All protocols

Finish a heat-and-cold session with cold exposure, then let your body rewarm on its own rather than immediately jumping back into heat. The idea is that ending on cold may better support metabolic effects by forcing endogenous rewarming and thermogenic activation.

Using sauna sessions as a stress-lowering protocol, typically with repeated bouts of high heat followed by short cool-down breaks. The goal is to reduce cortisol and promote relaxation by pairing intense heat exposure with recovery intervals.

A light-based device that mimics natural morning sunlight, typically used soon after waking when outdoor light exposure is limited. It helps anchor the circadian clock and can improve alertness, mood, and sleep timing by providing a strong early-day light signal.

For high-intensity intermittent sports like MMA, a fully ketogenic diet is generally not the best fit because repeated explosive efforts rely heavily on carbohydrate availability. The practical approach is to include enough carbs to support sprinting, grappling, and recovery so performance does not drop during hard bursts.

A ketogenic-style or lower-carbohydrate diet used especially outside high-intensity training, when the goal is to reduce carbohydrate intake and rely more on fat for fuel. It can support metabolic management and improve energy efficiency or steadier blood sugar control for many people, particularly at lower exercise intensities.

Before any learning bout, ask whether you are too alert and need calming or too sleepy and need more alertness, then use behaviors to adjust arousal toward the ideal learning state.

For social cooking-competition style gatherings, each person brings a particular dish to share.

Engage in movement in many different dimensions and relationships to gravity, rather than only linear, regular movement patterns.

If trying to start exercising, choose a realistic target rather than swinging between too much and too little. Examples given include going once before next week, once per week, or Monday and Friday, then building from there.

After reflecting on childhood, put the thoughts outside yourself in writing or speech, discuss them with a trusted other, or see a therapist if needed to process their current effects.

Display photographs or other reminders of people, experiences, and times you liked in your environment. Even without deliberate daily attention, this can cue positive emotional states and bias your unconscious climate toward the positive.

Deliberately counter negativity bias by recalling good things that happened to you, what you did well, what you learned from things that did not go as planned, and the effort you made even when outcomes were imperfect.

Notice what you say to yourself in quiet moments or pauses in the day. Use this to identify repetitive negative, critical, or intrusive internal messages that may be occurring many times a day outside awareness.

Use squats to develop the legs; mentioned as a concrete training behavior and also as an analogy for disciplined self-improvement.

Draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper, label one side concern and the other influence, then write down the things occupying your waking hours. Use it especially when sticky thoughts are preventing sleep. Huberman says doing it once a week has been very helpful; Stumpf says he now does it about once a month or once every six months.

Avoid bright electronic device light in a dark room right before bed.

If intrusive thoughts reflect a genuinely unsafe situation, change the situation rather than only working on the thought.

First notice and identify intrusive or repetitive thoughts, including self-talk that may occur hundreds of times a day outside awareness. Then ask what purpose the thought is serving.

Challenge yourself to drive daily total phone usage to under an hour; in their experiment they excluded phone calls. Andy reports getting his down to 30 minutes by the last week of January.

Force social media use onto a laptop instead of a phone because the platform is less sticky and less intuitive there; Andy says he would post what he wanted and then leave.

Lower-risk way to simulate the sensation of falling through the air before skydiving; instructors can hold onto you and you do not need a parachute or airplane.

Recommended for skydiving. An AAD is a computer that senses fall rate and barometric pressure and will fire the reserve parachute if you do nothing; noted as having hundreds of documented saves for unconscious or otherwise incapacitated jumpers.

Huberman cites evidence that adding three 30-minute cardio sessions grows the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, specifically if you hate cardio.

Begin the day as early as possible with some act of discipline, such as making the bed or drinking a 16-ounce glass of water before coffee.

Drink a 16-ounce glass of water in the morning before coffee; Andy says he implemented this and felt much better from hydrating first thing.

If you know the next day will be busy, meal prep the night before. If breakfast is not ready-to-eat or is complicated, do all the prep work beforehand so a healthy breakfast is easier the next morning.

Choose a healthy breakfast rather than something less healthy; prepping breakfast ingredients the night before can help, such as cutting up asparagus for an omelet in advance.

Try to get a sweat or get as close to sweat as possible once a day; for some people this may just mean getting off the couch and walking around. If you cannot fit in other exercise, Andy suggests sitting in the sauna for 30 minutes as one option.

As he gets older, Andy sees utility in both jujitsu and workouts but not in doing both very hard on the same day because it can overdo fatigue.

Wear in bear country, such as places like Glacier with grizzlies, as a hiking safety tool.