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
Chapter 1: Who is the host and what is the purpose of this podcast 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.
Chapter 2: What is endurance and how is energy produced in the 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,
basically onto logs with a flame there, then basically it will take fire, it will burn, okay? Oxygen allows you to burn fuel. So today we are going to ask the critical questions, What allows us to perform? What allows us to continue effort for long periods of time? Well, we think of things like willpower, but what's willpower? Willpower is neurons. It's neurons in our brain.
We have this thing called the central governor, which decides whether or not we should or could continue or whether or not we should stop, whether or not we should quit. So we have to ask the question, what is the limiting factor on performance? What prevents us from enduring? What prevents us from moving forward? What are the factors that say, you know what? No more.
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Chapter 3: How do neurons and willpower influence endurance?
I don't want to completely write off things like the immune system and other systems of the body, but nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs are the five that I want to focus on today because that's where most of the data are. Let's talk about neurons and how they work, okay?
But I want to tell you about an experiment that's going to make it very clear why quitting is a mental thing, not a physical thing. So why do we quit? Well, an experiment was done a couple of years ago and was published in the journal Cell, Cell Press Journal, excellent journal, showing that there's a class of neurons in our brainstem, in the back of our brain, that If they shut off, we quit.
Now, these neurons release epinephrine. Epinephrine is adrenaline. And anytime we are engaged in effort of any kind, we are releasing epinephrine. Anytime we're awake, really, we are releasing epinephrine into our brain. In fact, this little group of neurons in the back of our brain, it's called the locus coeruleus if you like, is churning out epinephrine all the time.
But if something stresses us out, it churns out more and then it acts as kind of an alertness signal for the whole brain. We also of course have adrenaline epinephrine released in our body, which makes our body ready for things. So think about epinephrine as a readiness signal. And when we are engaged in effort, this readiness signal is being churned into our brain.
When we're relaxed and we're falling asleep, epinephrine levels are low. So our desire to continue or put differently, our willingness to continue and our desire to quit is mediated by events between our two ears. Now that doesn't mean that the body's not involved, but it means that neurons are critically important. So we have two categories of neurons that are important.
The ones in our head that tell us get up and go out and take that run. And the ones that allow us, encourage us to continue that run. And we have neurons that shut things off that say no more. And we of course have the neurons that connect to our muscles and control our muscles. But the reason we quit is rarely because our body quits, our mind quits.
So when people say, is it, I hear that, you know, sports or effort or fighting, or it's 90% mental, 10% physical. That whole discussion about how much is mental, how much is physical is absolutely silly. It's 100% nervous system. It's neurons. So when people say mental or physical, understand it's 100% neural. Now, what do nerves need in order to continue to fire?
What do you need in order to get neurons to say, I will persist? Well, they need glucose. Unless you're a keto and ketogenic adapted, you need carbohydrate is glucose. That's what neurons run on. And you need electrolytes. Neurons have what's called a sodium potassium pump, blah, blah, blah, they generate electricity.
In order to get nerve cells to fire, to contract muscle, to say, I'm going to continue, you need sufficient sodium salt because the action potential, the actual firing of neurons is driven by sodium entering the cell, rushing into the cell. And then there's a removal of potassium.
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Chapter 4: What are the key physiological systems involved in endurance performance?
So that's not going to be a great fuel source, but you will start to liberate fats from your adipose tissue, from your fat. Fatty acids will start to mobilize into the bloodstream and you can burn those for energy. Now, there are some other factors that are important and those are the heart, which is going to move blood.
So the more that the heart can move blood and oxygen, well, the more fuel that's going to be available for you to engage in muscular effort and And as I've mentioned oxygen a few times, it should be obvious then that the lungs are very important.
You need to bring oxygen in and distribute it to all these tissues because oxygen is critical for the conversion of carbohydrates and the conversion of fats. So when we ask the question, what's limiting for performance? what is going to allow us to endure, to engage in effort and endure long bouts of effort, or even moderately long bouts of effort.
