Name: Best Exercises for Brain Health, Performance & Motivation | Dr. Andrew Huberman
Uploaded: 2025-01-16T13:25:12.000Z
Duration: 13 min 46 s
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We are, however, going to talk about the practical steps that you can take to make sure that you're getting the most brain benefits from your exercise.

Based on what we've talked about so far, as well as a broad survey of the literature, and again, it is a big literature, here are the four things that I believe everyone should be doing every single week in terms of their exercise program.

Sentences with advanced comparative

I believe that everybody should include both resistance training, could be body weight, free weights, machines, some combination of those, as well as cardiovascular training each week, and that the cardiovascular training should include both high intensity interval training at least once per week, and some so-called long, slow distance training or zone two type training each week.

Whatever exercise you happen to be doing or you happen to be planning, I do believe it should include four things specifically to improve brain health and performance, although these four things will also benefit you at the level of your bodily health, no doubt.

The first thing is to include at least one workout per week that is of a long, slow distance nature.

So zone two type cardio, maybe you get a little bit up into zone three, but basically jogging, swimming, rowing, any activity that you can carry out consistently for 45 to 75 minutes without getting injured, right?

People always say, well, do I have to run?

No, if you don't like running and running's too hard on your body, or you'll get injured, then do something else.

Maybe you do the row, or maybe you ride a stationary bike, maybe you ride a road bike, but at least one long, slow distance training session per week is going to be very beneficial for brain health because of the way that it impacts cerebral blood flow and to filial health, and basically the way that cardiovascular health improves brain function.

The second thing is to include at least one workout per week that's of the so-called high intensity interval training type.

Now, there are a lot of different types of high intensity interval training out there.

In fact, Dr. Andy Galpin says, you know, we'll hear about, say like the four by four by four protocol, right?

Four minutes of going as hard as you can for four minutes, basically where there's no variation in the intensity through that whole four minutes, you're going hard the whole four minutes, but only as hard as you can for the entire four minutes, then resting four minutes, and then repeating that four by four cycle four times.

But Dr. Andy Galpin would be the first to tell you that you probably also get great results from a three by three by four type of workout, or a six by six by six type of workout.

And generally when one finishes that type of workout, your heart rate is very, very elevated.

Now, I don't tend to track my heart rate during exercise, perhaps I should, but I don't like to get, you know, too weighed down with technology when I exercise.

I like to go more on feel, that's just me.

I find that my heart rate is extremely high right as I get off that thing.

But, you know, five minutes later, it's back to baseline.

And I certainly feel energized after doing that to go do some cognitive work, to shower up and to head to work, that sort of thing.

So pick a high intensity interval training session that you can do at least once per week, and that works for you.

And again, it's really important to pick a form of exercise for the high intensity interval training that you can do without getting injured.

You know, one way to really limit your brain health and bodily health is to get injured and to not be able to exercise.

The third would be TUT, T-U-T, time under tension.

If you're doing resistance training, and I do believe everybody should be doing resistance training, there are a near infinite number of different ways to do resistance training, as you well know.

You can move the weight ballistically, you can control the eccentric, you can do any number of different things, but some proportion of the exercises that you do during your resistance training during the week should include time under tension training, where you're really emphasizing the contraction of the muscles, the slow lowering of the weight, as well as the lifting of the weight, contracting the muscles as hard as you can.

And this is really to emphasize the nerve to muscle pathways and the way that time under tension promotes the release of things from muscles into the bloodstream that can positively impact the brain, as well as the way that focusing your brain on exercises such that you're isolating muscles, or even if you're not doing a so-called isolation exercise, maybe you're doing a compound exercise like a dip or a squat or a deadlift, but that really concentrating on the muscles that are supposed to be managing the work and not just moving the weight, but challenging the muscles, this very important thing, challenging the muscles using the weight, not lifting weights or moving weights.

By focusing on time under tension, you will of course get benefits as it relates to hypertrophy and strength increases, in particular hypertrophy.

And time under tension training is very beneficial for the deployment of the molecules that work both within the body, but also within the brain to support brain health and function, both in the short-term and most particularly in the long-term.

I tend to make a full third of my resistance training just focused on time under tension.

So if I do two exercises, typically the first exercise is a compound exercise.

So if it's a shoulder press, for instance, I'll do a couple of warmup sets and then the work sets, I try and move the weight.

And generally I tend to work pretty heavy in the, for me, heavy for me in the four to eight repetition range, I'll try and move the weight as quickly as I can on the concentric phase, the lifting phase, and then at least twice as slow on the lowering phase.

And then I pause while keeping the muscles under tension.

I never really set the weight down at all during a set, if I'm doing my job, that is.

And then the second exercise that I do, I really focus even more on time under tension.

So whether or not it's a compound exercise or an isolation exercise, again, compound exercise, multiple joints moving, isolation exercise, single joints moving, I'll really concentrate on keeping the muscle under tension the entire time.

In fact, I'll lift the weight off the stack if it's a machine, or if it's a free weight, just a little bit, engage the muscles that I'm trying to activate or train, and then keep it under tension throughout the concentric, the contraction and the lowering of that weight, and then never actually set it down until the end of the set, AKA increasing the time under tension.

And then the fourth category of exercise that I believe everybody should include in their existing workouts or add if you're not currently working out is some sort of explosive jumping and or eccentric landing.

Now the explosive jumping with eccentric landing, you could do on a mat, right?

