He Trains MVPs and UFC Champions. His Advice for the Rest of Us is Shockingly Simple.

Dr. Andy Galpin on the optimal weekly workout, the danger of trusting your sleep tracker, and why 95% of elite performance comes down to the basics.

Note to Members: We’re introducing something new for Members. Every podcast post will now have key takeaways from the episode for Members only. Enjoy.

Before I left for an 850-mile hike last year, I emailed Dr. Andy Galpin for advice on training. He’s arguably the world’s foremost performance scientist.

Andy ignored my request entirely. Instead, he turned me into a lab rat. “I know exactly what happens to normal athletes before, during, and after competition,” he said. “But I have no idea what’s going to happen to you doing something that extreme. I want to find out.”

Twenty-four hours before I hit the trail, a lab tech showed up to my house and took many of my bodily fluids: copious amounts of blood, saliva, urine, etc.

Then, nearly two months later, she returned 24 hours after I’d finished the trail and took the same measurements. Then she came back 45 days later.

The results were, in Andy’s words, “mind-blowing.” Some of what happened surprised even him.

In the first 20-minutes of today’s episode, Andy and I covered what the data revealed about my hormones, red blood cells, micronutrients, metabolism, and recovery timeline—and what that can tell you about the toll of exercise.

In the rest of the episode, we covered what Andy has learned from working with MVPs, Cy Young winners, and UFC champions. He says the fundamentals that make elite performers elite are the same ones the rest of us should do.

He walked me through his complete exercise framework, explained why most sleep apnea goes undiagnosed, broke down his thoughts on where fitness/sleep trackers go wrong, and shared a strange, cheap fix for better sleep.

Whether you want to sleep better, train smarter, or just build a body that can handle whatever life throws at it, there’s something in this conversation for you.

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Show notes

• Andy’s website.

• Andy’s health program: www.biomolecularathlete.com

• Andy’s sleep challenge with Sam Harris: https://www.wakingup.com/andy

• Andy’s podcast: Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

• Andy’s Instagram

• My live recap of my hike.

My Biggest Takeaways From the Episode

As a reminder, this new section is for Members only. Below are 5 to 10 of the highest-impact, most actionable takeaways from the episode.