I'll get a bloody champs. I hope this finds you well. So I gave a shout out on the socials as the kids call them, asking for you, my listeners, to ask me a question. Of course, my little disclaimer here is that this is me just thinking out loud about the questions that you ask. Some of them are silly, by the way, which is intentionally silly, which is good. We love a bit of fun. Some of them are a bit more serious. Some of them could be outside
of my scope, but whatever. None of this is meant to be a or is a personal prescription, but rather me just sharing my thoughts on what it is you are asking. All right, So I'm going to go pretty much in order, and I'm working off not the U Project you Project podcast facebook page, fuck that's a mouthful, but rather my general Facebook page. So question one is from Paul Ford. Paul Ford is a quite well known elite conditioning coach and his own right worked in the
AFL system and I think Melbourne Football Club. It's got a master's degree. He's a smarty pants. And Paul's very considered question is why that's it?
Just the one word?
Look, Paul, thanks for taking the time. Great question, Ah, my very considered question. Answer I should say, I'm a very considered answer to your very thoughtful question is because you're welcome, You're well. Our next question comes from Damie Damien. Damie Damien, who is also an old friend of mine. Fucking hell, what is going on? Damien's question is? My
question is a multi part question. If you were a fruit bat, would you consider it reasonable to eat the peaches that I grow and then shit in my pool? And would you then think less of me if I didn't like you? Well, the answer to that is, of course I would eat your fruit and shit in your pool. Of course, do you even need to ask that I would eat the fuck out of your fruit? I would
do all the shit in your pool. I wouldn't feel bad about it at all, and I'd probably shit on your head as you walked out of the house to check on the pool shit status. You're welcome but nonetheless still loved by me. And the last part of the question is would would I think less of you if you didn't like me? I would expect you to like me less. So no, And now, after the superfluous bullshit from my friends, thank you by the way, let's go to an actual grown up with an actual question. The
grown up is Carla Fletcher. Hello, Carla, Carla.
Well, it's not so much.
A question as a there's no question mark in here, but I know what she's saying. Exercise for someone who is fifty six with dodgy knees and lower back and a bad right shoulder, no idea where to start so I don't get injured. So if you listen to me, Carla, you know that I'm going to say probably that there's no you know, for me to not have met you face to face, not have done any kind of assessment, all of those kinds of things that would be unprofessional
to tell you exactly what you should do. However, let me speak in generalizations. For somebody who is in their fifties with quite a few injuries, it's going to be a little bit of trial and error. So even if I was working with you one on one, I would be doing some kind of assessment, and that doesn't need to be anything overly spectacular, but it might just be do five minutes on this bike at this let's set
the seat at the right height for a start. So if you've got dodgy knees, and you sit the seat too or you have the seat too low, it's going to put more.
Pressure on your knees.
So when you're, for example, riding a bike and you've got shitty knees, you want the seat height to be so when you're pedaling and your foot is at the bottom of the rotation, the bottom of the movement, then your leg is almost fully extended, but not quite just a little kink in the old knee. So with all of those issues. At fifty six, I'm five years older than you, so I don't think you're that old, of course, But it's going to be rehabby stuff. It's going to
be light stuff. I'd be doing some strength training, I'd be doing some walking, which you're already doing, and I'd be doing some low to no impact cardio stuff like I said, like the bike, like the rower, like the
elliptical strider or the cross trainer. There's a bunch of things that you can do in the gym, but you need to be prepared to get into the gym or whatever the training environment is and just try carlor and obviously start very easily, start with you know, low level intensity, low volume, but see how your body responds to that.
So whether or not you're face to face talking to an excise physiologist exis scientists like me, or a physiotherapist or a surgeon or a GP, none of them will know exactly how your body will respond to individual stimuli and whether or not that's you know, walking up some stairs. I'm imagining that walking upstairs is not as bad for you as walking downstairs. That seems to be the case for a lot of people with knee issues. So some
fundamental strength training is really important. I've torn my right peck, I've got both my rotator cuffs have been torn that the muscles in the shoulders. I've had multiple injections in my lower back for disk issues. I've torn hamstrings, quads. I've had a million issues. And I'm not discounting what you're working with. I'm just saying that many of us get to a point where having a brand new body with no pain, no injuries, no issues, is a thing
of the past. And so as we get older, and as we try to maintain and improve and navigate the territory of exercise and rehab and health and function and wellness and performance, there's a fair bit of trial and error.
