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Essentials: How to Build Strength, Muscle Size & Endurance | Dr. Andy Galpin - Huberman Lab | Wave AI Podcast Notes

Essentials: How to Build Strength, Muscle Size & Endurance | Dr. Andy Galpin

Thu Apr 02 2026

In this ⁠Huberman Lab Essentials⁠ episode, my guest is Dr. Andy Galpin, PhD, Executive Director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University and an expert in building strength and muscle size (hypertrophy).

Summary

Huberman Lab Essentials: How to Build Strength, Muscle Size & Endurance | Dr. Andy Galpin

Date: April 2, 2026
Host: Dr. Andrew Huberman
Guest: Dr. Andy Galpin

Episode Overview

This Huberman Lab Essentials episode features an in-depth discussion between Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Andy Galpin, a leading expert in exercise physiology. The conversation covers the science and practical strategies behind building strength, muscle size (hypertrophy), power, and endurance. Dr. Galpin breaks down the physiological principles, program design variables, and actionable protocols anyone can use, regardless of experience level, to maximize their training outcomes—while emphasizing safety, sustainability, and adaptability to individual lifestyles.

Key Topics & Insights

1. The Nine Core Adaptations from Exercise ([00:55])

Dr. Galpin introduces nine distinct physical adaptations:

Skill: Mastering movement patterns (e.g., golf swing, squat).
Speed: Maximizing movement velocity.
Power: The product of force (strength) and speed.
Strength: The maximal force a muscle or group can produce.
Hypertrophy: Increase in muscle size/mass.
Muscular Endurance: Sustaining muscle activity locally (e.g., max push-ups in a minute).
Anaerobic Power: Total work output over 30 sec–2 min (high-intensity, whole-body).
VO2 Max-Type Endurance: Max output in the 3–12-minute window (cardiovascular focus).
Long Duration Endurance: Sustained effort over 30+ minutes.

“If you continue to do, say the exact same workout over time, you better not expect much improvement... In general, you have to have some sort of progressive overload.”
— Dr. Andy Galpin [02:54]

2. Modifiable Variables: Foundations of Program Design ([04:01])

The primary factors you can change to alter adaptation:

Exercise Choice: Select appropriate movements for goals.
Intensity: Actual effort as a percentage of max (e.g., % of 1RM).
Volume: Total work (sets × reps).
Rest Intervals: Time between sets.
Progression: How variables advance (load, reps, movement complexity).
Frequency: Workouts per week per muscle/group.

On soreness:

“Soreness is a terrible proxy for exercise quality... For most people, I would say hedge a little bit on the side of less sore than more sore, because frequency is very, very important for almost all these adaptations.”
— Dr. Galpin [07:00]

3. Progressive Overload for Strength & Hypertrophy ([10:13])

Full Range of Motion: Aim for complete range, per joint, in training.
Exercise Selection: Prioritize confidence and safety, especially for beginners.
Balance: Choose a press, pull, lower body hinge, and lower body press for a rounded routine.

For Strength ([11:45]):

High intensity: 75–85%+ of 1RM.
Low reps: 5 or fewer per set.
Sets: 3+ work sets per exercise.
Rest: 2–4 minutes between sets—can superset with non-overlapping movements for time efficiency.

“True strength training is really going to be in like 5 repetitions per set or less range.”
— Dr. Galpin [13:55]

On Supersets:

“Supersets will reduce the strength gains, but by a tiny amount... For the average person, I will tell them, yeah, superset. For someone who's trying to break a world record... I don't superset.”
— Dr. Galpin [15:35]

For Hypertrophy ([17:58]):

More emphasis on recovery for growth (48–72 hours).
Key driver is volume: aim for at least 10 work sets per muscle per week; more advanced may aim for 20–25 sets.
Rep range: 5–30 reps per set (all effective if taken close to failure).
Progress limited not by frequency, but by ability to accumulate sufficient volume.

“The total driver of hypertrophy is volume. Assume you're taking it to fatigue.”
— Dr. Galpin [21:03]

4. Repetitions, Sets, Frequency—Practical Guidelines ([26:55])

The "3 to 5 Principle":

3–5 exercises per session.
3–5 reps per set.
3–5 sets per exercise.
3–5 minutes’ rest between sets.
3–5 times per week.
For Strength: Intensity 85%+ 1RM.
For Power: Intensity lower (40–70% 1RM), focus on speed.

