GUEST SERIES | Dr. Andy Galpin: Optimize Your Training Program for Fitness & Longevity

Looking for something like 30+ minutes a week being in the top 10% of your heart rate... is going to positively impact deep sleep as long as it's done very far away from deep sleep.

I was looking at some papers recently... Unless it's low-intensity exercise, trying to exercise about 6 hours or more away from your sleep time would be ideal.

Ideally, again, at the end of every quarter, you take a week off—whether that is a true full week off, which I'm fully in support of. I mean, friends, we're only talking about 4 weeks off a year; that's absolutely fine. Or, it could even be a slight deload week if you wanted to be.

Assume you're doing the 12 weeks and you're going to have a back-off week at the end of the 12 weeks, I would actually still then recommend having at least 1 back-off week halfway through. So, it would look like this. 5 weeks hard where you're progressing ... Week 6, deload ... Come back, go hard for 5 more weeks, and now, week 12 is your true off week...

You've selected all the exercises you need to get done ... Now, you just need to put them in order. The easy answer here is, generally, do what's most important first in the workout.

One of the reasons I put legs on Monday is because I tend to get enough sleep on the weekend ... I can be pretty sure however, that I've 'caught up' on my sleep on the weekends ... I tend to be pretty rested by Monday morning.

There's actually a significant amount of research to support this. Those individuals who go on a specific training plan compared to those who do not will receive better results independent of the effectiveness of the program.

Progressive overload can come in the form of any of the modifiable variables. So, you could increase the complexity of the movement; you could increase the intensity or the load; you can increase the volume by either more sets, more reps, or more total exercises in a day.

The two largest reasons why people don't get results with their fitness training protocol is number one, adherence, and then, number two, some sort of progressive overload. Both of those two things are challenging to accomplish without a plan.

We generally tend to overestimate what we can get done in a week and underestimate what can happen in a year.

You want to make sure that there are the non-negotiables that are in your life that you know are going to be ahead of your fitness program, and you want to work with those things not against them. Because life will win. When it comes to your children, when it comes to your job, life is going to win. You're going to have to give up something.

It's very important, in my opinion, to have at least 1 session per week of exercise in which you are doing something that challenges proprioception.

Sleep is absolutely critical to recovery and critical to growing muscle mass.

There is very good literature to suggest strength maintenance can be done in as little as 5 sets per week for a very long time, really up to 8+ weeks.

What's clear: You are not going to reach, likely, optimal health by only exercising hard and then sitting around the other 23 and a half hours a day.

The more specific and precise you can be with a single goal, the faster you will get there, generally.

Choose the number of days per week you can exercise and the length in terms of amount of time you can truly afford to train. I would rather you underestimate that than overestimate it.