Essentials: How to Assess & Improve All Aspects of Your Fitness | Dr. Andy Galpin

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, my guest is Dr. Andy Galpin, PhD, an exercise physiologist. We revisit the first episode of his Huberman Lab Guest Series to discuss the nine major components of physical fitness and how to assess your abilities. We explain practical tests for movement quality, power, strength, muscle mass and endurance, including grip strength, push-ups and VO2 max. We also discuss how to organize fitness testing, track progress and identify which areas to prioritize in your training to support long-term health and performance. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman David: https://davidprotein.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Andy Galpin (00:00:44) Fitness Goals, Appearance & Performance (00:02:32) Nine Components of Physical Fitness (00:05:54) Sponsor: Eight Sleep (00:07:21) Movement Skill, Tool: Assessing Movement Quality (00:11:11) Speed Testing (00:11:34) Power, Tool: Standing Broad Jump (00:12:55) Grip Strength, Dynamometers & Dead Hangs (00:14:51) Sponsor: AG1 (00:16:12) Lower Body Strength, Leg Extensions & Squat Holds (00:18:47) Safe Testing, Technique & Consistent Warm-Ups (00:19:45) Muscle Mass, Body Composition & Fat-Free Mass Index (00:21:51) Muscular Endurance, Planks & Push-Ups (00:23:21) Anaerobic Capacity, Maximum Effort Tests (00:24:55) Maximum Heart Rate & Heart Rate Recovery (00:26:10) VO2 Max, Running & Walking Tests (00:27:52) Sponsor: David (00:29:15) Long-Duration Endurance, Steady-State Exercise & Nasal Breathing (00:30:16) Testing Frequency, Test Order & Training Priorities (00:34:34) Acknowledgements Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Andrew D. Huberman?

  Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. And now for my discussion with Dr. Andy Galpin. Dr. Professor Andy Galpin, super excited to have you here. You're such an immense treasure trove of information on physical training and optimizing for specific goals and outcomes. How should I, or anyone else for that matter, think about their level of fitness in terms of really assessing whether or not I'm as fit as I could be and should be, both for sake of health and performance?

• 0:44Andy Galpin?

  When it comes to exercise, people generally have two major goals in mind. Goal number one is achieving some sort of appearance. Right? This is, I want to be big, or I want to not be too big, or I want to be lean. There is an aesthetic component to almost everybody. They want to look a certain way or not look a certain way. The other one is functionality. So I want to be able to perform a certain way. Now, again, that definition differs per person. So I want to be better at strength. I want to be better at mobility. I want to be able to have energy throughout the day, whatever it is. So there's some sort of appeal to aesthetic, and there's some sort of appeal to functionality. So within both of those categories, we want to be in a position where we can understand, where do I need to go with my exercise training so that I can be as fit and as healthy

• 1:29Andy Galpin?

  and achieve these goals that I want now, as well as be in a position where I can maintain them for a long period of time? So this blends both immediate goals. So say you're just interested in squatting a lot of weight. Say you're interested in running 5K time the best you want. It doesn't matter. It blends that with the ability, the desire to have a long wellness span, to be fit throughout life, to achieve all those things for as long as possible. So then the question kind of comes back to saying, how do I know which area I need to focus on the most? And why am I not achieving these goals? Or how can I get there more effectively? And if we look at the big picture, we have to understand that there are several major components to physical fitness that are going to be required

• 2:13Andy Galpin?

  in all of these categories. And to achieve that, there are a handful of components that have to happen. So what I'd love to do today is, over the course of our discussion, is hit exactly what those concepts are, and then cover a whole bunch of different methods. And we could do that for hours. But we'll cover a number of them for various goals.

• 2:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  What are the major adaptations that one can create in their body using exercise?

• 2:37Andy Galpin?