For Hypertrophy:

5–30 reps per set, taken to near failure.
Varying rep schemes for enjoyment, adherence, and adaptation.

“The programming is idiot proof. The work is hard, though.”
— Dr. Galpin [22:36]

5. Mind-Muscle Connection and Intentionality ([28:22])

For strength: Focus your mind on moving the weight.
For hypertrophy: Focus on deeply challenging and contracting the target muscle.

“Intentionality matters for both... the mind-body connection [in hypertrophy training]… initial indications are the mind-body connection are going to result in more growth than not.”
— Dr. Galpin [29:14, 30:17]

6. Muscle Activation and Correcting Imbalances ([31:40])

Awareness: Mental focus or tactile cues improve muscle engagement.
Eccentric Overload: Slow, controlled lowering helps activate hard-to-target muscles and is key for both hypertrophy and strength.

“You’d be surprised how many folks when you just simply tell them that muscle group right there and maybe you give them a tactical prompt... all this stuff can help get people to activate.”
— Dr. Galpin [31:45]

7. Breathing for Performance & Recovery ([34:04], [35:31])

During Lifts:

Inhale/braced hold during eccentric/lowering phase.
Exhale mid-way during the concentric (lifting) phase.
For singles: breath-hold fine; for high reps: develop a breathing rhythm (e.g., exhale every third rep).

Post-Session Downregulation:

3–5 minutes of exhale-emphasized nasal breathing (e.g., 4-sec inhale, 8-sec exhale, or box breathing) to speed recovery.

“You need some sort of internal signal that we're safe, throttle down here, we're gonna move on.”
— Dr. Galpin [37:35]

“I realized... that adrenaline ramp up during the workouts—I wasn't clamping that at the end and so I think eventually it crashed. Turns out the downregulation allowed me to work through the afternoon.”
— Dr. Huberman [36:22]

Memorable Quotes & Moments

On program adherence:

“Most people don’t want to go in the gym and do three sets of ten. They’re going to get bored very quickly... I think you should intentionally change the rep schemes for simple sake of having more fun.”
— Dr. Galpin [23:27]
On muscle growth science:

“There’s only a maximum amount of growth that one can get. The three most likely drivers are: metabolic stress, mechanical tension, and muscular damage.”
— Dr. Galpin [23:36]
On soreness as proxy:

"A little bit of soreness is good. Just don't get so sore it's compromising your total volume."
— Dr. Galpin [24:00]
On workout quality vs quantity:

“Did you do enough to just check off the box or did you actually strive for adaptation?”
— Dr. Galpin [30:17]
On breathing:

“If you really have to push it, give me three [minutes of downregulation]. You can do this in the shower if you have to.”
— Dr. Galpin [37:35]

Timestamps for Major Segments

[00:55] – The 9 major physical adaptations from training
[04:01] – Modifiable training variables
[10:13] – Applying variables for strength & hypertrophy
[17:58] – Recovery, training frequency, work volume
[21:03] – How to hit muscle group work set targets
[22:09] – Effective repetition ranges
[26:55] – “3 to 5 rule” for structuring workouts
[28:22] – Mind-muscle connection, focus, and intention
[31:40] – Strategies for muscle activation and overcoming imbalances
[34:04], [35:31] – Breathing strategies for intra-workout and recovery

Actionable Takeaways

For optimal adaptation, progressively overload by manipulating intensity, volume, complexity, and frequency.
Strength: Heavy weights (>75% 1RM), lower reps (≤5), high rest, focus on force output.
Hypertrophy: Moderate loads, 5–30 reps to near failure, aim for 10–20+ working sets per muscle/week.
Use full ranges of motion and focus on quality of movement.
Vary rep ranges to keep training engaging and effective.
Be deliberate with your focus—move weights for strength, contract muscles for growth.
Regularly assess and intentionally cue muscle engagement, especially if you struggle to feel activation.
Incorporate controlled breathing post-workout to facilitate recovery and manage stress.

Final Thoughts

Dr. Galpin and Dr. Huberman stress the importance of evidence-based, adaptable training practices. The principles outlined in this episode form a foundational roadmap for anyone—beginner to advanced—to build strength, muscle, and endurance effectively and safely.

“You can take a huge cloud of information and still distill it into protocols that ought to work for 75% of people, 75% of the time, which is an immensely valuable thing to do.”
— Dr. Huberman [38:20]

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Transcript

A (0:00)

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science based tools for mental health, physical health and performance.

