Fitness Toolkit: Protocol & Tools to Optimize Physical Health

High-Level Overview

In this solo episode, Andrew Huberman does something different from his usual format: instead of starting with mechanisms, he lays out a specific week-long fitness protocol that he has used, in some form, for over three decades (he has just turned 47). Drawing on earlier conversations with Dr. Andy Galpin, Dr. Peter Attia, Jeff Cavaliere and others, the "foundational" template is designed to build or maintain endurance, strength, hypertrophy and flexibility all at once, while leaving room to shift the emphasis toward whatever a listener cares about most. He walks through each day of the week, then covers resistance-training principles, nervous-system tools, and the messy realities of training: poor sleep, stress, illness, missed days, and whether to train fasted or fed.

The tone is practical, detailed and often personal, with stories about hikes with a former SEAL, a car accident, and his bulldog Costello refusing to finish sprint intervals. He opens with a striking new study on a tiny seated calf movement that improves blood sugar regulation, then moves day by day through the program before closing with a series of real-world questions and simple recovery tools.

The Discussion Explores:

• The soleus pushup, a seated micro-movement that dramatically improved blood glucose regulation in a new study
• Core principles of fitness, including Andy Galpin's idea that concepts are few and methods are many
• The seven-day template: long endurance, legs, heat-cold contrast, torso and neck, moderate cardio, HIIT, and arms
• Sets, reps, rest and month-to-month periodization for strength and hypertrophy
• Why Huberman trains his neck, and how to choose exercises in stretched and shortened positions
• Flexibility of the schedule, spacing rules, and the mind-muscle connection
• Training after poor sleep, when sick, fasted versus fed, and after a break
• Stretching, grip and core tricks, the dead hang, and slow breathing for recovery

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

The Soleus Pushup: A Tiny Movement With Big Metabolic Effects

Before the main protocol, Huberman describes a study out of the University of Houston published in iScience, titled A potent physiological method to magnify and sustain soleus oxidative metabolism improves glucose and lipid regulation. The soleus is a wide, flat, mostly slow-twitch calf muscle beneath the gastrocnemius, designed to contract continuously for standing and walking, which is why you can walk all day without it getting sore. The researchers had seated participants perform soleus pushups: with the knee bent at roughly a right angle, you lift the heel while pushing down through the toe, lower it, and repeat. Heel lift was only about 10 to 15 degrees, and participants didn't contract hard.

The study included equal numbers of men and women and a wide range of ages and body mass indexes. Participants did the movement for as long as 270 minutes across the day, with breaks. Despite the soleus being about 1% of total muscle mass and burning very little muscle glycogen, the researchers reported 52% less post-meal glucose excursion and 60% less hyperinsulinemia, with benefits lasting as long as two hours after a meal. Huberman notes he isn't aware of a replication yet, but by his reading of the data even smaller doses would likely help. He frames it as a zero-cost, low-investment tool for anyone stuck sitting in meetings, classes or on planes, not a replacement for exercise.

Core Principles and the Foundational Template

Huberman borrows Andy Galpin's line that "concepts are few methods are many." Fitness adaptations fall into categories: skill, speed, power, strength, hypertrophy, muscular endurance, anaerobic endurance, three-to-twelve-minute endurance, and endurance of 30 minutes or more. The key question is which modifiable variables you change, with progressive overload applying not just to heavier weights but to steeper hills, faster paces and longer distances. His template focuses on one aspect of fitness each day while covering the whole body across the week. He starts his week on Sunday, but stresses that the protocol is meant as a starting point anyone can shift and adapt.

Sunday: Long Endurance

Sunday is 60 to 75 minutes of zone 2 cardio, usually jogging. Zone 2 means breathing and heart rate are elevated but you can still hold a conversation; push harder and you'd have to stop mid-sentence. He doesn't wear a heart rate monitor or obsess over staying perfectly in zone, and says rowing, cycling or swimming work just as well. Some Sundays he swaps the jog for a two-and-a-half to five-hour hike, which breaks the monotony and can be social. When alone, he tries to breathe purely through his nose.

A recent addition is a weight vest of 10 to 50 pounds, which adds effort and lets him hike with someone less fit without leaving them behind. He recalls a former SEAL friend who offered to "bring you a sack" for a hike; Huberman assumed lunch, but it was a roughly 40-pound loaded backpack. Any weighted pack works, so you don't need to buy a vest. The Sunday session also checks off about 75 of the 180 to 200 weekly minutes of zone 2 cardio that Peter Attia and others associate with longevity and health. Beginners should start shorter, on flat ground, and add time, weight or speed as fitness improves, noticing that it takes more work to reach zone 2 as they get fitter.

Monday: Legs, and the Rules of Resistance Training

Monday, ideally around 7 a.m., is legs: quadriceps, hamstrings and calves. As the largest muscles, legs trigger systemic metabolic and hormonal effects, including testosterone, growth hormone and other anabolic hormones that support tendons, ligaments and overall musculature. He calls legs the foundation of the body, and adds: don't skip leg day, "in fact make leg day your first day of strength and hypertrophy training." The long, slow Sunday session doesn't leave his legs too sore to train, whereas a HIIT session would.