We need to ask which of those things, nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs is limiting. Or put differently, we ask, what should we be doing with our neurons? What should we be doing with our muscles? What should we be doing with our blood? What should we be doing with our heart? And what should we be doing with our lungs?
That's going to allow us to build endurance for mental and physical work and to be able to go longer, further with more intensity. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I even knew what a podcast was.
I started taking it and I still take it every single day because it ensures that I meet my quota for daily vitamins and minerals, and it helps make sure that I get enough prebiotics and probiotics to support my gut health.
Over the past 10 years, gut health has emerged as something that we realize is important not only for the health of our digestion, but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things like dopamine and serotonin. In other words, gut health is critical for proper brain function.
Now, of course, I strive to eat healthy whole foods from unprocessed sources for the majority of my nutritional intake, but there are a number of things in AG1, including specific micronutrients, that are hard or impossible to get from whole foods.
So by taking AG1 daily, I get the vitamins and minerals that I need, along with the probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, and in turn, brain and immune system health, and the adaptogens and critical micronutrients that are essential for all organs and tissues of the body.
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Chapter 5: What protocols build muscular endurance effectively?
For this month only, April 2025, AG1 is giving away a free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil, along with a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2. As I've highlighted before in this podcast, omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 have been shown to help with everything from mood and brain health to heart health and healthy hormone production and much more.
Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get the free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil plus a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 with your subscription. So let's talk about the four kinds of endurance and how to achieve those. So first of all, we have muscular endurance. Muscular endurance is the ability for our muscles to perform work over time
And our failure to continue to be able to perform that work is going to be due to muscular fatigue, not to cardiovascular fatigue. So not because we're breathing too hard or we can't get enough blood to the muscles or because we quit mentally, but because the muscles themselves give out.
One good example of this would be if you had to pick up a stone in the yard and that stone is not extremely heavy for you and you needed to do that anywhere from 50 to 100 times and you were picking it up and putting it down and picking it up and putting it down and picking up and putting it down, at some point, your muscles will fatigue. Muscular endurance,
is going to be something that you can perform for anywhere from 12 to 25 or even up to 100 repetitions. So a good example is pushups. It's actually no coincidence that a lot of military bootcamp style training is not done with weights.
It's done with things like pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and running, because what they're really building is muscular endurance, the ability to perform work repeatedly over time for a given set of muscles and neurons. So a really good muscular endurance training protocol, according to the scientific literature would be three to five sets of anywhere from 12 to 100 repetitions. That's a huge range.
Now, 12 to 25 repetitions is going to be more reasonable for most people. And the rest periods are going to be anywhere from 30 to 180 seconds of rest. So anywhere from half a minute to three minutes of rest. The one critical feature of building muscular endurance is that it has no major eccentric loading component.
I haven't talked much about eccentric and concentric loading, but concentric loading is when you are shortening the muscle typically or lifting a weight and eccentric movements are when you are lengthening a muscle typically or lowering a weight. So if you do a pull up and you get your chin over the bar or a chin up, that's the concentric portion of the effort.
And then as you lower yourself, that's the eccentric portion. Eccentric portion of resistance training of any kind, whether or not it's for endurance or for strength is one of the major causes of soreness. Some people will be more susceptible to this, excuse me, than others, but it does create more damage in muscle fibers.
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Chapter 6: Why is hydration and electrolyte balance essential for endurance?
That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree.
It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.
To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon, I like the raspberry, I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.
So it's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night.
Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees.
Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. Now I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home, and you can return it if you don't like it, no questions asked. but I'm sure that you'll love it.
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Chapter 7: How do long-duration endurance and mitochondrial function relate?
This is the type that people typically think about when they think about endurance. You're talking about a long run, a long swim, a long bike ride. Well, how long? Well, anywhere from 12 minutes to several hours, or maybe even an entire day, maybe eight or nine hours of hiking or running or biking. Some people are actually doing those kinds of really long events, marathons, for instance.
You're getting into regular repeated effort and your ability to continue that effort is going to be dependent mainly on the efficiency of the movement, on your ability to strike a balance between the movement itself, the generation of the muscular movements that are required, and fuel utilization across the different sources of nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs.