Most people won't do it on concrete because they're worried about impact, that sort of thing.

But let's say you have some mats or you're on a lawn or you're on dirt or you're jumping up onto a box as high as you can and then jumping down and controlling the eccentric portion.

Again, pick something that you can do safely, progress slowly, right?

If you're going to jump up and off boxes, you want to start with low boxes.

I know that many of you can jump quite high and I'm not one of those people, but if you can jump quite high and then you're going to jump off that box and you're going to do this as a new thing, you'll notice that anytime you add eccentric training to your workout regimen, it tends to increase soreness a lot.

And often people get injured by including a new form of movement, in particular form of movement that you can fall and or not just falling, but by including a lot of eccentric movements that they hadn't been doing previously.

Again, be really safe about this, but that loading of the skeleton through eccentric movement and controlling the descent, super important, not just for your body, not just to avoid falls, not just to improve coordination and a bunch of other great things, but also to get that release of osteocalcin, the improvements in BDNF, brain performance, brain health, and so on.

And I'm guessing that most of you can probably incorporate these four things, long, slow distance, high intensity interval training, some deliberate time under tension training during your resistance training, again, could be done with body weight, doesn't have to even be done with machines or free weights, as well as some explosive and eccentric control training without adding any time to your existing workout regimen, simply by incorporating it into whatever workouts you happen to already be doing.

And the explosive eccentric control training could be done, frankly, at the end of a run, you could do it at the end of your zone two day, you could do it on the end of a hit day, whenever you do it and however you do it, just try not to get injured, that's the most important thing.

Well, it turns out if you get injured, you can't exercise.

Sometimes you can, and it's good to continue exercising provided you're not aggravating that injury, but a lot of times you can't.

And there are actually studies of how quickly your brain starts to suffer if you don't exercise.

Now, most of these studies have been done on very experienced athletes, or people that are exercising a lot and then are forced to detrain or stop training completely.

And in some of these studies, they've done this independent of anything else.

It's not like these people got sick from a cold or flu and then had to stop training.

They'll just have them train a lot and then stop training and then start to look at some of the effects that occur within the brain.

And the major thing that I was able to extract from that literature is that after about 10 days of not doing any training, that is no cardiovascular training, no resistance training, you start to see significant decrements in brain oxygenation levels, as well as some other markers that are indicative of brain health, or that would be indicative of brain health if they were to continue.

So if you haven't been training at all for a long period of time, your brain is suffering.

The good news is you can start benefiting your brain very quickly by exercising.

Okay, so I listed off the four types of training that you absolutely want to include in your exercise regimen if improving your brain health and performance is one of your goals.

And obviously that should be one of your goals.

Your brain is your central command center for your entire brain, but also your body.

There's a fifth category of exercise that everyone should include if one's goal is to have a better and more resilient and indeed a better performing brain compared to your age match controls.

And to be direct, that fifth category is the one that you absolutely don't want to do.

Well, there's an absolutely beautiful literature about a brain area.

I've talked a little bit about this before in our episode about tenacity and willpower.

I've talked about it on a few other podcasts as well.

It came up during the podcast episode that I did with the one and only David Goggins.

And that brain area is the anterior mid-cingulate cortex.

The anterior mid-cingulate cortex, very briefly is a brain area that is powerfully engaged when we lean into challenges, including physical challenges, but also mental challenges, emotional challenges.

And we get that, I'm going to push through tenacity and engaging our willpower.

There's a category of humans referred to as super agers.

Super agers are people that defy the aging process, at least at the level of cognition.

They maintain the volume of certain brain areas well into older age, when their age match counterparts are losing the same brain areas.

Meaning people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s have brain areas that are shrinking.

Even in cases where people don't have Alzheimer's dementia, areas of the brain are shrinking.

Super agers are people that maintain the healthy, full volume of these brain areas.

And indeed, in some cases, the volume, the size of these brain areas continues to increase into their later years.

One of the brain areas that maintains or increases volume in these super agers is the anterior mid-cingulate cortex.

What can allow you to activate and increase the size of your anterior mid-cingulate cortex?

Well, it's very simple, to do things that you don't want to do.

I should be very clear, we're talking about things that can be done safely, that aren't going to damage you physically or psychologically, but we are talking about exercise, or in some cases, cognitive exercise, but today we're talking about physical exercise that you would much rather not do.

So if you're like me and you love resistance training, it can be hard, right?

Some days I want to do it more than others, and sometimes the workouts are much harder than others, but I love it.

But if I want to maintain and increase the size of my anterior mid-cingulate cortex, I absolutely have to find some form of physical exercise that I would much rather not do.

But as I mentioned before, that's also safe physically, and that's not going to damage me emotionally.

I don't know what kind of physical exercise would damage me emotionally, but you get the point.

So presumably most of you are doing some form of that.

So maybe you're doing more cardio than resistance training.

Maybe you're doing more resistance training than cardio.

If you're interested in a zero cost program where you can start to sculpt out a idealized program for you, but you want to start with a kind of general template, we have a newsletter that you can access at hubermanlab.com, zero cost.

You don't even have to sign up to access it, although if you want to sign up for the newsletter, that could be valuable to you too.

Go to newsletter, scroll down to foundational fitness protocol.

It describes the program that I've been following, essentially for 30 plus years.

And again, it's about three cardiovascular training sessions per week, three resistance training sessions per week.

The cardiovascular training ranges in time from about 12 minutes, and then a longer 60 minute session.