  The physiological adaptations can be bucketed really into nine areas. So the very first one is what I call skill or technique. This could be running more effectively. This could be practicing a skill like shooting a ball or an implement, swinging a golf club, anything like that. I call that skill development. The second one is speed. This is simply moving at a higher velocity or with a better rate of acceleration. That's very similar to the next one, which is power. And power is speed multiplied by force. The next one, then, of course, on top of that is force or strength. Those are really synonymous terms, right? How effectively can you move something? Now, this is often confused, strength, rather, as muscular endurance.

• 3:19Andy Galpin?

  So what I mean by that is, strength truly is a marker of, what's the maximum thing you can move? Or what's the maximum amount of force you can produce one time? Number five is muscle hypertrophy. And this is the first time now we're talking about an appearance rather than a functional outcome. This is the first one that's just simply how big is your muscle? And that's muscle hypertrophy or muscle size. After that is muscular endurance. So this is how many repetitions you can typically do of a movement. So think of how many pushups in a row you can do, how many situps in a minute you can do, things that are typically in like 5 to 50 repetition sort of range, and it is almost always local muscle. A pushup test is really how many reps that your triceps and pecs and deltoids can do.

• 4:04Andy Galpin?

  It is not a cardiovascular endurance. It is not a global physiological endurance. It's specific to typically one or a few muscle groups at a time. This is why you have to do multiple tests for sort of every group there. After that, now we've moved into number seven, which is what I call anaerobic capacity. This is more synonymous with maximum heart rate. And now we're actually looking at, rather than a single movement or muscle group, it is a total physiological limitation. It is the maximum amount of work you can do in, say, 30 to 45 seconds, maybe even up to 120 seconds of all-out work. Think of your classic interval type of stuff here. So how much work can you do at a maximum rate where you're going to enter tremendous amounts of global fatigue?

• 4:49Andy Galpin?

  The next past that is maximal aerobic capacity. And this is probably something like in the eight to 15 minute range, where you're going to reach probably both, a maximum heart rate as well as a true VO2 max. So that is different from the previous one, where you can't reach this in a matter of seconds. It simply takes multiple minutes to get to a position to where your VO2 max is actually going to be sufficiently challenged or an indicator there. And then the last one, number nine, is what I call long duration. And this is just your ability to sustain submaximal work for a long period of time with no breaks, no reductions whatsoever. This is often called steady state training, or a lot of people just think of this when they think of, quote unquote, cardio. But your ability to continue movement

• 5:34Andy Galpin?

  without any breaks or change or drop is the last and final adaptation. So really, if you look at a kind of a minimal number there, it's generally 20 minutes of what we're looking for. But a more typical would be 20 to 60 minutes. But anything past that would still be limited by your long duration endurance. So your ability to sustain work over time.

• 5:54Andrew D. Huberman?

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• 6:39Andrew D. Huberman?

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• 7:21Andy Galpin?

  All right, the very first one we want to talk about is movement skill. Is this really about human movement so that you stay injury-free? And you can continue to train for as long as possible? So what are the minimum requirements? Now, if you can have access to a highly qualified physical therapist or movement specialist, that's the best route. Go to them, have them identify all of your movement patterns, overhead pressing, squatting, running, all these things. That's your gold standard. If you want to do it yourself, though, here's a very simple four-step solution. So the way that I teach this is I go joint by joint. And so I think of this just as the major ones. Your shoulder, your elbow, your low back, hip, knee, and ankle. Okay, now what you can do is do a representative movement for you.

• 8:06Andy Galpin?

  So if you bench a lot, use the bench. If you do pull-ups, use the pull-up. If you squat, do that. I would recommend doing an upper body press, an upper body pull, a lower body press, and lower body pull. An example would be a push-up, a pull-up or a bent row, a squat, and then a deadlift. And record a frontal view and a side view. Probably do three to 10 repetitions per angle, okay? Slow and controlled, and you want to look for four key things. Number one is you want to look for symmetry. So symmetry is front to back, left to right, and your right limb and your left limb. If they aren't moving perfectly, that's fine. But you want to see, is one moving further ahead than the other one? Is one turning to the side and one's not? Is one fidgeting and twitching around differently?