B (0:11)

I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. And now for my discussion with Dr. Andy Galpin.

A (0:20)

Welcome, Dr. Professor Andy Galpin. There are only a handful, meaning about three, three or four people, who I trust enough in the exercise physiology space that when they speak, I not only listen, but I modify my protocols. And you are among those three or four people. I would love to have you share with us what you think most everybody or even everybody should know about principles of strength training and principles of, let's call it hypertrophy, power and the other sort of categories of training.

C (0:55)

There's about nine different adaptations you can get from exercise. First one to think about is what we'll just call skill. So this is improving anything from say a golf swing to a squatting technique to running. And this is just simply moving mechanically how you want your body to move. From there we're gonna get into speed. So this is moving as fast as possible. The next one is power. And power is a function of speed, but also a function of the next one, which is strength. So if you actually multiply strength by speed, you get power. So there's carryover. So like a lot of things that you would do for the development of strength and power, they are somewhat similar, but then there's differences once you get past strength. And the next one kind of down the list is hypertrophy. This is muscle size, right? Growing muscle mass is one way to think about it. After hypertrophy, you get into these categories of. The next one is these are all globally endurance, and the very first one is called muscular endurance. So this is your ability to do. How many push ups can you do in one minute? You know, things like that. Past muscular endurance, you're now into more of an energetic or even cardiovascular fatigue. So you've left the local muscle and you're now into the entire physiological system and its ability to produce and sustain work. Think about this as I call this anaerobic power, right? So this is your ability to produce a lot of work for say 30 seconds to maybe one minute, kind of two minutes like that. The next one down then is more closely aligned to what we'll call your VO2 max. So this is your ability to kind of do the same thing, but more of a time domain of say 3 to 12 minutes. So this is going to be a maximum heart rate, but it's going to be well past just max heart rate. Then after that we have what I call long duration endurance. So this is your ability to sustain work. The time domain doesn't matter in terms of how fast you're going, it's how long can you sustain work. This is 30 plus minutes of no break like that. So as just a high level overview, those are the different things you can target. And again, some of those crossover and some are actually a little bit contrarian to the other ones. So pushing towards one is maybe gonna sacrifice something else. There is a handful of things you have got to do to make all of those things work. One of them is functionally called progressive overload. If you want to continue to improve, you have to have some method of overload adaptation physiologically happens as a byproduct of stress, so you have to push a system. So if you continue to do, say the exact same workout over time, you better not expect much improvement. You can keep maintenance, but you're not going to be adding additional stress. In general, you have to have some sort of progressive overload. This could come from adding more weights, this could come from adding more repetitions, it could come from doing it more often in the week, it could come from adding complexity to the movement. So there's a lot of different ways to progress, but you have to have some sort of movement forward. So if you have this kind of routine where you've built Monday, Wednesday and Saturday or something, and you just do that infinitely, you're not going to get very far.

C (4:01)

