. So there's an optimal thickness and density combination that.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

But it's really. If you get it thicker, it interferes with your hip flexion.

Andy Galpin

So outside of setup, get it denser.

Brett Contreras

It's. It's. It. It doesn't pad as well. If you get it too soft, the bar sinks through. So the hip pain and the bruises and the scar. And then in some people, it can get bad.

Like, my girls will be like, look at this. And so sometimes when you have these crazy bruises, you can either avoid the hip thrust, but sometimes I'll sit on my client's laps backwards, and you do partner hip thrust. They hip thrust me, and I'm like, I weigh 240, but I'm heavier. It feels heavier. I go, if you can get me for 20, that's hard. So they either hip thrust me or they do single leg hip thrusts, or they do the kneeling or like some machine that doesn't put the stress in the exact same place. Okay. And then you would say from a functional standpoint, you'll still hear people say, you're lying down, it's not functional.

Those people are dead wrong. I think hip thrust transfer better. If you just said, compare it to squats. I think hip thrusts transfer better to sprinting speed. I would. The research on horizontal plyo says they're better for agility, too. But I think squats would be better at agility.

But I think they're better for rotational power because when you rotate you're more in full hip extension. So I think for rotational power hip thrusts are going to be better. And then they seem to tie for transfer to the deadlift, hip thrusts and squats. But I bet you squats build better strength. Deadlift strength off the floor and hip thrusts better, probably build better lockout strength. Makes sense as far as just straight up they transfer the deadlifts. Similarly, they lead to similar horizontal pressing strength, pushing against a wall as hard as you can, which is a very important sports functional performance outcome.

Hip thrusts seem to be better at isometric mid thigh pull due to joint angle specificity, no doubt.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Brett Contreras

And for jumping they're better for horizontal jumping, broad jumps, things like that, broad jumps. But then for vertical jumping they probably tie. We think squats would be better. But in the literature they probably either tie or maybe a squat slight edge for squats. But the bottom line is you should be doing both. You should be doing both of them. Oh yeah.

They neither transfer to lumbar extension strength. What else is there? They don't build lumbar extension specific strength.

Andy Galpin

Neither one of them density. Any research on that?

Brett Contreras

None on bone mineral density. But where would you do it? In the lumbar spine? Yeah, yeah. If that was the case, I would think squats would be better. But anyway, I think, I think what that shows is for sports performance you need a variety of exercises that multi vectorial training, you know, force vector training. Do heavy, medium and light stuff in your main directions. Yes. Sagittal playing stuff is going to be paramount in sports because you know, we stand on two feet.

But don't be afraid to. But anyway, so the functional crowd, they're wrong. It's really hard for people to fathom that an exercise can transfer like supine exercise can transfer to sprinting, but it does. Then the other arguments would be, I've heard it all, okay, it's really bad for your posture. It's going to grow your waist. It's not going to grow your waist. It doesn't activate the obliques much or the rectus abdominis.

It's not going to screw up your posture, it's not going to break your back. As long as you, you know. Well, not as long as you just.

Andy Galpin

You have actually seen like hardly any back injuries.

Brett Contreras

No, there's not nearly as many back injuries. But I think the problem, I think my power lifters don't like it is they see Someone like me doing all this weight. So they're like, if that guy can hip thrust, then I can. And they load up too heavy. I started with 185 back in the day and worked my way up gradually. You got to start light and get full hip extension and work your way up gradually and get that feeling of that full glute squeeze and the full hip extension, full hip hyperextension. And so they'll do it.

And they're going so heavy they're only working the bottom ranges and they don't feel it much. If they would have went lighter and went full, say they went light like 135 their very first time and did a pause at the top in full hip extension and did, you know, a set of 15 with a 3 second pause at the top, their glutes would have been lit up and they would be convinced that it works well. But instead they lit up 405 and they did 80% reps where they failed to get the 20% of full hip extension, didn't lock it out, didn't pause at the top because they could never reach there in the first place. And had anterior pelvic tilt and full spinal extension. Trying to mask, trying to pretend you're coming up higher. But the bar didn't rise any higher.

Andy Galpin

Right, Right.

Brett Contreras

They just altered their torso to make it look like they went higher.

Andy Galpin

And then their back hurts the next day.

Brett Contreras

Yeah, and then their back hurts. It doesn't feel right. They don't even feel their glutes. And they're like, this is stupid. Why am I even doing this? Yeah, that. It's redundant. If. If a study on squats showed that it built the glutes the same, why do it?

But when would they use that argument for any other muscle group? If lateral raises built the side delts is the same as military press. Which guy would say, don't do laterals. Then they'd say, do them both. If leg curls and stiff leg deadlifts built one of the hamstrings the same, would they be okay with that?

You'd probably do both. And they'd probably say, I bet you they grow different. Different port like the proximal versus distal or different subdivisions. We didn't look at the whole lot, the whole level of muscle, the full length of muscle at every. In the, in the semi tendinosis, semimembranosis, and then long head of the biceps forms and short head. They wouldn't. They, they would be skeptical.

But they're quick to throw out glute Isolation movements.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. Whenever I think about this topic, a couple things jumped in my mind. One of them is false dichotomy and the other is mutually exclusive. Right? So when we think about this, nowhere ever do I recall you saying things like you should only ever hip thrust, or that the hip thrust is ultimately always better or like any of these things. So when I say false dichotomy, what I mean is you don't have to do a hip thrust or any glute exercise as your only option. And you're not saying it's the best option.

It's just looking at research to say, is it actually working? And when studies come out to suggest it works the same or better or less, it depends on the outcome goal. Right. It depends on what we're training for. And all we're looking to put sort of words in your mouth is what do we know about the quality for this outcome? And there's never a rationale to think. It is only ever going to be, say, a hip thrust versus a squat or hip thrust versus an RDL or hip thrust.

You can do both. There's no rule that says you have to choose squat or this one. Right. And there's also no rule of you can't do both at different times. It's never ever going to be an answer of, is this exercise better than that one? That's just not how this stuff works. It is simply, what do we know that is positive?

What do we know that is potentially limitations. How do I put my person in the best position to likely succeed as a starting place? Research, as you've outlined so far, it only shows us what's most likely to work. Most people, most of the time, it's just a starting place. From then, you have to coach.

Brett Contreras

It's so weird because you've been to my gym in San Diego. I have strong clients. They're impressive. I would say we're the strongest all natural, all female gym in the world. I wish we could. Yeah. I wish like there was like some gym in Brazil or Russia and we tested them.

We tested them and they said, let's compete. Because I could tell my girls up, we got called out, we got to compete with them. It'd be fun. But what would you do? Strong lifting. Which exercise would you do? But like.

Yeah, and strong lifting. The big six.

I'd love to. I'd love to take on other, other gyms in the world who think they're stronger than us. And, and, and these girls don't take stuff. They're like I said, all natural. And we are so strong at chin ups, bench press, military press, squats, deadlifts, and hip thrusts. Are we as strong as the best powerlifters? No, not at squats and deads, but I got girls squatting above 315.

One of the girls in strongly comp squatted 405. One deadlifted 425, 405, 385, 2, 3 girls 385.

So we're not some wimpy gym. But it's so weird. The you'll see criticisms of me, and they're like, he just gives us girls hip thrusts and bands. And I've never given that because I don't know the answer. So it's always been kind of that rule of thirds, you know, a third from vertical, a third from horizontal, third from lateral rotary. But I do wonder, okay, if volume wasn't equated. What if you did just do hip thrusts and bands and you contrasted that to their programs?

I bet you'd get the same glute growth without quad hamstring and adductor growth. And then you could say, what's your goal? Do you want just glute growth or do you want all of it? And then if you want all of it, probably do the rule of thirds. If you want more quads, then focus more on quad dominant movements. If you want more hams, focus more on hinges. But, but, but, yeah, like, do your squats in a quad, like more upright.

Andy Galpin

Right.

Brett Contreras

Do a little more volume from the squat lunge category. If you want more hamstrings, do more hingey stuff. But like, yeah, one thing I like about hip thrusts is they're. It's one of the most. Well, everyone can do a hip thrust. People have bad anthropometries or poor anthropometries for squatting and deadlifting. But hip thrusts, it's a bridge.

Andy Galpin

Yep.

Brett Contreras

You just put the bar in the middle of wherever the middle of that bridge is, and the hips and you thrust and you. Anyway, what you said, though, you hit the nail on the head.

They're all tools. And you know, if. If you're starting out and you can only afford. You could be 80% as good of a carpenter with these tools. But you want to be the best carpenter in the world. You want to be the best at your job, you better have a lot of different specialty tools. And that's what I like, having all the machines, all the exercise, all the exercise variations.

I just told you how we can still do hip thrusts when their hips are hurting, when they're bruised up. I can tell you when someone's low back is hurting.

Here's what we do. When your knees are hurting, here's what you do. If your inner thighs are too sore, here's what you do. We have protocols for everything. If this gives you pain, try this. If you're old and don't want this, then we're going to do this instead. You got to have a lot of tools.

And what if you're trying to grow your glutes without growing your legs? Then hip thrusts and glute bridges because become a lot more friendlier options.

Andy Galpin

So one more question I have for you. Why is it so hard to grow the glutes without targeting the legs?

Brett Contreras

Okay. Because you look at some of the most effective glute exercise are squats, you know, lunges, deadlifts. They work a lot of muscle mass. So let's think about the glutes. Ideally, the knee would stay bent. Why? Because that's going to take the hamstrings out of it.

Largely when the knees are bent, the hamstrings are slackened, the glutes are going to take up more of the brunt of hip extension. All right, but then when you sink really deep, how are you going to work the glutes without working the adductors? When you're going super deep, you do deep squat. The deeper you go, the more adductors you bring into play. So how. So whenever you go really deep, you're going to work the adductors. If you're doing anything with knee extension, you're also working the quads.

There's some evidence that when you carry out knee and hip extension at the same time, the glutes don't do as much. They don't activate as much because you're coordinating two things, and you're not focusing on driving hips forward maximally. You're coordinating those two actions. If. And so it's like, all right, straight leg hip extension is great for glutes, but it also works a lot of hammies. Knee extension work is great for glutes, but it works a lot of quads and adductors. And you better do these in the most glute dominant fashion to work a little more glutes, a little bit less quads or whatever.

So just hip extension alone, what are the hip extensors? It's not just the glute max, it's the glute max, the adductors, and the hamstrings. So anytime you do hip extension, it's those Three in. In combination, how do you hone in on the glutes? You could say, well, why even do hip extension at all? Do abduction. Does that maximize lower glute growth?

If you lean forward and if you start doing all your volume of leaning front or leaning horizontal plane hip abduction, would you develop overuse injuries? Probably. So you have to look at. All right, what about loaded posterior pelvic tilt? You just do a glute squeeze that you feel mostly in the glutes, but that's such a short range of motion. Is that going to be effective at growing the glutes? We don't know what hip external rotation that uses mostly glutes.

Does it work the upper and lower gluteus maximus? Probably. But how do you create a program around that tough? Yeah. So in theory, you do more hip external, hip external rotation, more posterior pelvic tilt, more. More leaning forward abduction, abduction in the transverse plane. We have no evidence on these for growing the glutes.

We have EMG evidence showing high EMG activation, but they don't always work you through a full stretch. They don't move move you through as much excursion as hip extension exercises do. And so it's complicated. It's tough to just target glutes without working the other muscles in the quads, the adductors, the hammies. And so this is where glute bridges become very enticing and hip thrust and then kickbacks. But even kickbacks, if you do kneeling kickbacks or kickbacks from a high pulley position, you're going to involve your quads. It becomes kind of like a step up.

If you straight leg kickbacks, it's more like a, like a back extension. It's like a hinge.

So you do them swoopy. So there are ways to kind of make things more glute dominant, but you'd have to do more volume because you're not doing the biggest bang for your buck exercises. So can you do more volume? It would be really fun to do a controlled experiment looking at like the basics versus like a very grow your glutes without growing the legs dominant program. And look at do you get the total glute growth? Doing a lot more volume for glutes because they're not as effective. But then you don't get the quad and adductor and hamstring growth.

It's not easy to do. You're gonna have to get a. You're gonna have a lot of bros telling you you're doing it wrong. Yeah, but it is complicated because the glutes are involved in the hip extension. Like I said, there are other hip extensors, hip abduction. You got the glute medius, glute minimus, and TFL that do hip abduction as well. Hip external rotation.

You got the hip X, the deep six hip extra rotators. And so you kind of create a pro, even posterior pelvic tilt. The abs can do it. So when you're doing glute squeeze, you got to make sure it's not the abs, it's coming from the glutes. So you're not going to be doing the most popular glute exercise. All the squats and lunges, you could throw those in and just do a couple sets and not do progressive overload. Because you shouldn't fear getting gigantic quads from just doing the occasional squat or lunge.

You just might not utilize progressive overload. And you gotta do em in a glute dominant fashion, leaning forward, sitting back. But it is hard, it's not easy to do, and it requires biomechanical thought and consideration, which I don't see from a lot of people. Another criticism of the hip thrust is just because it looks sexual in nature. Oh, so what I started doing, because I heard this on podcasts by a couple people, so what I started doing is saying, I started doing reaction posts to them and I started saying, okay, so you're saying, like, this looks gay to do, but what is a Romanian deadlift? You're doing loaded bending over. So you're saying you'd rather do loaded bending over as a man than loaded thrusting.

Personally, I think loaded thrusting is the more manly thing to do. But you're saying, so anyway, I put it back in their court and point that out. It's always a funny thing.

Andy Galpin

I got you.

Brett Contreras

I'm fine doing loaded bending over. I'm fine doing loaded opening and closing of your legs with abduction and adduction, and I'm fine doing loaded thrusting. It just needs to become more common and more familiar. But yeah, what it looks like shouldn't dictate, but I get it, I do get it.

Andy Galpin

I, I, I, I hope we have a little more maturity with exercise selection than that. When, when you first got here today and we were talking, I said, you know, hey, I, I don't, I don't want to spend that much time talking about the glutes. And well, we, we did the whole thing.

But that's okay. There, there's your, your knowledge is vast in, in many other areas of strength training, and you and I love strength Training, we could do this for a very long time, very often, but one way or the other, we tackled a lot of information. I'll reiterate something I said earlier. Although we did focus on the glutes a lot here, I really do hope people can pull the lessons out to other forms of training, other training goals. You laid a lot of critical information about basic things like paying attention to what the client actually wants. It sounds funny, but that's really what you said. You notice clearly your clients, who just happen to be mostly women, we're really wanting a certain thing now.

Maybe other women want different things. It doesn't matter. The point from a coaching perspective was you really actually listened to what the client wanted. In this case, many of them wanted bigger glutes. Could be selection bias there. Doesn't actually matter. It's specificity. It's getting better results because you're being more specific to the actual goals and listening to the client and not worrying about what you thought was a better exercise because that exercise worked better for you or for other clients or a study said that. Right. It's paying attention.

So that was one thing I learned about really thinking about the client goals. The other one was, again, the examples were glutes and hip thrusts. But it doesn't matter. It is making sure if you're not getting progress, that you are truly progressively overloading, that the effort is there and that you're not distracting it with either other exercises or other forms of exercise or other life things. Making sure that there's enough stimulus in the way that you want to drive adaptation. And if you're not getting it there, then you need to think about other options. More variety, more ranges of motion, different range, less range of motion.

Like figuring out what one thing at a time is you need to change until your goals actually start or the thing you're trying to target starts making progress. And then you gave a ton of technical details. You covered a lot of biomechanics, you covered sagittal plane and frontal plane, and we covered a lot of anatomy. So hopefully people that have not had the exercise science background that you and I have will have learned a ton of things again, whether they're coaches or themselves, so they can follow along more with research to get better application for their own individual process. And then really, at the end there, we finished off with talking about how. How do you understand when new research comes up implementing, changing and adapting so that you're staying true to your core, Your beliefs aren't changing, your principles aren't changing, but you're focused on outcomes, not methods. Right. And methods come, methods go.

What is the outcome you're really after? So a lot of value, hopefully in all those areas. There's probably other summary points that I could think of, but those things kept coming back to me. Things that people say, but you gave so many direct examples of that from the scientific literature, from physiology, from anatomy to many, many years of experience, that ultimately that's just. That's invaluable information. I know that you provide a ton of value on your social media. You do a ton on your YouTube page and potentially, I don't know if I could spill the beans, but maybe more YouTube stuff is coming in the near future.

I've actually been to your seminars before. I've seen you speak a bunch of different times. So you are not shy about giving out information. I'd love to know where people can learn more about you and all those things. But you have everything. You have training programs like Booty by Brett, My wife does. It's very, very affordable, reasonable, good program.

So that all said, thank you for all that. As much as you are a business person and you've got money to make, you have given away so much stuff over the years at no or very reasonable price. It. You've. You've changed a lot of people's lives. Not only have you grown some butts, but you've really educated a lot of people. So thank you for all that and thank you for my wife because she loves your program so much.

That said, man, where can people pay attention to your stuff and learn it and what is. Is the best avenue?

Brett Contreras

Yeah, it's been Instagram for the last few years. Like, that's my main focus. Like you said, I'm going to start focusing on YouTube more and then something we should all be doing is like getting emails. So newsletter, we should be better at that because who knows? You can't predict these social media platforms. Sure, I don't send my newsletters out enough, but I never spam people, so that's. You get it?

BrettContrust.com but thank you for the kind words. Always happy to come back down the road and talk about other topics or updates if we have new science. Hoping to collaborate with you on some research down the road with your new facility. Seems amazing. And I've watched you rise up through your career. We've watched each other rise up.

Andy Galpin

You were way ahead, man.

Brett Contreras

Yeah, but we were like, we met through like Barbell Shrugged podcast and stuff, right? Like, and then seeing, seeing you become this rock star on Andrew Huberman's podcast and seeing you grow. This, this new research position, this new professor position, there's no one who deserves it more because I like to think I'm in the same group. We don't just read the research. We work with actual clients. And it's different when you do that. You're looking at maximizing every athlete's performance on an individual level.