• 8:51Andy Galpin?

  So you want to look just to check, to see and make sure that they're stable. Number two, you want to look for stability. So key indicators here are things like, if you can't control a squat, a controlled squat where your knees don't start shaking, that would be an instability issue. So can you do the movement slow? Can you pause at the bottom, maybe three seconds, maybe five seconds or 10? You should have complete control of that movement and all of these joints. Are your hips sliding to one side when you stand up? Is one elbow closer to your body when you're benching, and the other one's more flared out? These are the things I'm talking about, right? I'm not worried about what angle they should be at or not. You're simply looking for asymmetries or instabilities. All right, so again, as you're pushing up, does one elbow start flipping and twitching and going all over the place?

• 9:36Andy Galpin?

  The third one is what I call awareness. There are a lot of movement technique issues that are simply people don't know. And so you'll watch them squat. I do this in my classes all the time. I'll have 100 kids out there squatting, and you'll see some horrible squat technique. And then when you just tell them, hey, did you realize your heels are supposed to be on the ground all times when you squat? They're like, oh, okay. And they can correct it. It's not actually a movement flaw. It was just simply an awareness. I didn't know, and then I actually didn't realize that that was happening in that position. So we want all of our joints to be going through a general full range of motion, which is number four. So the ankles during like a squat, your knee should be able to go as far over your toes as possible while maintaining good position, your feet flat on the floor, your three points of contact, your whole foot foot, and you're not compromising another joint.

• 10:21Andy Galpin?

  So that's all you're going to look for, those four things. Symmetry, stability, awareness, and range of motion through each joint, through each movement. You can generally kind of clear these things in one or two repetitions in a couple of seconds. I just look for absolutely terrible. Like can't do it at all, minor flaw or pretty close to good. But that's really all I'm looking for. So my scoring system is 0130 is like, you're not going to do this exercise because you're at a very high acute risk. You might get hurt on rep one tomorrow. Now, like a score of one is like, there's a minor flaw here. We can probably do it, but we need to be cautious of load and volume. The other one is maybe it's perfect, maybe it's not, but go ahead and sort of do it on a reasonable protocol, you'll be fine.

• 11:03Andy Galpin?

  So that's generally what you would need to do is a cost free method of identifying good movement technique within any of the things that, that you would do.

• 11:11Andrew D. Huberman?

  What about speed?

• 11:12Andy Galpin?

  I actually don't think this is one most people should test. If you're a high performance athlete, we can run a 40 yard dash, or we can do some different things with a velocity transducer on a barbell. If you're a weightlifter or something, for most people, pure speed is really maximum velocity or acceleration, or kind of the two ways we break it down. It's not just generally not that necessary to test.

• 11:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  What about number three, power, which I believe before you told me was speed times force?

• 11:40Andy Galpin?

  The cost free version here is a simple broad jump. So this is stand, you know, normal position, jump out as far in front of you as you possibly can and measure the distance between where you started and the back of your heel where it lands. A super basic number to look for there is your height. So you should be able to broad jump, how tall you are. If you're five foot five, you should hit five foot five, six foot five, et cetera. That's going to ratchet down a little bit, about 15% for females. They just simply don't have the power in general that men have. And so you're going to want to bring that down a little bit, but that's a, it's a very crude number. If you were to look at like a high performance NFL player, if they're six feet tall, they're going to be jumping like nine to 10 to 11 feet. We're not looking for optimization in this particular test.

• 12:22Andy Galpin?

  What you are looking for red flags, if you even jump your body height, you're going to be just fine. To clarify, there's no running approach here. You're going to stand at a still, yeah, you can swing, bounce as much as you'd like to do, you're going to projectile off. So you're going to measure the distance from the tip of your toe. So basically stand behind the line and then the furthest point back where you land. So basically the worst possible score, not the best possible because your feet won't land symmetrically. One's probably going to be a little bit farther. Just use the furthest point back of your back heel and go from there.

