#1704 Some Truths About Exercise - Harps

and look back a few days. So as I record this, it's the twelfth of November, so I don't know, it's maybe the eighth or ninth of November something like that, or the seventh anyway, if you want to see the movement. But my point, my long winded point, is this, I was showing my audience how you can train your lower body, so quads, ass, glutes, hamstrings, calf a little bit, even a little bit of lower back because we go into hip flexion and then extension, so really everything from you know,

kind of the hips down as being worked. And I was talking about how if you do it the right way, you can vary the height, you can vary the speed, you can vary the amount of reps you do, and if you slow it down enough and you have a look at the movement. So I'm literally lifting my weight, which is about eighty five kilos with one leg, so the front leg which is up on the step, I'm not stepping down with the front leg, I'm leaving it

up there. And so I'm lifting and lowering eighty five kilos and it's a high step, and so it very much becomes a strength movement. And then when you slow it right down, less momentum, more strength is required at the bottom of the movement, where my other foot is back down on the ground, my lead foot, my front foot is still back on the step. So now I'm in like a really quite biomechanically disadvantaged positions, so it really requires there's a lot of strength for me to

get back up. Blah blah blah. So I was just demonstrating how we can with next to no equipment, well, with no gym equipment, we can get a good training effect. We can stress our muscles so that they need to adapt. And quite a few people sent me messages. I've got a couple of emails. A few people stopped me out and about and said, can you expand on that stuff? And so today I just want to share some thoughts

and ideas around some of the fundamentals. Some of this I've covered before, but I'll put on my exercise science hat again. For some of you, it might be a little bit of a revision. For some of you it will be brand new. I'll try and keep the science as fundamental and understandable and basic as possible without skipping anything. But so let's talk about strength training for a moment. You don't need me to bang on about the features, advantages, and benefits of staying strong. We all know. We all

know that being strong that doing strength training. Whether that's lifting traditional barbells and dumbbells or kettle bells, or it's doing some kind of class, or it's using pinloaded machines or hydraulic machines, we know that doing strength training whatever that looks like. It could even be rock climbing, which by the way, is an extreme form of strength training and muscular endurance training, among other things. Are you not going to find an elite rock climber who is not

extremely strong, especially power to wait and so on. So getting strong can be done in a range of ways. It doesn't have to happen in a gym. It doesn't have to happen with weights or kettlebells or dumbbells or bar bells or traditional strength training equipment per se. We can do it almost anywhere. We can do it at home. We can do it in the front yard, we can do it at the beach. We can do it anywhere where we have sort of space and we have the

inclination to do what works. So when you think about I want to give you a little bit of anatomy here just to kind of get you to a fundamental anatomy to get you to understand how adaptation works. So, if, for example, I'm bending, Let's say, even if you wanted to do this, if you can stand up and have your arms just hanging by your side. So if you're standing now and your arms are hanging by your side,

now turn your palms so they're facing the front. So as you naturally stand, your palms might be facing inwards towards your body, or they might be if you're a neanderthal like me, they might be almost facing the back. Now turn your palms kind of facing forward. We would call that superinated, where your hands are superinated. Turn the

other way is pronated. Now with your hands superinated, or your palms facing the front and your arms straight hanging down, now you bend your elbows and you bring your fingertips up to touch your shoulder. In the gym, we call that a bicep curl, don't we It's called a bicep curl. And we can do a bicep curl with a dumbell or a barbell, or a kettlebell, or a cable or a range of other different pieces of equipment. But in the gym, we call that a curl, and it works

our biceps. You know where your biceps are and your brachio radialis and your brachialis which is under your bicep, and all that works a bunch of muscles that cross the elbow joint that do a thing which is called elbow flexion. So when your arm is straight and then you bend it, you've just done elbow flexion. And when now you take your arm from a bent that bent, fully bent kind of position and then you straighten it, well,

now you're doing elbow extension. Now the muscles that do the elbow flexion, that is the bending, the bicep curling. They live on that side that you can see at the bicep side, and of course the tricep, the extension of the elbow. The tricep live on the other side, another little muscle called anconius or anconeus, depending on your pronunciation. Anyway, what's my point. My point is that from an anatomy perspective, when we bend our elbow the way that I describe,