And you can't just apply research to the masses. You have to do a lot of testing and figure out what's going to help them, what are their deficiencies and what are the strategies that are going to help them improve the most. And I have so much respect for you as a practitioner, as a researcher, and as a fellow person in this industry who cares about steering us in the right direction. So thank you so much for having me on. It's an honor. And I feel very privileged to talk, to have scientific discussions with someone at your level. It's fun for me.

Andy Galpin

So I had a blast, man.

Brett Contreras

Hope the people enjoy it. Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for joining Today's discussion with Dr. Brett Contreras. To learn more about Brett, follow along on his social media, see his products, courses and other relevant items. Please check the show notes for direct links. Thank you for joining for today's episode. My goal, as always, is to share exciting scientific insights that help you perform at your best.

If the show resonates with you and you want to help, ensure this information remains free and accessible to anyone in the world, there are a few ways that you can support. First, you can subscribe to the show on YouTube, Spotify and Apple. And on Apple and Spotify, you can leave us up to a five star review. Subscribing and leaving a review really does help us a lot. Also, please check out our sponsors. The show would not exist without them and their exceptional products and services. Finally, you can share today's episode with a friend who you think would enjoy it.

If you have any content, questions or suggestions, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I really do try my best to read them all and to see what you have to say. I use my Instagram and X profiles also exclusively for scientific communication, so those are great places to follow along for more learning. My handle is rndygalpin on both platforms. We also have an email newsletter that distills all of our episodes in the most actionable takeaways. We have newsletters on how to improve fitness in VO2 Max, how to build muscle and strength, and much more to subscribe to the newsletter, just go to performpodcast.com and click newsletter. It's completely free and we do not share your email with anybody.

Thank you for listening. And never forget, in the famous words of Bill Bowerman, "If you have a body, you are an athlete."

This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors.

Andy Galpin

The science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play and Life. Welcome to Perform. I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor and scientist and the Executive director of the Human Performance center at Parker University. In today's conversation, I'm going to be talking to my friend, Dr. Tommy Wood.

Tommy has an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Cambridge University, medical degree from Oxford, as Well as a PhD in physiology and neuroscience. Tommy is now running his neonatal neuroscience lab at the University of Washington. In addition to all that, he is a well versed rower and strongman and has worked with athletes across every sport and in particular more recently focusing a lot on Formula One drivers. And I say all this to help you understand that Tommy's ability to run back and forth between physiology and science and application in a human performance is really unparalleled in the areas of brain health and cognitive function. So in our discussions today, we talk a lot about those areas. We talk about how to enhance, understand, identify short term cognitive performance, what that even means, what that looks like from an exercise and supplementation and technology perspective. And then we talk about how that looks in the long term.

So how do we prevent and even deter or eliminate things like dementia and brain aging? And Tommy, over the course of our discussion will bring up at least five points that I feel like are quite counterintuitive or in other words are going to surprise or potentially even aggravate some folks out there. The reality of it is I don't think a lot of us truly understand the current state of the literature on both short and long term cognitive function. And Tommy does a wonderful job in this conversation of brain bringing that to the forefront. So we really are more understanding of what the literature says and how that transfers into practical application. Another thing I think worth mentioning here that we get into that I get asked about all the time, is how things like exercise have a causal effect on brain health. Of course there's a correlation between strong muscle and physical performance and how well you age.

But how is it directly impacting and how is that I causal, if it is at all? Tom Lee wonderfully walks us through all that in a way that I think everyone can comprehend and get a great grasp on. So with all that in mind, I hope you thoroughly enjoy this conversation today with Dr. Tommy Wood. Dr. Tommy Wood, welcome to perform.

Tommy Wood

Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here with you.

Andy Galpin

There's a lot of things I want to get into today, things that you and I have chatted about before, but most of the Things that I actually don't know the answer to. Hopefully I can pry some information out of you about enhancing brain performance, things that we can do now in the short term as well as long term brain health. But I think before we can get to that, for my own personal sake, I know I say some of these things wrong, so I'm hoping you can kind of fix this. But maybe it would be best for us to just start off with what is cognitive performance? How do you define that? How should we think about it? And what are the aspects of cognitive performance?

Tommy Wood

I think one issue that's come up a lot recently in this field is that some of these things are actually very hard to define. So when we think about cognitive function more broadly, the way that we've traditionally thought about it is how do you perform on some standard cognitive test, like an IQ test? And then there are tests for a whole bunch of other functions, like executive function, or response inhibition, trying to suppress the desire to make a response, which is an important part of planning. And the prefrontal cortex plays a big role there, also testing working memory and all these other things that we might. Or our ability to learn and remember in short periods of time. And that's kind of what we've had, because that's what we've got. We have standardized tests.

We know how you score compared to other people. We think we understand which parts of the brain are involved in those functions. But the real problem is that while they do relate slightly to the different functions you and I would want to do from day to day, that's an imperfect association. And beyond that, there are a whole suite of cognitive functions or things that we do with our brain that you can't really measure with those tests. So part of the problem is defining what is it that you want your brain to do. And you almost have to become sort of your own baseline, because I can test your executive function, and I can test your working memory. But if you're an artist, those things don't relate to that at all.

And you can do some standardized tests of creativity and stuff like that, but it's just not the same. So I think cognitive function in reality is very personal, and it depends on what you want your brain to do and when you want your brain to do it. But I think that if we're trying to define brain health, for want of a better word, it is having a brain that does those things. So some understanding of what you want to do, when you want to do it, and how can you support your.

Andy Galpin

Brain in doing that, okay, so the way that I, pun intended, my brain puts this together is I think about, when I say brain health, I'm referring to do I have lesions in my brain, Do I have brain damage? And then when I think of cognitive function, I'm usually thinking about performance. Right. So reaction time, memory, word recall, executive function. Is that a fair way to characterize it? Or should I add a third part there?

Tommy Wood

Or I think about brain health more holistically. And in reality, we know that structure and function in the brain are directly linked. The brain has quite a lot of redundancy. So you can lose function in an area and either recover it or maybe you don't even notice that that function is lost. So I wouldn't even necessarily separate them out in that way. I think it would depend on what you're measuring. So we can measure brain health based on an EEG signal.

Like different electrical activity in different regions of the brain, how those different networks are connected. We can also measure brain health in terms of, well, how do you feel today? Because that's essentially an integrated output of all the different things that your brain is experiencing. So that's why I think about brain health more broadly. Um, and that relates both to minute to minute performance and enhancing that as well as what's your long term trajectory of function? And you know, are you then at risk of significant detriments of function and dementia long term?

Andy Galpin

Right. Like, clearly, if I have some physical structure damage in my brain, I won't have the acute performance either. Right. I'm going to have some, however that may manifest itself. Could be any of the examples you said. But does that work backwards as well? In other words, because I'm maybe having a hard time with some form of cognitive function, does that indicate some likelihood of actually having some structural damage as well?

Or are those, is that street one way?

Tommy Wood

Because of the redundancy in the structural systems, you don't necessarily have a direct one to one connection and you'll probably lose, or for some people, you lose some functions or the, the functions decline before you can see, say on brain imaging. Oh, yes, here's some atrophy, here's some loss of volume or here's damage in a certain area. So I think that may just be partly because of the resolution of the things that we can measure. So maybe we get to a point where you have a really, really strong MRI and we can see in very fine detail all the little blood vessels and all the small parts of all the regions of the brain, and then you could get a More direct connection. So I think they are very closely connected. And if you're losing a function, there's probably going to be a structural correlate of that. But in all likelihood, because function is also going to be driven by nutrient status, mitochondrial function, some of these other things, you might start to have issues with function before you see a structural issue on brain scan or something like that.

Andy Galpin

Okay, if, then that is true, if I improve some sort of. I'll just keep calling these short term acute functionalities, how likely is that then to carry over into long term brain health?

Tommy Wood

The, the way that I think about the brain is because I'm, I'm a bit of a meathead, as you know. Yeah, I, I enjoy lifting weights and the more time I spent studying the brain, the more the brain could be thought to respond similarly to say, skeletal muscle in response to exercise. So all the things that you've spent decades researching, these processes are very similar in the brain. And what that really means is that function is driven by stimulus. Just like if you're trying to get strong and jacked, you need to apply mechanical tension to the skeletal muscle. Right. Regardless of everything else that you do.

And you can improve that response with sleep and nutrition and things like that, but no stimulus, no response. And the brain is essentially the same. And what you see is that when you stimulate certain networks or areas of the brain with certain activities in response, you then see an improvement in structure because structure comes from that stimulus and then the way that the brain responds to it. And the brain is capable of that pretty much throughout the entire lifespan.

Andy Galpin

That's really interesting because almost always when we hear this stuff talked about, we hear it in the sense of neuroplasticity. Right. So you have a capacity issue, some neurological adaptation, which, you know, it is structural, but for the most time we don't think about that as a structural change. We just think it as a functional. Yeah, right. So you have a new capacity, your reaction time is faster, your word recall, whatever. Right. But what you're actually saying is there's also a as noticeable physical change akin to muscle. Right. So when I get my, when I train my muscle, I have neurological adaptations that make me stronger.

I also have larger biceps. I'm not assuming I don't have a larger brain. Right.

Tommy Wood

Well, obviously the, the space within the skull is limited, but to some extent you do have a larger brain. And we know that with aging in particular, and as you follow a trajectory, say into dementia, your brain gets smaller, you get atrophy of the brain, you can Then see increases in the volume of the brain in response to certain stimuli. So you can get, particularly once the volume of the brain has started to decline as you get older, you can see then a response in terms of volume with stimulus, certain stimuli. So that's not just neuronal connections, but part of it is. So you have greater density of connections. That's the neuroplasticity, new neurons talking to each other. Early on in the loss of volume of the brain, people think about neurons dying, but actually that happens quite late.

What's happening is those neurons themselves are just shrinking up. So they're still there, they still have the capacity for function, but before aptosis. Yeah. And if you're not using them right, they will then follow that trajectory, but that can be recovered. Plus, neurons make up less than 50% of the cells in the brain. You have multiple other cell types. You have a huge vascular network in the brain.

And so when you're improving volume, you're also improving other cell types. You know, the extracellular matrix is really important in terms of all the proteins that sort of regulate how the cell. So yes, you can improve volume. It's not just neurons, though. And I think often we focus on neurons, but really there's so much else going on at the same time.

Andy Galpin

Man, I'm totally guilty of that. I know certain aspects of the brain change physically in a good or bad way in response to perturbations, but I just always give it the neuroplasticity to it. So I'd love to come back to that. I want to know more about it, but I gotta ask, since we're right here. I don't think there's any more debate, at least in my understanding of the literature anymore, about whether or not exercise and things like that are good for long term brain health. What there is considerable debate on though, is can you actually improve cognitive function right? Now, you said this earlier, if you want to do an IQ test, and then I coach you on that IQ test, you will improve.

You could probably pick about every metric in the brain possible, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're getting better cognitive function. It just means the brain is neuroplastic and achieves an adaptation response to stimuli. So I'm more interested in where you stand on that global argument. First of all, is there even an argument? Is it pretty well scientifically established? Where does that field lie? And then overall, tell me, can we actually improve cognitive function?

And then for sure, if we can, I want to know how.

Tommy Wood

So again, it really depends who you ask and how you're measuring cognitive function?

Andy Galpin

I'm asking you.

Tommy Wood

Yeah, you're asking me. But if you were to sample a large number of cognitive neuroscientists, and even some of the people that I work with, some will say, yes, you can improve cognitive function, and some will say, no, you can't. And this is partly driven by how we're testing it, which we've kind of covered. And yes, we know that people who spend longer in education, they have improved cognitive function, but part of it is just because they get better at taking tests. And when any study does longitudinal testing of cognitive function, everybody gets better, even the control group, because they just get better at taking the test. So then when you're thinking long term, which we'll come back to, I think there is a good amount of evidence that we can improve cognitive function when you're in a period of decline. But then if you're thinking right now, how can I improve my cognitive function?

I think the way that I think about it is again, related to skill development and what it is that we actually want our brains to do. And the human brain, more so than any other species, is evolved to adapt to the environment so that it can optimally perform within that environment. That means that whatever you want your brain to do, and if you train it in the right way, you will improve function. Any skill learning, language, sports, and then beyond. Then when you've done that, you have improved cognitive function, right? You're using your brain to perform some skill, you have improved at that over time, and your cognitive function has therefore improved. We also know that the same carryover from specific skill learning to more broader cognitive function, particularly longer term.

But if you define it that way, I think that we know that the process of skill development is the process of enhancing cognitive function. And then it's just a case of how do I maximize that adaptation and how do I maximize the expression of that skill once I've attained it?

Andy Galpin

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And these are obviously critically important, but but so are the micronutrients like vitamins and minerals. And even if you're eating a healthy diet, it's often hard to get enough of these vitamins and minerals along with the probiotics, prebiotics and adaptogens to keep your body performing at its best. It's for these reasons and many others that I personally take AG1 almost every day now. It's of course not a replacement for eating whole healthy foods, but it is a great way to make sure that you're plugging in any gaps in your nutrition to improve your energy, bolster your immune system, and just generally help promote a healthy gut microbiome and more. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com perform to receive five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com perform to Receive five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3 plus K2 if I want to improve creativity, just do more creative tasks.

Tommy Wood

Yes.

Andy Galpin

If I want to improve memory, practice memory. And this probably expands to any way we would define cognitive function for a normal, young healthy person. So actionable step number one would be simply that if you want to get better at writing. That was one of my favorite. I had a friend, several friends who are writers, and it's stunning how low energy, last minute that they can pull up, smash out 3,000 words and you're like, that would have taken me months, months to write. Right? This is what they do naturally.

That makes a ton of sense. Where is the broader applicability? Are there any maybe specific domains of cognitive function that have better transferability to others? Are there any particular types, whether this is maybe exercise or nutrition or brain training devices or tactics that have a more wide ranging, again, broader applicability? Or is it all pretty much they're going to be good on their individual one and then have very little transfer.

Tommy Wood

So this is the principle of near transfer versus far transfer. So near transfer means that you learn to get good at the thing that you want to get good at and then it doesn't really translate elsewhere. It's been the problem with brain training, as has typically been done for the past few Decades. And that's one of the reasons why people think you can't enhance cognitive function, is because when you do brain training, what you get better at is just some version of the test that doesn't then make you a better functioning person out in the real world. But if your near transfer is relevant to you, say it's writing or some other kind of specific skill or language, then near transfer can be enough. But we also know that if you're trying to think about so far transfer, so improving some cognitive function, that then translates to other cognitive functions, then activities that train certain aspects of decision making in the prefrontal cortex, they seem to be associated with some file transfer. Just you get better at regulating your own internal thought and decision making processes.

And that relates to a wide variety of scenarios. Then some of the other things that you mentioned, like exercise is one that supports and it's exercise specific. So resistance training and aerobic training have effects on different areas of the brain.

Andy Galpin

Both good, but different.

Tommy Wood

Yeah, both good but different. But then that applies to functions more broadly. Right? You're going for a run and that aerobic exercise is particularly good at improving certain aspects of memory. And so it doesn't matter what you're memorizing. Right. Memory is broadly enhanced.

So some of the lifestyle factors that we know are critical for brain health and cognitive function. They broadly support cognitive function as well as skill learning in the first place. But then some specific skills may be just related to that skill as you use it.

Andy Galpin

Okay, I'm going to give you a couple of avatars here, and I'm asking this personally. Imagine because you've worked with athletes across, I mean, just every sport imaginable, you've worked with industry folks, you've worked with non athletes, you've done concussion stuff, you've done aging stuff. So you're all over the map in terms of your skill set. So with this, somebody comes to you and says, hey, look, my brain's healthy, I'm 40 years old, I'm not super worried about dementia and Alzheimer's, things like that. My lifestyle factors are exercise. I do all, you know, I sleep well, I don't drink, I don't smoke, so on and so forth. I don't have a thing I'm looking for.

I don't know what I'm looking for. I maybe run a company, I have kids, something like that. What should I do to enhance my brain function right now? And I can't define that. I don't know if that means I need to be creative. I don't know if that means I need to have more, you know, reaction time. What, like where would you start with that individual in terms of what you said at the beginning?

You should make your own baseline test. Like what should I be thinking about? And are there some tactics where you say, okay, I need all the information, I would really need all but maybe two or three things here to start off that generally work pretty well.

Tommy Wood

So generally I think about when something like that comes to me and they say I'm healthy, my brain works great, I'd like to improve it as much as I can or maintain it for as long as possible. The first thing is just to make sure if that first statement is true. And the easiest way to do that is with some simple blood tests, determine some nutritional status, becomes really critical for the brain. We can deal with poor nutritional status and the brain works just fine early in life. But if you're trying to know, maximize everything we know, vitamin D, iron status, magnesium, B vitamins, omega 3s, some of these, and glucose, glucose regulation, or at least just making sure you don't have pre diabetes, you know, some of the basics, I would just make sure that all of that is sort of buttoned up and that's, and that's easy to address.

Andy Galpin

Would you mainly say those are energy metabolism markers? As long as your energy metabolism's fine, you're probably okay.

Tommy Wood

This is an interesting thing about energy metabolism in the brain and as it relates to brain structure as well, which is that it kind of follows a U shaped curve. So at low levels of energy availability, we start to lose brain structure and brain function just because we don't have the energy to support it. And then we see a very clear energy toxicity effect as well. So if we have, you know, pre diabetes, diabetes, lipid dysregulation, you know, all the markers of energy toxicity, which are very, very common. Right. Two thirds, if not more adults in the US have some version of that, then you start to see a decline in cognitive function and brain volume as well. So yes, energy regulation is really important, but some of those nutrients have their own effects in terms of brain structure as well.

So if you think about the relationship between B vitamins and omega 3s, this has been shown again and again and again that they interact. So if you have good status of one but not the other, you see no effect and vice versa. And this is where we've had trials that say we give Omega 3s but they don't work, or we give B vitamins but they don't work, but they haven't taken the other into account. And it makes perfect sense because if you want DHA, the long chain omega 3 fatty acid, to sit in the synapse where you want it to help communication between two neurons, it needs to first get into the brain and that requires usually healthy insulin sensitivity and energy regulation. And then it needs to go down the path of being attached to some kind of phospholipid, right? So choline or serine or ethanolamine. So you need that to be available.

And then you need methylation to work so that these things get attached together and that's where the b vicids become important. So some of these things are directly structural as well as being functional. Thinking about energy and mitochondria.

