-: All right, it wouldn't be a neurological unit
if we didn't talk about neurotransmitters,
which are basically going to be integral
for both the performance and the
recovery during a neurological phase.
But it's also going to affect things like your mood,
your stress response, your hormones.
Lots of things are going to be
dependent on your neurochemistry.
Before I move on, there is going to be a lot of text
on these slides, so if you want to,
feel free to pause and read them.
I'm going to kind of speak in my own words
rather than like reading from a script here.
So, but I just want to make sure that you guys,
everybody seems to be very interested in this section,
so I put a little bit more kind of
text content in here for you.
So if you see a bunch of text here,
I try to make it nice and big,
go ahead and pause and read the text
and then you can listen to the soothing sound of my voice.
So if you look at neurochemistry,
it's probably perhaps the most underrated
in terms of performance and stress management and recovery
because our nervous system is ultimately the king
of what our body is gonna be doing from a systemic level.
So remember when we talked about systems and whatnot
we kind of said your body basically has two main
decision makers, the nervous system and your cells.
They can choose to disagree, but everything in the middle
is kind of dependent on either what
the cells need or what the nervous system is saying to do.
So that goes for all of the hormones
and stuff that's going in between there.
All right, so if your nervous system is out of control,
you'll have hormonal imbalances,
you'll have a lower tolerance to stress,
you'll have lower ability for high performance
or high intensity contractions in exercise.
All of those things, right?
So your potential becomes massively decreased in terms
of trainability if we have poor neurochemistry.
Now when we look at our brain,
our brain is basically going to
move in say, we'll say four speeds.
So if you manage like the chemical energy,
like flowing back and forth in waves, right?
We're basically going to have like four types
of waves that our brain can move in.
And really it's just the frequency
at which those waves move in, right?
And so I'm going to have beta, alpha, theta, and delta.
Going from the highest frequency to the
lowest frequency brain waves there, right?
So my beta wave is going to be my I'm alert, when working.
When I'm training, this is where I'm at, right?
So it's very high frequency.
So when we talked about getting your brain
in a beta state, right, so this is where
my nervous system is going to be hyper-reactive.
I'm going to be more likely to do high
threshold stimulation of muscle tissues and whatnot.
So fight or flight happens in beta.
Like so this is, you want to be here when you're training.
But that's pretty much the only time you want to be there
because nothing is recovering in this state, right?
There is no recovery going on.
There is no adaptation going on
other than like providing the fuel needed to do work,
to deal with like a physical demand, right?
A physical stress.
Our alpha wave is basically our awake
but we're not in a hyper-alert state.
So this is where we would like to be
the hours that we're awake but not training.
In this state we can be relaxed, we can be reflective.
You know, we can be studying, we can be working,
and our body can be in a kind of
like rest and digest mode, okay?
When we get to theta, right, that's our drowsy state.
You know, that's where it takes us into sleep mode.
So this is like you will be there
like as you're calming down at night
and in those stages of lighter sleep, right?
And then we'll have delta, right?
Where I am sleeping and deeper sleep waves, right?
So this is where a lot of specific recovery things
are going to happen in terms of the liver and the brain.
And then theta is going to be like a decrease
in the agitation in the peripheral nervous system
and blood sugar and all of the hormones
and things like that are going to start to get calmed down.
So this is where we see like cortisol and stuff drop.
This is where we see a lot of recovery mechanisms start
to actually get turned on and that sort of thing, okay?
So if we move through and we look at those waves,
we can associate these waves
with a dominant neurotransmitter.
Now everybody kind of has their own particular brain
chemistry that makes up our personalities
and a little bit of our mood and our likes
and dislikes and things like that.
But relative to what your natural personality is,
you will see an elevation in one type of hormone per wave.
So when we look at your beta and alpha waves,
those tend to be yang.
Those tend to be more energizing, right?
And so those are associated with dopamine
and acetylcholine respectively, right?
So when you're in beta wave, your dopamine
will be the highest than any other state.
When you're in alpha wave, your acetylcholine
should be higher than it is in any of these other states.
When you're in theta when you're calming down,
GABA is going to be what's higher.
When we get into delta, serotonin can become
a little bit more dominant as a neurotransmitter.
So when we're trying to get our
brain into some of these states,
we're going to kind of look at boosting
the respective neurotransmitter,
whether dopamine through serotonin,
for getting you into that desired brain state.
Okay?
