The video delves into the intricate science behind mental endurance, detailing how the anterior mid cingulate cortex (AMCC) plays a pivotal role in pushing through mental and physical barriers. Through the lens of neuroscience, it conveys how this brain structure interacts with neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine, which are crucial in setting and achieving milestones under challenging circumstances. The narrator explains that the AMCC enables resilience by promoting the persistence needed to overcome arduous tasks, from running marathons to persevering through personal goals.

This discussion is critical as it links neuroscientific insights with practical applications such as managing pain, procrastination, and enhancing productivity. Drawing from studies and colleagues' experiments, the video emphasizes the dynamic control of effort through mental strategies like setting incremental goals or distracting oneself, which are bought to the forefront as crucial techniques for endurance athletes and everyday people alike. Techniques that engage both the physiological and psychological to help surpass perceived limitations are explored.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. Anterior Mid Cingulate Cortex (Amcc) [ænˈtɪəriər mɪd ˈsɪŋ ɡjʊlɪt ˈkɔrˌtɛks] - (noun) - A brain region involved in cognitive control, decision-making, and emotional responses, essential for overcoming challenges. - Synonyms: (cingulate cortex, brain region, cognitive center)

This is a brain structure called the anterior mid cingulate cortex.

2. mechanistic [ˌmekəˈnɪstɪk] - (adjective) - Relating to theories which explain phenomena in purely physical or deterministic terms. - Synonyms: (deterministic, systematic, methodical)

The meaning piece is a little bit hard for science to really attack mechanistically.

3. epinephrine [ˌɛpɪˈnɛfrɪn] - (noun) - A hormone and neurotransmitter involved in regulating heart rate and blood pressure, often released in response to stress. - Synonyms: (adrenaline, catecholamine, stress hormone)

Why? Because dopamine is deployed along with two other chemicals, epinephrine and norepinephrine, which, together those three we call the catecholamines

4. norepinephrine [ˌnɔrəˈpɛnəfrɪn] - (noun) - A neurotransmitter involved in attention and responding actions in the brain, and a stress hormone. - Synonyms: (noradrenaline, catecholamine, neurotransmitter)

Dopamine is deployed along with two other chemicals, epinephrine and norepinephrine.

5. endurance [ɪnˈdʊrəns] - (noun) - The ability to withstand hardship or adversity, especially the ability to sustain a prolonged stressful effort or activity. - Synonyms: (stamina, resilience, fortitude)

So, the incredible thing about human endurance is that we can use our cognition, our thoughts, our emotions, meaning, to set milestones and push through what would otherwise cause us to tap out if we were just focused on the perception of the pain.

6. catecholamines [ˌkætəˈkoʊləˌmiːnz] - (noun) - Any of a class of aromatic amines that includes a number of neurotransmitters such as epinephrine and dopamine. - Synonyms: (neurotransmitters, chemical compounds, brain chemicals)

And at that point, her physiology is different than it was 15 steps prior. Why? Because dopamine is deployed along with two other chemicals, epinephrine, and norepinephrine, which, together those three we call the catecholamines.

7. hallmark [ˈhɔːlmɑːrk] - (noun) - A distinctive feature, especially one indicative of quality or excellence. - Synonyms: (distinction, characteristic, indicator)

And I really want to emphasize that because I'm not a professional athlete or even an amateur athlete, the whole basis of this thing is to be able to do anything.

8. biopsychosocial model [ˌbaɪoʊˌsaɪkoʊˈsoʊʃəl ˈmɒdəl] - (noun) - A model that combines biological, psychological, and social factors in understanding health and illness. - Synonyms: (multifactorial model, integrative approach, holistic model)

He's talked a lot about what's called the biopsychosocial model of pain.

9. adenosine [əˈdɛnəsin] - (noun) - A chemical structure in the brain that promotes sleep and relaxation. - Synonyms: (nucleotide, chemical compound, sleep promoter)

What we're talking about is a molecule called adenosine. Incidentally, caffeine interrupts the adenosine system, so you don't feel that sleepiness.

10. neurochemical [ˌnʊroʊˈkɛmɪkəl] - (noun) - Chemicals in the brain that influence its operation and moods. - Synonyms: (brain chemicals, neurotransmitters, biochemicals)

Let the workout itself be its own source of neurochemicals.

A Complete Guide To Building Immense Inner Strength - Andrew Huberman

But why would some individuals be able to push further and further? And that's gonna be 100% neural mental. And when I say neural mental, I mean, you know, the mental piece. We often hear, you know, 90% of work or sport is psychological, but ultimately it's neural. It's the firing of neurons. So what would allow one person to push further? It's gonna come down to their effort, their perception of their effort, and what that means to them.