All resistance sessions follow the same structure: about 10 minutes of warm-up, then 50 to 60 minutes of hard work, because beyond about 60 minutes cortisol rises and, for him, impedes recovery. He recovers slowly, so he trains each muscle group directly once a week and indirectly a second time. He picks two exercises per muscle group, and says exercise choice should be governed by what you can do safely. He doesn't squat or deadlift; his choices are leg extensions and hack squats for quads, leg curls and glute-ham raises for hamstrings, and standing and seated calf raises. A principle from a strength coach guides selection: for each muscle, include one exercise with a weighted stretch (like the bottom of a standing calf raise) and one with peak contraction in the shortened position (like a leg curl or seated calf raise).

For sets and reps, he alternates by month. For three to four weeks he trains heavy in the four-to-eight rep range with three to four (up to five) sets per exercise and two to four minutes of rest. The next month he moves to eight to twelve or even fifteen reps, two to three sets, and 60 to 90 seconds (up to about two and a half minutes) of rest. Galpin noted hypertrophy can occur anywhere from about 5 to 30 reps, and varying the range offsets boredom. Huberman prefers heavy work, but finds he starts to lose ground if he stays heavy for more than four weeks, and that his endurance sessions feel different, and easier, during moderate-rep months. He cites a review by Mirac and Bagley on interference between strength and endurance training, but still prefers not to do cardio the day after legs.

Tuesday: Heat and Cold Contrast for Recovery

Tuesday has no endurance or resistance training. Instead he does three to five rounds of about 20 minutes in a hot sauna followed by about five minutes in cold water around 45 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. When traveling he alternates a hot bath with a cold shower. His rule of thumb: cold enough that you really want to get out but not so cold that it's unsafe, and hot enough to sweat and want out without risking injury, building up gradually because tolerance varies.

The goals are recovery from Monday's legs plus cardiovascular and brain benefits through alternating vasoconstriction and vasodilation. He cites a study from Finland, covered in his deliberate heat episode, showing that doing many sauna rounds on a single day about once a week produced very large, even 16-fold, increases in growth hormone, which are not seen with more frequent sauna use. Keeping cold exposure on its own day also matters: several quality studies show that ice baths or cold immersion immediately after strength, hypertrophy or endurance training can blunt the adaptations you're seeking. He says he's not aware of data showing the same problem for cold showers, which work differently.

Wednesday: Torso and Neck

Wednesday trains the whole torso: pushing movements like bench or incline presses, shoulder presses and lateral raises, and pulling movements like rows, chin-ups and pull-ups. Training these together is time efficient and produces broader systemic effects. He sometimes alternates push and pull sets, but asks people not to colonize multiple pieces of equipment in a crowded gym. Again it's two exercises per muscle group, one with a stretch (such as an incline press or chin-up) and one with peak contraction (such as cable crossovers or a row with the elbow behind the torso), within the same 50-to-60-minute window and monthly rep scheme. He recommends Jeff Cavaliere's free YouTube videos for exercise selection.

He's a strong advocate for neck training. He credits a trained neck with walking away from a fall off a roof and from being rear-ended at full speed at a red light, with his mother and grandfather in the back seat, sore but not seriously injured. He also gets shoulder issues when he stops training it. He mostly avoids neck bridges because, as Cavaliere has told him, disc damage can happen suddenly, and instead moves his head side to side and front to back with a towel-wrapped plate. Even if you don't want a bigger neck, light work helps counter the chin-forward posture from texting and computers that can contribute to back pain and headaches.

Thursday and Friday: Moderate Cardio, Then HIIT

Thursday is a warm-up followed by 30 to 35 minutes at about 75 to 80% of all-out effort, where 100% is sprinting from someone chasing you with a needle of poison. It's harder than zone 2 and requires mouth breathing, and it spans several endurance categories and fuel systems at once. Running, rowing or cycling all work. In a hotel he runs or walks fast up fire stairwells (making sure he can get back into the building) or does full jumping jacks, which get the heart rate up within five or six minutes. He travels with a jump rope, though he notes skilled skipping may stay closer to zone 2, and recommends the Instagram account Anna Skips for inspiration.

Friday is high-intensity interval training to reach maximum or near-maximum heart rate at least once a week, which Galpin recommends alongside weekly zone 2 work. His preferred tool is an assault or AirDyne fan bike: 20 to 30 seconds all-out with arms and legs, 10 seconds of rest, repeated 8 to 12 times. A rough estimate of maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age, though it doesn't apply to everyone. Alternatively he does sprint-jog intervals; his bulldog Costello would do the first sprint and then lie down and watch. Friday also serves as his indirect second leg stimulus, since protein synthesis can be stimulated roughly every 48 to 72 hours. He warns that all-out sprints can cause sciatica or pelvic floor pain the next day, so he sprints at about 95% and prefers bikes or rowers, which are safer for him.