• 12:54Andrew D. Huberman?

  What about strength?

• 12:56Andy Galpin?

  So strength is really important. You need to measure this in a, in multiple areas and we'll start off with grip strength. You can do this in two ways. You can buy a hand grip dynamometer. Now these are anywhere between 20 to a hundred dollars anywhere. These actually used to be like when I was in school, like hundreds of dollars. And now you can literally buy them on any website for 25 bucks. So technically that's not cost free. I know your whole thing about the cost free protocols, but 25 bucks, I'm calling that basically cost free. You can bring that in and test that. And that's just a little device where you're going to squeeze and you're going to do, and I would do your right hand and your left hand. They're going to give you a value in kilograms. You want to look for something like a minimum score here of 40 kilograms. Ideally, you're up past 60 would be a really good spot to be in. You want to make sure that there's no less than 10% variation between your left and right hand.

• 13:40Andy Galpin?

  Your, your non dominant hand actually shouldn't be that much weaker in this test. So what you'll actually see a lot of times is the non dominant can be oftentimes stronger because the dominant hand is more for movement, precision, writing, things like that. If you are a male and you're under 40 kilograms on a hand grip dynamometer, we're going to need to train that. If you're a female, it's not that much lower, but about 35 kilograms is the cutoff point. Another one that you can actually do is just a dead hang. So you can hold on to any bar, ideally one that is thin enough to where you can wrap your whole hand around it. Something like going to the gym and jumping on any pull up bar or a pull up rack. In general, we, we should be able to hang for a minimum of 30 seconds is what we're, what we're looking for.

• 14:21Andy Galpin?

  30 to kind of 50 seconds is my like, good, but we could probably get better here. If you're cruising above 60 seconds, I'm generally pretty happy. Now, if you are exceptionally large, this thing doesn't scale perfectly. You know, if you're 240 pounds and even if you're lean, it's just hard to hang and hold 240 pounds. Conversely, if you're 145 pounds, even if you're unhealthy, you're going to be able to hang for a long time. It's just not that much weight to carry. So just rough numbers as to start off with.

• 14:51Andrew D. Huberman?

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• 15:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  As you may know, I've been taking AG1 every single day for about 14 years now. That means I discovered it and started taking it daily long before I even knew what a podcast was. I continue to take it and back it here on the podcast because it is an excellent formula and it's now even better with the AG1 Pro formula. For a limited time, you can get an extra 20% off your first subscription to AG1 Pro by going to drinkag1.com/huberman and using the code BACKTOROUTINE. So that's with a numeral two, back numeral two, routine. Just go to drinkag1.com/huberman. So that's grip strength. What about strength elsewhere in the body?

• 16:12Andy Galpin?

  You can do an upper body strength test if you would like, although it's not technically something we do very often. One I'm generally more interested in is a leg extension test. And the reason I like this is a back squat is better. A barbell back squat is, look, that's my, like, that's my jam. That's my life, right? It's just very technically demanding and it's challenging. You need spotters, you need comfort. A lot goes into this. So for the average person, a leg extension test is fairly standardized. You don't have to worry about technique and people can just get into it and go. And so what you want to look for there is a couple of standards you want to hit. Again, a very simple answer here is body weight. Can you do a leg extension with your body weight? That's a pretty good number you want to be at.

• 16:52Andy Galpin?

  If you go up in age past age 40, every decade, that can come down about 10% and you'll still be in a pretty good slot. So if you're 50 years old and you're 170 pounds, if you can do one 60, you're in a pretty good sort of spot. And then you could just again, take it down about 10% every decade after 40. Any of these strength tests, they don't have to be done to a technical true one rep max. You can use what are called repetition conversion equations. So put on a load that you think is kind of close to your maximum and just do it for as many reps as you can. As long as it's under five reps total, you can then actually go online and enter that into any number of calculators anywhere and it will tell you, okay, you did three repetitions at 200 pounds.