If you would want to kind of give a simple analogy
to how these things are affecting our overall chemistry,
dopamine is like the size of your engine.
So how much horsepower you have, right?
So the more dopamine I have, the more fuel I'm
going to be able to burn through, right?
Like the more output, the more torque
I'm going to be able to produce, right?
So dopamine is going to be really important for metabolism.
It's going to be really important for energy.
Acetylcholine is like the regulator for the gas pedal.
And it regulates how fast you're going, right?
So this is what kind of controls the horsepower, right?
So this is really important for your ability
to be flexible and like, you know,
energize when you need it, your ability to focus.
Like to take that energy and actually
direct it towards something,
you need that acetylcholine level to be balanced, right?
GABA is going to be like the brake pedal.
So this slows everything down, right?
So it's going to calm down your dopamine, right?
And gets you out of an agitated state.
Like relax everything.
This is where we, you know, we initially get
a lot of those anabolic processes to occur
is when we start pumping the brakes a little bit, right?
So when we're pumping the gas,
right, that's during training,
we pump the brakes after training, right?
And then we can actually start that recovery process, right?
And then serotonin is like the alternator, right?
If you guys don't do cars, I'm sorry.
But basically the alternator recharges the car battery.
So it's the same thing for us.
It recharges our batteries,
which is why it's elevated, it's the most in sleep.
It's correlated with deep sleep and sleep quality, right?
So we need serotonin to run a lot of those recovery
and those replenishment processes.
So when you feel like you have slept enough
but you still are tired, right,
you didn't get enough quality of sleep,
then you probably aren't, you know,
you probably don't have enough serotonin.
You're not getting as much deep sleep as you should.
You're not getting into those really restorative processes.
So it's not about hours in bed with your eyes shut,
it's about the things that are actually
going on while you're sleeping,
getting into those actual restorative states.
So if we go into these in a little bit more detail,
okay, and again like I said, we're going to have
some decent amount of text on these slides.
So dopamine is going to be important
for metabolism and intensity.
So dopamine, it helps improve the intensity
of contractions because it's going to increase
our ability to do those high threshold recruitments.
So it increases our ability to recruit more motor units
and to recruit fast twitch fibers.
And when we have dopamine, basically that faster wave
means we're more likely to send a high frequency signal
to the muscle to get a larger portion
of neurotransmitters dumped out,
a larger portion of ATP dumped out
for a more intense contraction.
So that's all easier when we have
higher dopamine levels, right?
It also affects my thyroid, right?
So dopamine affects the thyroid
and those thyroid receptors as well.
So when I have good dopamine levels,
it tends to be good for thyroid levels
and my usage of that thyroid hormone.
So higher dopamine tends to mean
higher metabolic rate, right?
And so dopamine overall is energizing to the body, okay?
Lack of dopamine can cause elevated cortisol, all right?
And the reason that happens is if dopamine
is there to provide energy, okay,
so it's working with the thyroid hormone,
it's working with the nervous system,
and dopamine is kind of this energy driving process.
If that gets depleted, well then I need something else
that's going to facilitate driving that energy.
And so what my body is going to resort to
when dopamine levels are low is it's going to
have to bring up cortisol as the energizing hormone, okay?
So when I have hormones like cortisol elevated
inappropriately, cortisol is actually inverse to thyroid.
So cortisol actually works against thyroid hormone.
Because now instead of the body thinking oh,
I'm in an energetic state, it thinks I'm in a stress state.
But really the cortisol is up because
it's replacing the dopamine to provide the energy.
But the body doesn't know that.
The body only sees ah, cortisol, this means a stress state.
So when we talked about hormones like thyroid,
it was like hey, low threat level.
Everything is amazing, right?
Having elevated cortisol is like threat level is going up.
So guess what?
Thyroid goes down in the body, all right?
We get this sense of stress, right?
And now our certain metabolic processes
are going to start to be limited
because of that elevated cortisol
and those elevated catecholamines
that are going to go with this, right?
And over time that's going to lead
to the insulin cortisol see-saw.
It's going to lead to dysregulated inflammatory responses.
Poor insulin management, poor body composition and voila,
the brain is where you got your insulin resistance from.
Low dopamine led to poor metabolic function,
metabolic syndrome, whatever it may be.
It's probably started in the brain, okay?
Then we have, you know, the ability to regulate
your metabolism but we also have the
ability to over-stimulate it, right?
