#1603 Body Literacy - Unna Goldsworthy

the boxer we love him. Yeah, it's the Olympics, of course at the minute, and he if anyone has ever bowed out of a sporting event, not winning, but still coming out like a winner him, Did you see any of him?

to win. I've been visualizing myself winning. I've got thinking, had his phone set ten times a day to stop and visualize the metal ceremony. And he's been obviously training and all his conditioning work and his nutrition, and he's sleep and he's boxing stuff and his skill stuff, and he's been preparing for this moment like his whole life, but specifically the last four years for the Olympics. And then he goes, it's you know, while I really wanted to win, and I need to you know, acknowledge my

feelings and it's just a sporting event. And there are people around the world who are you know, in the middle of the shittiest situations, in the middle of war, in the middle of poverty, in the middle of you know, some mom and dads are trying to feed their kids and essentially I'm over here. I'm a privileged athlete who

didn't win a fight. It's okay. You know he didn't say exactly that, but a version I thought, I'll tell you what, what a great Yes, a great role model as an athlete, but maybe even a better you know, role model as a bloke as a human.

And I cannot give you the start of how the conversation evolved, but it became this conversation about you know, when you're picking a partner, or when you're with friends, or you know you're choosing who influences you, You've got to be thoughtful about how your decisions and what you say relates to them in their context. You're not responsible for them, but you know you do need to be thoughtful about it. And it all came down to, Yeah, of this idea around relationships and that you've got to

understand who you are, what's approached. There can be something shiny and exciting about someone else that gives you a real drive to be around them, but ultimately you're not compatible around them, or you know you're you don't lean into what's right for you, it just doesn't land. And

I think Harry's got that ability to it. Seems like he's evolved as an athlete in his skills, but the greater evolution has been him as a human, like his ability to understand his role as an influencer and that he's got great power as a celebrity figure in the things that he says and what he can create and change.

amazing is New Zealand. Like nine people live there and there I look before their twelfth on the table of fifty one countries that have meddled, five million people live in New Zealand, give or take. You think something like forty forty five million people live in California, right, I mean it's incredible, But back to that kind of role

model influencer. Too bad if you're an athlete and you just want to be an athlete, Like if you're a complete introvert, and it doesn't mean you're obviously a bad person. Some of my best friends are introverts. I think I'm an ambivert. Everyone would think I'm an extrovert because of my job. I'm definitely not very I live by myself. I spend most of my time by myself. I'm very happy alone and very happy to be in a room full of humans and be invisible. Right, I'm very happy

for that. Right. But if you if you're an introvert and you just happened to be great at sport and you love sport and you're good at it and people are shoving a microphone in front of your face every eight seconds, yeah that's going to be And what if you don't want to be a fucking role model? What if you just want to be and that doesn't mean you want to do bad shit? But what if you go, I actually don't want anyone to model themselves on me. I just want to be an athlete.

am an introvert. This is for me at the moment, Like I could vomit and shit right now on stage. This is how I feel like she was about to kind of break into this.

emotionally it's the land on. Yeah.

is Saya Saki Saka Kibara. I think good luck with that, harps did you hear her winter after after the race? So she won the gold this morning and she goes, this is live on Channel nine. So I just I thought, just fucking go for it. So I just fucking went for it. And I'm like, and there was no be like they didn't have time like that is that is the best. That is the best.

I'll shut up after this. People try to interview people when they are at their most emotionally kind of vulnerable and they can't string three words together.

Person Representative. I don't know the proper title for the last the period between the last two Olympics, and she's created a platform called play On which advocates for the effectively the mental safety for young girls to continue playing sport, because there's a massive dropout race basically when you hit high school. And she's the biggest over a teacher, she's you know, plays multiple instruments. She's now an Olympic gold medalist.

She's gold bronze, bronze, bronze, and said, I beg my pardon, and she's, you know, studying medicine. But she I think, yeah, she's She was more leaning towards the introvert world and she said, in just the coin of that idea of I guess I can do this, just do it. She was coming. I don't know where it was in the race. I assume it was later on in the race because it was really muggy and they had to not go ahead with the race at the design time because there

was a storm. Anyway, she's really struggling in questioning whether she wants the medal and really pushing hard. She looked so strong the whole time, but she was really pushing hard. And she was lucky enough to have her family there. And she said she walked past her sister and heard her sister yelling something, you know, over the crowd, and recognized her voice, and that was the click that took her to you know, zoom out again. You know, this isn't about me, this is you know, fucking I can

do this, and she yeah. So it was so amazing to hear the inner workings of you know, out there doing the thing, but still doubting yourself and still being able to talk yourself out of it or talk yourself back into it in this like huge, huge platform.

technique and the potential consequences of that. Thirty seven minutes and eleven seconds.