• 17:35Andy Galpin?

  Your one rep max is probably 215, whatever. So there's estimate equations. So if you don't want to spend the time or you're not truly comfortable, like absolutely going to your true one rep max, just get to a number that's fairly close and do as many as you can. And then go online, again, one rep max estimator equations are everywhere. If you get past five repetitions or so, the accuracy of those equations starts going down. So don't put on something and go, I did 12 reps of it. And then try to figure out what your one rep max, it'll get close. You start moving past that, you're just getting worse and worse and worse accuracy. If neither of those are an option, another one I like a lot here is simply a front squat or a goblet squat hold. So you're going to hold a weight in front of your chest, whether a kettlebell is, is great here, a dumbbell is fine here.

• 18:19Andy Galpin?

  And you want to hold about half of your body weight, go all the way to the bottom position and try to hold that for about 45 seconds. So it's, it's a pretty good indicator of number one, your position. It's hard to be in a bad position for that long at that load as well as core strength and low back stability. It's more difficult than leg extension, but it's, it's quite a bit more functional and it's going to give you insight into a lot more areas than just the quadriceps.

• 18:42Andrew D. Huberman?

  So 45 seconds down at the bottom of the squat?

• 18:45Andy Galpin?

  Yep.

• 18:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  And then returning to a standing position?

• 18:47Andy Galpin?

  Yep. And if you can't do the return, I actually, I'm not that worried, but as long as you can hold that good position without a technical breakdown in that 45 seconds, that's a really good spot. As an intro, I want a third of your body weight for 30 seconds. It's important to add a couple of caveats to the strength training stuff. So there's two that I want to do. Number one, these are assuming you are technically proficient. So I don't want you to do any exercise to exhaustion or to maximum strength if you're not comfortable with your technique. So adjust these accordingly. If you're not comfortable with the front squat, do the leg extension. If you're not even comfortable with that, do something different. So we never want to utilize maximum testing if it's going to come with a consequence of serious acute injury. So that's the most important flag.

• 19:31Andy Galpin?

  The second one is your warm up protocol will have a huge effect on your actual results. And so whenever you do these tests, especially if you're going to do a test and then a test again down the line, you want to make sure that that warm up protocol is standardized.

• 19:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  What about hypertrophy?

• 19:46Andy Galpin?

  So the thing you want to pay attention to here is

• 19:50Andy Galpin?

  You have the aesthetic portion of hypertrophy. That's entirely up to you. There is no rationale. You can decide what you feel like looks good or doesn't look good. That's irrelevant. There is a sufficient amount you need to have where below that is detrimental to your health, regardless of your outcomes. And so the best way to do this is a couple of ways. Any sort of body composition test can do this. So whether this is a scan, like a DEXA scan, which is a gold standard, or other ways of bioelectrical impedance or other ways. So there's a ton of different tests you can get that are pretty close. Okay. So what you want to pay attention to when you get like a DEXA scan is a number called FFMI. And so that stands for fat-free mass index. So you can look at, again, any number of online calculators. These are all standard.

• 20:35Andy Galpin?

  So it doesn't actually matter where you pull them up. You don't have to worry about looking it up and whether or not it's right or not or something. And so that's going to actually tell you if you have sufficient muscle mass. And so a number you want to look for in general is something like if you're a man, your FFMI should be something like 20 or higher. If you're a woman, you want to look for something like 18. So that, those are the targets. If you get past like 24, 25 for a man, that's a lot of muscle mass, assuming you're reasonably lean. Now, if your FFMI is like 24, 25, but your body fat is like 40%, you're actually just a very, very large individual. You're not in a great spot. So when we say these sort of numbers, it's the assumption that you're probably sub 30% body fat for a man and sub 35 for a woman.

• 21:19Andy Galpin?

