Behaviors

Before or during learning, decide what to focus attention on: auditory attention, visual attention, proprioception, limb position relative to body, or outcome.

Include many error reps and safe failures; errors cue attention, drive error correction, and open the window for neuroplasticity.

If errors are not hazardous, continue practicing at a high repetition rate rather than stopping when mistakes occur; learning is often possible in that period.

Avoid increasing dopamine levels before motor skill learning using pharmacology because it reduces signal-to-noise and likely hinders plasticity.

Even when working with a coach, include a period in each session where the athlete simply attends to their own errors without external cueing.

After receiving a correction from a coach, generate many repetitions from that corrected position or pattern rather than constantly switching cues.

In early sessions, let errors guide attention instead of deliberately cueing specific movement features. This approach may be used for one session or several sessions.

Once making fewer errors and the core motor pattern is learned, attention can shift across features such as motor sequence, stance, grip, speed, or outcome from trial to trial; doing this too early is suboptimal.

Determine your current repetition rate, then set a metronome slightly faster to force more repetitions and adaptive errors. Especially useful for speed work such as sprinting, swimming, or running to increase strokes, steps, or efficiency and train central pattern generators at higher speed.

To increase flexibility or range of motion, measure your current range of motion, then keep your head and body still while moving your eyes to the far periphery—left, right, up, and down—and retest. This can increase range of motion by about 5–15 degrees and can be used as a warm-up before exercise or skill learning when range of motion matters.

For physical learning, if using caffeine, take it before training so its effects extend into the session, rather than trying to spike arousal after training.

Do not interrupt practice with texting or other distractions; prioritize density of repetitions within the session.

Seek professional help rather than trying to manage serious anxiety or psychiatric symptoms entirely alone. The guest notes that leaving a serious anxiety issue untreated for a year or more can convert to depression.

Pay attention to your own patterns, family observations, and potentially device-based metrics to detect when you may be veering toward depression so you can seek treatment earlier. One classic early sign is early morning awakening: waking progressively earlier and being unable to fall back asleep, sometimes shifting from 5 a.m. to 4 or 3 a.m.

Change up exercise patterns and engage in novel types of movement, especially exercise involving lots of different body parts and movements, to potentially access stubborn fat stores and encourage maintenance or growth of neural innervation of fat throughout the body.

Reuse mate leaves repeatedly over about a day to extract more of the compounds that increase GLP-1.

Pay close attention while tasting food and repeatedly practice tasting to improve sensitivity and discrimination of flavors and develop a more nuanced palate over time. Includes really tasting food, focusing on component parts of foods, and taking an active role in tasting and smelling food.

Do not sniff real ammonia directly; it can damage the olfactory epithelium, olfactory pathway, and possibly vision/eye surfaces.

If using smelling salts, work with someone or know exactly what you're getting and how you're using them; misuse can severely damage the olfactory pathway and vision.

Do not ingest foods or beverages that are too hot, because burning the tongue damages taste receptors and can reduce taste for about a week.

When combining strength and endurance training, get at least 4 hours between workouts, ideally 6 hours, and even better 24 hours.

During high-intensity work, exhale during the highest-effort/concentric phase of the movement and inhale during the less intense portion, usually the eccentric phase.

Before endurance work or in the first few minutes, warm up the intercostals, diaphragm, and breathing system to breathe more deeply and deliver more oxygen. This can be done sitting, standing, walking, or while starting to pedal. Emphasize both chest/intercostal expansion and diaphragmatic belly expansion; if feeling unmotivated, do about 30 deep breaths or roughly a minute of this practice.

When starting to fatigue, inhale deeply and maximize diaphragmatic expansion to deliver more oxygen.

If you hit the wall during long-duration work, increase speed somewhat—not an all-out sprint—to tap into a different fuel source.

Show up to exercise reasonably hydrated and include electrolytes, especially sodium, potassium, and magnesium.

If drinking during >70% VO2 max work is difficult, train the capacity gradually rather than forcing large amounts immediately; start by sipping small amounts of fluid during intense workouts, then progress to larger gulps as adaptation occurs.

During runs, swims, or cycling, focus on a landmark or milestone to generate more effort, then relax by dilating the visual field afterward; alternate focused and panoramic vision to help regulate effort and efficiency.

Insert 10-second periods of doing nothing within learning bouts; during the rest, do not look at your phone or attend to anything else. You can close your eyes if you want, then return to repetitions.

If seasick on a boat, go up on deck, get fresh air, and look off toward the horizon rather than at nearby objects.