What to Do About Low Testosterone in Athletes and Exercise Enthusiasts
Why do male and female athletes get low testosterone and what can they do about it?
Ben Greenfield
Listen
What to Do About Low Testosterone in Athletes and Exercise Enthusiasts
The New York Times recently reported that America’s fastest marathoner, Ryan Hall, is officially retiring from the sport due to chronically low testosterone levels and the extreme fatigue, loss of motivation and drop in performance that is associated with this crucial hormone.
Let’s discover how both male and female athletes get low testosterone and what can be done about it.
What Is Testosterone?
Testosterone is a steroid hormone that helps you increase lean muscle mass and bone density—and beyond simply helping you have a nice body, it’s also crucial for good health! Low levels of testosterone, in both men and women, can lead to a number of serious health conditions, including increased risk of depression, low sex drive, obesity, and osteoporosis.
Men with low testosterone tend to have higher rates of heart disease, depression, and even dementia—and a decrease in testosterone levels in women can lead to a loss of muscle mass and weight gain (especially when paired with the rising levels of estrogen that you learn about in the episode on Hormonal Imbalances and Weight Gain).
While there are entire industries built up around herbal and pharmaceutical pills, capsules, lotions, injections, super foods, and other methods for increasing testosterone, athletes such as Ryan Hall need to be especially careful with these type of substances due to sport regulations and also due to the fact that you simply can’t supplement or pill pop your way out of a training or diet program that doesn’t support optimization of your hormone levels. In “Should You Take Testosterone To Get Fit?” I highlight many of the risks of using testosterone replacement therapy.
So how can you excel at sports or exercise as much as you need to for your goals without depleting your hormone levels? Here are a few tips.
1． Use HIIT Instead of Chronic Cardio
Long endurance sports such as cycling and running seem to lower testosterone in the same way that weight lifting and weight training seem to increase it. For example, one 2003 study found that testosterone levels were significantly lower in endurance cyclists than age-matched weightlifters, or even an untrained control group. Some researchers have even concluded that this type of low testosterone in endurance athletes is an adaptation that gives cyclists or runners a competitive advantage—since the extra muscle mass from testosterone would probably slow you down.
So if you’re trying to boost testosterone, avoid long jaunts on the treadmill, and instead do high intensity interval training, such as sprints. Multiple studies have shown that you can boost your testosterone levels by sprinting. In one study, testosterone levels increased significantly for people who performed a series of very short (but intense) six-second sprints—and testosterone levels remained high even after those people had fully recovered from the sprint workout.
So how can you implement the strategy of sprinting to increase testosterone? Try performing several sprints on the treadmill after you’ve lifted weights at the gym, or just head out into the backyard, a park, or your neighborhood block and do a few sprint repeats on your days off from weigh training. You can even do your sprints on a bicycle or elliptical trainer. Try to include 5-10 short sprints when you do a sprint workout, sprint no longer than 15 seconds, get full recovery after each sprint (generally 3-4 times longer than you actually sprinted), and do a sprint workout 2-3 times a week for optimal results.
In addition to keeping your testosterone levels elevated, sprinting can also help you to maintain endurance. As surprising as it may seem, that short efforts can increase your ability to be able to go for a long period of time. You can learn more about physiological mechanism behind how this occurs by reading my two-part article series on how to build endurance.
2． Lift Heavy Weights Using Forced Reps, Legs and Long Rest Periods
While you can do high reps with low weights or low reps with high weights, studies have shown that it definitely takes heavy weights to significantly boost testosterone. Full body, heavy exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, and Olympic lifts should ideally be used, at 85-95% of your 1RM (or one repetition maximum). You need to do 2-3 full body weight lifting workouts per week to get good testosterone-boosting results.
If you’re a beginner or new to weight training, don’t let this concept of heavy lifting scare you away. You can simulate many of these exercises on weight training machines until you’re strong and skilled enough to perform the free weight barbell or dumbbell versions.
