Huberman Lab
Essentials: How to Exercise for Strength Gains & Hormone Optimization | Dr. Duncan French
18 Sep 2025
In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, my guest is Dr. Duncan French, PhD, the vice president of performance at the UFC Performance Institute and a world-class performance specialist. We explain how resistance training and acute stress impact hormones and outline specific weight training protocols to increase testosterone to support strength and hypertrophy. We also discuss how to use cold and heat exposure to enhance recovery and performance. Finally, we explain how to match nutrition to training goals and improve metabolic flexibility. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AGZ by AG1: https://drinkagz.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman Timestamps (0:00) Duncan French (0:20) Resistance Training & Hormones, Testosterone, Men vs Women (4:32) Increase Testosterone & Resistance Intensity, Tool: 6 x 10 Protocol (7:53) Rest Periods & Metabolic Stimulus (9:26) Sponsor: Function (11:07) Weekly Training Sessions, Varied Intensity & Volume, Recovery (12:34) Short-Term Stress, Testosterone & Performance, Mindset (15:05) Deliberate Cold Exposure, Mindset & Recovery (17:14) Tool: Cold Periodization, Recovery & Goals (22:12) Sponsor: Eight Sleep (23:53) Sport, Skill Training & Quality Movement, Fatigue; Mental Fatigue (26:19) High-Intensity Training & Carbohydrates; Exogenous Ketones; Ketogenic Diet (29:32) Metabolic Efficiency, Carbohydrates & Fat Stores, Tool: Nutrition Periodization (32:45) Sponsor: AGZ by AG1 (34:14) Heat Adaptation, Sauna, Sweating (37:14) Training, Nutrition & Adaptations, Tool: 12 Week Program (39:06) Acknowledgements 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. And now, my conversation with Dr. Duncan French. Duncan French, great to see you again.
Likewise, likewise. Thank you. I don't often have many Stanford professors in the Performance Institute, so I'm really excited.
Well, this place is amazing and you have a huge role in making it what it is. I found dozens of papers on how weight training impacts hormones and your name's on all of them. What is it about engaging motor neurons under heavy loads sends a signal to the endocrine system, hey, release testosterone. I've never actually been able to find that in a textbook.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a stress response, right? It's mechanical stress and it's metabolic stress. And these are, you know, the downstream regulation of testosterone release at the gonads comes from many different areas. You know, my work primarily looked at, you know, catecholamines and sympathetic arousal.
So things like epinephrine, adrenaline. Correct.
Yeah, epinephrine, adrenaline, noradrenaline, how they were signaling cascade using the HPA axis, releasing cortisol, and then looking at how that also influenced the adrenal medulla to release androgens and then signaling that at the gonads.
That raises an interesting question. So in presumably weight training in women, people who don't have testes, also it increases testosterone. And is that purely through the adrenals? When women lift weights, their adrenal glands release testosterone?
Absolutely. I mean, that is the only area of testosterone release for females. And yes, it's the same downstream cascade. Obviously, the extent to which it happens is significantly less in females. But there's good data out there that shows
know females can increase their anabolic environment their internal anabolic milieu um using resistance training as a stressor and then they get the consequent muscle tissue growth um you know whether it's tendon ligament adaptations you know the the beneficial consequences of resistance training which is driven by anabolic stimuli yeah i have two questions about that the first one is something that you mentioned which is that the
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