You have what we call your modifiable variables. So this is a very short list of all the things you can modify the different variables within your workout that can be modified that will change the outcome. Fancy way of saying if you do this differently, then you're going to get a different result. So modifiable variables, the very first one of those is called choice. So this is the exercise choice that you select. So if you choose, I want to get stronger, I'm going to do a bench press. Well, if you do the wrong set range, the wrong repetition range, the wrong speed, you won't get strength. You maybe get muscular endurance and very little strength adaptation. So the exercise selection itself is important, but it does not determine the outcome adaptation. Right. It is the application of the exercise. What are the sets, what are the reps, what are the rest ranges that you're using? That's going to be your primary determinant. The second one is the intensity. And that refers to in this context, not perceived effort like, wow, that was a really intense workout. It is quite literally either a percentage of your one rep at max or a percentage of your maximum heart rate or VO2 max. So for the strength based things you want to think about, what's the percentage of the maximum weight I could lift one time? And that's what we're going to call one rep max, or it's a percentage of my heart rate. Right? So if I tell you to get on a bike and I want you to do intervals and I want you at 75%, I'm typically referring to 75% of your max heart rate or VO2 max or something like that. If I tell you to do squats at 75%, that means 75% of the maximum amount of weight you could lift one time or close. The third one is what we call volume. And so this is just how many reps and how many sets are you doing? Right. So if you're going to do three sets of 10, that volume would be 30. Right? Five sets of five, that volume is 25. It's just a simple equation. How much work are you totally doing? The next one past that is called rest intervals. So this is the amount of time you're taking in between typically a set. Then from there you have progression, which is what we started to talk about, this progressive overload. Are you increasing by weight or reps or rest intervals or complexity? All of those things can be changed as a method of progression. And so maybe you want to go progressing from a single joint exercise like a leg extension on a machine. And you want to progress by moving to a whole body movement like a squat, that in of itself you don't have to change the load or the reps or the rest. That is a representation of progressive overload. And it's probably a pretty good place to start because number one, especially for beginners, you want to make sure that the movement pattern is correct. Don't worry about intensity, don't worry about rep ranges or any of these things. You need to learn to move correctly and you need to give your body some time to develop some tissue tolerance so that you're not getting overtly sore. In general, soreness is a terrible proxy for exercise quality. It's a really bad way to estimate whether it was a good or a bad workout, especially for people in that beginner to middle to moderate. In fact, even the fat for our professional athletes, we do not use soreness as a metric of a good workout. On the same token, because stress is required for adaptation, you don't want to leave at the gym and feel like, I don't really do much. If you're sore of, like, you're moving around a little bit and you're like, man, this is a little bit sore, you can train. If you're like, I can't sit on the couch without crying because my glutes are so sore, in that particular case, I'd say you've actually gone to a place of detriment because now you're going to have to skip a training session and now you're behind. So your actual total volume, say, across the month, is actually going to be lower because you went way too hard in those workouts, had to take too many days off in between. You're gonna see that you're gonna cover less distance over the course of a month or six month or even a year. So you wanna walk a pretty fine line. And for most people, I would say hedge a little bit on the side of less sore than more sore, because frequency is very, very important for almost all these adaptations. Training frequency, which is the last modifiable variable. Right? Frequency, which is how many times per week are you doing that thing? So those are kind of our global things that we can play with. So when I'm trying to manipulate and get strength versus hypertrophy, or you know what, I want, like a little bit of both, all those variables are the things that are going through my mind. Which one do I need to move in which direction so that I can get this outcome and not this outcome over here, for example, some folks might want to get stronger, but not put muscle mass on. Some folks are just kind of want both, and that's a lot of the general public. I want to get a little stronger and a little bit more muscle. Great. But there are instances where people, for performance reasons or for purely personal preference, like, I don't want to get any more muscle great, but I want to get stronger. Awesome. If you manipulate those variables correctly, you can get exactly that. Very little development in muscle size and a lot of development in strength. And this is why we continue to break world records in sports like powerlifting and weightlifting that have weight classes. So there's a top number that we can hit in terms of body size, but yet we continue to get stronger and faster. So this is very possible. If you understand how to manipulate all

C (10:13)

