Hi, and welcome back to Bounce Forward with me, tiff Haul. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I'm recording this podcast, the wrendry people of the cooler Nation. I pay my respects for elders past and present. Nicole reached out. I have an eight month old and she's in a sleep regression as well as teething like crazy. I haven't slept properly in months, and
it's starting to take its toll. I know it's just a season, and soon she will be older and sleeping better and I can get back to lifestyle that I love. But for now, what is the most important aspects? I should be focusing on clean eating, just reaching my water, golf for the day at least, something like getting a walk in. Sometimes even these are a challenge. What are the best exercises to stick to when you're feeling sleep deprived?
Oh, Nicole, I feel you.
Every mom out there is feeling you right now, you know, And I've been through horrendous moments with my key.
It's teething sicknesses.
Just blatantly I'm not going to sleep, mum and standing up in my cot you know, and you're watching them on the monosor going, oh my goodness, go to sleep, and they just won't. It's highly frustrating and it's very fatiguing. Now I'm a big believer. My personal motto is something comes from something, but nothing comes from nothing. So I really like to rely on exercise snacking rather than doing structured exercise when I'm fatigued. And this is really really
important when you sleep deprived. It's important to lower the intensity so you don't want to be at risk of injury or overstressing your body which is already under so much strain from sleep deprivation. So best types of exercise when you're sleep deprived really it's whatever you can do, whatever you feel like you have the energy to cope with.
I like to keep it light, light, aerobic activity, walking really slow, jog really cycling, it in easy pace, or swimming because it boost circulation, releases those endorphins, which boosts mood when you're sleep deprived, and it improves energy and mood without overtaxing your body. Right stretching or yoga. Big fan of this as an exercise snack. Child's pose cat cow forward folds feel beautiful when you're sleep deprived, and it reduces that muscle tension, promotes relaxation, and it helps
you reset your nervous system. So I always like to think about exercise when I'm sleep deprived, and it still happens at minus seven and two as not exercise but regulating nervous system. I'm not burning calories, I'm regulating my nervous system. And the more you regulate your nervous system, the more that you're able to then get a good night's sleep when you can.
Okay. So then you've got body.
Weight exercises like push up, squats, lunges in the lounge room, train with my TXO, select a ten minute express workout and just do ten minute and it's press play. Let the trainer tell you what you need to do and take your mind off what am I going to do?
How many push ups, how many reps? How many sets?
Take that stress out of it and do a home workout maintains that activity level without the heavy weights, okay, and then low intensity strength training. If you want to get out of the house because you've had a bad night, just go and do some light weights that aren't going to stress your nervous system. You want to avoid high intensity workouts you hit training, for example, because they're going to increase your cortersole levels and strain your body further.
You want to really reduce your loads with heavy lifting because again poor focus, lack of coordination, because you haven't slept, you're likely to injure yourself.
And I've injured myself multiple times.
I fell over doing a step up holding some weights when I was sleep deprived and I had to have a risk reconstruction, and I just fell backwards.
It was just a wobble in coordination.
But because I was sleep deprived and I just had VADA, that led to another surgery. And then you want to really minimize prolonged and very intense cardio because this leads to just over exhaustion and already fatigued system like nervous system, it's just going to great. So you really want to listen to your body at this time. If you're feeling dizzy mentally foggy, it's also okay to wave the white flag.
And do nothing, have a rest day. You don't need to exercise.
Sleep deprivation is clinically proven to dehydrate you, so you want to make sure that you're drinking a lot of water before and after exercise, and even on those days when you don't do any exercise but you are sleep deprived, keep the session short, twenty minutes max right, and then just focus on movement quality over the quantities. So make sure that your form is good, that you're doing something that is not intense, and that you're feeling really good
about the technique so there's no injury. I'm a big believer in exercise snack, So ten minutes, twenty minutes, it all counts to really boost your endorphins. It's so important, and you can then feel more resilient to deal with the next night that's going to come up, because there are no days off as a parent, and I think that realization hit me like a ton of bricks when
I had arnold. There are no days off, there are no recovery days, there are no reset days, there's no sleeping in, there's no catching up, and so you have to then make your schedule have what I call green time where there is recovery and relaxation time built in around the red time, which is the stress time, and that stress time at nights, if you're having a red night where there's no sleep and you're highly stressed from work, then you need to make sure that your morning isn't
having a red training session that's intense. You need something green, like a yoga session or stretching session, or just nothing at all.