There's a fair bit of trial and error. So look, I.
Don't know if you a member of a gym or you want to join a gym. And before to all of you people who listening to this straight away default to I'm not a gym person. I'm not a fan of people joining gyms just to go.
I train in a gym. The reason that I the reason that.
I like people having a gym membership, whether or not that's my eighty five year old dad who has a gym membership by the way, or whether or not that's an elite athlete who's in their teams right, is because if you join a good gym, you are going to have access to Most gyms would have a million dollars or more of equipment for you to access for somewhere around two or three dollars a day, depending on what gym, what membership, you know, what you're paying and so on.
So and as soon as we say, oh, I'm not a gym person, I hate gyms, well, we kind of deprive ourselves of an opportunity to be able to use some resources and equipment and tools which are really really valuable. And there's so much even with injuries, and even with issues and challenges, there's so much that we can do. So next question is from Mike Creed. Mike asks why am I so motivated? Why am I so motivated to be a better version of me but lack the discipline to execute?
So, Mike, I, I don't know.
Like to me, that almost seems counterintuitive, like that you're really motivated, but you won't do it. I don't know, I don't The simple answer is I don't know. The question once again is why am I so motivated to be a better version of me but.
Lack the discipline to execute on the plans?
So rather than me tell you why that is, because I don't know, because I don't know you, and I think it's different for different people too. But nonetheless, and I'm being fully respectful of the question, of course, I completely believe that is the case for you, but I think you know the thing for many people is that one and this is going to be very Craig Hartbridge. The thing that we need to do is not the
thing that we want to do in the moment. The thing that we need to do the exercise, the movement, the habit, the food protocol, the whatever it is the thing that we need to do over the short to medium long term that will create eventually create the long term result we want. The thing that we need to do now is probably not the thing we want to do now. What we want to do now is eat cake and we also simultaneously. I'm using that as an example or a metaphor, but it's this lack of willingness
to delay gratification that for many of us is the barrier. Now. Again, this is just me talking about this question, but I reckon, Mike, there could be a scenario in your life which would arise where given a certain event or scenario or circumstance in your life, you would absolutely do what you needed to do because you were backed into a medical, clinical,
or health corner. You know, the amount of people who can't find the will power or the discipline or the self control to do something something that's good for them, despite apparently having motivation. The amount of people who get some kind of dire health news, who all of a sudden have all the discipline, all the willpower, all the.
Self control is many.
And I've worked with those people, and I've been around those people who can't They just can't find it, and they struggle to persevere and be consistent and to keep going, and then they get told they've got diabetes, or then they get told that there's some significant potential catastrophe that's like five minutes away if they don't turn their.
Life, thinking, habits, behaviors around.
So, but on a much more practical level, Mike, what I think is great to do is to create. You know, so you say there's you want to be a better version of you? Firstly I would go what does that mean to you? Physically, mentally, emotionally, behaviorally, practically, So when you say I want to be a better version, my question is how what does what does a better version of you look like? And what is a better version of you doing?
Now?
I would think that doing is habits, behaviors, protocols, diet, food, exercise, lifestyle choices, all of those things. So I'm saying, get clarity around what better you looks like, and then get clarity about around what your non negotiables are, right because right now those things for you are negotiable. That is,
you'll do them sometimes but not at others. Now, when something becomes really a hardwide non negotiable, that is, I do this no matter if I'm motivated, not motivated, happy, sad, if it's sunny or fucking raining, if I'm in the zone or out of zone, if it's quick or not quick, if it's hard or easy, whatever I'm doing it, that's a non negotiable. This is something that is hardwired into
your daily operating system. And it takes a while. But after you get clarity around what those non negotiables should be then or you want them to be, then step two is create an accountability process around that, something that will keep you doing the things that you need to do despite the peaks and troughs of self control, focused discipline, all of those things, those things that come and go. So what is the thing, what is the what is the accountability? What is the tool? What is the resource?
