3 Ways to Get a Hormonal Response from Your Training

Maximizing your training isn't just about logging hours or counting reps—it's about optimizing your body's hormonal response to build strength, improve performance, and enhance recovery. If you're ready to get the most out of your workouts, here are three proven ways to activate your central nervous system and trigger anabolic hormone production.

The Science of Hormonal Response

Your central nervous system (CNS) plays a crucial role in your training. Activating the CNS is key to producing testosterone and growth hormone—two hormones essential for muscle growth, recovery, and overall performance. But waking up your CNS isn’t easy. It requires high-intensity, muscle-engaging exercises designed to push your body to its limits.

Here’s how to do it effectively.

1. Heavy Resistance Training

Heavy lifting is one of the most effective ways to stimulate a hormonal response. Compound movements like squats, deadlifts, and bench presses recruit large muscle groups and engage the CNS, resulting in increased testosterone and growth hormone levels.

How to Execute:

• Rep Range: Focus on 3–8 reps per set.
• Intensity: Use heavy weights, ideally 70–90% of your one-rep max.
• Rest Periods: Allow 2–4 minutes between sets for maximum hormonal benefit.

2. Sprinting

Sprinting is an often-overlooked but powerful tool for boosting hormonal output. As an explosive, full-body exercise, sprinting engages fast-twitch muscle fibers, which are directly linked to anabolic hormone release.

How to Execute:

• Duration: Perform short, all-out sprints of 6–10 seconds.
• Rest Periods: Take 2–3 minutes between sprints to ensure full recovery.
• Progression: Start with shorter distances (e.g., 30–50 meters) and gradually increase as your capacity improves.

Pro Tip: Ease into sprinting if you're new to it to avoid injuries. Proper warm-ups and gradual progression are essential.

3. High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

HIIT combines bursts of intense activity with short rest periods, creating metabolic stress that enhances growth hormone production and supports testosterone levels over time.

How to Execute:

• Work Periods: 30–60 seconds of intense effort.
• Rest Periods: 30–60 seconds of rest.
• Exercises: Incorporate movements like burpees, kettlebell swings, or jump squats.

HIIT sessions should be strategically planned, as they can be mentally and physically taxing. Limit to 1–2 sessions per week for optimal results.

Balancing Hormonal Training with Zone 2

While these high-intensity methods are great for hormonal optimization, they shouldn’t dominate your training. Incorporating Zone 2 (low-intensity aerobic) training helps build your aerobic base and supports longevity. Aim for a balanced program that combines both high-intensity and Zone 2 sessions for well-rounded fitness.

Additional Methods to Consider

If heavy lifting, sprinting, or HIIT isn’t your style, here are other CNS-activating options:

• Plyometrics: Jump squats, box jumps, or clapping push-ups.
• Strongman Training: Tire flips, sled drags, and farmer’s carries.
• Olympic Weightlifting: Snatches and clean & jerks.
• Loaded Carries: Engage multiple muscle groups with heavy carries.
• Bodyweight Training: Push to failure for maximum effort and engagement.

How to Structure Your Week

To maximize hormonal benefits, include 1–3 high-intensity sessions per week:

• Day 1: Heavy resistance training.
• Day 3: Sprinting or HIIT.
• Other Days: Zone 2 or lighter recovery-focused sessions.

Final Thoughts

If you want to optimize your training, it’s crucial to activate your CNS and stimulate a hormonal response. Incorporate heavy resistance training, sprinting, and HIIT into your weekly plan to see improvements in strength, endurance, and overall fitness. Remember, high-intensity workouts are demanding, so balance them with adequate recovery and Zone 2 training to ensure long-term progress.

If you’re ready to take your training to the next level, start small, stay consistent, and watch your results skyrocket.

Garage Gym Athlete Workout Of The Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: 

All right today, let's talk about three ways to get a hormonal response from your training. This is the garage gym athlete podcast. I'm Jared moon. And.

I want to first talk about this in a conceptual nature, and then we'll get into like three specific ways that you can get more of this. You know, anabolic hormones, central nervous system activation type training that can help you. Get the hormones that you're looking to see from your training, because I've, I've noticed two things. One. And maybe this is my own echo chamber, but I feel like. When my, you know, extended family member, who's not into fitness at all, starts talking to me about zone two training.

I feel like, okay. Things have gotten a little. Little crazy here. Now, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with zone two training, but.

For some reason, people were acting like zone two training is the magic pill that's going to help you live forever. When it, in reality, I'm a huge fan of zone, two training for building your aerobic base and for the longevity benefits. But. It can't be your only source of training. It's. It's actually. Only good when it's in conjunction with other. Programming. And so I think you have to factor that in. Another thing that I noticed early on. I was a big fan of Louie Simmons. Who is, who has passed away a couple years ago, but he, you know, had the strongest gym in the world.

Westside, barbell. I followed. Followed him. Like I read most of his books. Like he's just got so much great information, but I don't know if there's anyone who talks more about the central nervous system. In training. More than, than Louie Simmons. And the reason being is because it's training, the central nervous system is not necessarily an easy thing to do. But it does get you that. Anabolic hormone release that hormonal response from training that we all want.

You know, you want to optimize that hormonal output. You're not going to really do that with zone two training. If anything, that's going to be more detrimental to it, especially a loads and loads of endurance training. In this whole concept of training your central nervous system, that's ultimately what you need to be thinking of when you're wanting a hormonal response from your workout. You got to think how, okay.

How can I activate my central nervous system? Now that's a very broad question that not everyone's going to ask themselves every day, but you have to think of your central nervous system as like. This friend who sleeps. Super deep. And like it's a huge pain in the ass to wake him up. You know, it's like he just, whatever he partied hard, you can't wake him up very easily.