Right. The meaning piece is a little bit hard for science to really attack mechanistically. But let's be real. If somebody feels depleted, but they can set mental milestones, like, I'll just go another 10 meters and then re up another 10 meters and then another 10 meters. That's one strategy. They could count steps. They could also distract themselves. Right. You could distract yourself from the pain of the effort. Somebody who's very good at endurance is going to have a deep kit. At times, they'll count steps. At times they'll go for milestones. At times they'll distract themselves, and they'll have a deep kit of meaning.

Running for the purpose of themselves, running for maybe higher power, maybe running for family, then they're going to have to probably shift those as time goes on. But if we want to get mechanistic, there's a brain structure. Most neuroscientists, until recently, didn't even know what this brain structure did. Most probably didn't even know that it existed. This is a brain structure called the anterior mid cingulate cortex. Fancy name. Name doesn't matter. But AMCC.

The AMCC is an area in the brain that gets inputs and outputs from lots of different things. The dopamine system, the serotonin system, memory system, the forebrain that's involved in thinking, planning, and strategy, and that's key. We'll come back to that. A colleague of mine at Stanford School of Medicine, Joe Parvizi, he's a neurosurgeon, did this really interesting study. He's in the brain. He's stimulating different brain areas, and he discovers this anterior mid cingulate cortex.

When he stimulates there, people feel as if a challenge is impending on them, a storm or some sort of physical challenge or psychological challenge. And it's kind of abstract in their mind, but their response to it, when this brain area is stimulated is to feel as if they're going to go forward, center of mass, into it and through it. It's the grit piece.

And then he backs off. The stimulation of this area, and that mental effect relaxes he stimulates a little bit of a distance away, completely different set of subjective effects. This brain area has been shown in other studies to enlarge or to be activated more in people that are successful dieters, successful exercisers. And here's the key. It seems to really matter if the effort that you're engaging in is something that you don't want to do. It's painful, it's creating that internal sense of resistance.

So your keep hammering mantra is hammering against something, right? We think of the hammer, right. Rarely do we think about the surface pushing back against that. So when Courtney or goggins or you or anyone is pushing through a mental barrier, they are enduring. Without question, this anterior mid cingulate cortex is highly active. And what's interesting is that this brain area is not designed for running. It's not designed for getting up for the 7th time in the middle of the night when your newborn is crying.

It's designed for all of that. This is something that's essentially in all of us, smaller in some, larger in others. And the act of enduring makes it more accessible. And there are a bunch of really interesting studies that also show when people fail at reaching a goal, when they tap out. Yeah. Especially long term goals. If you think about it, for somebody who struggled with their weight or with other issues or quitting smoking or something like that, it's an endurance race, really.

It's not a one off. This brain area seems to be less engaged, maybe even atrophies a little bit, shrinks a little bit. I've been talking a lot about this brain area recently because it's super exciting. A number of different studies converge on a common theme, which is that it's involved in enduring and pushing through. So when Courtney's out running, I don't know what's going on in her head, but presumably at some point she might have a cramp, cramp in the leg or something.

Now you have an option of thinking about that cramp, making it disappear that way, or taking your attention to something else. We now have had experts on the podcast who talks about pain, Doctor Sean Mackey. He's a medical doctor and PhD director of the pain center, essentially at Stanford School of Medicine. He's talked a lot about what's called the biopsychosocial model of pain, which means that pain is an emotion. It's something that exists in us as a thought and an emotion.

So that's the psychological piece, right? Courtney or goggins or you no doubt has a memory of, I've been here before, where there was pain, it went away. Or I remember leaning into the feeling of it, and it got. And that pain got smaller. That's what's interesting about how the brain registers pain. Sometimes by focusing on it, we can mentally shrink it. Sometimes by focusing on it, it grows. You kind of have to explore that.

I think the cold plunge is a really nice way to explore some of this. You get into really cold water, it's uncomfortable, and you can either embrace the discomfort and move through it, or you can try and distract yourself. So having those options in mind is key because of this mental part of pain and struggle. It gives us options of ways to push through it. It's kind of like finding your way through a jungle, right? Sometimes you want to hack low on the plant. Sometimes you want to hack high.

So one of the key things here is the fact that this anterior mid cingulate cortex gets input from the dopamine system. You know, and people make a lot of dopamine, and it's involved in a lot of different things, not just reward and effort. So one of the cool things about the anterior mid cingulate cortex is that it gets input from the dopamine system. And, you know, people hear about dopamine a lot these days. Dopamine hits, and dopamine is involved with reward and motivation. And that's all true.

It's involved in a lot of things. It's even involved in stuff within the eye, believe it or not. But the interesting thing about the dopamine system as it relates to endurance is that when we set milestones and we reach those milestones, dopamine is deployed, and that changes our physiology and allows us to go further. So, for instance, let's say Courtney's running and she got a leg cramp, and it's painful. Maybe she's wondering if she's hydrated enough. She's starting to flag.

I mean, I have to imagine. I'm not her, obviously, but I have to imagine at some point, she thinks, like, this really sucks. But she decides, okay, 15 more steps. Now, if she reaches that 15th step, no doubt there's a reward released in the brain in the form of a chemical. Made it. Yeah, made it. Dopamine is released other things, too. Okay. I don't want to give the impression dopamine is the only currency of reward in the brain, but at that point, her physiology is different than it was 15 steps prior. Why?