Nicole, It's really, really, really tough.
But the good thing is as they get older, it does get easier. The sleepless nights do happen, but they only happen on occasion when they're sick or when they have a bad dream. And you know, it does get easier, but you're in the trenches at the moment, and you really need to have self acceptance and compassion for yourself at the moment and make sure that even if you're getting your walk in, even if you're hitting a water golf for the day, that is something and something comes
from something, but nothing comes from nothing. Becky contacted me with a great question tip help. I've jumped on the smart watch bandwagon and with all the data, this thing says my VEO two is poor and I'm twelve years older than my actual age.
How do I fix this?
Do I just run every day until my cardiovascular system is better? Is this just a theoretical number? Surely watch on my risk can't measure this accurately? Such a good question, Becky, Oh yes, okay, So for everyone listening out there, let's start with what is a votwo max?
Okay?
So, votwo max, or maximum oxygen uptake, is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can utilize during intense exercise. So it's considered a key indicator of cardiovascular fitness and aerobic endurance. So votwo max is typically measured in milli liters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute. The higher your VO two max, the more oxygen your body can use, and the better your physical fitness level. And it depends on a few factors. So you've got
your heart and lung function. How efficiently your heart pumps blood and your lungs transfer oxygen, so that's like one factor. You've got muscle efficiency, how well can muscles use that oxygen?
And then you've got your age in genetics.
Okay, because your votwo max will generally decline as you get older. So how do you improve your VO two max and your training? Such a cool question. So there's about three or four ways you can do this. Number one and the biggest bang for your buck. And my favorite is high intensity interval training, so short bursts of high intensity effort followed by recovery periods. Example, thirty seconds of a run followed by one minute recovery repeat, you know,
for twenty minutes. That's an example of high intensity interval training. Very simple example. And hit improves both your aerobic and your anaerobic energy system. So your VO two max is going to soar if you keep doing your HIT, then you've got long, steady state cardios. Some people are big fans of this. They love going for a long run. It's good, it's meditating for them, it's good for their mental health. You're outside, I totally get it, whether it's cycling, running, walking,
going for a swim for third to ninety minutes. This strengthens your hardened lungs and it improves your overall oxygen delivery. Then you've got your threshold training, so exercising at or just below your lactate threshold, or the point where your body produces more lactic acid than it can clear. An example of this is like running at a really challenging pace for twenty to forty minutes, and this increases your
ability to sustain higher intensities for longer. It's a really good way of training, but you do need to be very fit for it, so it's not something I would give a beginner, Okay, so you would need to be kind of have an established fitness level before you try some threshold training. Then other types of training you can do you cross training and fart lick training, which is a mix of steady state cardio and intervals.
But also I have.
