Properties5
| Type | Article |
| Author | Andrew Huberman |
| Date | May 31, 2021 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLr2RKoD-oY |
| Note created | May 31, 2021 |
We talked about how to use cold specifically to enhance fat loss. I described a protocol involving getting into cold of some sort, whether or not it’s ice bath, cold shower, some form of cold could even be a river or an ocean if you have access to that and inducing shiver and then getting out, not crossing your arms or huddling but allowing that cold to evaporate off you and continuing to shiver and then getting back into the colder environment of water or stream or shower, et cetera.
If I decide that I’m going to pick my pen up and put it down, which is what I’m doing right now, my upper motor neurons were involved in generating that movement. Those upper motor neurons send signals down to my spinal cord where there are two categories of neurons. One are the lower motor neurons and those lower motor neurons send little wires that we call axons out to our muscles and cause those muscles to contract. They do that by dumping chemicals onto the muscle. In fact, the chemical is acetylcholine.
I’ve talked before about acetylcholine in the brain which is vitally important for focus and actually can gait neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change in response to experience. But in the neuromuscular system, acetylcholine released from motor neurons is the way the only way that muscles can contract.
there’s another category of neurons in the spinal cord called central pattern generators or CPGs. And those are involved in rhythmic movements. Anytime we’re walking or doing something where we don’t have to think about it to do it deliberately, it’s just happening reflexively that central pattern generators and motor neurons.
You might think, oh [the human brain] is so large for thinking and for creativity. Ah, no when you look at the amount of real estate in the brain that’s devoted to different aspects of life, it’s mainly vision, our ability to see and movement, our ability to engage in lots of different kinds of movements.
Our body is covered with flexors and extensors all over. So for instance, our bicep is a flexor and our tricep is an extensor. Those are what are called antagonistic muscles. They move the limbs in opposite directions.
Now with muscles, they don’t function on fats normally … is based on a process of glycolysis, the breakdown of things like glycogen and glucose into energy. … the only things you need to know about this process is that glucose and glycogen are broken down into pyruvate. You a little bit of energy from that.
Lactate has three functions, all of which are really interesting and really important. First of all, it’s a buffer against acidity. You don’t want muscle to get too acidic because it can’t function. … It’s also a fuel. When you feel that burn, lactate is shuttled to those areas of the muscle, and there’s an actual fuel burning process where in the absence of oxygen you can continue to generate muscular contractions. … when I say that lactate acts as a hormonal signal, what I mean is that it’s in a position to influence tissues that are outside of the muscle. And basically it can send signals to the heart, to the liver and to the brain, and it can have effects on the heart, the liver and the brain that are very positive.
I mentioned that burn is present from lack of oxygen being present. And then the hydrogen comes in and you get this lactate. But this process of lactate acting as a buffer of fuel and a positive hormonal signal for other tissues, occurs only if there’s oxygen. So if you feel the burn, you definitely want to focus on your breathing at that point. That would be the time to take deep inhales and try and bring more oxygen into your system.
Henneman size principle essentially says that we recruit what are called motor units. Motor units are just the connections between nerve and muscle from in a pattern that staircases from low threshold to high threshold. What this means is when you pick up something that is light, you’re going to use the minimum amount of nerve to muscle energy in order to move that thing. Likewise, when you pick up an object that’s heavy, you’re going to use the minimum amount of nerve to muscle connectivity and energy in order to move that object. So it’s basically a conservation of energy principle. Now, if you continue to exert effort of movement, what will happen is you will tend to recruit more and more motor units with time. … As you recruit more and more of these motor units, these connections between these lower motor neurons and muscle, that’s when you start to get changes in the muscle.
There are three major stimuli for changing the way that muscle works and making muscles stronger, larger, or better in some way. And those are stress, tension, and damage. Those three things don’t necessarily all have to be present but stress of some kind has to exist.
When you stress a muscle properly, or you give it sufficient tension, or you damage the muscle just enough, there’s an adaptive response that takes place where protein is synthesized. And it’s a very specific protein, it’s myosin. The myosin gets thicker.
If you can contract the calf muscle hard to the point where that muscle almost feels like it’s starting to cramp like it hurts just a little bit, that can be extremely painful nor is it going to have no sensation whatsoever, chances are you have very good upper motor neuron to calf control. And chances are, if you can isolate that what they call the brain or mind muscle connection, and you can contract the muscles to the point where it cramps a little bit, that you hold a decent to high potential to change the strength and the size of that muscle if you train it properly. Now, if you have a hard time doing that, chances are you won’t be able to do that.
Whereas with strength, it’s about using musculature as a system moving weights, moving resistance, moving the body. The specific goal of hypertrophy is to isolate specific nerve to muscle pathways so that you stimulate the chemical and signaling transduction events in muscle so that those muscles respond by getting larger.
once you know roughly your one repetition maximum, the maximum amount of weight that you can perform an exercise with for one repetition in good form, full range of motion, that it’s very clear that moving weights or using bands or using body weight, for instance in the 30% to 80% of one-rep maximum. That is going to be the most beneficial range in terms of muscle hypertrophy and strength. So muscle growth and strength. And there will be a bias if you’re moving weights that are in the 75%, 80% range or maybe even going above that 85 and 90%, you’re going to bias your improvements towards strength gains. This is true. And if you use weights that are in the 30% of your one-repetition maximum or 40% or 50% and doing many more repetitions, of course, then you are biasing towards hypertrophy and what some people like to call muscle endurance.
it appears that five sets per week in this 30% to 80% of the one repetition maximum range, getting close to failure, or occasionally actually going to full muscular failure, which isn’t really full muscular failure, but the inability to generate a contraction of the muscle or move the weight in good form. I’ll go deeper into that in a moment. But about five sets per week is what’s required just to maintain your muscle.
Now, how many sets you perform is going to depend on the intensity of the work that you perform. This is where it gets a little bit controversial but I think nowadays most people agree and Dr. Galpin confirmed that 10% not to be confused with the 10% we discussed earlier, but 10% of the sets of a given workout or 10% of workouts overall should be of the high-intensity sort where one is actually working to muscular failure.
If you can generate high-intensity muscular contractions using your brain, using your neurons, it will take fewer sets in order to stimulate the muscle to maintain itself and to stimulate the muscle in order to grow or get stronger.
resistance workouts of any kind tend to be best favored by workouts that are somewhere between 45 minutes and 60 minutes. And generally not longer than 60 minutes because that’s when all the things like cortisol and some of the inflammatory pathways really start to create a situation in the muscle and in the body that’s not so great for you.