Because dopamine is deployed along with two other chemicals, epinephrine and norepinephrine, which, together those three we call the catecholamines. And those three change the way that our brain networks work. They give us a new sense of what's possible. Now she can set a new milestone. Okay, I'm going to go another eight minutes, or I'm going to go the duration of some song in my head, or I'm just going to focus on the trees around me. So, the incredible thing about human endurance is that we can use our cognition, our thoughts, our emotions, meaning, to set milestones and push through what would otherwise cause us to tap out if we were just focused on the perception of the pain of.

It's almost like a vehicle that, you know, it's almost like an automatic vehicle where you program in the destination, but then it's a thinking vehicle that can change the destination, re up the destination, and actually change the amount of fuel it uses to go a given speed across a given distance. What do I mean by that? You know, if we look at the body and endurance and the brain, if we look at the body and endurance just as a. What we call, like a linear system, like calories in, calories burn, vo two max, you know, firing of slow twitch muscle fibers, etcetera, a lot of sense can be made of that, but ultimately, the mental piece is the one that can change.

How much effort is put in is largely dictated by how much we perceive that effort and how much we perceive. Okay, the effort. I just went through the last hundred miles. Well, I'm here now. If I could do 100 miles, I can do another 100. This is also true for psychological stress, and this is taught a lot in addiction treatment communities. If you can be uncomfortable for 1 second, then you can be uncomfortable for 2 seconds. You just made it through that second.

You can be uncomfortable with 2 seconds, you can be uncomfortable for five minutes. The whole notion of one day at a time, that segment seems to work. You try and segment your whole life. That's a big. That's a big elephant eat all at once. So the point here is that these reward systems that we can set up through just our own spontaneous creation of what the subjective milestones are, in theory, can allow us to run until we are on nubs, in theory. Right, right.

And at that point, of course, you know, you could bleed out, you could need sleep so much that you collapse. But in speaking with people in communities, you know, that go through, like, military screening, where they have to stay up many, many days, a lot of those guys will tell you, you know, you're better off not taking the nap. Right? You're better off not dropping it. Just keep moving. And the hardest thing to do is sit still. But as long as you keep moving, you're good.

And that, without question, is because you have a task. And as long as you're completing tasks, you're re upping these reward systems, which then changes your physiology, which then allows you to move forward in those conditions, they're being given a task, run this distance, dig this sand, get back in the cold water, or what have you. But in a foot race or a race against oneself, which is ultimately what it becomes, you just keep changing the goal, changing the goal, changing the goal.

So it's a constant re upping of finish lines, and it's essentially like taking a trophy each time, except that trophy. Think about that trophy that you get when you reach that next mental milestone. Imagine that trophy's filled with a fuel, and that fuel is endurance.

I mean, I think that people rely often too heavily on psychological motivators, and we overlook this entrainment phenomenon and the ability for our body to entrain to certain times. You know, I, for instance, it's a terrible thing, but I like to get up, hydrate, caffeinate slowly, do some mental work, and then my ideal training time, you know, if I ever retire, I don't know that I ever will, but would be to train mid morning, like 1030.

Amazing. I love it. My workouts are always best, et cetera. But my life isn't organized that way. So I like to try and exercise within an hour of waking up. But I have to drink caffeine first. I don't do my 90 minutes delay thing. I drink my caffeine first if I'm going to exercise right away.

And I should say that for people that feel amotivated, what do we do? Generally, we consume things like caffeine, which, as we know, disrupts the adenosine system. So adenosine, being a molecule of sleepiness or fatigue, also upregulates dopamine receptors. Incidentally, it's actually shown in human dopamine receptors. Pretty interesting there. Regular caffeine consumption very likely increases the sensitivity and or number of dopamine receptors available.

So whatever dopamine is released can have, quote unquote, more of an effect in terms of motivation and reward people will take nowadays. And I'm not passing judgment here, but there's a lot of use of things like Adderall, modafinil, vyvanse, stimulants. What do all those stimulants do? They release the catecholamines, mainly. Dopamine and epinephrine. They are amphetamines. Okay, people go, oh, my goodness. You know speed. Yep. That's what they are.

Again, not passing judgment. They can have certain positive effects for certain clinical issues in some cases. Again, not promoting or discouraging, just stating the reality. But what do people do? They take stimulants. What did I do right before this podcast? I'll come clean. I don't hide these things. I've been experimenting lately with two milligrams of nicorette, nicotine in the form of gum.

I don't smoke vape, dip, or snuff. Those are all bad, carcinogenic, et cetera. I know people say vaping is not as bad as smoking. Vaping is bad. Okay, it's as bad as smoking. Probably not, but it's not good for you. Don't vape. I just got some enemies, but that's my read of the data. More coming.