Andy Galpin

I don't want to lose the plot. I'll come back to our avatar here in a second. I have many follow ups to that. I'll ask just one though. I don't think people would have assumed you can get a reasonable assessment of short term, immediate acute cognitive function from blood.

Tommy Wood

So right now you probably can't. You and I are in the process of developing what should be a fairly simple blood test that relates directly to cognitive function. Dementia risk, also mortality risk. But like I said, critically cognitive function. Right now it's not gonna be perfect, but it does relate generally to nutritional status and energy status, which, which makes perfect sense. So on top of that, I think you could, you know, really button up the details with making sure that all you have all your nutrient ducts in a row. But in reality, if you're gonna try at the population level, at least try and predict somebody's cognitive function.

You could see, or if they have pre diabetes or any kind of nutrient deficiency, they're going to have lower cognitive function. And there's, there's, you know, dozens, hundreds of studies that show that.

Andy Galpin

Do they need to necessarily be at a technical deficiency there or if they're, you know, say bottom 10th percentile, they should pay attention. Do we have any insights into where those cutoffs start to lie for these metrics?

Tommy Wood

Yeah, probably. You're, you're right that in general, what we consider to be a deficiency nowadays is usually you're below the normal range, right? You're in the bottom 2.5% of some nutrient marker and you're going to have some. Your day to day cognitive function is not your main issue. There's going to be even bigger problems than that. But there are some cutoffs for all of these things in general, say blood sugar regulation. You want to make sure that normal fasting Blood sugar, not pre diabetic.

Beyond that, there's probably not that much benefit from being lower than that. But something like homocysteine is a marker of methylation status. Generally if you went to a lab, the normal range is 13, 15, bottom.

Andy Galpin

End, 5, high end, 13, 14, 15.

Tommy Wood

And most people will say you sort of target below 15. In terms of cognitive function, it probably needs to be less than 11. Some people would go a little bit lower than that for things like cardiovascular disease risk. But then similarly for omega 3 fatty acids, if you do something like the omega 3 index, you probably want to be like ideally over 6%, maybe close to 8% or higher. And like I said, those, those two things interact.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. I would say that in our experience, if you are above 9 to 10 for homocysteine, we're, we're looking very seriously at other things.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

And an Omega, you'd be surprised how many are under five.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Like very, very, very, very commonly. This is why you see in those folks a little bit of basic multivitamin and omega 3 support. And all of a sudden the brain fog is gone. The decline, like it just disappears from these people really quickly, which is really of no surprise. So coming back to us, then we check those blood markers, then what for that?

Tommy Wood

So then you can make sure that the other lifestyle factors are sort of all in a row. And when we think about long term cognitive function, there's kind of a framework for thinking about that. So sleep and all these other things, stress mitigation. I'd definitely look at all these other lifestyle factors. But if you're thinking about enhancing cognitive function, like I said earlier, I think stimulus is really the most important thing. Your avatar probably has quite a cognitively stimulating job, which we know increases long term cognitive function and decreases the risk of dementia long term. So then I would think about a lifelong plan of ongoing broad cognitive stimuli.

So if he's never played a musical instrument, he learns to play a musical instrument. If he, all his exercise is in the gym and it's unimodal, then he picks up an open skill set sport. He goes to play pickleball or learns to skateboard.

Andy Galpin

God forbid. No more people playing pickleball. Don't do that, Tommy.

Tommy Wood

If he has never spoken another language, then he learns a language. Some of these things. It's interesting when you look across the literature, the one activity that probably ticks a lot of these boxes and seems to really support cognitive function as well as mental health is dancing. And because that brings in play, it's an open Skill, there's music, it's social. So a dance class with his partner would be a great way to sort of integrate a bunch of these things together.

Andy Galpin

Cognitive demanding. What does that actually mean?

Tommy Wood

That's a question that I actually can't answer. I talk about cognitive demand a bunch, but in reality, we don't know. Like, it's a theoretical concept, because we could put you on an MRI scanner and we could see which areas of your brain become active, or we could do the same thing with eeg. But in reality, like, how do I quantify the stimulus that's being put on you compared to somebody else? I mean, we can't. Like, what's the equivalent of volume in the brain, like, compared to, say, lifting weights, where I can quantify how many bicep curls did I do? What was the weight?

You could look at velocity and all these other things. We can't do that with the brain, so yet. And so I kind of hope that one day we'll be able to quantify that. So then we could say, this is the cognitive demand that you're getting, this is the stimulus, and this is the adaptation that we expect to see. But right now, some of it is still a bit theoretical. And when you think about cognitive stimulus and cognitive enhancement, one of the reasons why there's so much controversy is because it's actually quite a young field where exercise, like cognitive. Enhance the cognitive enhancement is where exercise science was decades ago, four or five decades ago, maybe.

So the principles all make sense. You can see it happen in animal models. You can measure the fact that these neurons were activated. But how you truly dig down and quantify the networks being activated and the level of that activation, or maybe what's required in order to see a response, that's something that still needs to be worked on.

Andy Galpin

Dance makes sense to me because you didn't say these words. But sensory input is a huge impact here, right? So proprioception, in the case of dance, it is hearing. You're feeling. You're feeling the other person, probably you're feeling the ground. You don't want to step on toes. Hearing it is rhythmic, different.

These are all different parts of the brain, if that's a fair way to say it. And now you also have memory. It's this step and this step and this step, right?

Plus improv, improvisation. Four or five different areas immediately make sense. When you think about something like, let's just say pickleball. You said earlier, if you are a skilled pickleball player, then the act of playing pickleball is not as cognitively demanding, I'm assuming as it was the first week you played, right now there's still some because you're reacting to the external environment, change of direction. This is proprioception.

Where am I at in space? What shot am I going to make? What's the score? All those things, right? But it's not as high as it used to be the last time. Because parts of that experience now of where to put your hands, how to swing your technique have been now pushed to, we'll just call it subconscious.

Tommy Wood

Right.

Andy Galpin

This is learning how you get better at. Better at sports. Right?

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Where the cognitive demand piece to me sets a little bit differently. Again, I don't know if I'm actually thinking about this correctly because if I think about a day to day work experience, for me the dance thing makes sense because of all those different sensory inputs. When I think cognitive demand, I'm thinking some sort of difficult mental task. I'm not thinking like a physical body movement, right? So I'm thinking if I'm reading a scientific paper, that to me feels like a high cognitive demanding task. But in reality I can do that scrolling my phone pretty quickly. And hubris aside here, it does not take me long to scroll through a paper anymore and get the gist of do I buy it, do I not buy it?

Shoddy paper or other folks I certainly know, say my just self as a graduate student, the whole day reading every word to get the gist of it. Is it just something that is a generally hard task? If I'm doing, if I'm writing, is that always going to be a high cognitive demand? If I'm sending an email, is that always going to be low? I know, for example, just speaking from my relationship, if my wife gives me information about something, I hang with the kids in school, that's the highest cognitive demanding effort I will have in my whole day. I'm like, wait, who, what's the kid's name again? I just have like I have to drop everything and complete pay attention or else it goes to zero.

The next day she'll remind me and I have zero recollection. She's probably, if she listens to this, she's gonna die in anger. Listen. Because she's like, yeah, it's infuriating. She does the same, by the way. So to the point of saying like, is it the task itself?

Is it novelty? As long as I'm doing something different, where, where do we know that something is cognitive? Or where can we get closer to guessing?

Tommy Wood

So novelty plays A big role. And it's probably because novelty drives attention and focus. And if you're actually going to respond to a stimulus, you need to direct attentional resources to it. So then difficulty becomes important as well. So it should be challenging, and you should be giving it your full attention and focus, whatever it is. And then those are probably some of the prerequisites in order to see some kind of adaptation in the brain, how you subjectively feel about a task being difficult. Although I'm a big fan of the subjective for a lot of things, in this case, it doesn't really work, really.

And it's probably because of the way that we use our brains nowadays. Nowadays. What you mentioned earlier, listening to your wife talk about something to do with the kids. And you said the only way that you can actually internalize it, if you like, if you give it your attention. So what that tells me is what you're doing is multitasking. And you're not actually multitasking. What you're doing is task switching.

So you're trying to pay attention to this thing in front of you right here, and then you're trying to pay attention to her. And there's a cost every time you do that because you have to refocus. And what happens is essentially you're not doing either or you're doing both or three things very, very poorly.

Andy Galpin

I think I set the world record for highest task switching cost ever. If I have to task switch like that, I have to literally sit down. I'm like, shake my head. I'm like, okay, hold on.

Gimme a minute. Okay. What? It takes the lag. It's like a bad video game.

It's so long on me. When I switch tasks, I'm just like. I focus my whole day on not doing that. Cause it is so catastrophic for me to have to do that. I'll. I can do the task, but I'll have no memory of it. Yeah, it'll be gone for forever.

Tommy Wood

I'm actually very similar. Like, I am a terrible task switch. And like, my wife always jokes, I'm a terrible multitasker. And recently, you know, I've leaned into it. Like, the human brain cannot task switch like that efficiently.

People just can't do it. You may have to be able to navigate that for your job, but in reality, like Work by Gloria Mark shows how constant task switching is very stressful. And every time you switch a task, you have that cost of time, as well as the fact that if you're distracted from a task, maybe a long period of time before you ever return to it. And during that whole period of time, while you're not doing the task that you actually want to be doing right now, there's this sort of underlying simmering stress, because you know it's there, but you're not doing it. So I think a big part of this is that multitasking, as we call it, or task switching, which is very common. Now, email to this document you're writing to social media. It's what a friend of mine, James Hewitt, calls the cognitive middle gear.

And you kind of imagine it. So I'll keep going over to my terrible exercise analogies, but it's kind of like spending all your time at threshold. It's incredibly, like, physically tiring, but the adaptation you get from it is kind of disproportionate to how much it drains you.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, yep, yep. This is the last couple of sets that you did where you got nothing different, but you got high fatigue.

Tommy Wood

Yes, exactly. And you're doing that with your brain all day.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Tommy Wood

So what you really want to do is to try and periodize that as much as you can. Right. So you have your periods of intense focus, intense cognitive performance, and that's your deep work, the time when you really need to get stuff done. And then the rest of the time, you're sort of. You're doing your sort of like your. Your zone two brain work. And that can be answering emails, like some of the basic stuff.

As soon as you start to do a ton of those things at the same time, you start to sort of head back into middle gear. But that's. You kind of have to think about almost polarizing your brain use. Just like a lot of people might polarize their training.

Andy Galpin

Your lab does mostly neonatal stuff. Right. So your actual scientific time is mostly spent in young developing brain. Right. You've clearly done work across the entire lifespan. Does that task switching energy increase as you get older? Because I feel like when I was a kid, I could task switch immediately.

I don't actually have a recollection of it being a problem as, like a grad student, but now I'm like, oh, my gosh, just detrimental. And why I'm asking that is I'm wondering if that is the case. Could that be explaining some part of people feeling like they have cognitive decline, feeling like their energy's lower throughout the day, feeling like their brain fog is hitting now, when in reality they're just burning more gas and they had no idea?

Tommy Wood

Yeah. Particularly early on in life, I think the brain interacts with the environment in the way that we should be doing as adults and we're not doing. If you watch a kid learning how to walk, that is all they're focused on, right? And essentially, for the first 30 years of life, the brain is continuing to adapt and mature, and it can still respond to stimuli after that. But it takes almost half our lifetime for the brain to finish adapting to its environment. And that adaptation is driven by learning these skills, social interaction, language, motor skills.

But particularly early on, that's all the brain is focused on doing. Right? I'm going to spend this next 10 minutes trying to stand up, and then I'm going to take a nap, and my brain is going to start to figure out all the inputs that it received during that period of time.

Andy Galpin

I've had some days like that, no doubt even now.

Tommy Wood

So then as you get into the teenage years, I think that you're right. Kids seem to be able to jump back and forth continuously, and that probably is. They are better at focusing their attention very quickly. And I think that's partly because all the other things that we have to deal with when we're older aren't in place. So a lot of what happens as we get older and we think that our cognitive function is diminishing is actually just a product of the environment as well as the fact that we're not focusing on tasks in the way that we should in order to.

To maximize the benefit from them. So when you're trying to learn a new skill in your 40s, you obviously have less time to do it. You have kids to worry about. You probably didn't sleep very well. You know, you're stressed about your job and all these other things. And then you say, oh, I just can't learn a language like I could when I was a kid. But when you're a kid, you have nothing else to do, right?

You have your French class three times a week, and all you're doing in that class is learning French and you're dedicating. I mean, whether or not you enjoy it or you actually paid attention to the time, right? But you have these focused periods to just work on learning the skill, whereas you're learning French as an adult. It's like, well, I'll do 10 minutes of duolingo while I'm sat in traffic. And then you wonder why you're not learning French as well as you could when you were younger, right?

And some of the. Right. Some of these adaptations do slow over time. But it's not that the adult brain can't do it, it's that we're not actually applying the principles that we did when we're younger in order to learn these skills.

Andy Galpin

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Okay, so making sure that we are trying to focus on singular tasks at a time and having potentially a little bit of a buffer when we switch from one to the next in terms of expectations, we're not going to be on the next one quickly. So if we go to our 40 year old and we're back on this avatar, he's saying, okay, I just kind of want to enhance my brain function there. I drug us off track there pretty quick. So kind of coming back to that, what would be again, your recommendations of things to think about, stuff that he could generally try. You mentioned learning a language duolingo. Are there any other specific brain training things? Do those things work?

I guess we'll even start there. Nutrition supplementation, nootropics. Like what are things we can do in that? Again, I'm not diseased, I'm not hurting. We'll get to that later. Just feeling pretty good.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

What can I do to make my.

Tommy Wood

Brain scans I think most brain training as it currently exists is probably not enough for us to see significant file transfer in that person in that, in that particular avatar. I think we're now starting to see a revolution in VR, particularly in AR where that might start to change. And you have very complex environments that you have to navigate and problem solve within. And these are some of the things that the brain thrives on. And they're delivered via the eyes, which is one of the primary stimuli that drives neural organization. And then all the downstream consequences of that. So compared to looking at puzzles on a computer screen, having some in depth audio and visual stimulus in a virtual reality environment is much more similar to the way that we normally develop complex skills and you know, drive brain development.

So I think we're going to see more and more of that coming online even in, you know, regular adults and actually in kids and older adults. The current technology for say video games, when in say a 3D, a complex 3D environment, it hasn't necessarily, there's been a bit in VR so far research, I think that's going to really explode over the next few years with like all the devices that are now available. But even like I think the game that has the most research is Super Mario World 3D. And people who play Super Mario World 3D for a few weeks, compared to something like Tetris or Solitaire, see greater improvements in certain standardized cognitive function tests. So even that kind of new complex world, a lot of orientation, puzzle solving.

Andy Galpin

High effort, high focus.

Tommy Wood

Yeah, and you're going to die if you're not actually paying attention. And probably the same in Tetris, but not in Solitaire. And actually with increasing complexity you see increasing improvements in cognitive function. So providing these complex multidimensional and multisensory inputs, I think we already have some evidence that that can improve cognitive function in healthy adults. And I think we'll only see more of that in the next few years.

Andy Galpin

You just gave every sub 50 year old permission to tell their parents, I told you so. I told you the video games were okay for me. Fair characterization or no. If cognitive function is low, either maybe young or older, aging, something like a puzzle brain training brain HQ is probably the more most studied one. Many randomized controlled trials potentially can help. However, if you are kind of normal to above going past that, that's just not cognitively demanding.

Most likely not. Right. So now you have to get into situations where again you care more or there's a heart rate elevation, there's some other functional physiological demand that provides enough of a stimuli to cause adaptation. So video games of that ill come. I'm sure there are plenty of other ones, but you get the concept, right? It has to be all those things you laid out. This is where something like a dance would also then fit in. Right. Learning a new skill, presumably rock climbing or surfing where your environmental exposures and temperature changes are great activities.

Combat sports are of course are like fantastic for this.

Tommy Wood

Just don't get punched in the head too much.

Andy Galpin

Too much, yeah. What about from a nutrition side, supplementation side? Is there anything you can do? Or on the inverse of that, is there anything that you just have to avoid? Are there particular nutrients or styles of eating that are really bad for the normal non diseased person? Or what do we know about that side? Outside of energy toxicity, which you talked about long term was a problem.

Tommy Wood

Yeah. So in reality the answer is no, there's nothing that anybody has to avoid. There's some reasonable observational, epidemiological evidence to say highly refined diets high in ultra processed foods, which that classification is problematic because it includes protein powder, which I would happily recommend to people, but also Twinkies. Right.

Andy Galpin

I don't think, look, we can be pedantic about this, but a diet high in. You fill in the blank here. Probably not good.

Tommy Wood

Yeah, exactly.

Andy Galpin

I don't know if we have the direct mechanistic research on that for this question, but we don't have to stretch our imagination as far to say there's so many other reasons why you should avoid that. Like just okay, so outside of that.

Tommy Wood

Yeah. And then that's a lot of the downstream effects of that are driven either by nutrient deficiencies or energy toxicity. Right. So things that we've, things that we've already covered in terms of supplementation, it then probably becomes a case of what is it that you're trying to achieve and when are you trying to achieve it. So I think in healthy individuals, in athletes we see some interesting improvements in broad cognitive function with say creatine supplementation, particularly in aspects of memory. So that's something that's always high on the list. Everything else that I think would go on the definitely take could also be related to the nutritional piece.

So magnesium status, vitamin D, all those other kinds of things. When you're then thinking about say supplements or nootropics, often what you see is that there's a trade off, that you enhance one function at the price of another. And that's fine, but that has to be a choice. You can't just take these things and think, I'M going to be better at everything because the brain doesn't work like that. Well, nothing in physiology works like that, generally.

Andy Galpin

No free passes.

Tommy Wood

No free passes, no biological free lunch. So then it's just going to depend on what you're trying to achieve. So if you've had issues with sleep or stress long term, then there are interesting things like Theanine, Ashwagandha, KSM 66, they seem to improve stress and also cognitive function in those settings, if you're thinking about trying to perform in the moment in a given sport. Uh, so I can, I can use Formula One as an example. We've worked with multiple drivers who, because of their engineers and the teammate they're competing against. One of the, one of the metrics that you can easily see, they show it on the, on, on the TV right at the beginning of the race is reaction time. So how quickly did this driver get off the line?