So too big of an engine in a car,
if the car can't handle it, right, you're going to break,
you're going to rip the wheels off
or break the drive shaft or whatever car analogies
that you don't want to listen to me talk about.
But basically too much dopamine can
drive you into an anxiolytic state.
Like it can give you anxiety,
it can keep the nervous system from calming down,
it can make it harder for you to get into recovery mode.
You can actually go into a wasting mode.
You can become hyperthyroid.
So too much, like with dopamine it's not like
oh dopamine is great, it's good for intensity
and it's good for metabolism.
That doesn't mean that more is better, right?
You need enough for optimal metabolism.
You need enough for intensity.
But too much takes you past the
point of intensity to anxiety, right?
And at that case your system just becomes very catabolic
and you start depleting and wasting a lot of nutrients.
So that's going to have a negative impact on muscle growth.
It's going to have a negative impact on blood sugar
regulation and whatnot all in the same way, right?
So when it comes to brain chemistry,
it's all about keeping things optimal and balanced, right?
It's not like the dopamine is good
and everything else is bad.
People like to think of dopamine as good
because dopamine is associated with things like motivation.
You know, it's like I like to call it the GSD,
the get shit done neurotransmitter, right?
So if you take dopamine stuff it tends to help you
be a little bit more motivated in the gym or more in work.
But if you go too much, then you can't focus on anything.
You'll actually get irritated in the gym, right?
And you won't be able to focus on your contractions.
Everything will just seem like crap, right?
And that's not what you want to actually accomplish.
When we look at acetylcholine,
it's the master brain wave regulator.
So we talked about it being like the gas pedal.
So it affects, you know, how you're using the engine.
But so what acetylcholine does is
it affects what we call neuroplasticity.
So our ability to switch from like one state to the next.
So our ability to go from beta wave to alpha wave and back
to beta wave or from alpha wave to theta and whatnot.
So having healthy acetylcholine levels allows our brain
to shift to the different states that it needs to be.
So it's kind of like the thing that helps
all of the other neurotransmitters communicate
with each other to shift that brain chemistry around, right?
So that's very important.
If you are low in acetylcholine, you'll have poor focus
and you'll also have poor flexibility.
Meaning like you'll have trouble with change
or you'll have trouble shifting gears, right?
Like if it takes you a long time to get going in a workout,
right, there could be some metabolic stuff
or you could have an acetylcholine thing.
It's taking you a long time to go from
sit on my butt mode to smash stuff at the gym mode, right?
And it will impact various other systems
because it's really important for like
coordinating the neurological energy.
So it has a lot to do with the cardiovascular system, right?
So affecting respiratory, it's affecting heart rate.
Things like that.
So when we have healthier levels of acetylcholine,
we're better at regulating our heart rate,
we're better at regulating our respiration,
which will transfer over to, like,
say performance in metabolic training
or decreasing the stress on our autonomic
nervous system when we're at rest,
getting into rest and recovery mode easier
and being in a better state of recovery
when we're not training because it's easier
for us to coordinate our respiration
and our heart rate getting us nice and oxygenated.
We already talked about this.
It enhances the overall neuroplasticity, right?
In training terms, right, this is the key
to controlling the quality of your contractions, right?
So acetylcholine really helps if you have trouble
feeling your muscles or you have trouble with execution.
So acetylcholine levels are very important for learning.
And so people will take this as like a nootropic
to learn a new language or to watch a webinar
or something and try and take in as much new information.
But remember, those things are much
easier learning than motor pattern learning.
So with good acetylcholine levels,
you will learn motor patterns better.
You will learn execution better.
You will learn how to contract muscles
better with good acetylcholine levels.
With when we look at supplementation,
right, we're going to see boosters.
Things that can boost our acetylcholine.
So we have choline boosters like CDP, which is citicoline.
And then alpha GPC.
Both of those are kind of like natural ways
of helping boost acetylcholine
and basically function as precursors.
They're found in food sources a little bit.
Like things like nuts.
But if you want to increase this drastically,
you're probably going to need to
take that in supplemental form.
So in terms of getting nutrients for these things,
you know, dopamine is easily made from amino acids.
GABA and serotonin are easily made from amino acids.
Whereas acetylcholine, really it's much more scarce
in our diets and we will use this in
our methylation cycles and stuff.
Basically we'll use choline for other things.
So getting it elevated for performance stuff
and things like that can be more complicated
if you have stress in other areas.