But nicotine taps into the acetylcholine system, increases focus. It also will tap into the epinephrine and dopamine system. It's highly reinforcing. So I limit myself to two milligrams, maybe four times a week total, and I'm thinking about stopping altogether because I'm just running this as an experiment on myself, and it really, really works for me. What does it do? It makes me more alert, more motivated. That also scares me.

It's not, and many people I know that take, there are these pouches that come in canisters. I've never tried them. I don't want to. Those are generally four to eight milligrams of nicotine per pouch. I hear over and over again that people take one, they love it, take one pouch, they then will do two a day, three a day, and pretty quickly.

They're consuming a canister or so, if not every day, every couple of days. So it's a very quick route to, let's just call it habit. Is it addictive? Maybe. Is it habit forming? Clearly. And this is becoming all the rage now. I don't recommend it. Nicotine is a vasoconstrictor, which isn't good, raises blood pressure, et cetera.

There's some evidence that nicotine can be a cognitive enhancer, and maybe later in life it might be something that I'll return to for that reason. But it does have certain health hazards. Clips always get cut of me saying the cognitive enhancing part, but the point here is that when I people feel amotivated, they tend to look for something that they can ingest. Remember, no effort. Get the molecules going. And there's nothing wrong with that.

A cup of coffee or espresso or yerba mate, you know, I'll do all three sometimes. And you're more alert, you're more arousal. You need to do something with that energy and then try and lean into work. The problem is with pharmacology, it's hard to get the dose just right so that you have the ideal level of focus, ideal level of alertness, but nothing much that you have agitation and your mind is kind of darting all over the place.

My typical thing is I will use coffee or yerba mate or both prior to a hard weight workout. But when it comes to cardio, I try and do my cardio without any, any caffeine or even, and certainly no excessive caffeine. Maybe a half a cup of coffee, maybe youre bramante or two, and then just get out and go run in my case, or do the HIIT workout and let the workout itself be its own source of neurochemicals. But that's just me. I know some people are doing the energy drinks combined with nicotine combined with, I mean, all sorts of stuff, and it's wild because then what they find is in the absence of those things, they're amotivated.

Well, why? It was minimal to zero effort followed by high amplitude to dopamine release and probably less directly from the exercise that you're doing. How does caffeine from coffee affect? So you mentioned the dopamine receptors. Is that so? Is there, like, long term? Because then you start to, like, you never feel as good as, like, if you take a break from caffeine, then you have that first cup of coffee, right?

No, I can't say I relate because I can remember the last time I took a break from caffeine. I've done it when I had flus or I was cold, you know, had colds or flus, because I just don't want to drink caffeine under those conditions, usually like chamomile tea and I'm just huddling in bed or something. I love caffeine. I don't drink that much of it, you know, but probably total out about four or 500 milligrams a day. You know, I weigh 215, 220 pounds, so that's not that much.

And I'm pretty caffeine acclimated. And I tend to drink caffeine in the early part of the day and not so much in the evening, certainly not after 03:00 p.m. so I can sleep well. But yeah, the stacking is something that, you know, I don't want to give the impression that if, you know, you have an energy drink like a pre workout and you've got the music blasting and you're hydrated and you slept great, have a great workout. Like crush a workout every once in a while. But don't be surprised if the next time you're walking into the gym you don't feel quite as motivated.

And I don't think one should rely, rely on that every single time you know that you need to. If you need a stimulant every time you're going to exercise, you are creating a pattern of behavior and likely some underlying neurochemical habits that are not going to serve you well in the long run. You're going to feel less motivation to do the thing that itself can generate, feelings of motivation. And that's what we've been talking about. A cold shower would be a great one.

I'm just fascinated by this. I've never seen anything else. No drug prescription or otherwise, no supplement, no workout that I'm aware of, but I haven't explored every single one that creates that long arc of dopamine, epinephrine and norepinephrine release that 1 minute, 1 minute of being uncomfortably cold can create. There's great value in paying attention to how one encounters stress, moves through stress, and then when you get out of the cold plunge, I don't tend to spend too much effort thinking about how I feel in that time. I just know that it's a complete state shift.

I also know, based on my reading of my sleep on my eight sleeper whoop, that doing cold plunge in the morning dramatically increases the amount of rapid eye movement sleep I get at night. And I don't know the exact reason for that. Not incidentally, certain forms of pharmacology, not drugs of abuse, but that I've, I don't use regularly, but that I've used in the past, that increase dopamine and norepinephrine, like bupryrin will increase my rapid eye movement sleep dramatically. I currently don't take it. I took it years ago for a short bout of depression.

I don't take it any longer, but I decided to take 50 milligrams of papyrin as a focus aid at one point doing an experiment there, it didn't work well for me, but I noticed that my rapid eye movement at sleep just at night just spiked like crazy. The amount the duration increased by, you know, I think it was about 15%. Then I stopped taking it and went back to its, you know, previous value. So there's something about adrenaline release, perhaps even just early in the day, that seems to impact sleep at night.