When you try and increase that or try and decrease or improve reactance, be decrease reaction time, then there are some. You know, the supplement that would first come to mind is caffeine.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, right, no doubt.

Tommy Wood

And it works. Right. We know that caffeine improves psychomotor vigilance and improves reaction time. However, we also know that at higher doses, caffeine decreases complex, complex scalability. Right. And decreases certain aspects of.

Andy Galpin

Imagine any scenario in which you would want to be driving 200 miles an hour on a thousand milligrams of caffeine.

Tommy Wood

Yeah, absolutely not. And so this. And. But it's. It's been done or it's been tried and you'll see a great reaction time off the line and then you're trying to navigate the first corner at 200 miles an hour, 150 miles an hour with 90 other cars around you, and you're plowing to the first corner.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Tommy Wood

So this then comes into the idea of getting into the right window of arousal for some given cognitive task. And we can use supplements to do that, but we can also use breathing techniques, exercise to kind of modulate some of that. So there are some supplements and depending on the task, maybe caffeine is the right one. For most people who are habitual caffeine users, you are generally just reversing the deficit caused by a caffeine deficiency at the moment, rather than enhancing function, which is fine. Yeah, we just had coffees before we came in here.

Andy Galpin

Right.

Tommy Wood

But then beyond that, it's going to really depend on the task and that's largely going to be related to arousal. What level of arousal is going to be ideal for the task that you're trying to perform. And each task is probably going to have a different ideal level of arousal.

Andy Galpin

It's really interesting you say that because with all the athletes we work with, there is a spectrum of caffeine use not only within the person, a person that. But I mean, I say categorically between sports. If you take for example, our NFL players, they generally are on a pretty high dose of caffeine. It's a cognitive sport. But our golfers, absolutely not. Oh, yeah, like, you know, maybe a cup in the morning or something like that. And that, that's it.

Maybe 50 migs or something like that. Like some little, little top off. But they don't want to have, they can't have that kind of neural control on very much caffeine.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

At all. Many of them are just no caffeine period. Right. Some of our fighting sports, they can be a little bit of a mix, depending on what kind of a fighter they are, but they can be on all, all kinds of different areas of this. I know personally, I'm kind of unlike the golf world. I generally like, like one shot of espresso. Yeah, like that, that is like good for the day.

Just like kind of moldering around a little bit. If I have afternoon I want like decaf or quarter calf, then I'm like, that's like perfect for me. I have other friends who are like the opposite. Right. It's just like, you know, six, eight, ten servings a day. And they're going, if I use almost any form of nootropic, and I've probably tried a dozen outside of caffeine and nicotine, I can't get a word out.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

My cognitive function goes to zero. Like if, if I do like a tenth of a serving, like, I just, I just can't use it at all. But I'd say 90% of the people we've coached with Alpha GPC or things like that have a positive experience. So. Dr. Wood, why, why can't I not think straight? I mean, I have to think about every word that comes out of my mouth if I do the smallest half dose of alpha gpc.

Tommy Wood

That's a really great question. And the answer is I don't know what the. A lot of people I know really like it.

Andy Galpin

I've been wanting to know this for like a decade. By the way.

Tommy Wood

The, the reason why I can't answer that question is because there isn't that much like high quality research on alpha gpc. There's quite a lot on cdp, choline or citicoline. So another, another form of choline, which, you know, people say that alpha GPC is more likely to get into the brain, more likely to be turned into acetylcholine, but there isn't that much really good quality research. So when I talk about choline supplementation, I'll always fall back on citicoline because no more data. It's much better understood. So the reason why I can't answer your question is because I don't think anybody's really looked at that.

Andy Galpin

Anyone that tells me things like alpha GPC don't work, you're out of your mind. You're out of your mind because if I take a quarter of a dose, I can't think straight. So it absolutely works. I guess it depends on your point earlier.

Tommy Wood

Yeah, what it means by working.

Andy Galpin

How are you defining sort of work? Um, are there any categorical pros, cons to the things? So you mentioned one earlier. In the example of caffeine, you might get enhanced reaction time, but perhaps you have a decrease in focus or attention if it's overstimulation. Are there any other general swings like with alpha GPC or any other ones? Like we just generally, if you get more, I don't know, does it even work like that? If you get more focused, does that then take away creativity?

Or are there any other kind of like big switches that happen like that?

Tommy Wood

There's been, as far as I know, a lot less research on those different, on those different trade offs. There was a little bit historically on some of the raster terms and showed something similar. Right. You might have an improvement in some aspect of executive function or memory, but then verbal fluency or some other aspect of cognitive function decreased in response. The stimulants broadly do seem to have that trade off that we mentioned with caffeine. So there's a recent study that came out and compared caffeine to methylphenidate and some of the other stimulants that are regularly used by students and when they're studying or the clinical population like adhd, who actually might benefit from them. And you tend to see something, tend to see something similar.

So you might improve on one aspect of cognitive function, but especially certain aspects of executive functions seem to decrease. What's interesting is that a lot of you see this in the, say, the psychedelic microdosing literature. You see it in the cannabis literature. People think they're more creative or they think they have improved cognitive function, but actually if you measure it objectively, they don't and it actually parallels some of the caffeine research where people.

Andy Galpin

You just set the whole Internet on fire. Sorry.

Tommy Wood

And so what often happens is people think they're functioning better. And this has happened in some caffeine studies as well. They think they're functioning better, but actually objectively they're functioning worse. So there's this decoupling of the subjective and the objective again. And none of this is inherently bad. It's just knowing what it is you're trying to achieve in the given moment.

Andy Galpin

What is that? Because you see the same thing in sleep literature. If you sleep, deprive people not even to extremes, six hours a night, things like that. You'll see routinely cognitive function decreases massively with almost, not always, but a lot of times no subjective change. So people think, I'm totally fine, I'm totally fine, I'm totally fine. And then on a standardized test they're hot garbage. What's actually happening that makes you feel like you're.

Is it just the acute self preservation? Something must be going on here that is catastrophic or important. So we're going to maintain like total short term focus and just disregard like the real world, like what is happening here.

Tommy Wood

It's funny because you often see the opposite in sleep literature, which is where, you know, like Ellen Langer's work where they randomize people to sleep for eight hours, but they told them they slept for five hours. Right. So they slept a perfect amount. But they thought I didn't sleep well, therefore I'm not going to perform well.

Andy Galpin

And actually they.

Tommy Wood

Yeah, and they don't perform well because they, because they have this expectation. So I think for, for some of it there's, there is this aspect, aspect of what do you expect to happen? And thoughts drive physiology. Like we know that's the case, but. And there's ton. You know, we can do that across blood sugar, control sleep, even how physical activity affects mortality.

Andy Galpin

We've done it with lifting weights. We actually put different numbers on the bar bill. We ran a couple of these random of deception studies with it. Yeah. Like you will definitely PR if you think the bar is 15 pounds lighter than it is.

You will absolutely PR.

Tommy Wood

And they've done it with anabolic steroids.

Andy Galpin

Oh yeah, yeah, right.

Tommy Wood

That was the. One of the most famous ones.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What a tremendous one. Yeah.

Tommy Wood

So some of it is just purely driven by expectation. And I think this translates into everything in terms of how we think about our cognitive function is like, what are we expecting from ourselves today? And that becomes a self Fulfilling prophecy because our thoughts drive our physiology, and then you get the result that you expect. But sometimes, like you said in the opposite scenario, where you haven't slept well, you think you're fine, and you can still measure an objective decrease in function, there is still some baseline requirement that we have these things in place for cognitive functions. So some of it's driven by expectation, but expectation isn't going to be enough to overcome really significant differences.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, and we saw this a ton at absolute rest initially, and we've seen this in various aspects where set and setting and habit override most small effect. In other words, if you wake up in the morning and you brew coffee and then you walk your dog and you do the whole routine and then you sit down at your computer and then you start writing, then that is gonna have a massive nootropic effect. Not necessarily simply because of the caffeine in that particular case, but because your brain body knows the pattern of when we get down here, this is when we do our deep work. Right. So if one day you got switched out something else there, you would not have as much of a problem as you would maybe if the setting is switched. Right. So it's not that the caffeine dealer didn't work.

It's the whole set and setting that brings the experience. From a sleep perspective, if you have a certain habit, a certain behavior that then promotes quality sleep or does the opposite, that's the pattern that you'll see. Right? So you can try all the sleep supplements you want. It's not going to matter if you have this chaotic soup routine. Right. So you're not saying that those things aren't doing anything. It's just that the benefit is potentially only going to be seen if the rest of the situation is captured and clear, because there's just too much noise in that overall system.

And that makes a ton of sense from me. We've mentioned this stuff a couple of times, but I want to go back just a little bit to our avatar. Let's say that person's good. We did as much as we could on him. But now let's say he or she is saying, okay, I'm not normal cognitive function. I don't think I have brain disease. It's brain fog. Right. I'm just.

It's not perceptive. It is noticeable. It is real. There's this big decline. You hear a lot of these certainly in the last couple years about potentially long Covid happened after I got Covid or didn't or got a whatever just for Whatever reason we're down there, how does somebody know what that actually is? Are there tests that you can take? Are there online surveys or things that the average person could try?

And then secondly, you know, again, what do I do to improve that?

Tommy Wood

This is another controversial area. The idea of brain fog, which I kind of use interchangeably with the more formal definition, which is subjective cognitive decline.

Andy Galpin

That's brain fog's way nicer sound.

Tommy Wood

So when you look at the sort of the stages of dementia now, they include some of these periods. So first, you know, everything's good, no subjective or objective change, and then next there's probably a subjective decline before you see an objective change in function. Right. Or at least that's assuming that you don't have years of longitudinal cognitive function tests in this person, which nobody has. So if you feel like I have this brain fog, I feel like something's not quite right. But if I gave you a bunch of standardized cognitive function tests, you'd be within the normal range and I'd say there's nothing wrong with you. Right, Right.

But there's quite a lot of research now suggesting that that subjective decline, which, you know, has a lot of overlap with the idea of brain fog, then, is associated with improved. Improved or increased risk of first mild cognitive impairment, which is like the next step of cognitive decline, and then dementia. Obviously, not everybody who gets brain fog is going to get dementia. Right. I don't want to say that right now.

Andy Galpin

You just terrified the Internet. You set them on fire earlier, now they're all terrified.

Tommy Wood

So that is definitely not true. But I think the fact that they are linked, at least at the population level, statistically suggests that that could be a signal of some kind of impending issue or the beginnings of an initial issue. Now, most of that in that. In that stage is thought to be reversible. Even if you ask, you know, dusty old neurologists who think about, who thought about this, they would tell you. And that if you look at the sort of the spectrum that's in published papers, they'll say that at this stage it's reversible. So then you have to think about, well, what are the potential contributors to this?

And there are just the same old basics that are going to come up again and again and again. And so we already covered the nutrition stuff. That is that, like you said, you've even seen that in your own clients. Right. You address some basic nutritional things, and a lot of this stuff lifts immediately.

Andy Galpin

I'd probably say 60% of our clients have a subjective score of cognitive Function of five or less out of ten. Right. So whether they actually have brain far don't. Like over half of our people think that their brain is functioning poorly. And I would say our success rate is over 90% with all that.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

And we've done lots. Sometimes it is more complicated, but a lot of the times, if you cover all the bases, we have stunningly high results.

Tommy Wood

And that makes perfect sense if you think about, if you think about the framework of how I think about cognitive function. And so maybe that's, this is the time to kind of bring that and because it then relates to long term cognitive decline as well. So to kind of fit all these different pieces together and we've, we've touched on a lot of them. I have what I call now the 3S model, which is stimulus, supply and support. And these are the three broad categories of the things that are required to maintain and sustain cognitive function. And some inputs will cover many of those at the same time. Right. So sometimes I've put up a picture in a lecture and said, here's my model.

And somebody's like, yes, but something goes there. And there I'm like, yeah, I know, but it's a picture.

Yeah, it's just a picture. Right. Just kind of. But we've talked about stimulus, and I think that's the primary driver of a lot of cognitive function. But in order to respond to stimulus, we need a few things. So in the supply bucket, we have good cardiovascular function. Right. What you see in the brain when you have an increase in activity in some network associated with some function is you see an increase in blood flow and direction of resources to the area of the brain.

This is the process of neurovascular coupling. So when neurons become active, blood vessels in that area dilate. We direct resources to that area. This requires a healthy vascular system. Right. And so as it's almost exactly the same process as what happens in the coronary arteries in the heart, as we get into the process of heart disease, and therefore there's a lot of overlap in risk factors for heart disease and risk factors for dementia and cognitive decline, probably because of that vascular component. So everything that would improve cardiovascular health then helps to support this, exercise being one.

But obviously other aspects of maintain, you know, making sure you have low cardiovascular risk, blood pressure, you know, lipids, if necessary, all those kinds of things, then you need some kind of energy source. Right. For most parts of the brain, most of the time it's going to be glucose, but it certainly could be lactate, it could be ketones. Right. So. And they need to get there and they need to be able to get, to get, to get across. And that, that's where some of the energy toxicity piece comes into play.

And then you need nutrients to build and maintain the structures of the brain. And We've talked about omega 3s and B vitamins being critical components. So that's kind of, that's the supply part, right. If you want to actually create a response to a stimulus, you need all of those things in place. Then the support side is a few things. One is, are you allowing the opportunity for the brain to respond to stimulus? And again, to return to our gym analogy, everybody knows you don't get bigger in the gym, you get bigger when you rest. Right. And the brain is exactly the same.

So sleep being critical to that, an absence of chronic uncontrolled or uncontrollable stresses is a big point as well. And when I've like tried, we're currently writing a paper that sort of like lays out this in a more academic way, sort of like a systems approach to cognitive function. And when you talk about stress in the support side, even sort of like other neuroscientists in the field of people get a little bit uncertain about that. Because when you look at stress and what it does to the brain, in many senses it is a cognitive demand. It creates like neuronal hyper metabolism. So you almost have to think about it as over training. Right? So it's preventing the ability. Right. It's junk volume for your brain that's preventing the ability to adapt.

So that's part of it. And then you also want to avoid any kind of exposures that prevent some of these adaptations from happening. So excessive alcohol, smoking, air pollution is really common. And so if you're trying to address brain fog in an individual, these are all the areas that you have to think about, right? You have to think about energy metabolism, vascular health, sleep, stress, other exposures. We already talked about nutrient status and some other things that can inhibit this process include chronic inflammation. So that's where I think long Covid starts to come into play.

And we know that you can see chronic inflammatory processes in the brain in certain individuals who have ongoing symptoms. After Covid, you see the same thing often years or decades after certain traumatic brain injuries. And the amount of residual inflammation that you have in the brain relates to then cognitive function or cognitive deficits in that individual. How you address that becomes tricky. But that's also not going to be necessarily relevant to the vast majority of people who might be experiencing these things. So that framework, I think, gives you then a chance to say, well, where is the likely deficit? Or where's the issue that we're most likely to, you know, going to see benefit?

And why it's also important, I think, to think about it in that kind of framework is that these risks and components aren't linear. Like when we. When we talk about risk factors for cognitive decline or cognitive issues, you just get a list of 12. Some people, it's 50 risk factors, and they talk about it as if you have to hit all of them perfectly in order to see improvements in cognitive function. And that's actually not true. They interact and they synergize. So we know that if you have high blood pressure, you'll offset some of that risk if you sleep better.

But if you don't sleep well, you'll offset some of that risk if you do exercise. So you don't have to perfectly hit everything in order to plug all the holes in the roof, which is one of the analogies that's kind of used for these processes, actually. You can pull a few levers a little bit and you'll. You'll then almost see or often see outsized benefits.

Andy Galpin

So before we transition to this next area, if I had to summarize, if I feel like my cognitive function is fine, I'm not having any deficit right now, but I wanted to improve it, then searching for novel tasks is probably the way to go. Ideally ones that have multiple sensory inputs. So smell memory, different forms of cognitive function, creativity, executive function, like, different aspects, all the tasks are there.

Tommy Wood

And avoid extended or continuous task switching because we know that's a significant stressor that's gonna be very relevant to the avatar that you adopted. Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Yep. Thank you for that. If on the opposite, where I feel like I have some sort of cognitive dysfunction, I've lost it, then we go after the 3S model and we figure out presumably where area of that I'm struggling the most with. So is it the supply area? Is it the ones?

Tommy Wood

Yeah. So supply and support. Or it could still be stimulus. Right.

Andy Galpin

Or stimulus. Right. So maybe I'm not doing enough different things. Maybe there's some hole somewhere. So more than likely you've got a hole in your game somewhere. That's either then causing excessive energy. You feel like your energy is low, but what's actually happening is you're burning a lot of energy.

You don't really realize it because your stress load is high. And that's actually literally burning fuel in your brain. Right. To keep that vanished I would say of the people I'm talking about that we coach in RT that has that 90%, I don't think we've seen anybody that has a problem outside of that. Yeah, oftentimes they think that they are for sure convinced that there's something off the wall going on. And that has occasionally happened. But most of the time I'm not simply saying the basics.

Most of the time, if we do a full, true analysis of sleep, stress management, movement, daily format, so how your actual life is structured, hydration and mental health on top of nutrition, blood work, things like that, something is generally very, very bad. And they may not see that, perceive that. But once we get that cleaned up, sometimes it's been as simple, honestly, as hydration.

Tommy Wood

Yeah, that. I didn't mention that. But it fits right into that supply side. Right.

Andy Galpin

It's stunning.

Tommy Wood

A critical component.

Andy Galpin

Sometimes it's low, sometimes it's high. I've talked about this so many times now, but particularly females, they just stress, drink water, they just chug it and we're like, you can't drink 2 gallons of water a day. I'm being a little bit hyperbolic, but not much there. And you lower that back to normal and like headaches go away, function comes back and you're like, oh, I feel smart again. So those are, I think, really insightful things that we can do. Today's episode is sponsored by Renaissance Periodization. If you want to put on muscle through science backed training programs, look no further than Renaissance Periodization.