When lifting heavy weights, use long rest periods if your goal is to increase testosterone. Scientists have studied the effects of very short rest periods on testosterone and found that longer rest periods of around 120 seconds between sets are better for building testosterone (although you can still build other hormones, such as growth hormone, with shorter rest periods).
Considering what you’ve just learned about lifting heavy weights, this makes sense—since the shorter your recovery periods, the less weight you’re going to be able to lift. However, it can seem like a waste of time to be sitting on your butt for 3 minutes between each exercise.
So if your goals are to increase testosterone, I recommend that you maximize your time at the gym by doing alternate activities during these long rest periods, such as stretching, or better yet, exercises that don’t stress the same muscles you just worked.
For example, you can do one heavy set of bench presses, recover for just 30-60 seconds, then do one heavy set of squats. Go back and forth until all your sets are done, and you’ll get twice as much done in half the time, while still getting the testosterone boosting benefits of lifting heavy and long rest periods.
Next, when lifting, try to incorporate “forced repetitions”. To do a forced repetition, you perform a weight lifting exercise for as many reps as you can, and then have partner (a “spotter”) assist you with completing several additional repetitions (anywhere from 1-5 extra reps). Research shows that this type of forced rep set generates more testosterone than simply doing as many reps as you can do by yourself.
It’s best to do forced reps with a multi-joint, large motor movement exercise. For example, you can do a warm-up set of barbell squats, then, with a partner, a personal trainer, or someone you ask at the gym to help you, choose a weight that allows you to do 5-6 repetitions on your own, but requires an assistant to get another 3-4 reps done after that, for a total of 8-10 reps. You can repeat this for anywhere from 2-6 sets.
While you don’t need to perform forced reps for every workout or set that you do, if you’re trying to increase testosterone, it can be especially helpful to do your last set of any exercise as a forced rep set.
Finally, don’t forget to train your legs hard.In another study that investigated the hormonal response to weight training, participants were split into an arm-only training group and a leg-plus-arm training group. Testosterone increases were significantly higher in the group that added lower body training to their upper body training.
While it can be tempting, especially for guys, to focus on exercises like biceps curls and bench pressing, you’ll notice far better results for lean muscle mass, energy, sex drive, and fat loss when you include multi-joint leg exercises such as lunges and squats into your regimen.
3． Eat a Testosterone Supporting Diet
Any time you eat sugar and starch, your pancreas releases insulin, and high insulin upregulate aromatase activity (which means more testosterone gets converted into estrogen) and also cause an increase in Sex Hormone Binding Globulin (SHBG), which binds to circulating testosterone and renders it ineffective. So stay away from processed sugar, candy, soda, and even high amounts of things like pasta and bread, and instead try to include high amounts of healthy fats and natural unprocessed oils, both of which will provide you with the fat-soluble vitamins and important cholesterol precursors to allow for adequate hormone and steroid formation.
In the same way that insulin can lower testosterone, inflammation from lack of recovery, inadequate sleep, poor dietary habits, environmental toxins and pollutants, and many other common triggers can increase levels of “cytokine” molecules, which cause reactions similar to those experienced when eating a high sugar diet. My fellow Quick and Dirty Tips host, Nutrition Diva, actually has a great website that thoroughly expands on the topic of inflammation. Pay close attention to what she has to say about anti-inflammatory foods, and incorporate compounds such as garlic, ginger, curcumin, turmeric, cilantro, cinnamon, dark purple cabbage, dark leafy greens blueberries, pomegranates, and other anti-inflammatory spices, herbs and foods in your diet.
So that’s it: three simple steps to keep testosterone elevated: avoid chronic cardio when there’s an option to use intense training instead, hit the weights, and eat a testosterone supporting diet. Do you have more questions about why athletes get low testosterone, or what to do about it?Join the conversation at Facebook.com/getfitguy.
About the Author
Ben Greenfield received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Idaho in sports science and exercise physiology; personal training and strength and conditioning certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA); a sports nutrition certification from the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), an advanced bicycle fitting certification from Serotta. He has over 11 years’ experience in coaching professional, collegiate, and recreational athletes from all sports, and as helped hundreds of clients achieve weight loss and fitness success.