we just call that elbow flexion. And now once I do that movement and I add some load, like I might hold a can of soup. Well, there's a tiny but now there's a little bit of load. I hold two cans of soup. There's more load if I hold a bag of groceries which has got, you know, a whole bunch of couple of bottles of whatever in it, and some cans. And now I might be holding six kilos of weight, which doesn't look like a dumbbell or

a barbell. And then I bend my elbow again, or I do elbow flexion, or I bring my palm up, and now I'm doing essentially what we would call in the gym, a bicep curl. In functional anatomy, we call it elbow flexion. But the point is, I'm doing a certain anatomical movement, in this case elbow flexion underload. Now what's my long winded point. My long winded point is this, as long as the muscle that you are contracting and

lengthening or you know that around the joint. So I'm contracting my biceps and my elbow is bending and my palma's coming up towards my face or my shoulder. As long as I am doing that with load, then I

am strength training. It doesn't need to be in a gym. Conversely, when I straighten my arm underload, which we call elbow extension, right, and then I strengthen that underload or I straighten that underload, I'm doing a tricep movement, primarily tricep, and now I'm strengthening my tricep, the muscle on the back of the arm. So just keep in mind that your muscles don't know what is a dumbbell or a barbell. All your muscles

do is respond to a stimulus, respond to stress. Now, let's say I stood in front of you and you did Now you've still got your palms up, and you bring your palm up to your shoulder. Now I stand in front of you, and you're about to bend your elbow. You're about to do elbow flexion. You're about to do a version of a bicep curl. And I stand in front of you, or maybe even beside you, and I put my hand on your hand. And as you bring your hand up to touch your shoulder, that is, you

bend your elbow. You're about to do a bicep curl. I apply some force to your hand. Now I apply some force. Now let's say I apply five kilos of force or thereabouts, and you bring it up and then you take it down, and I push five kilos down. If we could, if we could do this accurately, but just for this example. Now you're bringing your hand up, you're taking it down, and I'm applying in inverted Comma's

five kilos of pressure both ways. Now let's say eventually, and this is a silly hypothetical, but I'm trying to get you to understand and how adaptation and strength and muscle growth or hypertrophy works, because it doesn't fucking need to be in a gym. It can be gym's very handy, but your muscles just respond to stress. Your muscles just adapt to and get stronger around overload. Now I'm doing that five kilo resistance. We call that manual resistance, where

I'm literally, I'm literally providing the resistance for you. And then we do that for a week or two or a session or two or three. And that's easy. So now I'm applying if we could measure this, I'm applying seven or eight kilos, and over time I'm applying more. Now if, for example, let's say this is ridiculous, but you and I are in the big House. We're in jail. We've got no weights. We've got no dumbbells or barbells, which is usually the way in jails because inmates tend

to kill each other with them. I've worked in prisons and so having free weights is generally not a thing. But every day you do all of these movements in the big House with me. You do elbow flexion and extension, and you do what is a squat. Let's say you do a squat. You know what a squad is. You go down and up and you're just using body weight. Right, So you're just using body weight. And let's say you

weigh whatever. Let's just pick a number, seventy kilos. Your feet is shoulder with you go down, you bend down, your ask goes just a little bit below your knees, or about the same level as your knees, and now you straighten up. So what you've done is you've bent your knees, which is knee flexion. Then you've straightened up again,

which is knee extension. And as you're going down into the squad, you're doing what's called hip flexion, and on your way back up you're doing what's called hip extension. The bottom line is you're using all the muscles in your lower body. And let's say you weigh seventy kilos and then you do ten squats. Great, and then eventually that becomes easy. So I come up behind you and I give you I put my hands on your shoulders

and I press down. I'm adding ten kilos. Now you're not doing a body weight squat, you're doing a body weight plus ten, and then that's easier. I push harder. Over time, I'm pushing down thirty kilos of pressure. So you're now doing a thirty kilo plus body weight squad. Now, over time, this is a very laborious way to do this, but I'm just sharing with you the way that things are,

