Optimize Your Exercise Program with Science-Based Tools | Jeff Cavaliere

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  A 60/40 split between strength and conditioning

  For general health with some muscle gain and leanness, Cavaliere, a physical therapist and strength coach behind ATHLEAN-X, suggests about 60% strength training and 40% conditioning. A simple week is lifting Monday, Wednesday and Friday with conditioning Tuesday and Thursday. He considers two conditioning sessions a week the bare minimum, and more is needed if cardiovascular performance is a priority.

• 02

  Train long or train hard, but not both

  Both men keep sessions to about an hour or less. Huberman does roughly 10 minutes of warm-up and 50 minutes of hard resistance work, plus 30 to 45 minutes for cardio sessions. He finds that going past about 60 minutes leaves him getting colds and weaker from session to session. Cavaliere says that as he's aged, workout length causes more problems than intensity, provided he warms up properly, which he now treats as an integral part of the session.

• 03

  The best split is the one you'll stick to

  Full-body, push-pull-legs (once or twice a week) and the "bro split" (one muscle group a day) can all work. A split you don't do isn't effective. Cavaliere notes the bro split helps people who need a few sets to lock in on how an exercise feels. Huberman's teenage split, given by Mike Mentzer, was shoulders and arms, two days off, legs, two days off, chest and back. Huberman now trains every other day because he wants to show up with fire.

• 04

  Lift first, then do cardio

  When conditioning and lifting share a day and lifting quality matters most, do the cardio afterward. Cardio before lifting impairs strength performance. Done fatigued afterward, it still taxes cardiac output. Two-a-days, such as pushing in the morning and pulling at night, can restore focus late in a workout but are impractical and systemically demanding for most people.

• 05

  The Cavaliere cramp test predicts how well you can grow a muscle

  If you can flex a muscle, such as the biceps or calf, so hard without load that it nearly cramps, you can likely stimulate it well under load. That intense contraction is the feeling to chase on each rep. Huberman says applying this made lagging body parts start growing. Cavaliere says the ability varies by exercise as well as muscle, and practice improves it.

• 06

  Seek inefficiency for hypertrophy and efficiency for strength

  For strength, let muscles work together, as chest, shoulders and triceps do in the bench press. For muscle growth, adjust the movement to make the target muscle work harder and feel more uncomfortable. If you don't feel it, something's off. Cavaliere says better neural connection also raises a muscle's resting tone, which he calls "muscularity."

• 07

  Train external rotation of the shoulder

  Daily life, sitting, and big muscles like the chest and lats pull the shoulder into internal rotation, while only small rotator cuff muscles rotate it externally. Reviewing a popular program, Cavaliere counted roughly 890 reps in a week and zero dedicated to external rotation. Add band external rotations. He swaps the upright row, which mirrors the Hawkins-Kennedy impingement test position, for a high pull with the hands rising above the elbows.

• 08

  Much "back pain" starts elsewhere

  A tight, weak gluteus medius can irritate the sciatic nerve and cause pseudo-sciatica that isn't from a disc. Cavaliere's fix, from what he calls his proudest video (30-plus million views): lie on your side, point the top toe down, press a thumb into the trigger point near the top of the glute, and lift the leg against the pressure. Huberman says repeating it a few times a day for three or four days resolved pain he'd thought was sciatica. Cavaliere notes it won't fix a genuine structural disc problem.

• 09

  Grip in the palm to prevent golfer's elbow

  On pulling exercises such as curls and chin-ups, the bar tends to drift into the fingertips, overloading the flexor digitorum superficialis (especially at the fourth finger), which attaches at the inner elbow. This is a common cause of medial epicondylitis, or golfer's elbow. Keep the weight deep in the palm, knuckles well over the bar. Huberman says this cured elbow pain he'd blamed on his triceps work.