Andy Galpin — Professor of kinesiology at Cal State University Fullerton and a leading expert on the science of strength, speed, endurance, and hypertrophy. He has worked with professional athletes across roughly 14 sports, including Olympic medalists and Cy Young winners.
The gist
This first episode of a six-part Huberman Lab guest series with Dr. Andy Galpin reframes 'fitness' as nine distinct physiological adaptations: skill, speed, power, strength, hypertrophy, muscular endurance, anaerobic capacity, maximal aerobic capacity (VO2 max), and long-duration endurance. Galpin argues that fat loss and general health are byproducts of these nine rather than separate training goals, and that no single style of training (endurance-only or strength-only) produces global health. He walks through a history of exercise science to explain why people hold flawed training assumptions inherited from bodybuilding. The bulk of the episode is a practical assessment battery: for each of the nine adaptations he gives a gold-standard lab test and a cost-free or low-cost home version, plus target numbers for men and women. He closes with guidance on how to schedule the tests and how often to repeat them.
Big reveals
- Galpin defines fitness as exactly nine trainable adaptations, and says fat loss and 'health' are byproducts of those nine, not separate training targets.
- An 80-90-year-old Swedish cross-country skier had a VO2 max of about 38, which Galpin estimated was a world record for someone over 90.
- Despite elite endurance, those lifelong skiers' leg strength was no better than non-exercising peers, showing endurance alone leaves health on the table.
- In a study of identical (monozygous) twins, the lifelong endurance twin and the sedentary twin had nearly identical total muscle mass, but the non-exerciser was often stronger, especially grip strength.
- The endurance twin's quad was about 95% slow-twitch versus textbook ~50% in his sedentary identical twin, showing 35 years of training can radically reshape muscle despite identical DNA.
- A famous strength-training proponent, George Winship, dying of a heart attack around age 50 terrified people away from strength training for roughly 70 years.
- Huberman admits on-air he cannot do a bilateral leg extension with his own body weight, revealing a quad deficiency.
- Galpin's mentor Dave Costill insisted 'there's no human excuse to be below 60' for VO2 max, a standard Galpin calls genuinely hard to reach.
Things worth remembering
- A VO2 max below 18 ml/kg/min is considered the 'line of independence' below which living alone becomes very hard.
- The Swedish skiers averaged 35-38 ml/kg/min VO2 max, roughly equal to a normal college-age male, in their 80s and 90s.
- Galpin considers a resting heart rate above 60 bpm a sign something is off or you're not fit, disputing the common 60-80 'normal' range.
- Fast-twitch muscle fibers are selectively lost with aging because they're only recruited during high-force activity, hurting fall-recovery ability.
- The soleus calf muscle is about 80% slow-twitch while the adjacent gastrocnemius is about 80% fast-twitch.
- A simple power benchmark: you should be able to broad jump roughly your own height (scaled down about 15% for women).
- Grip strength target on a hand dynamometer is at least 40 kg for men (35 kg for women), ideally 60+, with under 10% left-right difference.
- Push-up muscular-endurance standard is 25+ consecutive full-range reps for men, 15+ for women, with no pausing allowed.
- Healthy heart-rate recovery is about half a beat per second: roughly 30 bpm drop in the first minute after max exertion.
- The 12-minute Cooper Test (run max distance in 12 minutes) estimates VO2 max; Galpin wants men above 50 and women above 50, with 55+ ideal for men.