What is the thing that will keep me doing those behaviors, those actions, those protocols that create change. What will keep me doing that when I typically would have given up in the past because what you don't want to do, Mike and everyone else is you don't want to wake up in a minute, and we go, oh fuck it, now, it's two thousand and thirty. It's two thousand and thirty and I'm still going, ah, well, I would have. I'm motivated, but I'm not disciplined. You know, I was talking to
somebody this morning about a guy I listened to. This is not me, this is not original, but I loved it. And this guy he was a coach, I think he was a coach, and he was talking to these bunch of kids who were athletes, students and athletes, and he said to them, you need to want this thing. And he was talking about success you need to want if you're serious about it, you need to you need to want this thing like you're a drowning person who needs fucking oxygen. And I just think that some things we
don't want enough. We like the idea of it, but we don't we don't want it enough that we're actually really going to make it an absolute, overarching, no matter what, non negotiable priority in our life. There's a big difference between Look, you know, I'd really like to do that or I'd love to achieve that outcome or reach that goal, and no matter what, I will do the fucking work. Like, there's a big chasm between there, and we need to be more up the end of the no matter what scale.
Next question is from Andrew Sutherlane. Andrew, training with injuries. As we get older, we all tend to carry some sort of injury. Fuck yeah, we do tennis, elbow, b side a sticky knees. I'm loving all these medical terms or dodgy backs speaking my language. Disclaimer, I don't have all of these, but training partners combine we cover off most of them.
Of course, you do.
Some of these injuries just don't go away, so we have to train through them or modify what we do. Given yourself proclaimed dinosaur harps, I am indeed, I'm wondering if you have experienced any age or repetitive injuries, and.
Do you have strategies for managing.
This is my life. You're talking about my life. You are talking, Andrew about every day of my life. Now that's not to say I'm majorly disabled or anything like that, but I have like my body is almost never painfree, and by that I mean there's not a thing in my body that hurts at all. I never have those days. So right now, as I sit here, last night, I did seated rows in the gym. And Andrew, you know what they are because you train. Most of my listeners
know what they are. It's you know, where you sit forward and you grab a weight with a V grip or another grip and you pull it to your waist.
When I grew.
When I do seated row, I do full range of movement, and I flex through the hips and I bend right forward, so my hands at the bottom of the movement go past my toes, So I am using all the muscles in my back. I don't sit bolt up right like a lot of people do when they do a seated row. They sit bolt up right, so their back stays in the same position as they pull the weight towards and let the weight go to me. That is a shit
way to do that exercise. I could explain for a bunch of reasons, but the main reason being now, unless of course you have to because you've got an injury. But what I like about doing the full range of movement that I just described is that I'm using all of the muscles from my hip extenses, you know, lower back, glutes, erector, spine, a lats, rhomboids, rear adults.
All of those muscles get used.
But every time I do that, I don't get injured, but I'm just a bit sore Andrew for a few days, and it's muscle soreness, it's training soreness. There's a little bit of micro trauma. But in a few days, I'll be good. But right now, sitting here talking to you, right now recording this, I'm a about a four out of ten pain three maybe three, and it's not horrendous, but it's there. It's there, and I know by tomorrow it'll be a two and the next day it will
be one. Then I'll be fine, you know. But there's always so the challenges. Of course, we want to minim minimize our injuries as much as humanly possible, and the injuries that we can fix in inverted commas great, but there will be things that you know, just degenerate over time, often these hips, joint sankles, ligaments, tendons, the spine, those things, just those things. So my as I always say, with everything, there's no best program, right but there's the best program
for Andrew Sutherland. So if I were you, I would be figuring out what's the stuff that I can do at one hundred percent, what's the stuff that I need to do at fifty or sixty percent, what's the stuff that I need to find another way to create intensity. So, for example, doing what I just described seated row, I can't go balls to the wall super heavy like I used to, which in the old days I would seated row three hundred pounds or one hundred and forty odd kilos.
Now my upper limit would be about one hundred kilos, so two hundred and twenty pounds, so not the weight I used to do, but more reps. So what we are trying to do is we're decreasing the load, but we're increasing perhaps the volume the reps. So we're creating a different kind of intensity, but nonetheless still relatively high intensity without putting our back under the same absolute load.