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Again, that's rpstrength.com perform to Save up to $50 off of your subscription. Last little thing I want to ask about before we move forward to something you've kind of been alluding to, but that is vision training. You mentioned reaction time. And I'm bringing this up because we see this actually a lot with our athletes and people tend to not realize it. The first time I caught wind of this was actually a number of years ago working with high level major league baseball players. There's some actually some cool work out of Japan. It found that the variance in major league baseball players, the batting, successful batting average, it was something absurd, like 70% of variance was all in vision.

Like ocular metrics explained almost everything. And that's when I was like, whoa, if we really think we're going to service our baseball players better if we're not touching, testing and monitoring and improving vision like we're spitting, we're going after pennies on the dollar here. So what do we know about testing vision outside of of course you need glasses, like things like that. And then like, can I get that tested? How do I get that tested? And then what do I do to improve it if I can't test and just again, are there exercise, are there breath work, are there nutrition, how do we improve vision supplements, whatever the case may be.

Tommy Wood

Recently we've done some work also in Formula one drivers with vision because this is a big part of their, a part of their job and it's essential they'll probably you start to lose some visual acuity before you're going to lose a lot of other functions. The eyes are an extension of the brain essentially. So a lot of the stuff that we just talked about actually applies here as well.

Andy Galpin

Really? So that basic stuff should improve vision as well.

Tommy Wood

Yeah, and I did some analyses with some large population data sets in order to try and answer some of this question. Of course it's in a general population, but if you're looking at different aspects of visual acuity, even just measured with like a standard test, you'll see that blood sugar control, nutrient status, all of these things, also smoking and all that kind of stuff, all those same risk factors that we know are important for cognitive function, they then relate to visual acuity as well. So those same principles come into play and all those same nutrients are going to be important as well because you're essentially firing neurons from the eye into the brain. It's the same process. When you then think about visual assessment, there are a whole bunch of different platforms that you can do do this with depending on, you know, how much money you have and what you have access to. But like right eye is, is one that's, you know, fairly good. Certainly looks at different aspects of Eye tracking, which is important for athletes, but also after concussions and things like that, you can also do much more complex eye imaging, like optimal tomography, that can give you a much better idea of the structure of the eye itself and if there's any potential issues there.

When you then think about visual training, a lot of it comes down to similar principles. And actually there's a big overlap between visual training and both physical and cognitive training, because part of it is neurological and part of it is physical. Right. You are training muscles in the eye. So when we start to lose visual acuity, you can reverse that with essentially progressive overload of the ocular muscles by just trying to focus on something that's just beyond the reach of your current visual acuity. Similarly, if, say, sort of like dark light contrast is the same, we spend a lot of time exposed to the same intensity of light indoors. And so then that may be part of the reason why we lose some dark light contrast as we get older.

There's a nutritional piece as well, but, like, how often do we see and try and see in true dark and how often do we see in bright light? And it's not that often because we're not exposing ourselves to those differences in light levels. So you can then do training with like, visual tracking. So when I was trying to put together a program to for, say, a Formula one driver that want to try and maintain visual tracking, there are some off the shelf things that you can use. There's some nice evidence for something like Neurotracker, where you do multiple object tracking. That's probably not nearly as complex as you would need to do when driving a Formula one car. But for somebody who's done no visual training, there's some reasonable evidence to say that multiple object tracking just on your computer can improve some aspects of vision.

And then beyond that, it's just thinking, how do you create more and more complex situations where you then train these muscles? So I spoke to a friend of mine who's former special forces and does a lot of this kind of training with individuals. And so one of his favorite tasks is to use a baseball that you hang on some kind of string, and then you have either letters or some kind of symbols on it. So then you can first start with the ball just hanging still and vertical. And then you can practice, say, focusing in the far distance, focusing on a symbol on the ball, then focusing even closer. Right? So you can practice quickly switching visual depth.

But then you can also do things like make the pendulum swing, and then you have to track a Certain symbol as the ball rotates, and then also do that by quickly changing visual fields. And so then you're essentially training all these different parameters of vision, both visual field as well as, you know, looking all the different directions that you might choose to look. So the extremes of peripheral vision and as well as up the up gaze and down gaze. And it seems that, right. You probably can't overcome a huge visual deficit. Right. But a lot of these different features of vision do seem to be trainable.

Andy Galpin

There's an old thing we used to do in baseball where you have a bucket of balls and you throw balls to a hitter and the hitter has to identify different numbers and letters. Right. So you're gonna imagine you got a bucket of balls there and you got a one on one of the balls, the next ball has a B on it and so on like that. And then you throw it and the batter only has to hit the ball. But then say, that was four. That was F. Things like that.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Are you telling me that that might plausibly actually work?

Tommy Wood

Yes.

Andy Galpin

You vindicated every 1980s baseball hitting coach.

Tommy Wood

Normal. Normally, it's like some of these old school training methods just seem like hazing and they're kind of these attritional processes, but some of it might actually work.

Andy Galpin

Okay, so you could do things like that. We see this a lot of the times in combat sports and stuff as well. We throw different numbers out there. I think what you said at the beginning then makes a ton of sense. This is. It's the same exact principles of training your muscle, which were the same as training your physical brain and now your eye. Right. It is progressive overload.

It is stimuli, it is changing things. There's a variety. And then it is intention and focus. So you couple those things together, you could probably come up with just about any drill that you really wanted. It, like, doesn't matter a whole heck of a lot. Vitamin A, carotene.

Like, what about things like this? It makes sense if you Wikipedia quickly what those things are for.

Clearly there's evidence. If you've got certain physical, cognitive, or physical issues in your eye, especially from like a vitamin A deficiency, then of course it's going to work. But for the normal person. And the reason I'm asking this is I know of multiple companies now that sell very specific, very expensive supplements for vision.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

For normal vision, to enhanced vision, for special forces for certain sporting populations. I know you don't know the data on all these.

I don't even know them. But in general, is it plausible that they work. Is it completely implausible or do we not know?

Tommy Wood

So a lot of supplements that we use to boost any function or I used to boost any function, like testosterone boosters or these kind of visual boosters, there's probably going to be a benefit in the setting of an insufficiency or deficiency, but then increasing above that, you're not, you, you're not going to see any benefit. For some people. Right. Retinol is important. We know retinol is important in the eye. Some people due to genetic polymorphism aren't as good at converting these carotene into retinol. Right. So maybe there's some inter individual variability there.

But no, like more isn't going to be better. Certainly other things do seem to suggest some benefit and it's kind of like squint a bit and it might help. But some of the antioxidants, you know, Lutein, astansin, zeaxanthin, they seem to be associated with improvements in cognitive function and sometimes a supplement. There are trials that show some of those supplements can improve visual acuity and some other aspects of vision.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, actually that's like reasonably well demonstrated at this point. My, my question with those trials are always, are you simply seeing a metric of somebody who had suboptimal physiology?

Tommy Wood

Oh, I'm sure, yeah, probably in most scenarios because we know that most people have some nutritional requirement or you know, metabolic health issue or something like that. So then if you're, you have a bunch of oxidative stress in your eye because you're pre diabetic, then you know an antioxidant that can get into that system is likely to show benefit.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, right. Which is not to say you shouldn't use it. Yeah, right. If this is your first entry into enhancement for that individual as a coaching tool, that, that happens. Right. Sometimes you struggle with people and you're like, you know what, I'm just going to give them an easy win because we've been trying the nutrition, we've been trying to not get, get them to stop drinking as much and they won't, but then they see benefit there. So I actually don't want to dismay that too much.

We take a different approach of course, generally and so we haven't really seen much benefit in those folks, but I'm not surprised by that. So you've mentioned this multiple times now, whether it be from the energy toxicity or your metabolic and energy sustained principles with cognitive function. But I'm wondering how specifically things like creatine actually enhance brain function. We, you can take this actually from both angles. This is like actual cognitive function. First of all, does it like if I take creatine right now, am I gonna have a improvement in cognitive function? And then what about long term brain as well?

So kind of two part question there about creatine specific. I guess we'll just start there.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

And then how. Actually it's, it's doing those, if it is at all.

Tommy Wood

So whether you would see a significant benefit from creatine right now probably depends a little bit. You take your dose of 10 grams and what are you gonna see? It probably depends a little bit on your context. But you probably saw the recent paper that showed that after one night of sleep deprivation, creatine can overcome some of those deficits cognitively. Cognitively, yeah. And that was actually shown a few years ago with skill, rugby skills in rugby players. You may have seen that paper as well where they had players after a period of sleep deprivation, they gave them either creatine or caffeine and saw similar improvements in like rugby specific skills compared to a placebo.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. With a very different mechanism here.

Tommy Wood

Right.

Andy Galpin

You're talking about a stimulant and versus a fuel. Right? Totally opposite, yeah.

Tommy Wood

So however, you could probably relate both of those to energetics in some way because caffeine is overcome or it's inhibiting the metabolic down regulation caused by adenosine, which is part of what drives sleep pressure and the need for sleep. As you accumulate metabolites like adenosine, they then sort of suppress metabolic activity in the brain, which then is associated with reduced function. And something like caffeine overcomes that. Whereas creatine can acutely provide a buffer, energetic buffer that allows you to maintain function in the face of sort of increasing metabolic pressure to sleep. So even though different mechanisms, they kind of maybe converge on something similar. I know a lot of people who every time they take creatine, they notice an immediate sort of boost in some kind of cognitive function yet. And there's been a lot of discussion over the years about whether creatine negatively impacts sleep.

Um, for that reason it's sort of, it's slightly stimulating for some people. I've certainly found that in myself. Like if I take, I work out in the afternoon, if I take creatine after my workouts, I don't sleep as well. But if I take it first thing in the morning, it's fine because I've kind of separated it away. And not everybody's like that. And certainly we know that responses to creatine are very heterogeneous Right. Some people see totally big, big responses, some people see these smaller responses, and some of it's maybe related to methylation status.

Because creatine, when we make our own, which we make a lot of, is the most methylation intensive process in the body. You spend more of your methyl groups producing creatine than anything else. And so it could be related to that as well as a whole host of how much creatine do you normally have in your diet? And things like that.

Andy Galpin

So if I've gotten genetic testing done and I'm, no, no, don't do it, don't go there. Okay, So I think based on your reaction, maybe have just give us a little bit of an insight into your favor there.

Tommy Wood

So whenever, whenever somebody talks about methylation, they immediately start talking about genetic testing and there's a lot of that out there right now. Yes, genetic polymorphisms do change the functional level of enzymes related to methylation. The one that people talk about the most is mthfr. Different polymorphisms within MTHFR change the activity of that enzyme in a test tube. Right.

Andy Galpin

If I.

Tommy Wood

In theory, and then they do in some ways relate to other markers of methylation. So, um, homocysteine we mentioned briefly earlier is a, is a, is a, is an important marker for, you know, risk factor of a wide variety of diseases. It's directly related to your current methylation status. But in most cases, an elevation of homocysteine related to those polymorphisms is driven by some kind of nutrient deficiency or insufficiency. Sometimes your requirement is slightly higher because of a polymorphism. But, but in general, I have yet to see a study that would change my mind. When I say I can tell everything I need to tell from a blood test, I can tell from your phenotype, and there's no additional information that I get from your genotype, whereas the opposite is not true.

If I just measured your genetics, I don't know what's going on with you. And I still need to measure your B vitamin levels and your B vitamin status, your methylation status. So for most people, measuring those polymorphisms is not helpful, but what it does is it drives a huge amount of fear because people are like, I'm a poor methylator. Like, what does that even mean? Like, you're continuously methylating, right. If you're, if you don't methylate, you die. Yeah, right.

You can't turn genes on and off. You literally can't do anything. So we create this massive nocebo around these different polymorphisms which I think is net harmful. When, yes, sometimes this is an issue, but if you have a significant decrease in MTHFR function, like in air quotes related to an MTHFR polymorphism, all you have to do to see a significant reduction in, say homocysteine is make sure that you're eating the recommended daily allowance of riboflavin. It's not hard at all. It's not hard. It's literally nothing.

And that's because the polymorphisms change how MTHFR bind to fading, which is the proton carrier that that enzyme uses. So all you need to do is slightly increase availability of riboflavin to be converted into fad, and that's it. And it doesn't require super doses, just literally just 2 milligrams a day. It's nothing.

Andy Galpin

There's also a very low relationship between those polymorphisms and actual homocysteine. Oh yeah, like very sub 1%.

Tommy Wood

So I've. Yeah. And I've published a paper on that actually for that exact reason. I, I did these big simulation studies looking at the normal distribution of homocysteine by MTHFR polymorphism from published data. And essentially about 1% of your homocysteine is predicted by your level of activity of your MTHFR enzyme.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. So why not just measure the homocysteine?

Tommy Wood

Exactly.

Andy Galpin

I did a whole episode on genetic testing in season one, so please feel free to go back and listen to that if you want. So we'll move on for now because we can get aggressive there. But I think what potentially is interesting here is say somebody has done that testing, so it doesn't matter, they've already paid the money they're in, so you know, tough luck. And potentially they've had or think or are actually low with methylation status. Would that person then potentially be more likely to be a hyper responder to creatine for that exact reason? Or would.

Tommy Wood

That's what I've hypothesized. But I. And maybe this study's. If this study has been done, somebody sent it to me because I'd love to see it, but I think that might be the case. That would make sense because so much like so much of your methylation currency is spent on creatine production and if you know you have to decrease some of that production because your quote unquote, a poor methylator, or you have poor methylation status, poor B vitamin status, then it would make sense that you would sacrifice some creatine production and then would respond better to creatine supplementation, but so in theory, yes, but I don't think anybody's actually looked at that.

Andy Galpin

I wonder if it works the opposite way then as well. So somebody who's had potentially well exclude placebo, which is a large portion of this, but people that have had some sort of genetic testing done, then gone on high doses of B vitamins and felt a massive response, I wonder if those people could also then simply just go to creatine instead, which is, I won't say safer, but a little bit less risky. Right. Not a lot of downside to creatine, not a lot of downside to B vitamins, but more you're gonna get other consequences that you maybe didn't realize you're going after with high doses of, depending on which vitamin B you go after, but less potential downsides, I would think that you can go after.

Tommy Wood

What's interesting is that unfortunately these kind of questions haven't really been addressed in the literature. So I can quote studies on supplementing with B vitamins in individuals with elevated homocysteine. And we know how that can be important. But then we can also talk about studies where they give doses of creatine. And particularly when you start, particularly in older populations and those who've maybe started to see some element of cognitive decline, you see a greater effect size of supplementing with creatine. But I don't think anybody's looked at like, well, what if you gave one or the other? Or is there a trade off?

These are like super interesting and important questions. But because of the sort of the reductionist evidence based medicine model that we currently have, we just like try one thing at a time and don't necessarily consider the context around it.

Andy Galpin

I mean, vitamin B is. I'm all for. That's great. I just know that a reasonably high percentage of people will get really nauseous or have GI distress from them. And so for those folks, potentially maybe creatine is a little bit of an alternative option if you think you have a methylation or you actually do either way. And B vitamins don't sit well with you, especially at that dosage. And maybe creatine gives you some percentage of that benefit as well.

Tommy Wood

Certainly we've done, you know, so, you know, when I was working with a lot of individuals in, you know, in a similar arena. So to what you do now, you.

Andy Galpin

Know, this is taking people's. Thousands of people with their blood work and providing individualized protocols. This is what you've done for a very, very long time.

Tommy Wood

Yeah, yeah. And when and this is sort of like general population as well as with athletes. And if, you know, even status looked okay, but maybe homocysteine was still elevated or, you know, you know, we needed other strategies to help bring down homocysteine. Then creatine and choline or lecithin, which is a, you know, a plant, a plant derived source of phosphatidylcholine. They, they were, were good alternative options or something you could add on top.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. Okay. Why then does creatine help with cognitive function if it does? And we'll get back to the second part of that two part question. Is it the methylation support that's giving you, Is there other mechanisms? What exactly is creatine doing for the brain?

Tommy Wood

I think one of the things that I found most interesting across strategies that seem to improve, like robustly improve cognitive function either across the lifespan or in multiple different groups, is that they usually do more than one thing. And anytime we've tried something that only does one thing, it doesn't work.

Yeah, that's just like stunning. A lesson from neuroscience in general and also a lot of just like developing drugs in medicine in general. And so I think it's probably going to be a bit of all of these things. So we know that homocysteine is a risk factor for cognitive decline and that's probably because it's a marker of methylation status. So are you able to generate, say, membranes in cells in the brain like we talked about earlier? But equally, homocysteine can directly increase the accumulation of hyperphosphorylated tau, which is one of the sort of markers of risk factors of dementia. It's a marker of previous brain trauma and a number of other things.

So it may contribute to cognitive decline in a number of ways. And so if creatine is offsetting some of that issue, you may have some benefit there. Then there's the energetic piece. Right. It's going to give you short term, a short term energetic buffer as phosphocreatine in neuronal cells. And the brain is the most metabolically expensive organ in the body on calories or watts per gram comparison. And so anytime you have either a suppression of metabolism, say adenosine or some kind of acute injury, and that can either be, it could be a stroke, it could be cardiac arrest, it could be brain trauma where you have some kind of deficit in energy production, then creatine also seems to potentially be beneficial, although some of the studies suggest you can supplement afterwards.

But most of the benefit seems to be if it's on board beforehand. And of course, a lot of this evidence comes from animal models because you can't do that easily in humans. So some of it is an energetic buffer and then some of it, you know, one thing that creatine seems to do is to help stabilize and regulate calcium handling in mitochondria, which is related to acute injuries, but also to long term mitochondrial function, which then supports long term cell function in the brain.

Andy Galpin

Really quickly, I don't want to drag this down too far, but you've mentioned it multiple times. What is methylation? Why does it matter?

And just real quick.

Tommy Wood

Yeah, so methylation is basically the transfer of methyl groups, which is basically a one carbon group or a carbon with three hydrogens that gets moved around. And this is used to convert different metabolites in the body in multiple different cellular reactions. Like you change a molecule from one end to another by methylating it. But it's also really important for things like gene regulation. So people might have heard of biological age. Epigenetics, the major form of epigenetics and gene regulation and the sort of the more common measures of epigenetic biological age are all based on methylation status. So you have these, what are called CPG islands on DNA, which is where essentially the cell puts on these methylation tags, which regulates whether a gene is turned on and off.

