In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explain how to build endurance and describe targeted protocols to enhance different types of endurance. I discuss how endurance—the ability to sustain effort—requires the coordination of physical and mental systems driven by energy availability, brain willpower, and specific training adaptations in the muscles, heart, lungs and neurons. I explain conditioning protocols designed to enhance four types of endurance, from long-duration steady state to muscular endurance and high-intensity intervals, and how each training style triggers unique adaptations in the body and brain, such as improved mitochondrial function and oxygen utilization. Additionally, I highlight the crucial role of hydration and electrolytes, which are essential for neural function and influence the brain’s willpower to sustain effort. 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. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps 00:00:00 Huberman Lab Essentials; Build Endurance 00:00:50 Energy Sources, ATP, Oxygen 00:04:14 Neurons & Willpower, Glucose & Electrolytes 00:09:19 Heart, Lungs; Physiology & Performance Limiting Factors 00:10:35 Sponsor: AG1 00:12:30 Muscular Endurance, Protocol, Concentric Movements, Mitochondria 00:19:10 Sponsors: LMNT & Eight Sleep 00:22:00 Long-Duration Endurance, Efficiency, Mitochondria, Capillaries 00:25:54 High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), Anaerobic Endurance, Protocol 00:32:33 High-Intensity Aerobic Endurance, Adaptations 00:35:30 Sponsor: Function 00:37:26 Brain & Body Adaptations, Heart 00:40:40 Hydration, Tool: Galpin Equation 00:42:21 Supplements, Stimulants, Magnesium Malate 00:43:11 Recap & Key Takeaways 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'd like to talk about endurance and how to build endurance and how to use endurance for the health of your entire body.
endurance as the name suggests is our ability to engage in continuous bouts of exercise or continuous movement or continuous effort of any kind it is clear that cardiovascular exercise exercise where you're getting your heart rate up continuously for a period of time is vital for tapping into and enhancing various aspects
of our biology in the body and in the brain such that our brain can perform work for longer periods of time, focused work, learning, et cetera. The key thing to understand about energy production in the body is this thing that we call ATP. ATP is required for anything that requires energy, for anything that you do that requires effort.
So our muscles and our neurons use different fuel sources to generate ATP. The ones that are used first for short bouts of intense activity are things like phosphocreatine. If you've only heard about creatine as a supplement, well, phosphocreatine actually exists on our muscles, and that's why people take creatine. You can load your muscles with more creatine.
Phosphocreatine is great for short, intense bouts of effort. Then you start to tap into things like glucose, which is literally just carbohydrate. It's just sugar that's in your blood. And then if you keep pushing, you start to tap into other fuel sources like glycogen. And you have fat stored in adipose tissue.
Even if you have very, very low body fat percentage, you can extract lipids, fatty acids from that body fat. It's like a storage pack. It is a storage pack for energy that can be converted to ATP. Without going into any more detail,
When I say today energy, or I say ATP, just remember that regardless of your diet, regardless of your nutritional plan, your body has the capacity to use creatine, glucose, glycogen, lipids, and if you're ketogenic, ketones in order to generate fuel, energy. Now, the other crucial point is that in order to complete that process of taking these fuels and converting them into energy,
Most of the time you need oxygen. You need air basically in your system. Now it's not actual air. You need oxygen molecules in your system, comes in through your mouth and your nose, goes to your lungs and distributes via the bloodstream. Oxygen is not a fuel, but like a fire that has no oxygen, you can't actually burn the logs. But when you blow a lot of,
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