In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I discuss how to build muscle strength and size (hypertrophy) and cover key training principles to enhance athletic performance and offset age-related muscle decline. I explain how the nervous system drives muscle movement, the key differences between training for hypertrophy or strength, and resistance training protocols to build muscle for performance and healthy aging. Additionally, I discuss tools for assessing recovery and the role of key nutrients—such as creatine and electrolytes—in supporting muscle development and performance. This episode provides actionable, science-backed strategies to enhance movement, preserve strength with age, and boost energy levels. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Huberman Lab Essentials are short episodes focused on essential science and protocol takeaways from past full-length Huberman Lab episodes. Watch or listen to the full-length episode at hubermanlab.com. Timestamps 00:00:00 Huberman Lab Essentials; Muscle 00:02:02 Muscle & Nervous System 00:03:24 Sponsors: Eight Sleep & LMNT 00:06:03 Strength & Aging, Henneman's Size Principle, Use Heavy Weights? 00:10:09 3 Stimuli, Muscle Strength vs Muscle Growth (Hypertrophy) 00:12:11 Tool: Resistance Training Protocol, Increase Muscle Strength 00:15:55 Sponsor: AG1 00:17:50 Tool: Advanced Resistance Training & Volume; Speed, Rest 00:21:12 Testing for Recovery, Heart Rate Variability, Grip Strength 00:24:29 Sponsor: Function 00:26:16 Testing for Recovery, Carbon Dioxide Tolerance 00:29:20 Ice Bath Timing; NSAIDs & Exercise 00:30:34 Salt & Electrolytes; Creatine; Leucine Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
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. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. Today, I want to talk about something that is vitally important for not just athletic performance, but for your entire life and indeed for your longevity, and that's muscle.
And one of the things that's exquisite and fantastic about the human brain is that it can direct all sorts of different kinds of movement, different speeds of movement, movement of different durations, all of that, is governed by the relationship between the nervous system, neurons, and their connections to muscle. So today, as always, we're going to talk a little bit of mechanism.
I'm going to explain how neurons control muscle. We will touch on some nutritional themes and how that relates to muscle in particular, a specific amino acid that if it's available in your bloodstream frequently enough and at sufficient levels can help you build and improve the quality of muscle. We are also going to talk about recovery. That's when muscle grows.
That's when muscle gets more flexible. None of that actually happens during training. It happens after training. Most people, when they hear the word muscle, they just think about strength. But of course, muscles are involved in everything that we do. They are involved in speaking. They're involved in sitting and standing up. They're involved in lifting objects, including ourselves.
They are absolutely essential for maintaining how we breathe. They're absolutely essential for ambulation, for moving and for skills of any kind. So, When we think about muscle, we don't just want to think about muscle, the meat that is muscle, but what controls that muscle. And no surprise, what controls muscle is the nervous system.
The nervous system does that through three main nodes of control. Basically, we have upper motor neurons in our motor cortex, so those are in our skull, and those are involved in deliberate 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. Now 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. Anytime we're doing something deliberately, the top-down control, as we call it, from the upper motor neurons comes in and takes control of that system. So it's really simple. You've only got three ingredients.
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