And, and these tags seem to shift over time. That's associated with biological aging. So it's this really central process that drives so many different parts of biology.

Andy Galpin

It's in every cell of your body. It's on DNA, it's on protein, it's moving. A carbon is hard, like chemically. Right. So it's gotta be a major thing to get it to move off of one, which changes the entire function. So I think the way that you stated is very nice. It's a core biological thing.

You don't adapt, you don't grow, you don't shrink, you don't go any direction without methylation. So thank you for that. Now we have a little bit of understanding of why that's important. Then regarding the creatine in the brain, the second part you said was fueling. All right, walk me through how creatine. Actually, you mentioned it kind of quickly with just a touch of jargon there, which for the folks that don't know what an intermediate has substrate are, how is creatine actually providing fuel for your brain? And then on the second part of that is, well, what's the normal fuel.

Tommy Wood

For our brain when you think about different energy Systems. And I think people could watch endless lectures from you talking about different energy systems in exercise. And those principles in some ways are very similar in the brain. Although the majority of cells in the brain are, you know, like, like we said earlier, derived, derive energy from glucose, goes through glycolysis, then enters the electron, you know, the pyruvate and, or laxative pyruvate goes into the electron transport chain in the mitochondria. But there's all of that is done to generate high energy phosphates via usually or mainly ATP. Right. So ATP is your energy currency, sort of a much shorter term energy currency or that allows you to recycle ATP when you've used it up is the phosphocreatine system.

So your creatine is phosphorylated with a high energy phosphate and you use that to regenerate ATP. So for very energetically expensive processes where you can't get enough energy through that longer process, that glycolysis and aerobic metabolism, then the buffer comes from the phosphocreatine system. And it seems that even for normal cognitive function, there is some benefit from having more of that buffer on board, both acutely and chronically.

Andy Galpin

So just like your muscles or any other part of your system, they have to rely on energy. The nerves need energy to conduct. Right. And so people, I guess, sometimes don't always grasp the fact that your brain, when we say it's energetically demanding, it's because it's going through a ton of metabolism. We have this connotation, that muscle and metabolism kind of thing. But the brain is metabolism as well. Your basal metabolic rate, the amount of energy you burn throughout the day, your fast or slow metabolism, all these things are.

It's in your brain as well. And so it produces energy much like anything else. It can use fat as a fuel source, theoretically, it can use carbohydrates, it could use ketones or anything else. And then creatine, just like it is in your muscle, provides that stoichiometry of one to one. Right. So not a lot of energy per molecule of creatine. So it gets used up and turned and burned quickly.

But the upside is it gives you that energy really fast. And so while you're maybe slow to metabolize, and you mentioned this, so we'll bring it up, your brain will actually then generate lactate.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

So if you're thinking really hard and thinking a long time, are you like feeling the burn in your brain? Is that lactate building up? Is that what's happening.

Tommy Wood

I don't think lactate doesn't accumulate. It just gets generated and used.

You probably couldn't. You could probably measure. So this is where I think creatine becomes important. And potentially, if I put microdialysis needles really accurately in certain parts of the brain, and then you start to upregulate the use of that network for a specific function, because there's going to be a slight delay between increased ATP production and the requirement you actually need that energy before you realize you need it. Everything that we see and do has essentially already happened because of the time lag that it takes for us to actually interpret those actions. So that energy is needed immediately. And it could be that because of the lag in the system upregulating energy production, that's where creatine becomes important in a network.

As you activate it, then you would probably start to see locally. If you could measure it with, say, carbon 13 metabolism or something, you could have a radio tracer on your lactate and you could see that your astrostrites, which make your lactate for your neurons, will probably increase production. Because your neurons are more active in that area, they're going to require more energy. They've used up their phosphocreatine system, and then the astrocytes locally are going to produce more lactate. None of it's going to accumulate because it's getting used, but flux through the system is probably increasing.

Andy Galpin

And this is potentially why people have looked a lot at lactate as a supplement or as a medication or a therapy for various aspects of a brain injury in brain damage. I don't want to go into this in too much detail because I covered a whole episode in season one, episode 10, all on a paper that you led with Dr. Federica Conti and myself and some other folks as well, on what we know exactly regarding supplementation and nutrition for brain injury. So this is concussions, tbis and things like that. So you can go and watch that whole episode and download that whole grade for all those details there. But in that paper, I remember we had a very short section regarding lactate, and what do we know about lactate for concussions and stuff like that. And so before you answer that, I want to set the stage just a tiny bit.

You can feel free to maybe double tap on creatine a little bit here since we brought it up. But I think it's really important you have. I've seen you give the best explanation I've ever seen of what a concussion actually is and what it is not. And so maybe just quickly tell us your egg analogy and then that'll help explain a little bit of why maybe these things do or don't work for there. So how does a concussion actually work? Today's episode is sponsored by Momentous. Momentous makes the highest quality supplements on the market, Period.

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Tommy Wood

Off to Zoom out for a second. I think one of the reasons why we have really failed to produce consistent therapies or reproducible therapies for concussions is because we don't study them properly. And we don't study them properly because we don't understand them properly.

Andy Galpin

Hard to fix when you can't define.

Tommy Wood

Exactly and so what is normally done or the. When people think about a concussion and if you read papers, you'll still see this consistently. Experts in the field talking about it, you'll hear something like the slosh effect or you imagine a head getting bashed and then the brain banging around inside the skull, like hitting one side of the skull, then banging and hitting the other side. And that's what they call a contrecoup injury, which is basically you see some injury on the opposite side from where the impact occurred. The brain is, you know, it's Mainly fat and water. And it is then surrounded by fluid. And it's inside solid box.

Andy Galpin

And that fluid is full of salt.

Tommy Wood

That fluid is full of salt. If you take a solid box full of water, even if it's got something very fragile inside, and you shake it really hard, that fragile thing does not bang against the sides because the water is. Well, it buffers it or the csf, the fluid.

Andy Galpin

I saw you do this. It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. You took an egg and you put it in a jar with salt water. I don't remember the concentration you put it in.

Tommy Wood

Oh, it was just like normal siding.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. And you screwed the top of a ball jar or whatever it was, and you shook the living crap out of the egg. And the yolk didn't break.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

At all?

Tommy Wood

No.

Andy Galpin

Because it's not hitting anything. No, it's smashing.

Tommy Wood

It stays right in the middle.

Andy Galpin

In that moment, I went, what? Like everything?

Because I had said that always. I did not know that until you showed me that. Not me, but you're showing other people. And I was like, wow.

Tommy Wood

So if you could, while I'm shaking it, image the jar, what you would see is you would see distortions along the surface of the egg yolk inside this jar. So there are distortions.

Andy Galpin

So the egg, instead of being a perfect circle, turns into an oval. It's not smashing against the wall. It's just being distorted. And it's being accordioned.

Tommy Wood

Exactly.

Andy Galpin

Squished and pulled back apart. Right.

Tommy Wood

So how we generally study concussions is the other version of the egg experiment, which I also showed, which is that you have your egg yolk in your solution, and you leave a big chunk of air in the top of the jar. You shake that, immediately, it turns into salad dressing. Right. Immediately you disperse that egg yolk throughout the liquid. That's how we normally study concussions. But what happens if you then look at where injury is in people who've had concussions? So you look at individuals who have cte, Right.

They probably have some ongoing history of concussions. It's happened multiple times. If you look at where the injury has accumulated, it's not at the surface of. Of the brain. It's not the brain banging, it's the skull. What's happening is that these distortions, like waves of energy that are transferred through the brain is at the interfaces of different parts of the brain. So particularly the interfaces between the gray matter on the outside and the white matter underneath.

Andy Galpin

It's connective tissue.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

They're tearing the connector.

Tommy Wood

Yeah. So right at the. Usually right at the base of the sulkai. So you think about the brain is really wrinkly. Right. Those are the gyri, the. The sort of the divots in between those wrinkles, the sulci at the base of those.

That's where you tend to see injury. And it's because you have tissues of different densities where then the distortion travels at different rates. So then you create this shearing effect at those interfaces. And then that's right. And if the shearing effect is very large, you can rip axons. So you create direct. Direct axonal injury.

If it's a blast wave, then obviously you're not directly shearing anything. But you still. You still seem to injure those same areas because the energy wave is transferring through the brain at different rates. And so that's where the injury accumulates, is at those interfaces.

Andy Galpin

So then how do things like creatine and lactate help? Do they work at all? And if so, how?

Tommy Wood

I've been really excited about the potential for lactate in traumatic brain injury. And that excitement aligns very similarly with ketones. But people have been talking about them for a long time, and I'm still waiting for some good human studies.

Andy Galpin

Been probably talking about it for a decade online, like in front of people on podcasts and things like that.

Tommy Wood

Yeah. So I. I believe that they could be beneficial, but we just haven't seen really high quality evidence yet.

Andy Galpin

However, now that's clear. You haven't seen evidence that shows they don't work either. No, the studies just aren't being done.

Tommy Wood

No, no. And if, if I were to get a significant concussion or tbi, like, I'm going straight to the ketone esters because I believe that there's a high chance of benefit with low risk. Anybody who's like, I don't have a randomized control trial to tell you that that's the case, but, you know, I think it could be.

Andy Galpin

If it's your brain.

Tommy Wood

If it was my brain, that's what I would do.

Andy Galpin

As an MD, PhD in brain health, this is what you would do. Infer that for what you will, folks.

Tommy Wood

Part of it is that it's essentially providing some kind of metabolic substrate in an area of the brain where there is impaired metabolism. So one of the consistent responses you see to an acute brain injury, and again, strokes, cardiac arrest, traumatic brain injuries, is what we call energy failure. So there's this gap between energy requirements and energy supply because you have dysfunctional mitochondria, ketones, and Lactate can kind of bypass some of that and seem to be less energetically expensive or they're more energetically efficient in terms of generating ATP. Like the effect is small, but in that kind of setting a small effect may be enough to help minimize injury. There's also going to be some other signaling effects that could be beneficial. Like both lactate and ketones have a whole range of other anti inflammatory neurotrophic kind of effects. So, so lactate seems to help and ketones seem to help drive an increase in production in bdnf, brain derived neurotrophic factor, which could help recovery.

So beyond their effect on your metabolism, they may have these other downstream effects as well. But another reason why this is important is that in the acute injury setting, the brain may become relatively insensitive to glucose or glucose uptake decreases. But that doesn't seem to be the case because the transporter is different. And both ketones and lactate go in through the monocarboxylate transporters which aren't necessarily affected in that state. So some of it could be that particularly ketones might be more metabolically efficient in terms of energy production, but also they're maybe more likely to get into the brain in the setting of an acute injury to help support.

Andy Galpin

Are they potentially less negatively influenced by inflammatory markers as well?

Tommy Wood

Yes, potentially. Although I mean it kind of depends on what's going on and how they're getting in.

Andy Galpin

I don't naturally associate physical structural damage with metabolic problems. What's the connection here? Why is it if I have a structural tear, this is a case in muscle by the way, that my brain is. Well then it's inflammation, it's damage. So you need to give me something that's anti inflammatory, NSAIDs or some other drug that is going to reduce inflammation. Or you need to give me something that's going to repair the structure. Dha, fish oil, like some structural thing.

Why are we seeing and having to deal with and why are metabolic issues so prevalent? Glucose dysregulation, things like that. And then why is energetic the solution when we have a physical structural tear?

Tommy Wood

So one of the reasons why you have impaired glucose metabolism is because of the inflammatory response. And a normal inflammatory response creates peripheral insulin resistance in order to divert glucose to the immune system in order to, in order to respond.

Andy Galpin

So it has to have energy, the immune system has to get energy as well.

Tommy Wood

So that, that, that's a good thing in order to generate a normal immune response, but can then cause issues in other tissues because they become insulin resistant. Driven by the inflammatory response. The direct metabolic effect of injury is due to the changes that happen at the cell or in the nerves in response to that injury. So if it's like a direct shearing effect, or even in concussions where you haven't fully sheared neurons, you may have stretched them and you may have vascular changes that impair the ability to deliver oxygen to those tissues. And in all of those settings, you can get essentially a hyperstimulation of those neurons. So they start to fire a bunch when you get this hyperstimulation of neurons. And you can see this with low oxygen states or with acute sort of stretching.

If you sort of acutely stretch the neurons, they increase their firing rate. That creates a large production of what we call excitatory neurotransmitters, things like glutamate, which are.

Andy Galpin

That's the most common one.

Tommy Wood

Yeah, the most common one. But there are others that then starts this sort of wave of increase in signaling. You then essentially hyper stimulate the downstream neurons. You get these big shifts in calcium within the cell, and then that calcium impairs mitochondrial function, and at very high levels can actually stimulate what we call the mitochondrial permeability transition, which is essentially the mitochondrial saying, I can't take any more. And then that then triggers cell death. So it's essentially an overstimulation which can be driven either by low oxygen or stretching, which then sort of creates this cascade that impairs mitochondrial function.

Andy Galpin

You mentioned calcium again, that was also the third part of our criteria we talked about earlier. Right. Like that, having that third issue. So I want to ask more about that, but let me see if I can summarize what you just said quickly. In the case of a brain injury, you're going to immediately have some sort of inflammatory response, which is a great thing. Right. The whole point of the inflammatory response is to let your immune system know we need to divert attention and start physically, mechanically repairing collagen and whatever else is there. Right. Unfortunately, those immune cells require energy, and so you have to then divert glucose to them.

And the best way to divert glucose to them is to block it from going other places. Right. Now, in this short term thing, we've basically given other areas diabetes.

Tommy Wood

Yeah, Right.

Andy Galpin

Like we've made them insulin resistant on purpose so that we can focus our glucose to the immune cells. The immune cells then show up to the place of injury. This is all a good thing. But because of that, we're gonna start running into. In fact, we could also be dealing with tears and damage to the actual. The Membrane of the cells. Right. Themselves could be physically torn, which then is gonna allow things coming in and out of the cell that we don't want and we have like calcium and having other problems with that.

That's the normal process. If we were to then go take copious amounts of say anti inflammatories at that stage and this is probably one of the reasons why they don't do this. Right. We are probably going to run into issues because we're blocking that natural process. Right. So we want some sort of, I'm presuming, inflammation immediately, but probably not super excessive.

Tommy Wood

Yes.

Andy Galpin

But not small either. Right. By the way, I'm guessing all this because this is exactly how it works in bone and muscle. So tell me when I start to deviate here. Right.

Tommy Wood

I'm literally guessing I'll jump in just quickly to say that in general in, in brain injury, everybody's thought that these inflammatory responses to injury are a bad thing and we should try and prevent them. And so far that that has generally failed. And actually there are some therapies, you know, nothing that's you know, available right now, but there are some therapies that seem to augment some of the initial responses to injury. Inflammatory response to injury. So like in a minute it looks worse, but actually that then ends up resulting in improvement longer term.

Andy Galpin

There are cascades of drugs that pre dose pro inflammatory cytokines and whole and then give them to you like give an exaggerated inflammatory response in again another tissue. I'm not surprised it's the same in bone or in the brain. So once we get past that, the issue then becomes if that stays around too long and now we're starting to damage mitochondria and now we're having an issue with regulating energy and that's why then providing energetic support so that the cell can stay alive. Right. If that cell, now in the case of the cell we're talking about the brain cell runs out of energy, then we're gonna die.

Tommy Wood

Right.

Andy Galpin

And so it's a hard time managing energy. And this is why probably initially in the case of an acute injury, we want to maintain temperature.

Tommy Wood

Yes.

Andy Galpin

Right. That's. I know that's one thing we covered a little bit in the paper, but I know you spent a lot of time on because of this process. Right. When things get really, really hot, metabolism has a hard time hanging on. Right. So things get overheated.

Managing blood glucose in general so that this curve is normal and then at that point providing energetic support. So those were kind of the three big Areas for in the acute setting, where if you were to actually have a real injury and you were to get treatment in hospital, particularly temperature and glucose are probably the two things they're going to pay attention to most, right?

Tommy Wood

Yeah. If you were in a neuro ICU because you had a significant traumatic brain injury, then glucose regulation and thermoregulation are known to be critically important. I think in the. We kind of hypothesize that in much less severe injuries these things are still relevant. So we should think about them. There haven't been a ton of trials in that area because they're hard to do. But it kind of makes sense that, you know, just because you don't have a massive injury doesn't mean that those things aren't important for, you know, quote unquote, just a concussion compared to, you know, a major brain trauma.

Andy Galpin

What about things like at home brain tests? So there whether these are technologies where you can test cognitive function? Maybe not. I doubt there's any at home concussion tests that you can do.

Tommy Wood

No. So most concussion tests generally require either some kind of baseline cognitive function test. So there's things like the impact test. The military have their own version of this. There's other tests that are probably more sensitive to concussions called the Kingdevic test, which is basically you have to read off a complex grid of numbers and letters that kind of like overlap if you can't read them properly. But you need a baseline score and you need the same person to kind of administer it. You also see there are some available devices where you can measure changes in event related potentials.

So the electrical signal that you get if you show somebody an auditory or visual stimulus that seem to be pretty good predictors of like there's actually been an effect of a concussion and then recovery. But all of this kind of requires some kind of specialist to be involved, usually more broadly in terms of cognitive function. What's interesting is that there aren't a ton of easily available cognitive function tests that you can like just do at home and do repeatedly. Are some apps and things that kind of have some of this stuff built in, but it's difficult to standardize one depending on if you have, say, access to some kind of healthcare provider. There are nice companies like Kreos which give a bunch of standardized cognitive function tests you can do at home on a desktop. A lot of neurologists and neuroscientists use something like that. I think the main cognitive function test that I know of, that anybody can do at home for free and is validated is actually has been put online by a charity that I work with in the UK called Food for the Brain.

And they have a validated online cognitive function test that includes measures of executive function, working memory and processing speed. And you can just like go on their website and you can just do it and you can track it over time.