I mean, you're the the guru of exercise physiology on this show anyway, And so they have to have one foot touching the ground at all times. Obviously, when you're running, there are like there's half the time there's no feet on the ground. There's you're pushing off, but both feet are off the ground. But with race walking you have to have one foot in contact with the ground at

all times. Have you ever looked at what's going on closely at the hips and the ass and the hamstring and the hip flexes And there.

And it was the thing that made me think that, and I assume my interpretation is reasonable, is that she had all that amazing movement that they have in their hips on there on the science sideplane, but her trunk wasn't kind of taking up this lag with spots into it as well, So she was creating a real propulsive force, only with none of this kind of pull push from reactive forces anywhere else in the system. And she was, yeah,

she looks, she looks so so good. And then you'd see other walkers that were hired a hot you know, struggling and working to their absolute highest, and you could see the kind of faulting in their stability and where they were what we'd say, losing losing energy in their biomechanics, and it was it was amazing to what it really really was. But yeah, that's and I had the joy.

I've got a picture on my phone of I did my swim training last night and I'm the worst kicker and my trainer, my trainer was kind of enough to say, no,

there's another person in the pool. You But at the end I've gotten out and I was just having a little recovery chatting to one of my other we'll call them veterans swimmers on the side, and they had to tell you up watching the swimming and all the other young young squad kids were in the pool having a break watching the some of the Olympic races for the swimm at the same time. It was really cool with standing in the pool watching their idols.

He now swims three hours a week, three hours in the week because he only swims fifty meters, which is I can't remember twenty two seconds or something ridiculous. But the vast majority of his training is land based, so it's all about power and function and speed, and so he's building this body out. This is fucking amazing. So he's doing less swimming than ever and he's better than he's ever been, Like he just won the Olympic gold medal.

So you know, this is one of the things that we see the evolution of sport and the science around sport and the evolution of training, where now he's being inundated by other athletes and coaches who want to know his protocol. Right, So you think about now, I don't know if those numbers are exactly right, thirty versus three hours, but I know that he's reduced his pool workload like exponentially, So he's in the pool hardly at all compared to

what he used to be. And ironically, the swimmer doesn't do much swimming, but he does everything out you think about, you think about talk about explosive events, So imagine being at the Olympics. Your event last twenty seconds. Now, if you're good at it, you get to do it again, and if you're good at it, then you get to do it again. And if you're good at it, then

you're the Olympic champion. Right. But it's funny how you know what we'll see now, probably because he is currently the best, you know, as of yesterday, the best on the planet at this event, and he's training in a way that virtually no one else is training. So there

might be a few people dabbling with this. But it's so interesting the way that sports science and the science and by that I mean not just training in the pool, but the strength stuff, the recovery stuff, you know that all the stuff we're seeing around ice bars and blah blah blah, just the myriad of variables that go into making somebody the best in the world at something.

it's just that acceleration of change. And I think it's particularly exciting with the female sports space because now that the training is starting to take into account how to refine and do do female training particularly well, I think we're going to see that's where we'll see the biggest changes as well. And I think most of it's come from our ability to understand recovery better rather than doing

the thing makes you better at it. It's the ability to work as high as possible when requires not just doing a lot of it, and then you know you're actually functioning at this lower level. How do we create continuous change rather than a stimulu that's actually just keeping us in the same spot.

So what am I saying? We often had the coaches who in terms of physiology, exercise programming, recovery, nutrition, that were completely unqualified, but they would be the ones who were deciding that tonight we're going to do one hundred one hundreds. One of my mates a rip Rob Dixon, friend of mine who sadly passed away, one of my best mates from school. He played footy for Hawthorne and he also played footy for the Brisbane Bears. He was a helicopter pilot. He was the first winner of Survivor

Season one, one of my best mates. Shout out to his brother Pete. Awesome human. But anyway, Dicko, I remember Dicko telling me when he arrived at Hawthorne. Now this was in nine eighty two, right, so forty two years ago. One night, in the middle of summer, they did one hundred one hundred meters sprints. Like that is so fucking terrible. That is so bad for like, so in the heat, they're sprinting ten kilometers. There's no benefit to that. There's

only potential risk and damage. And you might go, oh, toughens them up. No, it doesn't. It makes them hate the coach, and there's physiologically you know, it's just stupid shit. And even back in the day when I arrived at Saint Kilda, which was a long time ago now, but I arrived there in I think it was nineteen ninety four, ninety five I was there, it was like and it's not like I was a world leader in exercise science, but before I got there, there was no rhyme or reason.

