how can you optimize your workout to
boost your testosterone I'm Dr Rena
Malik urologist and pelvic surgeon and
today I'm going to tell you all that we
know about how to boost your
testosterone Naturally by exercising
we're going to talk about how the body
produces testosterone how intense you
need to make your workouts what kind of
exercise should you be doing and what is
the order of exercise you should do
whether it's resistance training or
endurance training lastly we'll talk
about the lasting effects on
testosterone as well as what factors can
limit your ability to produce more
testosterone naturally so how is
testosterone made well 95 of the male
body's testosterone is produced in the
testicles and this is done by
specialized cells called latex cells the
signals to stimulate these cells starts
from the brain in the hypothalamus which
releases a hormone called gonadotropin
releasing hormone this hormone causes
the pituitary another part of the brain
to release LH LH sends signals to the
late excels of the testicles to then
produce testosterone then testosterone
goes to specific cells around the body
including the muscle then the
testosterone goes inside the cells and
binds to an androgen receptor The
Binding of the testosterone and the
antigen receptor then causes a Cascade
of Gene production which then goes on to
make proteins and building blocks for
your body how does exercise actually
lead to increases in serum testosterone
well when you exercise there is a
release of both catabolic and anabolic
hormones that means hormones that break
you down and grow you up one of these
hormones includes testosterone this
increase in testosterone also
upregulates the expression of the
Androgen receptor and subsequently
causes increases in protein synthesis
and the theory is that after exercise
your testosterone goes way up this
increases the half-life of the Androgen
receptor mRNA which is the gene product
of the Androgen receptor and increases
its Half-Life so this makes makes it
more likely that you're going to have
hypertrophic adaptation or essentially
muscle growth but it's important to note
that there appears to be a threshold of
metabolic demand or volume of work that
you need to achieve to actually get the
testosterone boost so let's get into it
we're going to talk about the intensity
of the workout the number of sets and
repetitions the order of the workout as
well as the amount of resting period you
should have so let's start with
resistance training resistance training
has been studied and specifically used
these terms so you'll understand them
intensity describes the difficulty of
the exercise and is typically based on
the amount of weight that you lift a
repetition maximum is the maximum amount
of weight you can live for a defined
number of movements and volume of work
which I said is the key marker for
testosterone boosting includes the
number of sets the repetitions and the
intensity of the work so let me give you
an example for increasing intensity if
you did 5 five reps of something with a
hundred pounds and you did then five
reps with 150 pounds you have then
increased the intensity but if you went
from five reps of a hundred pounds to 10
reps of 100 pounds you increase the
volume in the testosterone size looking
at what types of exercise actually boost
testosterone there have been two kind of
bigger studies that have come out once
they looked at three to five repetitions
of three lower body exercises that a
hundred percent of 6 RM or repetition
Maxes so meaning you're maxing your
weight capacity and doing six
repetitions three times of each of the
three exercises the other side I looked
at five sets of ten repetitions of ten
repetition maximums so not focusing on
the numbers I just gave you but the
thing to realize is that you need to be
using your 100 repetition maximum so you
want to take the heaviest weight that
you can to do the entire set what about
endurance training so endurance training
does increase testosterone in the short
term so when doing very short durations
or two to five minutes of 90 to 100 VO2
max which is kind of the maximum amount
of oxygen your body can use during an
exercise usually in order to find out
your VO2 max you'll either get a stress
test at your doctor's office or go to an
exercise medicine sort of Clinic where
they can measure that for you so an
endurance exercise specifically you will
often see an initial increase in
testosterone but later because of the
stress of the aerobic exercise your body
starts releasing cortisol and cortisol
then inhibits testosterone production
which causes a decline in the
testosterone particularly in high Elite
endurance athletes you'll find that they
may actually have lower testosterone
levels this is because the high
endurance athlete creates what's called
reactive oxygen species in response to
stress these reactive oxygen species can
actually blunt the pathway in the brain
that tells the testicles to make more
testosterone so when you're comparing
should I do resistance training or
should I do endurance training ideally
resistance training is going to be the
one thing that boosts your testosterone
the most there also have been some small
studies which have looked at high
intensity interval training that do show
improvements in testosterone levels
after performing high intensity interval
training however looking at the data a
lot of the data says the testosterone
boosts only for an hour or a short
period of time after the exercise some
Studies have shown improvements in
testosterone as long as 48 hours after
the exercise but it's important to
realize that doing one-time resistance
training is not going to boost your
testosterone levels for a prolonged
period of time what about the number of
sets and repetitions well as I mentioned