Love it. All right, great. So one of my other laws of strength and conditioning is in general, the default is all joints through all range of motion. So this is important because it's going to answer your very first question on this strength category. In general, the ankle should go through the full range of motion of the ankle. The knee should go through the full range of motion, the knee, the hip, the elbow, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So across the I would even say it doesn't even have to be the day, but maybe throughout the week, try to get every joint through full range of motion. When I say full range of motion, that's the default. That doesn't mean every single person can do that for every single exercise. It means that's where we should be striving to. And that's our starting point. You're going to see a lot less injury and a lot more productivity out of your training sessions. In fact, the science is fairly clear on this one. Strength development, as well as hypertrophy is generally enhanced with a larger range of motion of training. So if you're doing, say a deadlift, and in order to take your knee through a full range of motion, a deadlift, you have to compromise your back position, that's no bueno. So caveats there aside, don't kill me in good positions, always don't kill yourselves. More importantly, so why that matters is if we walk through strength, the very first thing I'm going to go through is the exercise selection. So let's choose an exercise which ideally has a full range of motion or close to it, that doesn't induce injury for you, that you can still maintain good neck and low back and position and everything else you feel comfortable with. So you can feel strong, but you don't feel like, oh my gosh, if you've never snatched before, having you do a snatch for a maximum Even, you know, 75%, like it's a terrible idea. You're not going to feel confident, it's going to be a train wreck. I would rather put you on a machine bench press so you can go, I feel stable, I feel safe here and I can just express my strength. So exercise choice in general, full range of motion and you want to kind of balance between the movement areas. So this is an upper body press. So this is pushing away from you, bench press, things like that. Upper body pull, pulling an implement towards you, bent row pull up. The pressing should be horizontal, so perpendicular to your body as well as vertical. So this is lifting a weight over top of your head, lifting away, away from you. The pull version is pulling horizontally to you and pulling vertically down, pull up, things like that. So if you were going to do a single workout, you could choose four exercises and you could choose one of one press, upper body press, one upper body pull, one lower body hinge, one lower body press. And that would be like a decently well rounded exercise. That's your exercise selection. And if you're taking those through a full range of motion, you're at a pretty good spot as close as you can. The next one is intensity. So if you want to develop strength, there is a certain recruitment threshold needed for neurons to fire. And we have muscle fibers in what we call fast twitch muscle fibers and slow twitch muscle fibers. And in general you're going to activate the slow twitch ones first because they tend to be associated with low threshold motor neurons. It's not exactly that way, but it's close enough, right? Well, the only way that you activate some of these higher threshold neurons is to demand the muscle to produce more force. So in general, the only way to use these big chunks of your muscle, which are incredibly important for aging, by the way. One of the major problems we have with aging developing or development of aging related issues with muscle is the fact that we lose fast switch fibers preferentially and then we have major problems as we go down the line because we've lost a big chunk of our strength and size. So you want to make sure these fibers stay alive and intact. So if that being said, the only way to develop strength is then to challenge the muscle to produce more total force. So if you want to get stronger, you need to impose a demand of strength, not repetitions. So this has to be. The load has to be very high. In general, you're probably looking at above 85% of your one rep max. If you're moderately trained, maybe 75%. So because the intensity demand is so high, that is going to force you to do a low repetition range. You can't do 12 reps at 95%, then it wouldn't be 95% of your one rep max. So by definition, true strength training is really going to be in like 5 repetitions per set or less range. So we've covered choice, intensity and repetitions. Right. The total amount of sets that you do is really kind of up to your personal fitness level. Right. If you did as little as like three sets per exercise, that's probably enough work sets. Totally. Yeah, totally work sets, right. So get fully warmed up and build up to that 85%. Don't just walk into the gym and throw 85% on and go, thank you. That's an important distinction. A very classic warm up thing would be like a set of 10 at 50%, a set of eight at 60%, a set of maybe eight again at 70%, and then maybe like a set of five at 75%. So two or three or four sets kind of building intensity and lowering the rep range. And then you would go after your two or three working sets. Also in terms of rest intervals, the primary driver of strength is intensity. It's not the volume, right. It's the intensity. So in order to maintain that, we have to do a low repetition range. But in addition, we also have to have a high rest interval. Because if we have any amount of fatigue incur and we have to then either reduce the reps or reduce the intensity. We've lost the primary driver, we've lost that main signal. So the number we're going to throw out typically is like 2 to 4 meds. So imagine you did, you know your setup bench press and you did five repetitions at 85%. You probably want to rest two to four minutes before coming back to the bench. That doesn't mean you have to sit there on your phone like, in fact, please don't, like everyone will thank you for not doing that. I promise you can engage other muscle groups. This is what we call super setting. So you're doing your bench press and while that two minute clock is running for your chest to rest, you can go over and do your deadlifts. You can kind of move back and forth and this is how you can make strength training, not seven hour workout. If you're a professional athlete, you're going to take that time because you want to maximize the outcome. We've done this actually in our lab too. Supersets will reduce the strength gains, but by a tiny amount. And most of us don't care enough relative to it's going to triple the length of your training session. It's not worth it. So for the average person, I will tell them, yeah, superset. For someone who's trying to break a world record in weightlifting or powerlifting, I don't superset.

C (17:58)

One of the questions is what are you training for? If you're training for hypertrophy, right, muscle size, muscle growth, we need to hedge towards recovery because what you're trying to do is cause a massive insult there. Allow then protein synthesis to occur, building of new tissue, which takes time, 48 to 72 hours, like kind of at a minimum, that process needs to occur. If you're doing actually more strength, strength is not going to cause a lot of soreness. Therefore intensity is the driver. Therefore frequency can be as high as you want. So you can train every single day the same exact muscle if speed or power or strength are the primary training tools. But if you want to allow for that process of contractile proteins to add and grow, then you're going to have to allow some recovery. Because if you go back into that muscle too soon, you're going to blunt the response, you're going to stop it, you're going to cut it off. You have all kinds of problems going on in the cell that are going to just attenuate that growth response. So the answer for hypertrophy is probably less than 3 out of 10 on level of soreness. You can go again. In general, you're probably looking at 72 hours is the optimal window. So if you trained your shoulders on Monday, you probably wouldn't want to train them again on Tuesday. If hypertrophy is the goal, maybe Wednesday, maybe Thursday's best. So something like an every two to three day window is probably, and we know a little bit more now about why that is. The gene cascade, the signaling response happens. Well, the signaling happens instantaneously, right? Within seconds. The gene cascade is probably in the peaked in the four hour window, like depending on which gene you want to look at. But it's just kind of a snapshot. But the protein synthesis process is 24 to 48 hour. And so it tends to kind of look like let that thing finish and let that signal go back to baseline and then hit it again, and then hit it again. And now as long as you're providing the nutrients, the recovery should happen and you should be able to sustain the same work output in the training session. So the stimulus stays high and the recovery's there. And you can now continue to grow muscle.