The conditioning work, yes, that like the bitness stuff and speed stuff and skill stuff of course that kind of but the actual strength training, there was no rhyme or reason, like there was a couple of weights in this shitty gym. Of course, it's very different now, been to the gym ats and Kilda. It's like the fucking space station now, it's like being at NASA now. But back in the day and we're talking only you know, like one generation ago.

We're talking twenty five years ago, it was fucking archaic, so so understanding how to optimize a body. It's still very much in its evolution.

with your own body literacy in saying today is not a great training day for me, or yet today is the appropriate training day for me based on what's happening in my body, and that's where the refining is happening.

So there's you know, we can see, we can hear, we can taste in teroception, that ability to know, you know, this isn't the best day for me, or that discomfort is an okay discomfort versus this isn't a good discomfort to be moving through. I'm dehydrated, so that's making me grumpy or not great. It's not a great decision making

right now. So it's yeah, it's the ability to go I can feel what's going on in my body and make a clear decision whether I act on that in you know, as in my tools of do I do ABCD today in terms of using training, but beyond that, I don't make myself feel guilty about making a decision that feels in line with what my body needs.

in our decision making about our body. So we are no, I'm going to eat nothing today because last night I had a big night, or I'm going to If running five k's is good, then running ten k's is twice as good. If training three days a week in the gym is good, then six days is brilliant, and ten days a week in the gym is amazing. So I'm doing do you know what I mean? It's like yeah, Because we're emotional creatures. And I always say this, you know, try to de emotionalize when it comes to your body

as much as possible. Turn down the emotion and turn

up the strategy and the science and the logic. Because if you are if you have an unhealthy relationship with your body, which is every second person who listens to this show and you know who you are, or an unhealthy relationship with food also a lot of you motherfuckers and me too, you know, and you have a capacity or a perhaps a tendency to make what are not the best decisions for your health or body because you are operating out of fear or laziness or whatever, then

at some stage we need to be able to go, Okay, what is my body actually telling me? And how do I use that information wisely?

So if we track back, you know, I don't know, maybe five months ago, four months ago, I can't remember how long we've been doing it. He's eleven, So we're going to give him a break in terms of you know, not fully developed frontal lobe and you know, not connecting to emotional senses.

kind to me. Let you know, what, can you processify yourself anyway where we'd get through the runs and then cut forward, we've done a good four or five runs now where there's been no complaining. There's been you know, keeping up and taking accountability for himself and all that kind of stuff. And then today he came, but he's had just a bit of a block nose otherwise, well, but a bit of a block nose for a good

week or so. So came and we started running, and he started sort of hanging back, really hanging back, and from me from an adult in parenting, I can be helpful here point of view if I take the time machine back to before I was encouraged him by pushing a little bit because I knew that he was there was no reason for his body not to doing something hard mentally, emotionally, physically, was a good thing for him to be learning about and then today he was hanging back,

not feeling quite right, and I said, hey, I'm going to run today. If you don't, if you don't feel like it's right for you today, you make that call. She said, oh, yeah, I'm going to walk for a little bit. Oh, I'll catch up to you. So I stopped at our normal stop and kind of looked back, and as a fair way back, he caught up and I said, so, what do you think are you going to run today? He said, yeah, I've got this funny pain in my shoulder, and da da da da da.