To mention my favorite TODA strength training, which incorporates you know, all your big lips like dead lifts, squats, and it builds that muscular strength and endurance. And people don't know this about strength training, but the stronger your muscles, the more oxygen they can carry and the more efficiently they extract that oxygen and therefore your votwo max is going to go up. So strength training is really really good
for you. Now, nutrition wise, you know, you need a balanced diet rich in whole foods that fuel your training and recovery. So that's a lifestyle factor that will support your votwo max improvement. Rest and recovery is really important as well, because the more your muscle rests, the more it can optimize performance of course, hydration is really important for cardiovascular function and sleep. High quality sleep critical for
that adaptation of the muscles and to really recover. So you can regularly test your votwo max through using fitness apps. You know, wearable device is seeing a pt that can take you through a VO two max tests physical tests. But let's look at the smart watches and how they
actually work. So smart watches use algorithms that rely on data that they collect from you, such as heart rate, speed, and distance which is tracked through GPS for outdoor activities like running or cycling, your activity type that you select like walking, running outdoors, cycling, indoors, strength training, hit, whatever you select, and then the inputs of age, weight, fitness level that you usually provide to your watch, and these
metrics are combined with known physiological models to estimate VO two max without requiring direct oxygen consumption measurements. Okay, but there are certain factors that affect accuracy, so type of exercise. For example, your VO two max estimates are more most accurate for running and cycling because those activities match the models used in smart watch algorithms. Right for other activities like say you're on the elliptical machine at the gym,
the data may be less reliable. There's not that much testing. Heart rate monitoring optical heart rate sensors. These are aleds to measure blood flow and may be less accurate during high intensity exercise or activities involving a lot of risk movement, and we are very active with our risks when we're moving. Chest straps when they're paired, are more accurate. Okay, so you know, you get the heart rate monitor that you
put around your chest just under your bra line. They measure heart rates so much more accurately, and they will show you the VO two max estimates much more accurately. Then you've got environmental conditions that you really have to think about, heat, humidity, altitude. These can all skew results, and the quality of the algorithm varies by brand model as well. So premium devices like your garment, your apple,
your tend to have more refined calculations. So you know, you pay the money to get the better estimates, and then regularly wearing your watch and performing VO two max specific activities will improve accuracy over time as your device collects more personalized data and is able to relate it to you, so how accurate are they compared to lab testing. They deliver like five to fifteen percent from lab measured
VO two max values, so not that accurate. Okay for trends, While absolute accuracy may vary, smart watches are good at tracking trends over time. So trend tracking, yeah, I think they're pretty good. And I'm not an elite athlete. I'm a mom who likes to keep fit, so I don't really need an accurate VO two max. I look at my smart watch to see improvement. So it's like I was here, now I'm upper level. Oh great, you know
that to me is valuable. So casual fitness tracking absolutely it works for athletes.
Yeah, you might.
Want to get a really good smart watch, or you may want to do some lab testing or be with a personal trainer who can do fitness testing in person. You know, in terms of your biological age. Now you said you're bioage, you know, twelve years older. Yes, I don't think that a smart watch can really tell you this because it really has to take in a lot
of factors. You know, it can look at your aerobic activity, it can look at your strength training, but it's not going to look at your flexibility and balance for example, which you know you can incorporate through pilates and yoga and stretching and mobility and things like that, which is a factor to bioage. So you know you've got to sort of take it with a pinch of salt. It can track your sleep, which is really good, so that can be linked to premature aging and health issues. And
it will track a healthy weight range. You put on muscle, you may be getting heavier. Uh. It's not really tracking your body composition, so I wouldn't really take that on too much. I never really input my weight and worry
about that. And it's not really tracking your nutritional habits, you know, emphasizing that you're eating fruits and vegetables and whole grains and whole foods and you're getting amiga three rich foods like fatty fish, flax, seas and walnuts and all the good stuff, or watching that you're limiting processed foods. You know, at the end of the day, I think track your metrics definitely, if that's something that's really important to you, look at your smart watch, track it, make
sure that it's improving. You can go to see a doctor and get your blood pressure, your blood sugars, your cholesterol levels as well. They're always good to check in on and have that as a biomarker every six months. But really, you know, I wouldn't get too hung up on what your smart watch is telling you. In joy that you get two three hundred calories done in each session.
That's good to know.
You can push yourself there, watch your heart rate, make sure that you're in your heart rate zones. If that's the way that you're training, stay consistent. But really, in terms of biohacking, your by wage and you know, you can do your cold exposure, your sauna therapy, you can eat well, you can do all those things, but your smart watch's never going to know. So don't be a slave to the smart watch. That is the message of today. But just enjoy seeing those metrics improve over time. But
don't worry or compare those metrics to anybody else. And if you don't want to trust what's happening on the smart watch, you can go to dexa scan clinics. They just scan your body, give you a body composition, talk you through your body composition, how much lean muscle mass you're carrying, And that's a great way, it's not a doctor's surgery, it's not you know, sterile and all you know,
you don't need an appointment. You can just go in and and have a scan and know where you're at and you're not relying on the scales, and you're not relying on the smart watch, and you have some solid foundation data in which you can go about improving over the next three months. Thanks so much for listening to Bounce Forward. I love having your company, so please dm me on Instagram at tif Paul Underscore XO and let
me know what topics you'd love me to cover. Don't forget to rate and review me on your podcast app speak soon.
Happy Days,