You're not getting enough B vitamins
or you're not getting enough methyl donors
or your liver is overtaxed.
That stuff is going to deplete your choline
so you're going to have less choline in the brain
and less acetylcholine in the brain.
And so you'll suffer all of these things
because it's being drained in other ways
and it's not really high in the food that we eat today.
Okay.
All right, so this is just me kind of
summarizing this up specific to training, okay?
So dopamine is important for intensity of contraction
and metabolism, also kind of motivation in the gym.
Acetylcholine is essential for, you know, being able to
focus on muscle execution by muscle connection.
Also, tolerance to volume, right?
So because it coordinates respiratory,
cardiovascular, and contraction efficiency, right?
So good acetylcholine levels will allow you
to tolerate more volume in a session
and maintain performance over the higher volume workouts.
Mind muscle connection.
The other thing is it also increases pain sensitivity.
Okay, so just like dopamine.
Like oh, too much dopamine is bad.
Guess what?
Too much acetylcholine makes you
hyper-reactive to pain, right?
So you would not necessarily want to take
a maximum dosage of alpha GPC before you go in
to get some dental work done, right?
So bad idea, right?
Unless you're a masochist, okay.
GABA calms us down, right?
So it's going to affect how well we
switch over to the recovery process, right?
And it's going to affect our
tolerance to training frequency.
It will affect our tolerance to just training in general,
but mainly frequency because if it takes us a long time
to switch over to recover mode,
it decreases the hours we have to
recover between workouts, right?
So we could maximize the amount of time
our body is recovering between training.
Well then we tend to be able to train again sooner.
So GABA levels are very important
for being able to tolerate a higher training frequency.
But that also will go into volume too.
But serotonin will be more important for volume.
Because that's going to affect the degree
of recovery you're getting, especially at night.
And the clearance of inflammation and the things
that tend to be elevated with higher volume training.
Serotonin is going to be more
impactful on your tolerance to volume,
whereas GABA is going to be more likely like hey, can I
train the next day even if it's a different muscle group?
All right, GABA is going to be very important for that
whereas serotonin is going to be like okay, how much volume?
Like what is my recoverability from
a certain amount of volume, right?
So in terms of trainability perspective,
serotonin is going to bring up recovery
in terms of the amount of like stress
that you can handle within a workout.
But GABA is going to have an effect
on how fast that process occurs.
Okay?
All right, so let's look at pre and intra workout.
How do we want this brain chemistry stuff to be organized?
One, we want elevated levels of
dopamine and acetylcholine, right?
Those are our energizing neurotransmitters.
We want to be in that beta state, right?
So dopamine level is high,
but we also want to be focused and have good execution
and be able to tolerate volume.
So we need acetylcholine.
We can't have a big engine and no gas pedal.
We need a big engine and really good
control over the gas pedal, right?
And you know, the ratio of those will depend on the person
and the type of training program.
So the more I'm focusing on either
neurological or metabolic expenditure,
then dopamine becomes more of a priority.
The more I'm focusing on tension and volume,
then the more acetylcholine becomes a priority, right?
So if we think of like neurological metabolic phase,
maybe a little bit more dopamine would be ideal.
And with hypertrophy phase, maybe a little bit
more acetylcholine would be ideal, right?
When we look at post workout,
we want to decrease levels of dopamine and acetylcholine.
So specifically we want to really want to
get those dopamine down to a manageable level, right?
It doesn't mean that we need to eliminate it completely
so that you're like in a comatose,
like don't want to do anything state.
We just need to get you out of that beta wave state.
So it needs to come down to your
resting levels of dopamine, right?
And the acetylcholine needs to come down,
but not to as big of a degree.
Our big thing is getting from higher dopamine
switching over to a little bit higher GABA, all right?
And how much of that GABA really
depends on like what we're doing
in terms of like when are you training, right?
If you're training in the morning
and then you've got to go to work,
obviously there is a certain degree of energy
and enthusiasm that you need to carry out your job, right?
So it's not like you could do the same nutritional program
as somebody that is training late at night
and then wants to shut everything off as fast and as hard as
possible so that they can get a good night's sleep, right?
So we need this to switch over the autonomic,
oh, the autonomic nerds system.
That's a new thing.
All right, so the autonomic nervous system
is what that should say, right?
The nerds system, that's new.
So that we get into recovery mode, right?
So we need that GABA to be able to push us over to that.
Get us into that rest and digest.