So let's ask the question, why would you fail on a long run? Why would you quit? Well, your mind... is going to use more or less energy depending on how much willpower, how much of a fight you have to get into with yourself in order to generate the effort. I really want to underscore this. Willpower in part is the ability to devote resources to things.
And part of that is making decisions to just either do it or not do it. I'm not of the just do it mindset. I think there's a right time and a place to train, but I also think that it is not good. In other words, it utilizes excessive resources to churn over decisions excessively.
And you probably burn as much cognitive energy deciding about whether or not to do a given training or not as you do in the actual training. When you go out for a run that's 30 minutes, you are building the capacity to that performance the next time while being more efficient, actually burning less fuel.
And that might seem a little bit counterintuitive, but every time you do that run, what you're doing is you're building up mitochondrial density. It's not so much about mitochondrial oxidation and respiration, you're building up mitochondrial density. You're actually increasing the amount of ATP that you can create for a given bout of effort. You're becoming more efficient, okay?
You're burning less fuel overall doing the same thing. That's really what these long, slow distance or long bouts of effort are really all about. Now, why do this long duration effort? Why would you want to do it? Why is it good for you? Well, it does something very important, which is that it builds the capillary beds within muscles.
So these are tiny little avenues, like little tiny streams and estuaries between the bigger arteries and veins. You can literally build new capillaries. You can create new little streams within your muscles.
And the type of long duration effort that I was talking about before, 12 minutes or more of steady effort is very useful for doing that and is very useful for increasing the mitochondria, the energy producing elements of the cells, the actual muscle cells. And the reason is when mitochondria
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Chapter 8: What training methods improve high-intensity and anaerobic endurance?
So this long duration work, unlike muscular endurance, like planks and everything that we were talking about before, is really about building the capillary systems and the mitochondria, the energy utilization systems within the muscles themselves.
And then there are two kinds in between that in recent years have gotten a lot of attention and excitement, sometimes called high intensity interval training. One is anaerobic, so-called anaerobic endurance, so no oxygen, and the other is aerobic endurance, both of which qualify as HIIT, high intensity interval training. So let's talk about anaerobic endurance first.
anaerobic endurance from a protocol perspective is going to be three to 12 sets, okay? And these are going to be performed at whatever speed allows you to complete the work in good, safe form, okay? So it could be fast, it could be slow. As the work continues, your repetitions may slow down or it may speed up. Chances are it's going to slow down. So what does this work?
What do these sets look like? Remember long, slow distance is one set. Muscular endurance is three to five sets. High intensity anaerobic endurance is going to be somewhere between three and 12 sets. And it's going to have a ratio of work to rest of anywhere from three to one to one to five, okay? So what would a three to one ratio set look like?
Well, it's going to be 30 seconds of hard pedaling on the bike, for instance, or running or on the rower. These are just examples. It could be in the pool swimming. It could be any number of things or air squats or, you know, or weighted squats, if you will, provided. You can manage that. 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off. That's a very brief rest.
So three to one is just a good example would be 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off. The opposite extreme on that ratio would be one to five. So 20 seconds on, 100 seconds off. So you do the work for 20 seconds, then you rest 100 seconds. So let's just take a look at the three to one ratio. So in the three to one ratio,
If you're going to do 30 seconds of hard pedaling on a bike followed by 10 seconds, so maybe one of these, what they call assault bikes, and then you stop for 10 seconds and then repeat, chances are you will be able to do one, two, three, four, maybe even as many as 12 sets if you're really in good condition.
that you'll be able to do all those because pedaling on the bike doesn't require a ton of skill. And if you do it incorrectly, if your elbow flares out a little bit or something, it's very unlikely that you'll get injured unless it's really extreme. But the same movement done, for instance, with kettlebells, so 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off, The first set will probably be in good form.
The second one will be in pretty good form, but let's say you're getting to the fifth and sixth set and you're going 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off, chances are the quality of your repetitions will degrade significantly and you increase the probability that you're going to get injured. If quality of form is important, So maybe this is using weights. Maybe you're doing squats.
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