I said, your call. I'm going to keep running though. And we got to the end, and another beautiful story in there. There I was hanging on the back of an old guy called Bob, and I passed Bob and I said thanks. I was hanging on your heels for a bit. That's a whole nother story. But Bob and I crossed the line together. We will help each other along the way. Whole nother story. But he got to the end of My son apologized to me for not running, and I said, buddy, don't abandon your decision now. You

made a good decision for your body. You don't need to answer for my feelings when you've made a choice about what your body is telling is right for today. So there's always these fun magic moments that we get kind of learned from. But hopefully for people listening, that's a bit of an example of body literacy and the context of how you make decisions very much comes down to your identity where you're trying to go to who else you're answering for? But what what are you saying sorry for, buddy?

time or that environment anymore. I get it, I get it, but and I think the world, well, arguably, you know a lot of where we live and how we live now is infinitely better, let's put an asterisk next to that. But also there are you know, there are things that have been lost along the way, like when you look at how intuitive and instinctive and intelligent animals are when

nobody's taught them in inverted commas. And now it's like, as a species, as an animal roaming the planet, we've evolved to this point where we can't fucking understand any

thing about our own body. I was going to tell you so yesterday today, being Saday, yesterday morning at Crown, I opened what is the what's it called the Ignite Fitness Business Conference for the Amazing Male Tempest, And so I did the opening keynote to a whole bunch of jim owners, gym managers, fitness professionals, blah blah blah blah blah, And I just wanted your take on this because it kind of it opened a bit of a Pandora's box, and I spoke about this. So my thoughts about the

fitness industry. Fitness industry gets a lot right and a few things terribly wrong, I think, and probably a few things that could be better. But I think one of the things that the fitness industry and maybe even the health profession more broadly speaking, could start to think about is just the person underneath the body. You know. It's like we're good with bodies. We're pretty good with bodies.

We're not always great with people, now, you know. And I know like, if you've got a million dollar gym and you've got you've got a PhD in exos physiology, and you've got all the resources and all the knowledge, and someone comes into that gym but you can't understand them, or they can't understand you, or they're intimidated by you, or you can't build connection and rapport and trust with them as an educator or exos physiologist or coach or

dietitian or doctor or whatever, then that person's not coming back. So it doesn't matter about your fucking million dollar jim or your PhD. And I was talking about that, and I was talking about trying to help or at least trying to start the conversation around, you know, for one of a more scientific term, getting in shape, right, so changing our body in the way that someone wants their

body to be changed, eether or not. That's navigating shitty posture or obesity, or reducing back pain or dealing with endometriosis or you know. One of the myriad of things that we might want to improve about our physiology and function is to get people to think about the role of the mind and how much For example, getting in shape is an emotional on a psychological process with a physical outcome. And had a guy follow me out of

the room. I won't say his name because it's just a work in progress at the moment, but he owns a really big organization and he's like, would you be interested in I can't say even what country, but would you be interested in working with us and coming to this It's a country I've never been to, right and essentially what you talk about, I want you to come and talk about that over there. I'm like, well, I'm

very interested. And it's funny because the stuff that I spoke about is the stuff that they've been trying to to I guess foster within under the banner of fitness and health, and I guess that you know, My long winded point is that we're just starting to open it open the door now on helping people, yes, get in shape physically, but also understand the role, the role and the integration of the mind and the emotions in the physical transformation process.

way operating my body? So if you're the you know, the fitness person sitting in front of someone, part of your role is to understand that if you've got ideas that you're trying to shove down someone's throat and they're not you know, not able to do them, or they're doing them differently than you like, and you become personally offended by that, that's you holding a value so rigidly that you can't see someone else's point of view. Therefore you are not helpful. You are just not able to

be there. And I think part of that when you do really, really, really well with helping people, it changes the tape of how quickly it happens. And the fitness industry is known for twelve weeks to this, eight weeks to this summer program, all all that kind of stuff. But when it comes to a trainer understanding themselves or the exerciser understanding what it would take to commit to their health long term. Those tools are mentally emotionally uncomfortable.

They are not taught in the fitness industry as well how to do them, and it doesn't happen quickly, so it doesn't really fit up with the business model business industry. And I've struggled with this as a younger clinician and still even now as a business owner they're making making money from health still feel a bit odd to me because I feel like health is a right in a way,

and how do we how do we do that? And ironically the only way is to become hugely financially independent and then be able to just do other things for free in the background. Yeah, but it just comes about money.