  So those are the numbers. There are online calculators. All you really need to know is your total body weight, your body fat percentage, and then your height. You can enter those three numbers and then they'll tell you your FFMI score and it'll correct for an adjusted value. And most of those will actually tell you the grading rubric in them. It's a good, average, bad, et cetera. But those are the numbers we look at. If you are, as a man, sub 17, as a woman, sub 15, now we're in an area of pretty severe physiological detriment for insufficient muscle.

• 21:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  What about muscular endurance? Is this where you're going to tell me I need to do wall sits?

• 21:56Andy Galpin?

  So this is really nice. You can do any number of tests here. A standard plank. Can you hold a front plank for 60 seconds? Can you hold a side plank for 45 seconds? If you're able to do a push-up. We want to be able to do for, again, for a general male, we should have no problem doing 25 plus consecutive push-ups. This would be a full, complete lockout of the elbows on the top and a full chest touch or close to it at the ground. You can do it different. It doesn't really matter, but just keep it standard from your pre-test, your post-test, if you're trying to mark progress.

• 22:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  And for females?

• 22:30Andy Galpin?

  So for those, those folks, anything, that's going to scale down a little bit, right? So basically you're looking at 15 is that marker, like 25 was for the male, where I want to see above 15. And if I do, we're good. Anything between 5 to 15 is a number of like, okay. If you're sub 5, we generally have some problems. And if that is different between 1 and 0, then like now we, 0 is, is a problem. So we should be able to do that. The other way to assess muscular endurance is take the exact strength test you did from the talk five minutes ago. Which one did you do? Load that to 75% and then do that for as many repetitions as you can. And that is a tremendous barometer of muscular endurance. So if you were able to do 200 pounds on your leg extension test, put 75% on that and do that as many repetitions as you can.

• 23:14Andy Galpin?

  You want to look for more than eight repetitions. If you are below eight repetitions, then we have a muscular endurance problem.

• 23:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  What about anaerobic capacity?

• 23:24Andy Galpin?

  This one's more challenging. You either have to go to a laboratory and do something like a Wing Gate test. So this is a 30-second maximal test where you're going to see how much work can you possibly do in that 30 seconds? If you don't have a loud system laboratory, you can, you can do this on any protocol you want. This could be sprinting. This can be on a, like an air bike. This could be on a rower, anything like that. Anything where you can exert maximal effort and you don't have to worry about technical problems. So I generally don't like to do things like a kettlebell swing or something like that. There's just too many other variables. You need to be able to go as hard as you possibly can, knowing you're going to get to a place of tremendous fatigue. Now, in the lab, we often use what's called a Basco protocol. And you're going to stand on a force plate and you're going to do as many vertical jumps

• 24:09Andy Galpin?

  as fast as you can, as high as you can for 60 seconds. And you're absolutely destroyed by like second 45. So we either use that Wing Gate protocol or that Basco protocol. If you want though, again, take any of those other places. 30 seconds or so, up to 45 seconds, up to a minute if you want. It doesn't really matter. We don't really have standards for these things because it's going to be different. How far you can travel in 30 seconds on a treadmill? Is this going to be so different than sprinting in the field or on the assault bike or whatever? So what you really want to worry about there is can you complete it? And then how awful do you feel afterwards?

• 24:48Andy Galpin?

  So what, what you really want to think about here is not those protocols, but this. You want to think about, can you get close to your predicted maximum heart rate? So the, the number we throw out is 220 minus your age. So if you're 50 years old, 220 minus 50, you should be able to get to a maximum heart rate of around 170 beats per minute. Now, that number is extremely generic. If you don't get there, that doesn't have any indication of your fitness. If you get higher, that doesn't mean you're any more fit. It's just a rough number. So here's what I'm, what I want you to do. In this case, your heart rate recovery is the better metric. So I want you to get up to a maximum heart rate and then test your heart rate recovery.

• 25:32Andy Galpin?

