Summary How to End Every Workout for Best Improvement & Recovery | Dr. Andy Galpin & Dr. Andrew Huberman (Youtube) www.youtube.com
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n/a So what are some tools that we can use to enhance our recovery?
Dr. Andy Galpin Yep. Let's start off with that acute overload phase. So in other words, I just did a workout and I'm feeling awful, or I just did 1 2 days ago and I'm super sore. How do I get rid of that right now? Well, there's a couple of things you can do immediately after your Workout, and then others that are maybe more actionable a day later or 2 days later.
Dr. Andy Galpin And we'll discover handful of them. We'll do some nutrition and hydration and supplementation in the next episode. I'm gonna cover everything else not in that category right now. So a couple of things. Number 1, you can actually start kick start that recovery process at the end of your current training session.
Dr. Andy Galpin And I guess I should say this way. I strongly suggest you start this recovery process immediately after the workout. You mentioned earlier about this idea of You gotta get a really high peak of stress to cause adaptation. But I actually didn't explain that correctly because what has to happen is you need that extremely high peak, but you then you have to be met with an extremely sharp recovery back down. And so, you know, you've talked about this before in some of your, neuroplasticity stuff and in terms of what has to happen that caused the insult, and then you immediately need to be able to recover to make sure that that causes changes the range.
Dr. Andy Galpin Same thing happens here. So we need a really sharp and high inflammatory response. And then if you do not meet it with an immediate recovery period, The signal won't be there to maximize your results. So what's that mean? You can actually do a couple of things.
Dr. Andy Galpin Number 1 is actually listening to slow paced music. There's evidence to suggest fast paced music may slow down your recovery, and slow pace would actually enhance it. So if you just change from, you know, your maximum get you up and get going music during the workout to a slower lower cadence that will help you kick start the idea. Of a similar note. You can also use what we call down regulation breathing.
Dr. Andy Galpin You could do them in conjunction or 1 or the other, whichever is up to you. So my personal favorite method here is somewhere between 3 to 10 minutes of finishing your training session, laying down. I'd like to be in that position. You could certainly do it in the lotus position, but I think laying on your back is generally more effective. Personal preference there.
Dr. Andy Galpin No signs. I like the eyes being covered, getting into this dark quiet sort of area. And then just breathing through your nose in a structured cadence. There's a lot of different things you can try. An easy example is just box breathing.
Dr. Andy Galpin So and you can imagine box having 4 squares. So what you're going to do is inhale for somewhere between, like, 3 to 8 seconds. And then whatever number you choose, you keep that same tempo. And so let's say you chose to do a 5 second inhale, that's gonna take you up vertically. And then horizontally for your box is a 5 second hold, and then a 5 second exhale and then a 5 second hold.
Dr. Andy Galpin And you just need to repeat that for the time domain. Now I typically honestly don't use a timer. You'll actually notice a lot of people will, fall asleep or get really close to falling asleep in this period. And you could do a triangle version of that where you do an inhale, Hold, exhale, and then go right back into your inhale. Or there's a bunch of different tricks you can try here.
Dr. Andy Galpin You need to play around and see what actually works best for you. 10 minutes is probably better, but if you can just at least give me 3, that'll work. If you're really, really resistant, you can actually do that just in the shower. And so if you're gonna finish your workout, get in the shower. Again, just close your eyes in the shower.
Dr. Andy Galpin Give me 3 minutes of focused relaxation breathing, and that will accelerate the recovery process.
n/a I love it. And I particularly love it because my laboratory works on stress and respiration, a k breathing, and the interactions between the 2. And I'll just mention a result that was just accepted for publication, so it should be out by time this happens. So there's, thank you. This is the beautiful work of, not me directly, although it took place in my lab.
n/a But as we know, it's the student and postdocs who really do the heavy lifting Always. Of, doctor Melies Balban, in my lab, he's a phenomenal researcher, that showed that a short period of 5 minutes of Box breathing of exactly the type that you described or, cyclic sighing. So 2 inhales followed by an extended exhale to lungs empty. Ideally, the Inhales are done through the nose. The exhales are done, through the mouth, although it could all be done through the nose, or the mouth for that matter, but probably nose nose For inhale, inhale, mouth for exhale, or, in inhales through the nose and and exhale through the nose, Cyclic sighing as we refer to it done for 5 minutes.
n/a Both of those produce very significant, decreases in resting heart rate. The over time, will increase things like heart rate variability and so on and so forth. So provided that there are Extended exhales, it seems like the calming response and the reduction in overall stress occurs. The only thing that really sensing us in the other direction would be something like cyclic hyperventilation. I'm sure you've observed that.
n/a And interestingly, When we had people just do 5 minutes of, meditation, which during which, of course, they are breathing, but they're Just allowing their breathing to progress however it happens to be in that Improvement, or moments across the 5 minutes. There were reductions in The same sorts of markers of stress that I described, but not as significant as breathing. So I love the Brock's breathing tool post Workout, and there's some other alternatives there too that I just mentioned. But I think people greatly underestimate the potency of breathing for shifting one's Nervous system function away from stress or if 1 wants toward more alertness and stress.