The and weird. We currently have a database of more than half a million people who've taken it and dozens of thousands of them also have done lifestyle questionnaires about sleep and all those kinds of things we talked about. So we're in the process of doing a lot of research from that database. Like right at the beginning we've just sort of be given access to be able to do some of that. But people can do that test. I will say that in terms of cognitive function tests, it's one of the ones that has the biggest learning effect on the second attempt just because of the way this test is structured. So if you're going to do it and you want to track things over time, I would do it a couple of times in succession so you know it and then use the second or third time as your baseline and then track it over time.

But there are a number of people now in this space because right. I can now go to Quest or LabCorp and I can get whatever blood tests I want but I can't get a really good, well validated multidimensional cognitive function test. So that's something that you know, we and other people are working on any.

Andy Galpin

Other technologies, consumer based EEG things that you can or cannot mention the exact products if you'd like. But just where does that field. Stan, I know that there's probably half a dozen or more that immediately come to mind. Some of them sit in the front of my head, some in my ear, some back place like walk me through again. You can speak specifics if you want or not. But the general lay land of at home based EEG technology, I think it's.

Tommy Wood

An area where there's a ton of promise.

Andy Galpin

It's just figuring out that's never a good start.

Tommy Wood

No, but in. Well I think in a good. So I guess the short answer is is there anything that gives you everything you would want right now? Probably not. However with very simple EEG devices and there are some that are set up in earphones. So I think the one that's that I know is most widely available or at least will be soon is a company called Neurable. The one the frontal EEG like Muse is something that people are going to be familiar with.

And actually there are versions of the Muse that have the sensors around the ear as well. Some of the.

Andy Galpin

Why does it matter if it's in the front of the forehead versus the ear?

Tommy Wood

It depends. And it depends on what you're on, what you're looking at. With some of my collaborators, we're looking at different EEG frequencies and people have heard of like alpha, beta, theta, delta and the different, like the relative frequencies and power of these different. So like even within a frequency band, people will have different average frequencies. And then the total amplitude of the wave is the power. And your mean frequency and power in those different frequency bands relates to different aspects of cognitive function. So certain aspects of alpha seem to predict, say, learning speed for learning a second language, and some other aspects of cognitive function.

Some companies have created focus metrics so you can tell when your brain is focused. That's either based on certain measures of alpha or sometimes they have alpha plus beta divided by delta plus theta or some kind of ratio of the different frequencies. And that stuff is pretty good. The problem is that each individual company kind of focuses on one thing. Right. So you're using it for neurofeedback in kind of like a meditation type setting. Yeah. Or you're using it to kind of tell when you're focusing well and then your focus is starting to drop off and maybe it's time to take a break.

I think that you could get a lot more and broader information about somebody's cognitive function over time with some of these technologies, Even simple setups, but just nobody's really done that yet. So kind of selling focus or selling meditation, that stuff's great. Like, don't get me wrong, I think it's an important start, but I think there's a lot more that could be done if we had the right information and we sort of tracked it in people over time. Yeah.

Andy Galpin

So the only. Well, perhaps not maybe the only, but the largest consideration there for the consumer is just that last point.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

So it's going to be at least that I'm aware of that you're aware of. Any consumer face product there is going to have one particular aspect of cognitive function, but it will almost certainly not test nor train and help you evaluate other aspects of cognitive function, which is not their fault. This is a more than small technological.

Tommy Wood

Yeah. It's difficult.

Andy Galpin

Really. Yeah. Challenging the calcium question.

Tommy Wood

Yes.

Andy Galpin

Right. So what does calcium have to do with this entire project? Why does it matter if calcium influx is happening or this excitotoxicity with glutamate what's that got to do with it? And then does calcium work then as a supplement I can take to enhance cognitive function to deal with brain injury? Walk us through the story with calcium.

Tommy Wood

So I think this is another area where the brain and muscle kind of tell a similar story. Right. We know that muscular heart.

And the heart. Right. The muscular contraction is driven by cycling of calcium. Right. And a lot of signaling processes, including mitochondrial function. And then the transfer of information across cells in the brain is driven by waves of calcium. And so that then opens and closes different channels.

It activates or deactivates different energetic processes. It regulates mitochondrial function just like it does in the muscles. So when you have large excessive or unregulated influx of calcium into a cell, one of the prototypical downstream effects is mitochondrial dysfunction. And eventually, like mitochondrial death. And mitochondrial death, you essentially have cell death.

Andy Galpin

That's what you're going to see is cell death.

Tommy Wood

So when you then think about, like calcium as a supplement, obviously those two things don't go directly together. You can't take more calcium and then have better regulation of energetics in the brain, unfortunately, because it's just a lot more complicated than that. But I think this is where some other things come into play. We know that. So vitamin D is really important for cognitive function. One of its role, I mean, it's essentially a steroid hormone, but one of its roles is in the regulation of calcium. So that, you know that it could be playing a role there.

We know like magnesium and calcium play together and often sort of like playing off one another. We know that magnesium is really critical there. So some of these other factors that we know are important for cognitive function may be playing a role through regulation of calcium. But if you were just going to take more calcium, it's. Unfortunately, it's not going to just end up in your brain and improve cognitive function. Unless, you know, for whatever reason, you were calcium deficient, which is relatively rare. Usually it's other factors, vitamin K status, you know, other things that, that are playing a big role there.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. I mean, what's the RDA for calcium?

Thousand milligrams a day. Like something like that. Right. You don't. Rarely see people or you don't often see.

Tommy Wood

It might be a little like 7 or 800 milligrams. It's not that much.

Andy Galpin

Okay. Maybe you see less than. Yeah. Pretty. I mean, a smidgens of broccoli.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

And it's like some dairy. Like you're. You're probably there if you eat any.

Tommy Wood

Dairy, you'll hit your RDA of calcium.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. You're not going to smash that up there. It also seems to be one of the. The minerals particularly, that doesn't like to be outside of its window.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

In the sense that if you get a little bit high in magnesium, particularly if you are really physically active, that's probably okay.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

In fact, like, oftentimes. That's good.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

You don't want to do that with calcium.

Tommy Wood

No. And it's even more tightly. It's even more tightly regulated because it's essentially a trigger for so many. And like, it's how so many biological processes are regulated.

Andy Galpin

Your heart will stop.

Tommy Wood

Yeah. So you need it to be at a radio.

Andy Galpin

Your brain will stop. Like it's not a good thing. Yeah. Way low, way high. So it's not one. And for those cases, I mean, thinking back over your career, how many times you think you've recommended calcium supplementation based on blood work or things like that?

Tommy Wood

I think the only time we routinely recommended it was in, like, osteoporotic older individuals. But you were taking it with vitamin D and we were trying to cover some other bases as well. So just giving, like, calcium on its own, I don't think I've ever recommended.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. So not in your performance enhancement with your athletes, not in your practice as a medical doctor. None of those things. Right. I don't think I've ever given it, though.

So magnesium, like, ubiquitously.

Tommy Wood

Yeah. Like, everybody hose people down with it.

Andy Galpin

Totally. And. But calcium is probably not one of the ones. So probably not one of the markers we're going to go after for either cognitive enhancement or the brain injury, Things like that. Okay. You have said three things thus far in our conversation that have irritated probably many people.

Tommy Wood

I want to remind them what they are.

Andy Galpin

I am. And then I want to see if we can go for a fourth.

Tommy Wood

Okay.

Andy Galpin

One thing you said was that things like microdosing, psychedelics and marijuana probably don't. Potentially don't necessarily enhance creativity. They certainly enhance your perception of it. But maybe actually you're not doing better work. You're just high and think your stuff is great when it sucks. Okay. That was number one.

Whole Internet will hate me for that, too. The second thing you said was actually that you're fairly convinced at this point that we can actually enhance cognitive function, which doesn't sound controversial to some, but for others are going to be really upset about that. And what you mean by that is general. So that is transferable to other modes of cognitive function as we Just talked about focus is not the same as executive function, that's not the same as word recall, et cetera, and that that can be improved. And we laid out various cases for that. Third one you said was that in fact concussions and brain injuries are not your brain slamming against your skull. That probably could happen.

It's plausible, but most likely you have either a temperature or distortion or metabolic issue or combinations of us there. Fourth one, and I've heard you on record, so true or false here you are of the opinion that dementia and late onset Alzheimer's, not early onset, to be clear, are 100% preventable?

Tommy Wood

I've never said 100%.

Andy Galpin

Okay, all right.

Tommy Wood

I would say so. And this really, at this point shouldn't be controversial because again, dusty neurological institutions led by establishment individuals would say the same thing. I would say that the party line is that 45% of dementia is probably preventable. That's from the Lancet Commission run by Gil Livingston and a bunch of experts across the world. It was just updated. It used to be 40%, now it's 45%. They increase the number of risk factors that they included.

I would say it's easily the majority because there are some things that they.

Andy Galpin

Didn'T include.60 plus percent, 70 plus percent.

Tommy Wood

So other estimates, so say Yin Tai Yu, who's at Fudan University and his group have done a ton of modeling and prediction from large population data sets. They think that somewhere between up to 70 something percent of, of dementia is preventable if we were able to address all the different risk factors that contribute to it.

Andy Galpin

Okay, so this is an enormous departure from what the lexicon. Right. So not only potentially is a departure from the scientific community, but if you were to walk down the street and just ask people about, first of all, they'll call it Alzheimer's, probably. Right?

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

But dementia, I don't know anyone who thinks that this is anything besides this just happens with age or it's like cancer where it's just a bad luck of the draw potentially. Some people might think, oh, it's, you know, if I drink a lot of alcohol. But I don't think many people think it's anything besides those ones. So not only are you saying that that is not the case, but it is in large part call it even. 40% is impressive, but probably more realistically, 70 plus percent of dementia is extinguishable. So two part question, is this a prevention issue or is this a reversal?

Tommy Wood

There are certainly some people out there who, working with individual clinical cases, have said they have seen what they feel is reversal of Alzheimer's disease that I'm still not hard because once you've reached that point of significant atrophy and significant pathology, it's very difficult to restore function and, or, you know, reverse or structurally, you're. Yeah, structurally, but then also to respond to some of the things that we know improve cognitive function. So this is all, this is all.

Andy Galpin

Prevention case studies, maybe things like that, that like in terms of reversal dementia is the same case or just Alzheimer's.

Tommy Wood

Most of this is focused on Alzheimer's. But some people will say, you know, in certain cases of frontotemporal dementia or Lewy body dementia, they've seen significant improvements in cognitive function. And it's by generally addressing the same things. But, but I wouldn't come here and promise reversal, but I do think prevention, there's massive potential slowing down onset, slowing.

Andy Galpin

Down progression is certainly a thing. We'll talk about that separate. I'll keep you going, I'll bring you back to that. So there's reversing. They're stopping the progression and they're stopping it from happening. So, okay, continue on with the prevention piece.

Tommy Wood

And I think all of this is essentially all of this is connected and the same risk factors apply essentially across the board, regardless of where you're trying to intervene. It probably just gets harder the further you go along. So when they classify them in the Lancet Commission report, they sort of classify them by stages of life. So early life, the most significant modifiable risk factor is education. So the more years of education you have, the lower your risk of later dementia. And then late life, cognitive stimulus also becomes important. And that's been shown again in meta analyses by Professor Yin Tai Yu's group and is incorporated into this Lancet Commission report.

So I think that's a good place to start because it fits with my worldview that stimulus is really important.

Andy Galpin

That's always good. And you have, by the way, you and Josh have a paper, open access paper, we'll fully link to that in the show notes so you guys can go fully read that. But continue on. If you want to read this whole breakdown, that paper will be up so.

Tommy Wood

You can kind of hear, think about this idea. And again, it's sort of driven by that same idea that stimulating like the function of a tissue is directly proportional to the stimulus applied to it. The liver is the same, the immune system is the same, muscles are the same. And so when you look at trajectories of cognitive function across the lifespan and there are Multiple meta analyses. And a lot of this has to be observational. But what you see is that those who have more years of education, they have a higher peak of cognitive function, and that's. You spend more time devoting more resources to enhancing cognitive function.

Andy Galpin

I'm sorry to cut you off for the fourth time, but I have to linger on that point. It makes intuitive sense that the more time I spend on education, the enhanced cognitive function I have. But that's not what you just said. What you just said was you reach a higher peak. I hope people are sinking in on what the heck that means. We all can progress, we can improve, but getting to a higher total maximum peak is really. It's not the same as just increasing in speed.

And what's stunning me about this, and I'll keep going back to it, you will see the same thing with bone. Right. The maximum bone density you get is gonna be predicted by what you did between ages 10 to 14. Now, the rate of increase is pretty much ubiquitous. Like, up and down is the same. But determining how high that peak is is all about what you do in that window. So I'm just, like, so stunned right now that I knew the increase. Right. I could certainly would have said, hey, would you improve cognitive function?

Like, yes, if you train, but I was not anticipating you would say that. That the height of that peak is gonna be determined by that as well.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Because you're gonna deal with that. The downside, the rest of your life.

Tommy Wood

Exactly. Yeah. And so, you know, a lot of other things go into that, but you generally see that people like the higher your. So if you think about peak cognitive function, which, depending on what it. What cognitive function you're looking at and how you measure it, the peak is gonna be somewhere between 20 and 30 years old. And it generally an individual peak sometimes sometime around the time they finish formal education. Right. So all that kind of lines up to say that the more time you spend on that, the higher the peak.

And at that peak, the peak is higher in those who, on average, who have longer.

Andy Galpin

Longer education across multiple methods of testing cognition, cognitive function. Yeah.

Tommy Wood

And Right. You have to talk about the fact that, you know, different people get access to longer periods of, like, so all of that plays. Right. Socioeconomic status plays a big role, and access plays a big role here. Right. But I think in the Lancet Commission report, they said that 5% of dementia was preventable if just like, everybody got adequate. Yeah. Got adequate education.

And the reason for that is. So if we then imagine some trajectory of cognitive decline that occurs in everybody on average. And like, the rate is. Is different and we can, we can change the rate of decline. But if all you did was educate people more early in life, they would have a higher peak, the rate of decline would be the same, but they'd reach the point of dementia later. Right. Because they've started from a higher peak.

The same rate of decline means they reach dementia later. And, you know, maybe they die of something else first and they never get dementia. So that's, that's how that then happens.

Andy Galpin

We also quickly define age there. Early in age, is that like adolescence?

Is that high school? Is that all of it just kind.

Tommy Wood

Of ubiquitously in terms of what you.

Andy Galpin

Just said, that the higher mortgage we give them early in life.

Tommy Wood

Oh, yeah. So this is just like the traditional education years, right? So, like, you go up, not a specific.

Andy Galpin

Hey, between age 5 and 8 is the most.

Tommy Wood

No. So it's, it's just total years of education. So did you do complete high school, like bachelor's degree, graduate school? Like, there's sort of a roughly linear relationship.

Andy Galpin

Okay.

Tommy Wood

And then there are several studies that show that late life cognitive engagement or stimulus, and they've measured it with, like, how often you go, like you read books and go to museums and all these kinds of things, or they've done it through, like, how cognitively stimulating is your work that then also slows or is associated with a slower rate of decline and also a slower or a lower risk of dementia. So there was one study they actually included. They sort of stole the forest plot from it, and they included it in the Lancet Commission report. They had early life education, and then they had how cognitively stimulating your job was. And what they saw was that people who had more early life education, but not a stimulating job and cognitively stimulating job, and people who had less early life education but a cognitively stimulating job later in life, they had about the same risk of dementia. So you can offset a lower education early in life with more cognitive stimulation later in life. The lowest risk was obviously those who had both.

But yes, there's a huge amount of benefit you get from that early stimulation through education. But it's not like you're now written in stone like, this is your destiny. Now I have a higher risk of dementia if you didn't get that, because there's lots of evidence that suggests that stimulation either through your job or other things will then slow that decline later in life. So you can still do something about it later on.

Andy Galpin

It's so interesting because you're halfway between muscle and bone. Now, such that the muscle you develop as a child has almost no bearing on how much muscle you can develop. If you start lifting weights for the first time at 50, your rate of increase in muscle growth will be the same as if you lifted weights when you were 10 or not or basically like that. So in that case, like earlier development has very little bearing on progression. Like so the rate of increase. That said bone is the opposite. Like whatever you get basically as a kid in large part is going to determine while you're out there.

So you have this halfway house of where muscle is not reliant upon. You know, when you're a kid, bone is almost entirely. And now what you're saying is like brain is a little bit of both. You got either one right. You can do it early in life, you can do it late in life. Obviously both is great or worst case here. And I would have to imagine, I don't know if you actually know the numbers here, but the folks that were the double dipping on the bad side, so no education and low cognitive, demanding job, I have to imagine their rates of Alzheimer's and dementia as well as progression is probably the most aggressive there by an order not, maybe not a magnitude, but some fold.

Tommy Wood

Yeah. So in this paper was published in the BMJ a few years ago, that was your reference group and then everybody else just did better, right?

Andy Galpin

Just 2.0, 2.7. Yeah, just doubling over there. Okay. So I guess if you had a great childhood education, tremendous. Don't rest on your laurels. Continue to challenge cognitive demanding, whatever that may be. If you didn't though, you still can regain much of that by doing something. Just don't use that to have your mind numbing job as we're there.

So it is in either case largely preventable. I think the departure here is early onset Alzheimer's is a different ballgame entirely here. Right. I don't want to spend too much time here. But now you're probably looking at probably opposite, like 70 plus percent is maybe even higher is genetic.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Bad draw here.

Tommy Wood

So, so I think just, just to finish the, the, the first piece, like we think about life stages and they think about the life stages of risk factors. Then in the middle of life, a lot of what they're talking, like talking about is body composition, physical activity, smoking, alcohol, you know, all the stuff that we've talked about already in terms of if we eliminated those, we could eliminate, yeah. You know, the related dementia. And then one thing that we haven't talked about before or at least not related to this is sensory inputs. So that's some of the late life risk factors they talk about.

Obviously brain trauma is another one. In midlife, don't retire. Yeah. But no, sensory inputs are like vision and hearing.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Tommy Wood

So there's now a pretty good body of evidence suggests that if you have cataracts you have a higher risk of dementia. That dementia, that risk is reversed. If you have cataract surgery, if you have hearing loss like Presby acusis as you get older, you have a higher risk of dementia that is reversed.