before the volume of work is what
matters the most so you can modify the
numbers of sets and the numbers of
repetitions as long as you keep the
intensity high and you can get get the
same amount of volume of work what about
training to failure well one study
actually looked at this they essentially
followed 40 men and they divided them up
into three groups one that exercised to
failure I mean they worked out until
they could not lift anything anymore the
others exercised not to failure and the
last group didn't exercise at all what
they found was that those who did not go
to failure had greater gains when doing
lower extremity exercise in muscular
power output whereas those who went to
failure had larger gains in the number
of repetitions they could do with the
bench press but what about their
testosterone they found that the group
that didn't go to failure had lower
cortisol concentrations meaning they had
less stress in their body and had higher
testosterone levels so going to failure
may not be the best thing for your
testosterone level all right so we said
resistance exercises are the best but
what kind of resistance exercises well
as we mentioned before or you want high
intensity but you also want to use large
muscle groups so even if you do a high
intensity small muscle mass it's not
going to boost your testosterone for
example a jump squat which is using your
lower extremities and your core are
going to have a higher testosterone
increase than those who are getting the
bench press also things like squats and
Olympic lifts can actually produce a
higher increase in testosterone what
about using free weights versus machine
when they looked at this free weights
actually increased plasma testosterone
levels more than those who had machine
weights the reason for this is likely
because when you're using free weights
you're also using other muscle bodies
like your core to help stabilize whereas
with machines they really try to isolate
the muscle that you're exercising with
what about resting periods how long of a
rest should you take so in a study
looking at intensity number of sets and
repetitions as well as resting time what
they found was that moderate intensity
higher volume and shorter resting times
actually had a higher increase in plasma
testosterone so using a shorter rest
period in this case using 60 seconds
versus 90 seconds led to better
improvements in total testosterone
levels so if you're going to do both
resistance and endurance training what
goes first well based on the hormone
physiology you want to use as we
mentioned before large muscle groups and
you want to be able to have that
elevated testosterone level throughout
your entire workout so the best bet for
having a greater boost and prolonged
boost in testosterone is to start with
the resistance training for us using the
large muscle mass followed by the
endurance training what about changes in
the basal testosterone level that means
your resting testosterone level when
you're not exercising does doing
resistance training actually impact that
level well from now we're not exactly
sure while we've seen that continued
bouts of exercise particularly in one
city where they looked at 3 three
different bouts of exercise they
persistently saw increases in total
testosterone after each of the bots of
exercise so we know that the resistance
training does improve testosterone level
even when done repeatedly if you're
exercising regularly regardless of the
type or intensity of the exercise it
does not seem to have a lasting effect
on the basal testosterone level however
we do see some small studies
particularly in obese individuals and
older patients where we do see an
increase in basal testosterone levels
the theory for this for at least the
overweight and obese individuals is that
they're also losing weight so they're
losing waist circumference as well as
fat loss which can also boost
testosterone levels so if you want to
see the continued testosterone boost you
got to keep doing the resistance
training that's why you never Skip Leg
Day alright so what if you're doing all
the right things you've been doing all
the right exercise but you're still
struggling while there are a couple
factors that make it more difficult to
boost testosterone response the first
one is obesity obesity can cause
endothelial dysfunction as well as
vasodilation of the blood vessels what
that means is the blood vessels are not
as good at carrying blood to and from
the testicles this can then make it more
difficult for them to respond it does
seem that they do boost their
testosterone but it may not be as high
of a boost as someone who is leaner in
weight the second thing is age so man's
ability to produce testosterone peaks at
about age 40. after that it tends to
decline about one to three percent per
year over the course of the lifetime and
this is just like any other part of your
body the cells in this testicle called
the latex cells have less of a response
because they've gotten older to the
stimulation produced by the brain or the
pituitary so older men still similar to
obese men still Mount to response but
usually it's less of a response than
younger men but the bottom line I want
you to take away from this video is
regardless of your age any other
condition editions you have your weight
there is sufficient evidence that doing
resistance exercises with large muscle
mass using moderate to high intensity
with short resting periods and high
volume can produce increases in
testosterone level so right after you're
done watching this video get up and do
some jump squats you can do them right
at home you don't need a fancy gym and
start getting that boost of testosterone
as always I'm going to take care of
yourself because you are worth it
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