C (23:27)

My recommendation is I think you should actually use the repetition range as a way to have some variation, because most people don't want to go in the gym and do three sets of 10. They're going to get very bored very quickly. And so I think you should actually intentionally change the rep schemes for simple sake of having more fun. It is a very different challenge. The mechanisms that are inducing hypertrophy are different, but there's only a maximum amount of growth that one can get. Right. But the three most likely drivers are one, metabolic stress, two, mechanical tension, and then three, muscular damage. You don't have to have all three. One is sufficient. You can have a little bit of one or two and you can cut it so you get it to play here. We've already talked about the muscular damage again, it's very clear. More damage is not better, but it is somewhat a Decent proxy. Right. Like, again, a little bit of soreness is good. Just don't get so sore it's compromising your total volume. Mechanical tension is kind of like strength. And this is why, if you do even sets of five or eight and you're kind of close to that strength range, you will gain a little bit of muscle. It's not optimal muscle gain, but you're going to gain some because everything in these, like, physiology didn't cut off at four reps. And then five reps is a different thing. Right. It's always a blend. So think of it as like a fading curve. As you get closer to the end, it fades. Less effective. As you get closer to the middle, it's more effective anywhere between 8 reps per set to 30, it's equally effective past 30, it's going to blend out past 8 to 5 to 4 to 3, it's going to blend lesser there. So mechanical tension is the one that's heavy. Muscle damage is the other one. The third one is metabolic stress. And this is a bit of an area of scientific contention, but something's there. I know something's there. We're just kind of fumbling to figure out what exactly it is. And this is metabolic stress is the burn. Right. It's there. So you want to train to failure, but you don't need to go to extreme failure, so you don't need to necessarily go to that. Like a partner has to lift the barbell off my chest. But you have to get close.

C (31:40)

Yeah, this is actually very common and I think everyone has probably gone through this. There's some part that you just can't get going, which goes back to earlier part of our conversation, which is why exercises themselves do not determine the adaptation. It's the execution that matters. Right. It's the technique, it's the rep range. All of those are going to determine your actual result. So if anytime you're banging your head against the wall and thinking like, why am I not getting movement here, Growth or strength or whatever, it's guaranteed to be one of those areas, right? You're probably not getting the muscle groups to activate. Whenever I'm diagnosing movement quality, I look for a handful of things, but very first one is awareness. You'd be surprised how many folks when you just simply tell them that muscle group right there and maybe you give them a tactical prompt. So you touch it and you just tell them things like, hey, squeeze my finger, squeeze my finger as you're doing your bent row or your pull down, you can touch the lat. All this stuff can help get people to activate. Outside of simple awareness. Eccentric overload is a very effective way for activation of a difficult to target muscle. Things like a pull up. Okay, so if I'm going to do a pull up and I have poor lat activation to make the movement simpler, I'm going to go all the way to the top. So imagine stepping on a box or something going all the way to that top of that pull up position and starting from there. And I want you to simply lower it under control. And so you're just simply breaking the movement down into smaller pieces that allow you to to focus on the execution more. Eccentrics are great for strength development, very good for hypertrophy and allow you to focus on control. I'm willing to bet a huge percentage of you out there who've like, I've never had a sore lat, even though I've done a lot of pull ups and things like that. If you do that eccentric only you'll probably wake up the next day going, oh gosh, I feel it there. And that's a sign. Even if you didn't feel it during the workout, but it got a little sore the next day. Keep down that path and eventually work that into a progression where you can do the concentric, eccentric and isometric portions and get activation so that that may take you six weeks, might take you six months, but that's generally a pretty good strategy for learning how to activate a muscle group.