the way that muscles adapt to force and to stress. Right, So when I'm on the ground and I'm doing a push up, where I'm doing a body weight thing, so let's say that's for me. I'm at Let's say I'm quite strong and I do ten push ups and it's easy. So now what I do is I go, well, that's easy. How can I make that harder? Because the idea of training is we want it to be progressive, and we want it to be varied, and we want there to be some kind of increased resistance or intensity so that

our muscles or our cardiovascular system adapt. And we might be trying to build strength, or we might be trying to build cardiovascular fitness, or we might be trying to build range of movement or flexibility, whatever fitness variable it is. But when we know what we are doing with our body,

this is my point. When we know what we are doing and we stimulate our body the right way based on the kind of result we want to produce, then our body is just a really almost like an unwilling passenger on this journey that you are taking it on. If you do the right thing the right way, your body can't help but build muscle, because that's what bodies do. Given all the right variables and stimuli. You can't help but lose weight if you do the right things the

right way. And of course there's a few other variables that can make it complicated. We understand that. But you can't help but increase your cardio vascular fitness if you stimulate your respiratory system and cardiovascular system the right way consistently. Right, so we don't need a million dollars equipment, but we really need to understand our body. Now. My observation is that now I'm going to say this clearly, because people misinterpret what I'm saying is that most people don't train

hard enough. Now. I don't think people need to train like maniacs. In fact, I would suggest the opposite. I think we should train strategically and intelligently, and when our body is ready, when we've got a good training base, we train as intensely as we can while being safe. While being safe, because what we are trying to do is we are trying to either, let's say, in terms of strength, build strength or maintain strength. We're trying to

build fitness, cardiovascular fitness or maintain it. We're trying to build flexibility or maintain it. But in order to build or maintain we need to be working a level which will provide the right kind of stimulus to create the

result that we want. For most of you listening to this, I would guess I could be wrong, but I think for most of you you would like to be a bit stronger, maybe have a bit more muscle, maybe have a little bit more cardiovascular fitness, maybe maybe not be a little bit more flexible, maybe have less back pain, maybe maybe have low of blood pressure, maybe have better posture, maybe a whole range of things, a whole range of things. And the way that we do that is we create

a protocol that we just keep doing. The truth is when it comes to when I say truth, I'm going to say my truth, my observation might experience. But also remember that my experience is over four decades working in this space, so I think it's not insignificant. Of course, I'm not infallible, I'm no guru, but I've literally worked with tens of thousands of people. My observation in the experience is that most people don't train at a level

which is anywhere near exploring and exploiting their physiological potential. Again, we don't be reckless, we don't be emotional, we don't do silly things. But bodies are fucking amazing when we do the right thing the right way. I recently also I put this on Instagram if you scroll back, not too far as I record this. Like I said, it's twelfth the November, so sometime early in November, maybe late October. But recently I put up a post of two of my friends, a couple, and Ian, I should say, and

Jan Fraser, who some of you familiar with. Jan is eighty four years old. Ian is eighty six years old. And Jan did fifteen bodyweight push ups hands and feet, proper push ups, not from the knees, not half push ups, not modified push ups. And Ian her husband did I think it was fourteen or fifteen four push ups. He's eighty six, Like I said, he does full chin ups.

Yesterday at the gym, Jan was in the gym. I helped her with a little bit of stuff and she's doing one arm rows, so each arm she's doing fifteen kilo one arm rows for like fifteen odd reps, perfect form. To give you a perspective or a comparison, Firstly, most eighty four year old ladies and not doing one arm rows, which is a bit sad. Hopefully hopefully that changes. But most most the average female I guess in the gym of any age thirty forty fifty that I would see

doing that. Again, what I see, I'm saying average, not all would be doing one arm rows with something between seven and twelve and a half kilos. And we've got an eighty four year old doing them in there with fifteen kilos easily, and I would think she could probably do twenty kilo one arm rows in a pinch if she had to for six to eight reps. My point is bodies are fucking adaptable. But they've been doing that

for a long time. But nonetheless, what we see is when we do something well, and we have a lifestyle and habits and patterns and behaviors and rituals that support health, sleep, a great nutrition, supplements, perhaps managing emotions and mind and creating just creating a protocol or an operating system that is reflective of how we want to be, who we want to be, what health state we want to be in.