Saturday: Arms, Calves, Neck, and an Indirect Torso Day

Saturday trains biceps, triceps, calves and neck directly, while indirectly hitting the torso a second time. Dips, which he recalls Pavel Tsatsouline likening to an upper-body squat, work the chest, shoulders and triceps; chin-ups work the biceps and lats. A sample session might include dumbbell curls, incline curls for a stretch, and two to three sets of chin-ups, then a triceps peak-contraction move like kickbacks, an overhead extension for stretch, and dips, followed by calf and neck work. Small muscle groups can take longer because you move between more exercises, so he allows up to about 75 minutes if equipment is busy.

Summed up, the week is: Sunday long endurance, Monday legs, Tuesday heat-cold contrast, Wednesday torso and neck, Thursday 35-minute moderate cardio, Friday HIIT, and Saturday arms, calves, neck and indirect torso work.

Flexibility of the Schedule and the Mind-Muscle Link

Nobody will hit every workout on the same day every week, so Huberman's rule is that any session can shift one day forward or back. If you miss Tuesday's heat and cold, move it to Wednesday, keeping cold at least four and ideally eight hours after resistance training, or do only heat. Think top-down: each week get one long endurance session, one moderate faster session and one all-out session, plus hard training for legs, torso and arms once each, with calves and neck. Spacing matters more than the exact days: never put HIIT the day after legs, and separate them by two or three days.

On strength and hypertrophy, he says few people have perfectly balanced musculature. As Jeff Cavaliere popularized, if you can contract a muscle hard, almost to cramping, without any weight, you'll likely build it more easily than muscles you struggle to activate. During sets he focuses intensely on the working muscle (which shifts a set toward hypertrophy) or on moving the weight (more toward strength). Between sets he tries to relax deeply using the physiological sigh: two inhales through the nose, the second topping up the lungs, followed by a long, full exhale through the mouth, which he calls the fastest known way to calm the nervous system. For any repetitive cardio, he says the single most important variable is performing the movement safely, citing the example of setting a bike seat too high during sprints and paying for it with back pain or sciatica.

Real-World Questions: Sleep, Stress, Food and Illness

After a poor night's sleep or a very stressful day, Huberman usually skips training and slides the schedule forward, because training then tends to make him sick, which costs more days. The exception: if he got only three or four hours but wants to train, he does 10, 30 or even 60 minutes of non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) first, which often restores his capacity. He points to a free 10-minute NSDR script on YouTube.

He prefers training fasted, typically within an hour of waking, with his eating window roughly 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., though he isn't strict. Before morning leg days he eats starchy carbohydrates like rice or pasta the night before, and after hard resistance sessions, where about 30% of his sets go to failure, he eats starches and protein. If he must eat first, he trains 60 to 90 minutes later, because training fed beats not training. On illness, he dismisses the old neck-up rule as lacking data. With a tiny sniffle he shortens the session by about 15 minutes, reduces sets to failure from about 30% to about 10%, or throttles endurance work back 10 to 20%. With a real cold or possible flu he doesn't train at all until fully recovered, then ramps back up over one to two weeks after any layoff.

Stretching, Grip, the Dead Hang, and Slow Breathing

From his flexibility episode, the center of mass of the research favors static stretches at about 60% or less of maximum, held for 30 to 60 seconds, repeated two or three times, relaxing into the stretch with an exhale. He admits he fails to stretch daily but gets about three sessions a week, often in the evening or at his standing desk. Drawing on Pavel Tsatsouline's principle of irradiation, he notes that relaxing the midsection aids stretching, while contracting the core and gripping hard boosts force, even squeezing the handle of the non-moving dumbbell during alternating curls. Grip also helps with Peter Attia's dead-hang test, since the ability to hang from a bar for a minute or longer is an interesting metric of health.

His final tool, from Andy Galpin, is three to five minutes of deliberately slow breathing at the end of every session, in the shower, in the car, or wherever. Research from Galpin's group and related work in Huberman's lab suggests it downshifts the nervous system and sets you up for faster recovery, so you can bring full intensity to the next workout.

Conclusion

Huberman's foundational fitness protocol is less a rigid program than a framework: each week, get one long zone 2 session, one moderate-hard session, one all-out interval session, and hard resistance work for legs, torso and arms, with neck and calves included and recovery built in through heat, cold, sleep and breathing. Within it, the details are concrete: 50 to 60 minutes of real work, two exercises per muscle in stretched and shortened positions, heavy and moderate months alternating, and cold kept away from training sessions. Just as important is the flexibility he builds in: sliding workouts a day, skipping when sick or badly slept, using NSDR, and ramping back after a break. Add small extras like soleus pushups, physiological sighs and slow breathing, and you have a science-informed template anyone can tailor to their own goals.

This is a summary of "Fitness Toolkit: Protocol & Tools to Optimize Physical Health" from Huberman Lab, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.