Yeah, well, cold shower is always great, and it's not just zero cost. It'll save you on your heating bill. Cold shower sucks because it's almost like the fact that part of you can be out of the cold makes it worse. Like, part of you can be slightly warmer, whereas with the cold plunge, you're all in up to the neck. Hopefully. Sometimes people get their hands out, and I don't judge.

I think that's fine. People have different levels of vasoconstriction and pain from the. From the cold. So you want to be fair. It does not a problem to keep your hands out. As I understand it, cold showers, great. I think the high intensity interval training that I know you're a big fan of, that's a remarkable tool. Not only is it brief, but it deploys all these systems, these neurochemical systems that create alertness.

Also, because it's brief and it does that, you're unlikely to fatigue yourself to the point where cognitive work is harder. So how can we overcome procrastination? Well, it turns out that there are findings from within the addiction literature that turn out to be very powerful towards leveraging our way out of procrastination. And it has to do with this. You already know, because I've told you probably a dozen times now that the depth of the trough after a dopamine peak is proportional to how high that peak was and how steep it was, how quickly that peak occurred.

It turns out that not only is the depth of the trough proportional to that, but the rate at which you get out of that trough is proportional to how steep that trough is. Let me explain this for you in as clear terms as I possibly can imagine. You're in an amotivated state. You're just not feeling motivated. You're procrastinating. You may think, okay, the thing to do here is something.

I'll clean the house, take care of some bills, I'll do something, or I'll just wait. Those approaches, as we talked about before, generally don't work, or at least don't work quickly, or they lead you right up to the deadline, and then the deadline that forces you to get something done, or you just don't get it done, and you don't succeed in your goal. That happens a lot as well. However, if you were to take that state of being unmotivated of procrastinating and actually do something that's harder than being in that amotivated state.

In other words, doing something that's more effortful, even painful, you can rebound yourself out of that dopamine trough much more quickly. So what do I mean? You want to put yourself in a state that's worse than or harder than the state that you're in or do something, quote unquote, more painful. And here I want to be very clear. I'll say this three times, but I'm going to say it for the first time now. When I say more painful, I do not mean doing any kind of tissue damaging or psychologically damaging behavior or anything of that sort that's going to render you injured or not.

Well, even in the short term. That's not what I'm referring to. Okay, let's just get that one out of the way. What I'm referring to is the fact that, for instance, if you're feeling a motivated, but you find yourself cleaning the house as a way to procrastinate, you can say, well, cleaning the house is harder than sitting down and doing nothing, but actually, in that moment or in those moments, that's not the case, or else you wouldn't be doing it.

The reality is that the dopamine system works according to what feels hard or easy in the moment. In other words, if you're feeling amotivated, you need to do something and put yourself into a state that's harder than the state you're in. So, for instance, if you're sitting around feeling a motivated, or you find yourself tending to tasks that are irrelevant to the goal that you really should be focused on, you need to put your body and mind into a state of discomfort quickly. And the way to do that is to either engage in some tangential activity, meaning an activity not related to your goal, that puts your body into a very different state.

So here again, I'll default to the obvious one, which is something like cold shower or cold immersion, which not only increases dopamine long term or over several hours rather, but for most people is experienced as pain. That pain causes a rebound out of that dopamine trough faster than it would occur if you had just stayed in that amotivated state and waited for it to go away or done something like cleaning up that, for whatever reason, felt like it required less friction.

When I say friction, I mean limbic friction. Your limbic system is always in this dialogue with your forebrain, and limbic friction goes two ways. Limbic friction can be you're tired and you don't want to do something. And so you have to, quote unquote motivate to do it, energize yourself to do it. Or limbic friction can be that you're nervous and scared and anxious to do something, and you have to calm yourself in order to lean forward into action in order to do that thing. Despite the anxiety, I realize this can be a little bit confusing as a concept, so I want to go into a bit more detail.

Let's imagine that you or somebody else does not like to exercise. You don't want to exercise, and you're trying to get your minimum of five days per week week exercise, and you're just not motivated to do it. There are a couple different techniques to doing this. Assuming you've taken care of all the baseline stuff, all the foundational stuff we talked about earlier, and you're just not getting in gear and you find yourself checking your phone, or maybe you're tending to some tasks.

Obviously those things are quote unquote easier for you, meaning they cause less limbic friction than engaging in exercise. The typical advice would be just exercise for 1 minute. Okay, just get 1 minute of exercise or five minutes, and then use the successful completion of that one or five minutes as a milestone that allows you to then move to the next milestone. And indeed, that approach can work. And it's exactly what I'm describing here when I say that you're in a state of lack of motivation or procrastination or both, and you need to put yourself into a more painful, not less painful state.

So what do you do? You push up against that friction and you exercise for a short while, and then that pops you out of that trough. That's possible, but for a lot of people, even that won't be possible because they just can't get motivated. Or they do that 1 minute or five minutes and they're just like, okay, I'm still in the trough. I'm not actually feeling that great in those circumstances.