Then some fucking amazing things can happen. But truly, the bulk of the population when it comes to exercise, either don't exercise. And what I mean is consistently exercised, methodically, strategically, intelligently move their body in a way to create a better outcome, a more functional, more operational, healthier, fitter, stronger body. Most people don't do it. They don't. Most people don't follow something strategic and consistent. A lot of people start

and stop, a lot of people never start. And for me, this is a problem, not because I'm a gym guy or an exercise scientist. This is a problem because all of us humans have a body, one body. We can't get a new one. And I know I bang on about this, but I've just watched way too many people who could have presented, prevented, could have prevented sickness and injury and disc function, not do that because for a range of reasons, they had habits and behaviors and thinking

which was essentially a form of self sabotage. And then they get to a point in their life where their body's fucked or close to fucked, or temporarily fucked, and then at the age of whatever, they try to reverse some of what they've done. And while I understand that and all, it's always good to, you know, to try to put the brakes on and to try to turn it around, of course, but a much better protocol is, let's not wait for shit to break. Let's not wait

for that. Let's not wait another five years. So a few other thoughts I want to share. So when I talk about training intensely, like I said, I'm not training. I'm not talking about training like a crazy person. I'm just talking about training with enough intensity to produce the right kind of result that we want. So when I go into the gym with my sixty one year old back and sixty one year old shoulders and joints and

forty six years of working out from when I'm forty seven. Shit, I was fourteen when I started working out with weights, so forty seven years of training under my belt, there's quite a few things that I can't do. There's quite a few injury issues that I need to navigate. But what I do do is with the ability I have, the capacity, I have, the body, I have. I do as well as I can every day. Nothing reckless, nothing stupid. But I do everything that I can to stay strong

and fit and healthy and operational. And I don't take a shortcut, and I don't take the easy option. While still being sensible and logical about how I go about it, I would suggest you do the same. I think that people think also that you know you need to one. As I've said, you don't need to be in a gym. I do prefer gyms just because they have a lot of different resources, and some people are like, I'm not a gym person. In fact, I just finished a ten

week program. I don't think she'd mind me mentioning this, but there was a lady in the group, her name's Mel who, in her own words, needed to you know, lose lose some weight, get in shape, get some fitness, and you know, change a lot of things about her health and the way that she went about maintaining that. And you know what was interesting was in week one we had a bit of a small group seventeen people.

We had a bit of online a bit of an open dialogue, and one of the things to come out was that, you know, she wasn't a fan of gym's and she was a bit intimidated in all of these things, which many people are. Last night, like I said, it's Tuesday. As I record, last night was the tenth session and final session, week ten. And she's now been a member of the gym for about eight weeks. She's lost a bunch of weight, her confidence has gone through the roof.

She actually likes going there. People talk to her, it's enjoyable. She's met a few people who are supporting her. And what's really changed is her thinking, Yes, her body's changing and all of these things. But she had a story about why the gym was not the place, and look, I don't think gyms are for everyone. But I also want to say to those of you who think gym's not for me, I'm not a gym person. You don't have to be a gym person. I'm not suggesting be

a gym person. I'm saying it has never been easier than it is right now in twenty twenty four, to have access to some fucking incredible resources for very little money about two dollars a day depending on what gym you join and what kind of membership you have. But you know, the gym that I go to, I'll give them a shout out because they just do a good job and I pay. I'm not sponsored by them. I pay for membership. I think it costs me two bucks

a day, and that's Snap Fitness. Okay, But do I think you should join Snap or you should join you know, any other particular franchise. Not necessarily. I'm happy with Snap. They've been good for me. But the bottom line is we just need to have access to something where it's going to make it easy to do what we want

to do. Now if you don't want to do that, or you can't do that, as I've already explained to you, not necessary, but really understanding that our body is this kind of a biological spacesuit that we get around, you know, in for eighty years or so, and it really needs it really needs looking after, and it needs us to

