What are the best ways to increase my testosterone

The best-supported starting points are heavy resistance training without going to failure, keeping sessions from becoming excessively long, lifting before endurance work, and protecting sleep and stress balance. Cold exposure and some supplements may also help, but evidence and safety vary.

• 1. Heavy loads, not failure: Use challenging loads—roughly the 1–8-rep range—without continuing until you cannot complete another rep. This approach is associated with testosterone increases lasting about a day and sometimes up to 48 hours. 1
• 2. Keep sessions under 75 minutes: Longer, sufficiently intense endurance sessions may reduce testosterone, possibly through increased cortisol; limiting endurance work to 75 minutes or less may help avoid that. 2
• 3. Lift before endurance work: If you combine them in one session, do weight training first and cardio afterward. Sprint intervals or high-intensity interval training may also increase testosterone. 3
• 4. Cold exposure: Cold may influence testosterone indirectly, including through rebound blood flow and dopamine-related pathways, but direct effects are not established. Directly icing the testicles is not necessary and may be dangerous; be careful to avoid tissue damage. 4
• 5. Tongkat ali and fadogia agrestis: Tongkat ali has some evidence for increasing free testosterone, but supplements require caution. Fadogia agrestis is discussed as potentially increasing luteinizing hormone and testosterone, alongside concern about possible testicular-cell toxicity based on animal research. 5 6
• 6. Testosterone replacement therapy: It is a medical treatment, not a self-directed supplement. Decisions about it should account for potential benefits and risks with a clinician; the discussion notes that hormone-modulating treatments can have side effects and require caution. 7

Sleep and stress management are part of the broader picture, but the specific lifestyle protocols emphasized here are training, exercise timing, and avoiding excessive exercise stress.