Fitness 101: how to assess levels of fitness – Andrew Huberman ft. Andy Galpin podcast notes

 

 This is the first instalment of the podcast guest series of Andrew Huberman with Andy Galpin on all things fitness. From muscle building to endurance training and workout planning, Andrew and Andy tried to cover it all in six episodes.

• • EPISODE 1: How to assess and improve all aspects of your fitness

• • EPISODE 2: Optimal Protocols to Build Strength & Grow Muscles

• • EPISODE 3: How to Build Physical Endurance & Lose Fat 

• • EPISODE 4: Optimize Your Training Program for Fitness & Longevity

• • EPISODE 5: Maximize Recovery to Achieve Fitness & Performance Goals 

• • EPISODE 6: Optimal Nutrition & Supplementation for Fitness 

Let’s start with the first one

So, you’ve decided you want to improve your fitness? You’ve probably heard that it’s good for long-term health or you’re just excited to take on a new challenge and run a marathon or you just want to look better.

How should you think of your level of fitness? How can you evaluate how fit you could/should be for the sake of health and performance?

“The methods are many and the concepts are few” is a phrase I hear Andy repeating all the time. In the world of fitness, the diversity in exercises and goals is so broad and can make people intimidated and confused. Once you get the concepts, you can evaluate if easily chose a method depending on your goal. 

The 9 exercise-induced adaptations: 

People ususally exercise for two main goal:

• • Goal 1: an appearance/aesthetic goal (lea, big, slim, …)

• • Goal 2: functionality goal (more strength, more mobility, energy, ….)

Depending on which goal you’re aiming for you’ll need specific fitness levels which can be encompassed in 9 physiological adaptations. 

1- Skill/Technique: learning to move better, more effectively, with specific sequence, position, and timing … Like learning how to shoot the ball better, how to gold swing …

2- Speed: moving at high velocity or with a better rate of acceleration

3- Force and strength: the maximum weight you can move or how much force can you produce one time. (ie: how much can you lift once)

4- Power: is speed x force (how much force can you produce quickly)

5- Muscular endurance: how many repetitions can you do in a row of a typical movement (how many pushups can you do for example). It relates to how many times can specific muscles contract.. 

6- Hypertrophy: growing the size of your muscles 

7- Anaerobic capacity: the maximum amount of work you can do in a few seconds. (ie: HIIT training, interval training …). You challenge your maximum heart rate.

8- Long duration (aerobic capacity): the ability to sustain submaximal work for a long period of time with no breaks. (ie: steady-state training, …)

• • Fat loss or health improvement are not training styles/adaptations. They are more byproducts (occur as a result) of the 9 adaptations. Some training styles are more effective for fat loss than others one you understand the underlying mechanisms behind it.

• • To be in good health, scientific studies dating back to the 1950s suggest that you need a combination of broad strength/muscle quality and endurance/cardiovascular fitness

Metrics for physical fitness and health

VO2max: 

• • The maximum amount of oxygen your lungs can inhale and get transmitted to the muscle. It is measured by millilitres per kilogram per minute. 

• • In a study conducted by Andy, they compared 80 and 90-year-old Swedish elderly who were previously cross-country skiers with Americans of similar age who were not exercising. 

• • The independence threshold related to VO2 max is 18 ml/kg/min. Meaning if you are below this number it’ll be hard for you to live by yourself and will most likely require someone living with you or need to be in some sort of assisted living home. 

• • The cross-country skier had a VO2 max of 35 to 38 which is what you’ll find in a normal college male.

• • The non-exercisers had a VO2 max of 20 which is right around the threshold. This is still not good because if they catch a cold or had something pop up that made them lose their fitness they’ll get below 18.

Resting heart rate (RHR): 

• • As the name suggests, RHR is your heart rate at rest. 

• • A good number to go off of for anybody is a sub-60 HR

Ratio of fast twitch muscle fibres (strength): 

• • Our muscles have two types of muscle fibres (fast twitch and slow twitch). 

• • The slow switch muscles are activated in our mundane daily activities and during endurance exercises. Fast twitch can only be activated if you’re doing high-force activities. 

• • When we age, we start losing our fast twitch fibres more than the slow twitch. This is dangerous because if you want to catch yourself from a fall (which are one of the leading causes of death) you need sufficient leg strength. When you lose balance, you need the muscles to move fast to move your feet in a position on time to stop you from falling and you need force absorption in your muscle as well.

Impact of genetics on fitness

Another interesting study was done on 2 identical twins (same DNA) in their mid fifties. One was an avid endurance exerciser who did triathlons and ironmans and another one was a truck driver (sedentary job) and didn’t exercise. In terms of blood lipid panels, resting heart rate, blood pressure, VO2max the exerciser twin was much better. However, the total amount of muscle mass was almost identical. But in terms of muscle quality it didn’t favor the exerciser. In terms of strength and power, they often favored the non exerciser.  

The take-home message is, endurance training alone (running, cycling, swimming) won’t get you the high functionality you need to age well. 

Assessing how good you are in each adaptation

How to assess:

Skill/technique: 

• • You want to evaluate your movement patterns so that you stay injury-free and you can continue to train for as long as possible

• • The best thing is to have them assessed by a movement specialist. 

• • If you want to do it yourself there’s a very simple four-step solution. 

1- Choose the exercises you do the most: squats, deadlifts, pushups… 
Andy recommends an exercise per joint: upper body press (bench   press), an upper body pull (pull-up), a lower body press (squat), and lower body pull (deadlift).