It makes sense to do something that's tangential to the whole path that you're trying to pursue this goal that you're trying to pursue that is, believe it or not, much worse than just being a motivated. And when I say worse, I don't mean picking some task that normally you don't like to do, but now you're willing to do. I mean literally thinking about what would be worse than being in this state again without causing yourself tissue or psychological damage. What would be worse? Well, cold water would be worse for many people, very cold water.

So the key is to figure out something that, for lack of a better way to put it, really sucks, really sucks, and yet is safe. And by doing that, you steepen the trough, you steep in the slope of the trough, which we know brings you back to your baseline level of dopamine more quickly. Now, for some people, that will be deliberate cold exposure through cold shower ice bath. And I have to tell you that if you're cringing as I say this, well then there you go. You now have a tool that, you know, you cringe even when you just think about and therefore represents a great tool for you.

So if I'm procrastinating to do something I really need to do, should I just simply wait for that procrastination to evaporate? No. Will it eventually evaporate? Maybe. Will a deadline eventually surface that will trigger me into an anxious or activated state that will allow me to complete what needs to be done? Maybe, hopefully. But better would be to get out of that amotivated state, that state of procrastination, quickly.

You know, I'm big on helping people get their sleep, right, because sleep is the ultimate reset for endurance and life. Right. But I'm a big proponent of things like non sleep deep rest, which is similar to an ancient practice called yoga nidra, where you lie down, you deliberately stay awake, but you relax your body and you try and get your brain out of thinking and doing and more into just pure sensation. Sometimes people fall asleep. This done for ten minutes or 20 minutes can partially offset some of the effects of sleep deprivation.

But we know naps work too. Now what we're talking about is very, very short naps. What happens when you're sleep deprived and you take one of those mental micro naps, or let's just call it a micro nap, is no doubt the brain goes into a state of sleep that's much deeper than it normally would had you, you know, been on a more standard schedule, awake for twelve to 16 hours or something like going to sleep. So what you're getting is a bunch of sleep like stuff in that very compact time frame.

Okay, now what's happening there? Okay, well, we know that fatigue and sleepiness comes from the build up of a molecule called adenosine. Incidentally, caffeine interrupts the adenosine system, so you don't feel that sleepiness and the caffeine wherever off and that adenosine hits those receptors and you feel extra sleepy. But no doubt in those short micro damps, some adenosine is being cleared we also know that there's a bunch of changes in the neurons themselves. Those what we call ion channels, a potassium sodium thing, gets altered, let's say, in sleep.

You know, it's about altering the amount of potassium in and outside of the cells. In naps, you adjust some of that. So when you are really tired and you kind of do that little micro nap, you wake up, you're like, I feel better. What's going on there? Well, it's a very compact replenishment of some of the cellular and kind of body things, like clearance of adenosine changes those, the amount of potassium inside and outside the cell, these kinds of things.

Now, are you clearing all that adenosine away in 1 minute? No, but no doubt there's a more rapid clearance than would normally occur in 1 minute of sleep. There's also something very powerful, and this is the reason I mentioned non sleep depressed. There's also something very powerful about just letting your mind go idle for a period of time. You know, from the time you wake up until you go sleep night, you're in what I call dpos. You're doing duration, path, outcome.

You're trying to figure out what to say next, what to do next. You're trying to get to that milestone. You're trying to navigate through your day. When you go into one of those 1 minute micro naps, or you do a non sleep deep rest, you're essentially shutting down all that planning. What's planning? The prefrontal cortex, the prefrontal cortex we talked about earlier is this very dynamic strategy setting system.

So, like, we're here in my yard, we have a strategy, we have a plan, and we're carrying out that plan. The moment you get in your car, you have a different strategy, plan to get where you need to go, and so on and so forth. The prefrontal cortex is involved in all of that dynamic planning. And when you run, as we were talking about before, prefrontal cortex is going to be engaged. This is important when you actually have to plan milestones.

But there's also that beautiful part of endurance running. Not what I would consider myself an endurance runner, but I try and ruck along on Sundays, and I ran across country a bit to know that there are those times when you just went 20 minutes, 30 minutes, you weren't planning anything. You're just cruising, and you're just in the sensation of running. And I would argue that when you're doing that, when any of us are doing that, we are allowing our prefrontal cortex to go slightly offline. It's always online to some extent, but slightly off lost rest a little bit.

So this is rest while moving. Okay. This is rest while in effort. So, this is another kind of drawer in the. In the cupboard of option. Sorry.

This is another cupboard in the options of ways to push through. So you can plan milestones, but that's planning that requires that prefrontal cortex. Okay, I'm gonna do this, then. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do this. It's like the list that people cross off during the day, but then there's the just running, not thinking about anything.