  And what you should be looking for there is about a half a beat recovery per second. You're going to get up to a place where you reach like absolute terrible exhaustion, maximum fatigue, test your heart rate, and then count, right? Have a timer going. Within 60 seconds, you should have, again, that half a beat per second. You should have a heart rate recovery of 30 beats per minute. Within the next minute, so two-minute recovery, it should be in half that, so 60 beats. Those are rough numbers to go by. And your three-minute recovery is again, half of that again. So that is the closest way. If your heart rate recovery is worse than that, then we know we have a problem in your anaerobic capacity or your cardiovascular capacity.

• 26:10Andrew D. Huberman?

  What about number eight, maximal heart rate? Because what you just described sounds a lot like maximal heart rate.

• 26:15Andy Galpin?

  So this is your VO2 max. So the gold standard here is to actually go into a laboratory and get this thing done. So we can actually run a VO2 max test where you put a mask on, collect all your gases and run you to there. And there's a very specific protocol for completion of a true maximum test. And any scientist will know that. If you don't have access to that, you can do a couple of tests. One of them is called a 12-minute Cooper's test. So this is simply time. You're going to run for 12 minutes as far as you can. And you're going to record the distance you covered. Again, you can go online to any number of calculators, enter that distance in, and that will tell you your estimated VO2 max.

• 26:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  So that's a 12-minute sprint?

• 26:52Andy Galpin?

  12-minute sprint. Maximum distance you can cover in 12 minutes. So that's anywhere between a mile to two-plus miles, depending on how fit you are. But you just do that Cooper 12-minute test. If you want, you can do a little gentler version of that. There, in fact, there is a one-mile walk test you can do. In this case, you have to have some sort of, either a stopwatch or ideally a heart rate monitor. And all you have to do is, this is a Rockport one-mile submaximal test. So you're going to walk a mile, record the time, record your heart rate at the end, enter those in, and those will give you, again, estimates of your VO2 max. So that's the, the like, oh my gosh, I can't run for 12 minutes as hard as I possibly can, or I don't want to do it. Or we have a lot of these in our executive program. It's like, my knee hurts too bad.

• 27:37Andy Galpin?

  I've got back pain when I run or whatever. Can I? Okay. And you did the walk test. And it's pretty accurate if you do it correctly. And again, those are all standard calculations. So anywhere you find those, you don't have to worry about the source. So you just enter your stuff in and they're going to be running off the same equation.

• 27:52Andrew D. Huberman?

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• 28:37Andrew D. Huberman?

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• 29:15Andy Galpin?

  Yep. So you really want to think about this as not a standard number. This is, you should maintain consistent work output for over 20-plus minutes. And this one, I want you to just pick something that it was in your lifestyle. So is there a loop around your house that you can do? Is there some protocol that you, you like to use for? And you're simply going to test your ability, can you maintain work without stopping? That's all it needs to be. Now, ideally, I personally like to throw a little twist in here, which is, can you do this with nasal breathing only? That's when I feel really good. If you can go 30 straight minutes without needing to take a break. Walking doesn't really cut it unless you're very, very unfit. In which case, if walking 30 minutes without a break is a challenge, okay, like there.

• 29:59Andy Galpin?

  But if you can, I want you moving at a non-walking pace. I don't care what zone this is, two, three, four, five, I don't care. Show me you can maintain minimum of 20 minutes of work with no breaks, no intervals, no downtime. And again, ideally breathing through your nose only.

• 30:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  How often should we be assessing our fitness for each and every one of these?

• 30:20Andy Galpin?

  Well, the way that I would say this is, I would recommend doing this full battery once a year. Now, you could do these technically all in two days. A three-day split here is probably best. So if you were to just say, hey, this is like testing week. I actually love this for beginning of the year. Or whenever it is that you sort of change your training. Just like once a year, you should probably go to a physician and get full blood work. You're going to be thinking, yeah, but I don't want to like give up on my exercise routine that week. Well, I promise you, you're not going to finish this week and think, I didn't do very much work this week. It's going to feel great. And then you're going to have a very nice barometer of exactly where you need to change and prioritize your training for the next quarter or half a year, or wherever you want to go. So which order to do them in? The non-fatiguing tests you can do whenever.