2- Record the movement from multiple views and do a few repetitions per angle

3- Look at four key things for every joint 

• • Symmetry: is one side moving further ahead than the other one, is one twitching differently?

• • Stability and control: can you do the movement slowly – are you shaking during any part of the movement (knees during a squat for example)

• • Awareness: sometimes we’re not aware of technique mistakes until we learn about them. Research proper form and re-examine if you’re doing it.

• • Range of motion: are you doing the movement in its full range

Speed

is not necessary to test for most people unless you’re an athlete that needs it. You can indirectly measure it through power testing.

Force and strength

• • Grip strength test using
    
    • • Dynamometer:
        
        • • Easily available and not very expensive.
        • • Look for a minimum of 40kg (male) – 35kg(female), ideally 60kg
        • • Make sure the variation between the two hands doesn’t exceed 10% (usually the dominant hand tends to be stronger than the non-dominant one)

• • Dead hang:
    
    • • Find a bar that is thin enough and you can wrap your whole hand around it.
    • • You should be able to hang for 30secs, ideally for 60s
    • • Grip strength in women tends to be better
    • • If you are exceptionally large, this thing doesn’t scale perfectly 

• • Other body parts’ strength:
    
    • • One rep max in the bench press for upper body strength
    • • Leg extension one rep max:
        
        • • Better than the squat to account for differences in technique mastery
        • • The standard is to be able to do your own body weight
        • • If you don’t want to do a one rep max, you can use repetition conversion equations which you can find online. Put a load close to your maximum and do it for as many reps as you can. They should be under 5 reps for the calculations to be accurate. 

• • Front Squat or goblet squat holds:
    
    • • Hold half of your body weight (kettlebell or dumbbell) 
    • • Perform a squat and try to pause it at the bottom for 45sec without a technical breakdown 
    • • It’s a good indicator of core strength and low back stability

• • Caveats to these tests:
    
    • • Whenever you do these tests make sure that the warm-up protocol is standardized
    • • Do not do technically demanding movements if you’re not comfortable with your technique

Power

• • Broad Jump
    
    • • In a normal position, jump out as far in front of you as you possibly can and measure the distance between where you started (tip of the toe) and the back of your heel where it lands.
    • • The standard jumping is your body height.

• • Vertical Jump
    
    • • Take your two hands and put them together with the middle fingers touching.
    • • Put them over your head and mark where they reach on the wall (you can colour your fingers with a highlighter).
    • • Jump as high as you can and mark it.
    • • Measure the gap between the standing and the jumping height
    • • The reason why you’re using two hands is that if you do it one-handed, you can reach higher by offsetting your shoulders.
    • • The standard is 24 inches or higher (for females it’ll be ratcheted down by about 15%)

• • You can do the jump in a force plate it will not only tell you how high you’ve jumped but also how much force you’ve put in the ground and how long it took you.

Muscular endurance

• • Pushups are a good test for muscular endurance 

• • 25 pushups are the standard for males / 15 for females and 10 is the bare minimum for males / 5 for females.

• • If you can’t do a single pushup, it’s not an endurance issue, it’s a strength issue. Muscular endurance is irrelevant if you cannot do one repetition.

• • To test other body parts, you can use the same exercises for the strength test, use only 75% of the weight and do as many repetitions as you can. You want to aim for a number higher than 8.

Hypertrophy

• • You can use a body composition test (DEXA scan is the gold standard)

• • Measure your FFMI (fat-free mass index) using online calculators. It tells you how much muscle you carry.

• • FFMI should be at least 20 for men and 18 for women

Anaerobic capacity

First test:

• • Exert maximal effort for 30 seconds through sprinting, rowing, air bike….

• • You want to try to get to your maximum heart rate, the way to calculate that is by subtracting your age from 220. If you’re 30, your maximum heart rate should be 190

• • The goal is to measure your HR recovery after reaching this maximum. You should be looking for half a beat recovery per second or 30 beats per minute for good anaerobic capacity.

VO2max measurements:

• • The most accurate results are done in laboratories

• • Cooper test:
    
    • • Run for 12 as far as you can and record the distance covered
    • • Use online calculators, enter that distance in and it will estimate your VO2max

• • 1 mile test:
    
    • • Walk for 1 mile and record you time and heart rate at the end
    • • Record the numbers in a any online calculator and it will estimate your VO2max

• • You want to aim for a minimum of 35 ml/kg/min for men and 30 for women. Ideally it should be 50 

Long duration (aerobic capacity):

• • Can you maintain a minimum of 20 min consistent work output without stopping (running, cycling, ..). 

• • Ideally, you should be nasal breathing only (not breathing through your mouth)

Testing frequency and order

• • If you want to test all of the adaptations, you can do them within a week in a 3 day split

• • The recommended frequency is doing the tests once a year

• • Testing order:
    
    • • Start FFMI, body mass measurements first. Intense exercise can influence the measurements water retention. Make sure you have a 48h between these exercises and your test.
    • • Skill, maximum power and strength at the beginning of the day when you’re fresh. 

If you made it until now and you are eager to learn more, check out the other episodes from the series:

• Episode 1: You have just read it. It’s this page 🙂
• Episode 2: How to increase strength and muscle mass. Check it out
• Episode 3: Improve endurance and fat loss. Check it out
• Episode 4: Optimize your training program for fitness & longevity. Check it out
• Episode 5: Maximise recovery to achieve fitness & performance goals. Check it out