And we know that that allows the brain to some areas of the brain to get some, quote, unquote, rest during those times. So I would argue that provided one doesn't go off track, off course, provided that one is staying with their pace, the more that one can rest while in effort, the more resources you're conserving. What resources are we talking about? We're not talking about caloric energy at the level of muscles. We're talking about caloric energy and neural energy.

Right. Okay. Which sounds kind of woo. Neural energy. No, but think about most of our metabolic needs each day are for brain function. So the ability to just let the brain idle a little bit in certain areas is energy conservation.

And so that's got to play in also. So we're not just talking about a vehicle that can, like, milestone. Go, milestone, go, milestone, go. Push through. Endure. It's also about knowing when to hit, like, in a vehicle.

You know, you're. And then you get up in those higher rpms, then what does a good transmission allow you to do? Yeah, and you can go the same speed, right, at lower rpm. I try and get to bed by about ten, maybe 11:00 p.m. i don't always succeed. I wake up around 06:00 a.m. or so. If I don't sleep enough or I don't feel rested, I'll do it. Ten to 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes.

Nstr yoga, nidra. I get up, I like to hydrate. First thing I try and do is drink 16 to 32oz of water. I, like, just hydrate in the morning, get outside, and get some sunlight. If I can't get the sunlight, I get in front of that 10,000 lux light. I prefer to work out early in the day, in which case I'll drink caffeine.

If it's a resistance training workout for me, that's yerba mate, coffee, or both. Sometimes I'll just tell you my workout schedule is really easy to hit on. Same thing I've been doing roughly for 30 years, although sometimes I've been less, you know, less focused on it and let it lapse a bit here and there. So, first day of the week for me, it falls on a Monday, but it could be any day. I train my legs, calves, hamstrings, squats. I'm a big believer in glute, ham raises, hack squats, leg curls, leg extensions, calf raises. Is just keep the lower body strong, keep the posterior chain strong.

There are a bunch of different ways to do this. One could do it with kettlebell swings or deadlifts, but those are the things that work well for me and that I can consistently add load or other ways of increasing intensity without getting hurt. Okay, knock on wood. The whole thing takes about an hour.

Next day is a rest day, typically after leg day, and I'll try and do, I don't always do, but some deliberate heat and deliberate cold exposure. In an ideal world, it's 20 minutes of sauna, three to five minutes of cold. 20 minutes of sauna, three, five minutes of cold, 20 minutes of sauna, three, five minutes of cold. And yes, I finish with a warm shower because I'm a human being and I like that. And I will listen to podcasts or books or something while I do it and helps my recovery.

It's also just thermal training. It has all the benefits of sauna and cold, and I like to do it on that day. The next day I'll do typically a run, a 25 or 30 minutes run at a kind of faster pace. So where I'm, you know, breathing hard for most of it, but it's not all out, maybe 85% of effort, and that's it. The next day I train my torso. I know a lot of people roll their eyes and be like, what are you talking about? How do you. I do, I do some overhead pressing, some dips, some pull ups or chin ups and some rowing, and then I do some abdominal work.

And I train my neck because it's an important part of the structure of the upper body to keep the head stable. And I'll get text neck and things like that. I don't train it heavy, but I train my neck. And I do make sure I do things like rear delts. I really am trying to emphasize outward external rotation of the limbs who are not hunched over like this and heavy in the traps, just upright, right posture, those kinds of things.

And then the next day, the only workout is about ten minutes long. It's that ten second hard cycling on the assault bike, 22nd rest, 1020, 1020 for eight rounds. That's it. Vo two max Saturdays, another short resistance training workout. So three total for the week. And then it's, you know, biceps, triceps, calves, little neck work, abdominal work.

It's kind of just small body parts stuff. And then on Sunday, which for me falls on a Sunday, I try and do some long ruck or hike, often socially put on a backpack with some weight, or if I'm by myself, I'll do, you know, a 60 to 90 minutes jog or something of that sort, maybe hike part of it and listen to music or just let my thoughts go.

So what it boils down to is six days of training per week, three resistance training sessions, one longer slow run, one moderate one, and one short one. The total amount of time is actually quite low when you think about it. And then there's that rest day where I may or may not do the heat and cold. This schedule, I could micro dissect. But what ends up happening with this schedule is because, for instance, I'll train my legs on Monday directly, but I'm doing the assault bike for hit on Friday.

So my legs sort of get targeted twice per week, once directly, ones indirectly, so I don't have to worry about too little frequency of stimulation for things like strength and hypertrophy, although I'm not trying to grow anymore for maintaining muscle. Similarly, I'll train my torso on that one day during the middle of the week, but you're using your arms for that. And then you train your arms directly another day. And on the arm day, you know, I'm doing some dip like things and say, you're also hitting your torso muscles.

So I never worry that it's not frequent enough. I find that getting into the gym more than three days per week or doing resistance training more than three days per week, I start to lose my motivation for it. But I like to be really focused and targeted when I'm there. And I love long runs, I love moderate runs, and I love the HIIT workout. So I get to do a little bit of everything. And I really want to emphasize that because I'm not a professional athlete or even an amateur athlete, the whole basis of this thing is to be able to do anything, meaning I can go for a long hiker backpack during the summer with a heavy pack, no problem.