Particularly in high risk people. If you get hearing aids. So if you start to lose a sense. Right. And a lot of people just like I'm going to battle through because you know, I don't want to have a hearing aid or whatever, don't do that. You know, if you start to have hearing loss, get a hearing aid because that's going to be associated with a lower risk of hearing dementia. So making sure you're still getting those sensory inputs into the brain remains really critical.

Andy Galpin

So don't lose your sense of smell, don't lose your vision, don't lose your hearing. Probably in the, I'm going to guess 50 to 60 year range. Like if you start getting in that age window and you start seeing precipitous declines in any of those functions and you want to reverse that as quickly as you possibly can because of what you've been saying all day.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

If you can't hear stimuli, doesn't go in there, then that part of your brain presumably dies.

Tommy Wood

It makes perfect sense. Right. You're not using those networks anymore, so they're going to decline, but then everything else they're connected to is going to be affected.

Andy Galpin

I assume the same thing is true with proprioception in terms of balance, things like that.

Tommy Wood

Right.

Andy Galpin

So make sure that you continue to train balance, work on balance. I think this is a pretty easy story to tell for exercise and nature.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Right. Exercising in the outdoor, like exercising inside in the gym is great. But now you're outside, you're going up and down, you're seeing different things, hearing, smelling, like so on and so forth.

Tommy Wood

Differing light exposures, like the effect of say seeing green spaces on autonomic nervous system regulation or like there's a temperature is different. Yeah. There's a ton of different ways that.

Andy Galpin

Yeah, okay, so I'm on board. There is highly preventable. You said this earlier as well. You talked about exercise a bunch. This was one of the more stunning parts about our earlier conversation when you said and I'm stupefied that I never made this connection. I've said this a thousand times, plus thousands of times, and I never really grasped the fact that when you exercise, you're going to have neurological neuroplasticity. Nerve, nerve, nerve.

But then the actual structure of the brain. And I promise we would. I wanted to come back to this. So here we are, coming back to it. It's like the second time I've actually come back to a topic I said I wanted to come back to. But I want you to explain this to me about how it's actually. What aspects of the.

What areas of the brain physically are improved by exercise? Does it determine or does it depend on the type of exercise? Is strength training different? Do we know any details about the exercise? Is it a certain amount of sets or reps or styles?

Like, what do we know? So what do I do? And how does it actually help? And then the last part about that is, is there a law of, hey, I didn't start soon enough, so now it's too late. Right. So give me the jazz on how lifting weights makes my brain. What do you call it, like, bigger.

Bigger muscles, bigger brains. More.

Tommy Wood

Bigger. More brainiac.

Andy Galpin

More, bigger. More brainia. There you go. I've heard you say that before.

Tommy Wood

So a good place to start is the first ever study, I think, that was done, that showed that you could increase the size of a certain part of the brain in humans was with an exercise intervention. It was published in 2011.

Andy Galpin

Exercise for the win. I'm telling you, folks, exercise scientists run science. You just don't like to admit it.

Tommy Wood

So this is published in PNAS in 2011, and what they did is.

Andy Galpin

Oh, that recent.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Oh, wow.

Tommy Wood

Yeah. So there's the. So, like, before then, we knew that. So if you just looked at brains of people who'd recently died, you could see that there were certain areas of the brain that there was some neurogenesis, particularly the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. But to actually physically see an increase in size of a part of the brain, this is the hippocampus, which is generally just thought to get smaller and smaller over time. That hadn't.

That hadn't been seen before. Before.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. Hard. Hard to do in humans.

Tommy Wood

Yeah. And so the other side of that is that we don't know if there's more neurons being generated.

We know it's bigger. Right. So this is like, it could be glia, it could be extracellular matrix. There's a whole bunch of things that go into that, but that doesn't necessarily matter. We can we see improvements in, in brain structure and volume with an exercise intervention. So what they did in this study, individuals in their 60s and 70s, they had them do a walking program 40 minutes three times a week for a year. That's it. Brisk walking.

And that was enough to significantly improve or increase the size of the hippocampus.

Andy Galpin

These are non exercisers.

Tommy Wood

These are non exercisers. Yeah. And they sort of like worked their way up to a certain intensity and they did it for 40 minutes three times a week for a year. The increases in size of the hippocampus correlated with improvements in VO2 max, which also correlated with improvements in or increases in production of bdnf, brain derived neurotrophic factor. So in a sedentary population, we know we can see improvements in the structure of the brain with exercise, with aerobic exercise. What was interesting is that in this study they didn't necessarily see significant improvements in cognitive function. They saw improvements in structure, but function didn't necessarily track with it.

Part of this is probably an intensity piece. So there was a very recent study that looked at different levels of intensity of exercise, aerobic exercise again, and structure and function of, of hippocamp.

Of the hippocampus. So again, so now we're thinking about memory related tests. And they found the greatest benefit in individuals doing a high intensity exercise training. And it was essentially the Norwegian 4x4 Pro, like four minutes at, you know, 75 to 80% max, like VO2 max heart rate, sorry. And they saw maintenance of structure of volume of the hippocampus compared to control groups where it kind of where those decreased. And improvements in cognitive function they think related to that area of the brain. So some aerobic activity of any kind in people who are sedentary, if it improves their cardiovascular fitness, then you're going to see improvements in brain structure.

To see correlated improvements in brain function. Intensity is probably going to be important in that study. They're generating a ton of lactate. Right. Whereas they weren't in that original walking study. Right. So that could be, that could be one, one way of the win again.

So in general what you see across multiple studies is that the gray matter of the brain, so now we're talking the, the outer cortex and the hippocampus primarily seems to be benefited by aerobic exercise. And in general aerobic exercise seems to be associated with improvements in memory. Right. Again, the hippocampus is really important there. If we're thinking about the amount that you have to do, it's essentially going to be two or three times a week, some kind of activity that is improving your cardiovascular fitness wherever you've started from, but probably at least once a week doing something that's very intense, right, Some kind of, some kind of sprint type or high, high intensity interval training. At least that's what sort of aligns with the literature in terms of resistance exercise. You see benefits in different areas of the brain.

So resistance exercise seems to primarily benefit the white matter, which kind of sits between the cortex and the deep brain. And right, that's where you have your myelated axons, your fast connections like that, the hyperspeed zone. The hyperspeed zone is the transfer of information from the brain to the body and throughout the brain. And so we actually just published a review paper talking about the studies where they'd done a resistance training intervention compared to a control group and then looked at brain structure over time. And this is what you see is improvement, either improvements in the white matter or prevention of decline of the structure of the white matter. And then that's also associated with improvements in cognitive function, particularly with resistance training, executive function function. So like prefrontal cortex function.

So different areas of the brain affected by different types of exercise, which are then associated with different improvements in cognitive function. The minimum effective dose for like sustained improvement seems to be two sessions a week, like super standard six to eight exercises covering the whole body for three sets of eight to 12 reps, just like the most basic resistance training program, twice a week for at least six months. And you see significant improvements in brain structure and associated cognitive function. So those are kind of the different ways that those different exercises kind of come together. Then you get more of like a glow if you do both. Hopefully some kind of global improvement in cognitive function.

Andy Galpin

So it has never been shown. I know this. But it would, based on all that, be reasonable to presume if I wanted to develop an exercise program that was specifically targeted with the primary objective of keeping my brain as healthy as long as possible, not necessarily my body composition or muscle or strength or anything like that, I wanted to do an exercise program for that. One could theoretically, say, okay, lift weights a couple of days a week in exactly what you mentioned, five to eight exercises, whole body, a couple sets each, that'd be two days a week, one day a week, do something that is closer to, let's just even say the Norwegian four by four.

Tommy Wood

That's a great option. Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Four minutes of the highest amount of work. People get mad when you describe this as four Minutes of max effort or all out.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

You can't go all out for four minutes. But the highest amount of work you can do for four minutes, rest for four minutes and do it again. I don't really think friends. Like, I cannot imagine a world in which that specificity matters. You don't have to do the four. You could probably do just about any type.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Of high intensity endurance conditioning work and it would probably be the same. But let's just say for simplicity, you did four by four once or twice a week. Was that those interventions.

Tommy Wood

I think they were doing it three times a week.

Andy Galpin

Okay.

Tommy Wood

But if you're doing other aerobic exercise and, and resistance training, I think you're gonna. Yeah. You're probably not gonna need to do like a four by four, three times a week. That's.

Andy Galpin

That's pretty damn hard. Especially for six months extended periods of time.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. I'm gonna say realistically, as an exercise scientist, I'll give you permission to cut that to two.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Per week. And then maybe one to two or three sessions a week of the more lower intensity standard endurance exercise cardio. Whether this is even physical activity. Walking.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

Or would they actually need to do more like 50, 60% heart rate for that kind of cardiovascular adaptation?

Tommy Wood

So, you know, this is, that, this is the, the age old question is like, it, like what's the exact intensity required to see a specific adaptation? I think that.

And it's the same. We did a podcast Talking about the 4x4 on your podcast on my podcast. And then somebody was like, well, what if I can't maintain my heart rate in that zone for that long? Just do. Yeah. Right. Do whatever you can for four minutes and you. Right. You'll get better over time.

And so I think it's, I think it's the same thing.

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Tommy Wood

Like if it's a, if it's a casual stroll, you're probably not getting adaptation. But you know, equally, if a brisk walk is hard work for you. Right. Then that's going to be, that's going to be a good, good place to be.

Andy Galpin

Yeah. This one riles me up so much because I get it, people want like specific numbers, but I'm so resistant to do that because it doesn't actually matter usually.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

It's a, it's a rough concept of where you're at. So if those numbers help you, great. But something like that. Here's the reality. Don't think that your brain all of a sudden won't adapt.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

If you do half that.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

If you did one day of lifting, one day of intervals and a couple of days of walking. It's better than the zero.

Oh, yeah, it's a lot better. Right. So you don't have to hit that minimum number to get any effect whatsoever. Right. Probably getting closer to that final destination. But if that takes you six months or six years to get to where you can handle that, that being that little three, you know, protocol we talked about, it's fine. Like, get there eventually and you'll probably get much of the benefit, which is great.

This actually answers a big question that I have dealt with a lot. You and I actually have a paper together again, that you led, where we found physical strength predicted, I think it was 5% of cognitive function. Right. And I'll say that again, physical strength predicted 5% of cognitive function. I have talked about, People have talked about at length, how leg strength, how grip strength. Grip strength fires people up. Right. And the common claim here is like, oh, grip strength is just a proxy for overall health.

And certainly true. If you look at research on folks that have dementia, you'll see, I think actually one paper found, I can't even think it was UK Biobank paper, about a half a million people in it found that. I think 30% of Alzheimer's death was explained by low grip strength. Yeah, Right.

Not a small number.

Tommy Wood

And there's a recent study showing that frailty precedes Alzheimer's by several years on average.

Andy Galpin

Multiple years, I imagine.

Tommy Wood

Right. And if you're frail, you're not doing all the things that we know continue to stimulate or support brain function. Right.

Andy Galpin

So what I want you to kill, and perhaps this is a fifth thing that'll irritate the Internet that we're going to call it, is the idea that this stuff, the grip strength, leg strength, is exclusively an, indirect or a correlation. Right. Of course, there's some folks who are struggling with dementia are probably also then going to struggle with movement. And there'll be a backwards direction. Right. There'd be a causation, but it would kind of be backwards causation. Right. So end this horrible idea that strength is only a correlation to brain health.

And you just actually kind of answered the question before, which is like, how is it actually causal? But then spell this out as directly as possible so I can cut this clip and send it to people. Every damn time I get told it's just a correlation.

Tommy Wood

Technically, people are right. A lot of this comes from epidemiological research. Correlation isn't causation. However, there are several studies we Just talked about some where you randomize somebody to a resistance training intervention, their strength improves, brain function improves. Right. Brain structure improves. And actually related to the point that you're making in one of those studies. Yes. You see sustained improvements in white matter structure with two sessions a week.

But you've got improvements in cognitive function with just one session a week. Right. So you don't. These effects, particularly if people aren't doing much exercise, are essentially linear and like.

Andy Galpin

So if you could ask for a more causal function and structure benefit and in a dose response.

Tommy Wood

Yeah. So what else do we need?

That essentially says it's causal. Right?

Andy Galpin

Yeah.

Tommy Wood

And people are. So depending on the type of research, of course people are. Right. You can't tell.

You can't tell. Causation. However, what people also don't necessarily understand is that in a perfect epidemiological study, if you could account for every confounder and mediating and moderating relationships, what you have left is causation. That is like. That is a definition of causation. So, yes, epidemiological studies technically don't show causation. But if you could, it's difficult because you don't always get the variables you want. Right. You can determine causation from an epidemiological study.

That is possible. That's allowed in, you know, a frequentist model of statistics.

Andy Galpin

I'll count that as like 4.5 thing that the Internet's gonna get mad at. Yeah. You don't think people understand basic statistics with that?

Tommy Wood

So. Right. People have worse physical health.

Right, we know. So in the study that we did, if you had higher blood blood sugar, high HbA1c, you had lower strength. But I think that's also bi directional. Right. More insulin resistance, that's going to worsen muscular function. But if we think about the potential mechanisms by which this happens, if you're doing things that improve strength, that's direct neuromuscular stimulus. We've already talked about the importance of stimulus.

The next important thing is that your skeletal muscle is your biggest and most important glucose sink. So if we're thinking about the importance of energy regulation, then your muscle, like the more muscle you have and the more you move it, the greater amount of glucose you can move through that system. And there's, I mean, this has been done for decades and decades and decades. So your, your skeletal muscle and your physical activity are two of the best ways to improve glucose handling and energetic handling more broadly. And then the final piece is that when you contract your muscles, you release a whole bunch of stuff, right? Your muscles are organs. So lactate, bdnf mot C, irisin, lac fee like pick your metabolites, cytokines, extra kinds, like whatever, like whatever it is.

Like pick your favorite metabolite du jour. We're still discovering on it, like taurine. We're still discovering on a, like on a weekly basis the things that are released during exercise that have broad, broad benefits. So like, all of that comes together to suggest that yes, it's a bi directional relationship, but by improving muscular size and strength and function. And those usually go together, but not always, depending on who you are, there is four or five, if not more different mechanisms that would directly relate to improvements in cognitive function and brain health.

Andy Galpin

I hope that ends the conversation. I'm going to move on. Although we could probably have done a whole conversation just on that. But one little piece here, it makes sense to me energetically based on what you just described. It makes sense to me from a neuromuscular perspective that the strength training works backwards. And so the same neurological system that makes you squeeze your hand together, it starts in your brain, keeps alive. How does the white matter, what's the stimuli from exercising muscle?

Because it makes sense. When I think about muscle, it doesn't happen this way, folks. But as a teaching point, if you think about, I lifted some weights, the muscles that I contracted, they pulled, they got stretched, they contracted, they got damaged. Again, it doesn't happen this way. But I can paint that picture in my head. I'm not stretching the tissue in my brain when I'm lifting weights. So how am I generating more or preserving my physical tissue outside of the metabolic and the, the astrocytes and the nervous system side.

Tommy Wood

Yes. So I think all of those play an important role. For instance, we know that as we age, things like changes in metabolic health and white matter structure in the brain probably better track with cognitive function than say something like amyloid accumulation in your brain. Actually the trajectory follows more closely and that's going to be related to, um, so, so the white mass trajectory is gonna be related to things like metabolic health for the, for the reasons we talked about. But I think there's a direct stimulating effect right as you are, you know, the. Both learning the new skill of, of, of like the muscular control required to move weight. In that way, I think you're directly stimulating some of those pathways.

So pathways related to like motor pathways associated or white matter pathways associated with motor control. I think you're directly stimulating those which we, and then we know as you stimulate those, you Offset all those things we talked about earlier in terms of adaptations that improve structure and function. And then more broadly, I think that's where some of the. The signaling pieces come into play. What's interesting is that there is an overlap in some of the things that are produced in aerobic exercise versus resistance training. But we do see region specific effects. So it's probably there's like some coupling of what's going on, like a specific stimulus plus the sort of the hormonal milieu or the myokines and things that are released.

And I think it's some combination of that. It's really hard to test these mechanisms in humans. And it's actually also really hard to get rats to do bicep curls. So it's.

Andy Galpin

Squats is easy, but.

Tommy Wood

Yeah. Or because they. They have like, they do.

Like they do weighted. Weighted wheels. Right. So it's kind of like a. A weighted Jacob's Ladder kind of thing is what they do for resistance training in rats. But I think it's some combination of those things.

Andy Galpin

If you look at this from the muscle skeletal muscle perspective, I should probably have be saying it that whole. I always say muscle skeletal muscle. All right. A little bit different. It doesn't require damage.

Tommy Wood

Yeah.

Andy Galpin

There's another thing that people have this false thought of. You have to break a muscle down to grow back, which is fundamentally not only not true, but it actually doesn't happen very often. It's not generally what's causing muscle damage. It's not causing soreness, it's not causing. And it's definitely not the stimuli to grow. You can simply change energetics and stimulate muscle growth, skeletal muscle growth. I can't see why you couldn't do that in the brain.

It's the same thing. It doesn't require a stretch and a damage.

Tommy Wood

All of these adaptations are driven by an increase in energetic flux. Right. That's what it is at its most basic state. And then that's what that drives neuroplasticity. It drives autophagy. It drives all these other regulatory processes that we know are involved in aging and reversing those. And so anything you can do locally and muscle improve increasing energetic flux through aerobic exercise.

And then the same any stimulus in the brain, you're increasing the amount of energy that's moving through the system that acts as a stimulus that then the same same processes occur.

Andy Galpin

Is that why you think those different modes of exercise produce different actual brain adaptations?

Tommy Wood

I think that's part of it, yeah. Sort of. But all of those things seem to you know, dissecting those exact pathways hasn't been done. But it, if you think about, well, you get, you get lacked. You know, you do a heavy set of leg press, you release a ton of lactate. Right. But. And you release a lot of lactate when you do the four by four protocol.

But you get different, you seem to get different responses in the brain. So it's the, the combination of multiple things sort of coming together.

Andy Galpin

All right, fascinating. We're going to press the button on more things you're going to irritate the world about. I don't need the full dive here. Give me the, the what we used to say in the 90s and 2000, the Reader's Digest version. I only now recently realized that kids have no idea what that means. No, that analogy. Now people are like, the what?