And if you call work helping people, supporting people, coaching people, sitting with people. You know, maybe fifteen percent of what I do I do for nothing, and I do it gladly, and I hope in ten years fifty percent or more of what I do is just helping people. Right, It's like with no financial kind of component to it. But at the same time, you know, I have three people who work for me. You know, bills, you have bills. There's a practical reality. I don't think you being an

awesome you being an awesome human and helping people. It doesn't need to be mutually exclusive because there is a commercial value to what you do. But I just one last thing I wanted to chat about. So getting old. Yeah, so the last couple of weeks, and I can't say too much, but just so, my dad's had a few challenges, right,

and it's been an interesting time. And my parents lived two hours away, which is fine, but there are times where I'm driving up and back two days in a row, you know, So it's four hours of driving on a Monday, four hours driving on a Tuesday, and I'm okay with that.

to Saint John have got hospital in Verick. They were fucking amazing, so thank you to them for looking after my dad. But then, you know, seeing your eighty five year old dad who doesn't, you know, understandably doesn't understand the language like all the medical you know, and he and Ron makes sure you do this and don't do that, and here's that, and everyone's good. But it's like that, the speed of the conversation, the words being used, and the you know, like all of this kind of understandable

medical jargon because it's a medical environment. But then I'm trying to decode everything for him and then kind of put it in layman's terms without it being terrifying, and then yeah, like getting him home to mum and then Mum's worried and I'm trying to explain to Mum what's going on, and you know, and Mum gets anxious about Dad and Dad gets anxious about Mum, and then it's fuck now. And then all of a sudden, you go, oh,

I'm Dad. Now, I'm Dad. Now I'm Dad, and oh God, God bless them, and you just I don't know, I'm being a bit deep and philosophical, but you kind of you get to a point and everyone does this and this is this has been said billions of times, but you know where you go, this is actually all that matters, Like this is all that matters. Like my priority these days is really how do I What can I do to make them okay? What can I do to make

them less terrified more comfortable? You know? What is how do I how do I make the next one two, five years or however long they have? What can I do to make that as close to a good experience as an eighty five year old a couple can have? You know? So that's been my that's been my week.

kind of organization of a family? How does how does that fit in there? And that that in itself can feel a bit uncomfortable because it's just not as smooth as the day to day when there's you're throwing that little bit of challenge in there as well. I think, yeah, it's it's big and I think I think when we go off that version of autopilot to the scary version of autopilot, is you know, how long will these poor people in my life be there for?

mentioned it probably three times. Fuck it. It's called Unfollow by a lady called Megan Phelps Roper who was part of a church called the Westboro Baptist Church, which is a cult, a religious cult. And oh my god, just I don't know. I've read over a thousand books in my life. I'm sure I've read a lot of books, listen to a lot of books more recently than read. I listened to that full disclosure right now. Anyway, Maybe it'll change over time, but right now it's in my

top five books. And I can't even tell you why. Well I can, but anyway, enough, I fucking I was so interested. Now you on my recommendation, and thank you. You just listen to it. What are your thoughts?

And yeah, I felt great relief when she's left and when she's processing the trauma of being controlled and what that looks like and the fear that the complete sphere that she had to move through to believe, and the amazing strength of her to not blame but see the difference of my my you know, my family are good people, but the mind washing that they've gone through, the brainwashing is very much you know how how they're operating. And

there was this one bit I text you before. There was a bit that I'm up to and it was not a story or a fable that I've heard of before, and it was The Snail and the Rose Bush before. Yeah, anyway, and the Snail and the rose Bush, and it's a it's an author that I need to go back and check because it's one of you know, the great painted authors of all time. And the snails disgrunted by the world and the rose bushes like but what about the

world's beauty and what you can give? And the snail is you know, to put in in courage terms like fuck the world, it's done nothing for me. And she then sort of came to this realization that she was the rose bush fighting for using the religious platform to fight for what they thought was, you know, the thing. And it's like, actually, no, I'm now the snail. I have to just turn in wood and keep it all in wood and just figure out how to operate now.

And I text you something else that just made me go, oh,

it blew my mind off. What did I write? Just having a quick look the snail and the rose bush and the illusion of self This is what I wrote, The illusion of self control when living in a collective confirmation bias and with no real choices, And this idea that how she navigates now trying to navigate normal relationships because she's fighting with her disburse the moment because they're so used to their emotions and thoughts being controlled by

an external Now that they're able to openly participate in conversations, they're having conflict because they've never learned how to have their own processes. They were just put in a little box.

was born. She was born into that cult of thought and that cult of belief and that cult of behavior, and so there was never really any question of are we in the right place, because they knew in inverted commas that they were God's chosen and that everyone in the world apart from them wasn't. And when you know, she started protesting with placards when she was five years old.

up right here we are. You want to join the cult, let us know where can people find you?

exercise and mental health and all those amazing things. And yeah, other projects and supports and speakings going on as well, So have a little look in there or reach out if people want to.