I can sprint for the airplane, no problem. I can lift things without hurting myself, no problem, provided I'm smart about it. I'm not trying to be the strongest, the biggest, or the fastest, or the one with the most endurance just kind of all around life. And none of these workouts is longer than an hour. And in many cases, they're twelve minutes or 30 minutes. The daily routine is pretty much consistent, and I should say that schedule.

If I travel, things might slide a bit. I might move day one next to day two. I move things around, but I'm careful to never weight train more than two days in a row. I personally don't recover. I don't like doing that. Okay.

Nutrition. I just try and emphasize non processed or minimally processed foods. I'm not really hungry until about 11:00 a.m. and then I like some meat, some berries, some rice or oatmeal sometimes, and some vegetable. I'm not low carb. In the afternoon, I'll generally have a snack, maybe a protein drink, some nuts. You know, I do eat, you know, those maui nui jerky sticks or a thing of bone broth or something. It's not promotion, it's just a fact.

And then for dinner, I like, I tend to emphasize less protein. For me, that works. This runs counter to what everyone says, but I like more vegetables, pasta, rice, risottos, occasionally I'll go out for a big steak or something like that. But generally, the heavier on the starch is not heavy, but heavier on the starches, relatively. And vegetables. And then a couple hours before sleep, ideally.

But sometimes I'll finish dinner and collapse. You know, it's just life. Um, I do find I sleep better if I allow a few hours before sleep in terms of, um, stress modulation and things like that. I do deploy the physiological sigh, which sounds very technical, but two inhales through the nose followed by a long exhale to lungs empty. I try and do that anytime I feel that my stress is too high. My lab published a clinical trial in Cell Reports Medicine, in collaboration with David Spiegel's laboratory at Stanford, showing that five minutes a day of breath work of cyclic sighing. So, inhale, inhale, exhale.

Both inhales through the nose. Inhale, inhale, exhale. Done as a dedicated practice for five minutes a day, led to some interesting changes. Positive changes in reductions in resting heart rate, reductions in blood pressure, improvements in sleep mood, et cetera. Not all significant, but several which work statistically significant. But I don't tend to do breath work. I tend to just use that physiological sigh whenever I'm feeling kind of overly ramped up.

So what I've found for me is that, you know, the core set of supplements, plus training, right. Plus life lived in the way I described, some hydration, etcetera, that seems to work best. And what's my measure of that is feelings, vigor, whether or not I can recover from my workouts. Meaning, am I getting any progress in terms of loads or other intensity variables, or distance or speed over time with the cardiovascular stuff? And the answer is yes. Small improvements over time are really what I'm after or maintaining what I've got.

Because at 48, I'm just interested in staying healthy and I'm sure would love to be even healthier. But I'm also paying attention to how much cognitive vigor I have. You know, if I'm training so much or paying so much attention to nutrition that I can't, like, engage in work and function, that's not good. If I can't sit for 3 hours and have a conversation because I'm in pain, that's not good. And fortunately, you know, I've got things in a place where I feel generally good, sometimes great, but good most of the time.

I still get bad night's sleep every once in a while. I still stress, you know, I don't tend to do cheat days or things like that. I love the occasional piece of pizza or croissant or something like that. But I've also learned that most of the things about taking great care from nutrition, lifestyle, mindset, and the rest creates kind of a heightened sensory experience of life. This is what I think people miss.

They think of it as deprivation. But when you're doing these things and you do them consistently, I find at least that. First of all, I love the foods I eat. I love meat, fish, chicken, eggs, vegetables, certain starches, fruit, et cetera. I enjoy all those things. And I also enjoy all of life so much more.

Whereas I find that things, for me anyway, alcohol, highly processed foods, they create a kind of cloak over my senses. I don't enjoy life as much, but of course, a really good cookie, like a really good cookie, or. Sure, that makes sense. And I enjoy those. So I look at things, all of it, exercise, nutrition, supplementation, you know, any kind of NSDR things like that, as do they allow me to lean into life with more vigor, with more curiosity, with more texture, or do they kind of consume a lot of time and don't allow me to do that?

And in my experience, the things that I described, and there are a few others, I do allow me to live life better, right? It's not like I'm sleeping all the time or I'm neurotically saying, okay, everybody, it's 830. I got to go to sleep. You know? And look, I respect people's individual choices. I actually, the other day, saw for the first time in a long time, Brian Johnson, who's, you know, he's, like, wholeheartedly and whole everything, devoting his entire energy to being the most measured human and longevity stuff.

And that's what floats his boat. Me, I like to have some flexibility on my schedule in life, and if it costs me a few years of life, I'm willing to make that trade.

Neuroscience, Motivation, Endurance, Technology, Innovation, Pain Management, Success Chasers