• 31:03Andy Galpin?

  The FFMI, the body fat composition, all this stuff can be done wherever. I generally like to do that, though, as your very first activity. The reason is, we know that acute exercise can heavily influence things like body composition measurements because of inflammation, water storage, et cetera. So it's easiest to just sort of get that off of a 48-hour rest. You want to make sure you don't do any hard exercise the day before a body composition test and probably 48 hours before that. So just start yourself off with that. Your movement test can be the same thing. You don't want to try to do a assessment of how well you're squatting if you're incredibly sore from your brutal squatting test. So tend to do those things when you're the most fresh. Then what you want to do is any skill or maximum strength or power goes at the very

• 31:47Andy Galpin?

  beginning of the day. Any fatiguing thing happens at the end. And so you could easily do this. All right, I'm going to do my power test, my broad jump. You're not going to be fatigued at all from that. And on the same day, since I'm already pretty warmed up, now I'm going to roll right into my leg strength test. And since I'm really warmed up, I'm going to do my leg muscular endurance test right there. So this is a very common strategy we use. We do our one rep max leg extension, five minutes, seven minutes, whatever we need to do, come back, load it to 75%. Do as many reps as you can. Boom. You could roll right into then your upper body test or your grip strength test or anything else that you want to do there. So you can knock out your strength testing and muscular endurance testing all in one day.

• 32:29Andy Galpin?

  You could do your performance diagnostic, your power jump test, your strength and your muscle endurance, and all that stuff is knocked out. You're going to have to come back on a separate day and do your anaerobic test. This is 30 seconds maximum endurance, things like that. You could, though, if you wanted, do that after your long-duration tests. Your long-duration test is, again, is just going to function as like a big warm-up. Or you could flip those things, or you could do them on separate days. You're going to have to do your VO2 max test on its own day, for the most part, unless you wanted to do, again, your movement or your body composition sort of before those things. So you really have the ability to kind of mix and match. Ideally, this most realistically probably takes three days.

• 33:10Andy Galpin?

  You don't need to be optimal in all of these areas to be quote-unquote optimal health from this perspective. You just want to make sure, again, there's no severe performance anchors. This is what we call them, right? We don't want any of these severe constraints because you're going to get limited by that thing. And so what you want to do is move that up to just sufficient or concerning, right? And get it away from that. If you do that, that thing's not going to catch you. You're going to be able to continue to pursue optimization in any of the one things that you have a specific passion for, which is generally what moves people, right? You train so that you feel better. You train because you know there are all these benefits to it, and geez, this audience probably could list hundreds of them.

• 33:53Andy Galpin?

  But you also train because you generally like to get better at something. A lot of us like have something. And so you want to make sure that you're not going, hey, I know you're good at endurance, but you really shouldn't train anymore. We don't want that message, not at all. I want you to love your training. So before we close out, I want to go back and finish off the metrics for VO2 max because I don't actually think I gave you numbers on that. So in general, for men, a minimum number we want to look at here is 35 milliliters per kilogram per minute, and for women, that'd be about 30. We could actually push a lot higher on those things. In reality, I want to see men above 50. And I'm not even really stoked until I get above 55. In fact, if I want to see men above 55, I really want to see women above 50.

• 34:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  I want to add just one more metric to our discussion today, which is really just my way of saying thank you, because if there were a metric for amount of useful information per sentence spoke, you would be at the upper level of that metric. You have this amazing ability to provide so much knowledge in a clear and concise and today listed-out format that is both interesting, grounded in science, and actionable. So on behalf of everyone listening, and certainly for myself as well, I just want to say thank you.

• 35:09Andy Galpin?

  Well, I appreciate the compliments, and I'm looking forward to the next conversation, jumping right into speed, strength, and hypertrophy training, and where the evidence base and best practices for protocols in those areas.