Smash Notes
GUEST SERIES | Dr. Andy Galpin: How to Assess & Improve All Aspects of Your Fitness
In this episode 1 of a 6-part special series, Andy Galpin, PhD, professor of kinesiology at California State University, Fullerton and world expert on exercise science, explains the 9 different types of exercise adaptations that can be used to transform the functional capacities and aesthetics of our body, and benefits each adaptation has for our health…
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Notes
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On Huberman Lab, the physiological adaptations from exercise bucket into nine areas. The first area is skill or technique: learning to move better, more efficiently, with a specific position and timing and sequence. Skill development covers running more effectively, practicing a skill like shooting a ball or an implement, or swinging a golf club.
The second area is speed, simply moving at a higher velocity or with a better rate of acceleration. Power is very similar and comes next, and power is speed multiplied by force. Force, or strength, sits on top of power. Force and strength are synonymous terms for how effectively you can move something. Strength is often confused with muscular endurance.
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On Huberman Lab, the non-exercising twin was as strong as the endurance-training twin, and the measures often favored the non-exerciser. Grip strength stood out, and the vertical jump and leg extension power did too. Genetics give a clear starting place, and the strength measures are very responsive anyway. Distance running alone does not build them.
The non-exerciser was in his mid-fifties, did not exercise, and paid no real attention to his diet, and he was still in pretty good shape. It is unknown whether the endurance training reduced the other twin's strength. In both studies, the endurance-trained people were much better off on measures tied to how long a person lives, including VO2 max, and the training still did not reach strength. Aging selectively reduces fast-twitch fibers. Daily living keeps slow-twitch fibers active, while fast-twitch fibers need high-force work or they are not kept. Without fast-twitch fibers, there is no speed to get a foot out in front in time and no eccentric strength to stop a fall.
High functionality takes something besides distance running. Strength training alone has the mirror limit. Endurance training improved VO2 max and the other measures tied to how long a person lives, and it still left strength behind. The aging literature is clear about maintaining strength and fast-twitch fibers.
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On Huberman Lab, the limits of physiological adaptation are darn near boundless given enough exposure. After 35 years of extremely consistent training, one identical twin's muscle morphology was completely different than his identical twin with the exact same DNA.
Two examples cover people doing endurance work for a number of years and the benefits and functionality that work gives them. On the question of whether the opposite experiment has been done or observed, where somebody just weight lifted or just sprinted for a number of years, On Huberman Lab, it is not known that an identical twin control exists. The expectation stated on Huberman Lab is that the person who sprints or does heavy squats and explosive work would then have more fast-twitch muscle fibers in the quad, and the non-exercising counterpart would have fewer.
The show states outright that the specific data on endurance level in somebody who has just done strength training or just sprinted are not available. Studies on lifelong strength trainers are only starting to come out. There are not a lot of people who have been lifting weights for thirty plus years, while a whole swath of people have been doing endurance training for that long.
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On Huberman Lab, people walking into a gym used to make every lifting choice on the assumption that maximizing muscle size was the goal, and that assumption is clearly no longer the case. The pendulum of training is shifting into the middle, so each adaptation can be chased on purpose.
Bodybuilding used to run the whole approach. Other forms of exercise filled the gaps and then introduced problems of their own. Maximizing muscle strength points to the powerlifting community. Maximizing muscle power points to the weightlifting community. For muscular endurance or well-roundedness, Andy Galpin looks toward CrossFit communities, obstacle course races, or functionality training, and frames that look as a maybe. Nine adaptations were listed, and health was not one of them, because one person's optimal health differs from another's. More hypertrophy comes from bodybuilding concepts. Enough size, or a wish to add no more, leads to a different question: how to get stronger without getting bigger, and the answer given is powerlifting concepts. More power, more speed without losing fat, and physique changes each sit with a community that already specializes in them.
Protocols can now be generated by picking and choosing across the styles so the exact adaptations show up and the unwanted ones stay out.
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On Huberman Lab, speed draws little separate worry because a power test already shows a lot about speed, and a power test is easier to do and easier to train for most people. The cost-free version is a simple broad jump. Stand in a normal position, jump as far in front as possible, and measure the distance from the start to the back of the heel where it lands.
The super basic number is your own height. A person who is five foot five should hit five foot five, and a person who is six foot five should hit six foot five. The target is not perfect. Females should bring the distance down about fifteen percent, because females do not have the power men have in general. On Huberman Lab, the height match is a very crude number.
A high-performance NFL player who is six feet tall jumps about nine to ten to eleven feet. The height-long broad jump stays a crude basic target for most people, while a six-foot high-performance NFL player covers nine to ten to eleven feet.
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Andy Galpin measures grip with a hand grip dynamometer and wants a minimum of forty kilograms, with a score past sixty as a really good spot. A man under forty kilograms needs grip training. For a woman, about thirty-five kilograms is the cutoff. Above fifty-five, grip can be added to training, and he is not worried about leaving grip out. Above fifty is the cutoff he wants a woman to reach.
The dynamometer costs twenty to a hundred dollars. Galpin says the tools cost hundreds of dollars when he was in school and now sell for twenty-five bucks, which he calls basically cost-free. Test the right hand and the left hand and read the score in kilograms. Watch for ten percent variation between the hands. The non-dominant hand should not be much weaker and is often stronger, because the dominant hand handles precision work such as writing, so the two hands should stay close. Under forty kilograms, a man needs the training. About thirty-five kilograms is the female cutoff, above fifty-five grip can be optional, and above fifty is where Galpin wants a woman to land.
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On Huberman Lab, a front squat or goblet squat hold stands in when a one-rep max is not the test. About half of body weight, held at the bottom for about forty-five seconds, shows position, core strength, and low back stability, and the result covers more than the quadriceps.
A kettlebell or a dumbbell stays in front of the chest. The lifter goes all the way to the bottom and holds for about forty-five seconds. Staying in a bad position is hard for that long at that load. The hold is more difficult than the leg extension, more functional, and it gives insight into more areas than just the quadriceps. Returning to standing is not required. A good position without a technical breakdown across the forty-five seconds is the standard. As an intro, the load is a third of body weight for 30 seconds.
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On the show, reliability beats validity for real-world fitness testing. A tool can fall short of being extremely precise and still hold value when it is reliable. The use of that tool is as a metric of whether fitness got better.
The aim is the tool that is both the most precise and the most reliable. When that tool is unavailable, the path is a reliable tool and measurement for consistency. Body composition has inherent error, and the size of the error is not the same for every measure: some errors are smaller and some errors are larger. Standardization within the testing protocol allows progress to be measured and shows where fitness stands.
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