Fitness Toolkit: Protocol & Tools to Optimize Physical Health

For those of you that have heard the phrase, 'Don't skip leg day,' I will go a step further and say, don't skip leg day and, in fact, make leg day your first day of strength and hypertrophy training. Put it on Monday.

Getting 180 to 200 minutes of zone 2 cardio per week has enormous positive effects on longevity and enormous positive effects on general health—again in terms of cardiovascular function but also metabolic fuel utilization. Also, in terms of your musculature and your ability to use your body over long distances for long periods of time.

So, I guess I will tell you what exercises I do. For the quadriceps, it's going to be leg extensions and hack squats ... I'll do leg curls and glute ham raises for hamstrings, and I'll do standing calf raises and seated calf raises for the calves.

If you do deliberate cold exposure—in particular, ice baths or getting into very cold water—immediately after an endurance training session or a strength and hypertrophy session... it can disrupt or prevent some of the adaptations that you are seeking with strength and hypertrophy and endurance workouts.

I can honestly say I've had some of the best training sessions, resistance training or endurance training sessions, after a really poor night's sleep, but that's the rare event. More often than not, if I'm not sleeping well, I've had a terrible night's sleep, the next day, I will just skip training that day.

Leg workouts, like all resistance training workouts for me, consist of about... 10 minutes of warming up and then about 50-60 minutes of real work.

I personally do not squat and do not deadlift. I've actually never done much squatting or deadlifting.

For me, the goal is to head out on Sunday and get 60-75 minutes of jogging in zone 2.

I make sure that at some point on Monday—and for me, that some point is, typically and ideally, early in the morning, so 7 AM or so—I train my legs on Monday.

It's pretty clear that if you're going to do lower repetitions and heavier weights that you're going to want to do a bit more volume.

In addition to the benefits of getting 180-200 minutes of zone 2 cardio per week minimum, it's a really good idea to get up to that max or near max heart rate at least once a week.

So, what I'm basically saying is that, no, I don't believe you should train if you're sick.

It's a tool that there is excellent research to support the effectiveness of and that I do believe should come at the end of every training session, and that's to do 3-5 minutes of deliberately slow breathing.