be proactive, not reactive. The good news is we don't need to train, you know, two hours a day like if for example, and again this is not a recommendation, this is a just for example, the average person who doesn't lift weights. Let's say I go and pluck a fifty year old lady and a fifty year old man who don't do anything proactively to stay strong. I go

and get them. I have a chat with them, I do an assessment all that, I write them a program, and let's say every second day, every second day, not every day, but every second day, they do twenty to thirty minutes of strength training. Now they do it really well, really well. It's progressive, it's appropriate for where they're at, it's the right program for their body, and they do it forever. That is, it just becomes part of their

operating system, and they are doing that forever well. All things being equal, and if those two are somewhat typical, in one hundred days from now, which would be fifty workouts from now, they will be significantly different. Their bone density will have changed. They will have more muscle, more functional muscle. They will be stronger. They'll be able to get in and out of cars and chairs more easily. Things that we call ADL's activities of daily living will

happen more easily. They will literally be stronger. There the biochemistry of their brain will be changing, because it produces biochemical changes in the brain. When we do strength work. They might feel better, they might be more motivated, they might have overall better energy and so on. And I'm talking about twenty or thirty minutes every second day. Now, is that my recommended protocol? No, But I'm just giving

you an example of what can happen. What You are better off to do some strength training every second day than to go nuts for two hours a day for two weeks like some people do. You don't need to do amount. There's fourteen hundred and forty minutes in a day, fourteen hundred and forty minutes. What if you put aside fourteen hundred of those minutes and you did forty minutes a day on average, not of strength training, but just of consciously moving your body. It might be strength training.

It might be stretching. It might be out walking in bare feet on the grass. It might be jogging up a hill and walking down. It might be some stair walking. It might be soft sandwalking. It might be riding an indoor bike or an outdoor bike. It might be sitting on a rower. It might be climbing some rocks. It might be throwing a frisbee with your kids or grandkids.

It doesn't matter. But imagine if every day you consciously did forty minutes not when you felt like it, not when it was convenient, not when the birds were singing and the bees were buzzing and the sun was shining. But imagine if every day of your life you spent forty of the fourteen hundred and forty that you have, you'd spent fourteen minutes consciously doing something that is good for your body. When you're not motivated, when you're not into it, when it's not fun, when it's not convenient,

you just fucking didn't. There's a big chance that you will live longer and better. Obviously, I can't guarantee that, nobody can, because there are a myriad of variables. But as if you trust me, and most of you do trust me, I'm telling you that, based on my data and my work and my observation and my personal experience, there's a fair chance that you're going to live longer and stronger and better than if you did not do that.

If you did not do that. I don't think this needs to be clearly I haven't planned this chat on freestyling, but I don't think this needs to be something that's going to turn your life upside down. I don't think there needs to be a major revolution. I don't think you need to become a gym bunny or a gym junkie. I don't think you need to become that person. I just think it is important that, especially in twenty twenty four, as life is becoming increasingly more sedentry, we are, without

doubt we rather sit down generation. In general terms, we move less than ever, we stand less than ever, We

expend less calories than our grandparents did. Typically, not everyone, of course, but typically if you're a landscape gardener, excuse what I'm saying, but if you are one of the many that spends a lot of your time either in front of a computer or in an office, or on a couch or in a bed, or sitting in a car, or sitting on a train or whatever, then then maybe the best thing that you can do, maybe the best thing you can do, the best strategy, and not just

for physical health but mental health. You know, exercise might very possibly be the best mental health tool or resource available. We unequivocally absolutely know that done the right way, exercise can reduce stress and anxiety. And I know that's not a fucking breakthrough. I know that you know that, but how many times have you I'm sure you've done at some stage in your life where you've gone and done

something you know. It might have been a swim in the ocean, it might have been a jog that you did. It might have been and you went, fuck, how good do I feel? How good do I feel? Right? Well, of course, because you're producing dopamine and then doorphins, and

you're changing the biochemistry of your body. And not only are you doing something good for your joints and ligaments and tendons and muscles and cardiovascular and respiratory system, but you're also doing something that makes you feel fucking great biochemically, like you're just lighting up your brain like a Christmas tree by doing this great shit, And so why wouldn't we do that? So I'll hand it over to you. I hope you've got something out of that.