You could slap him in the face, pour cold water on him. Eventually he'll wake up. And when he does wake up, He's like the best guy, right? He's the best guy to be around. He's a ton of fun, something like that. Hopefully that you know, metaphor. What kind of stick, but ultimately that's what it is like with your central nervous system, because their central nervous system is not easily activated. It can not be a woken easily.

You have to go to these deep dark places to activate your central nervous system. And so how you do that is. Kind of two ways. The first way is. Activating or incorporating a lot of muscle mass. Into your training. So just start thinking about that as. Thing one for activating waking up the central nervous system is like, am I getting a lot of muscles involved? If you are getting a lot of muscles involved. At a, kind of a higher, moderate to high intensity. With these muscles, you are waking up the central nervous system.

You are starting to activate it. That's the first thing that you have to know about it. And then the second thing is just going to be intensity.

And this is how high are you taking the intensity level? Again, it's, it's really hard to wake up the central nervous system, get it activated, but once you have it activated it. Yeah, it gets activated at the high intensity level. So those two things, if. Like, am I getting a lot of muscles involved?

Am I going high on the, the intensity factor for me specifically, if you can think conceptually like that you are activating your central nervous system and you don't have to necessarily stick to like, oh, Jared said, do these three things, these three things that I'm going to mention are. Something you probably already know, and honestly proven by science and I'll go over a few others, but if you can think conceptually about how to activate the central nervous system. You're going to be able to get that hormonal response more easily and maybe do different exercises that you like. So the first, the three most proven ways. First is going to be heavy resistance training.

So the hormonal response from heavy resistance training, it increases testosterone and growth. Growth hormone levels, especially when it's compound movement. So if you're thinking about the squat, the deadlift, the bench pressed. And all of these movements, like I said, they recruit a large amount of muscle mass and stimulate the central nervous system. Which leads to a surgeon, anabolic hormones.

So the execution here, the how to is you want to aim for lower rep ranges, three to eight reps. With heavier weights and you want to do longer rest periods. So two to three minutes, four minutes, something like that. For the maximum hormonal benefit, if that's what we're optimizing for. The second thing that you want to be factoring in is sprinting.

A lot of people don't do this and I think you need to ease into it. So don't go from desk job to running a hundred meter sprints because I said, so you really got to ease into that, make sure that you have really solid warmups. Start with shorter sprints. You know, 30 meters, 40 meters, 50 meters, because the chances of you pulling a hamstring, if you sit a lot or don't sprint regularly, this sprinting is very much, you use it or you lose it.

Okay. And sprinting is super important. But the hormonal response, it triggers testosterone and growth hormone spikes. Sprinting does. And sprinting is powerful, explosive exercise that requires full body muscle engagement. And it stimulates fast Twitch muscle fibers, which are linked to higher anabolic hormone release. So you want to do short bursts of maximum effort, maximum effort when it's something that's more anabolic like this is not that hard.

Okay. So we're talking about six to 10 seconds. And the rest periods again, you want. Adequate rest periods. This could be 1, 2, 3 minutes. Think about I'm putting in six seconds of work and resting two minutes. Like. You want to be really well rested and recovered because we're not trying to get to that aerobic zone.

We're trying to stay anabolic. We're trying to stay explosive. And that will optimize the hormonal output. So we got heavy resistance training in sprinting. And the last one is high intensity interval training. So high intensity interval training and grow increases, growth hormone, and can improve overall testosterone levels over time.

It's something that you have to do more frequently. But the combination of high intensity bursts and short rest periods, maximizes and metabolic stress, which is linked also to hormonal responses. So the training tips for executing it though doesn't necessarily mean go do a 15 minute at Metcon you know, CrossFit Metcon, because you're going to call that high intensity interval training. What you actually want to do is perform intervals of 30 to 60 seconds of intense work followed by 30 to 60 seconds of rest. So exercises like burpees, jump squats, kettlebell swings can be particularly effective for the use of high and high intensity interval training.

Now you can throw all these things one, two, or all, or all three into your training week. So say you had a sprint day. Heavy resistance day hit day, and then the other days are zone two. That's a more balanced program that's giving you. You know, Let's focus on the mitochondria and longevity benefits of a zone, two training, but let's also get a hormonal response from these higher intensity training methodologies. Typically most people can only do high intensity things.

One to three times a week. Three is at the maximum. And I really feel like the sweet spot is one to two for most people. Just because mentally over time it becomes very, very demanding to keep doing high intensity stuff over and over three times a week is very tough. So one time a week is, is gold because you know, no, like, Hey, this is the high intensity high intensity day.

This is the day I'm going from that hormonal response. I'm going to get it. So you go for it. And you can do that. Maybe you have it in you to do one other day. But that's again, just from my, like, from coach to human, like. Coach to athlete. That's my official recommendation. Now there are a lot of other ways that you can get this in.

I'll just mention them without getting into like everything. But if you're, if you're like, well, I don't like any of those. I don't like heavy resistance training, sprinting, high intensity interval training, either way. You're going to have to wake up your central nervous system to get that hormonal response.

But other things that you might want to look into there's plyometric training, strongman training, Olympic weightlifting, circuit training, loaded carries because of how much of the body. Muscle mass. It, it stimulates and then bodyweight training can even do this. If you have a really high effort taking things to failure. And then endurance training with strategic sprint.

So like fartlek training, you could still do this with running and other things, but the top three, the gold standard is going to be heavy resistance training, sprinting, high intensity interval training. So if you're looking to get a hormonal response from your training and you want to make sure that it's in there. Go do those things and you will be better off for it. But that's it. for this one.

Remember if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.