If you know, and I'm just giving you one example there so you know, I know for me, for example, I can run three days a week two or three k's. If I ran, I could I could run ten k's. But I know that if I consistently ran ten k's in my sixty one year old body, unless I was running in amazing shoes on grass with perfect technique, which I don't have, but me just running around suburbia like a fucking dinosaur the way that I do. You know, running if I'm honest, mostly on concrete. I try and
run on nature strips, but concrete, bitumen nature strips. If I did that three times a week for a longer distance than two or three k's, I would get injured. So what I do do is I realize that running is good for me. I also realized that shorter running is going to help me hold onto muscle more than longer running, of course, And I also realized that I can run two or three k's at a level which for me is fucking uncomfortable. And even though it's not
a long distance, it's still quality training. So I don't think I gave you a specific answer Andrew, other than just pay attention to your body, and you need to creatively find ways.
Remember the way that our.
Body, our body keeps adapting is through progression and variety. Right, So if you do the same thing the same way, same sets, reps, volume, exercise intensity, recovery time, blah blah blah, same workout, same exercises, you know, same thing, same way, you're going to produce the same outcome. And you don't want that You either want to. I don't know how old you are, but for me at my age, for example,
sixty one. I'm either trying to keep what I've got without going backwards al with some things improve.
So what am I trying to improve? I'm trying to improve flexibility.
I'm trying to I fucked up one of my shoulders badly, six badly six months ago in a fall, badly, like couldn't lift my arm to take the kettle off the bench, right, So I'm rehabbing that. I'm making that strong again. And interestingly, there are things like I just describe seated road that I can do with, you know, relative confidence and strength and other things like I still cannot bench press, so I trained my chest, but I don't do Barbelle bench
press on the bench. And there's a million reasons why. Maybe I'm going to put an asterisk. Maybe a lot of us should avoid that exercise. I'll talk about that at more some stage, if you want me to. Anyway, Andrew, thanks for your question.
I hope it didn't bang on too long in the answer.
All right, now, just in cases is a bit stoppy starting. I'm pausing in between. I'm pausing the recording momentarily, so if you hear any weirdness, that's that. So I can read the next question. So next question is from Kelly Smith. Good a Kel. Kelly says, can I come and be the interviewer? Well, let's get you. I'll tell you what, Kel. What you can do is because you are quite good at that, I'll tell you what.
Kel.
You come up with fifteen questions that you want to ask me. It could be anything about anything. Um obviously keep them somewhat in my wheelhouse. You come up with fifteen questions, and then you can interview me on my show.
There you go.
Now the next question or the next part of that is no. But seriously, my question is do you think there is a danger of becoming too self aware and over analyzing every part of your life instead of Okay, I don't think there is a danger of becoming too self aware, because self awareness is a gift. But what I do think there is a danger of is becoming a wess start again haaps obsessed with becoming uber self aware. So I'm fascinated, of course with my research and just
with my life and my brain. I'm fascinated with self awareness, people understanding what they're like for themselves and for others and so on. I don't think we can have too much self awareness. But I think we can overthink self awareness. I think we can become obsessed in the pursuit of consciousness and awareness.
And also the.
Second part is and over analyzing every part of our life instead of just living and learning.
I one hundred.
Percent agree with that. I wrote a post recently. I don't know how long ago it was, doesn't matter I
write so much. But anyway, in the last month I think where it was called something like fuck all days, and so a fuck all days where you do fuck all a fuck all days where you're not productive, you're not proactive, you're not kicking goals, you're not ticking boxes, you're not crossing things off a to do list, you're not investigating the fucking meaning of everything and the meaning of life, and you're not opening fifty doors a day and being you know, the ever present students. Sometimes you're
just watching Netflix and fucking off. Sometimes you just fucking riding your bike, or sometimes you just you know, putting your toes in the sand or the water, or you're just fucking you know, you're not learning, you're not growing, you're not evolving, you're just being.
And so.
I am one hundred percent on board with this question, and I I am, I might not seem it because all people get from me obviously, because this is a personal development kind of podcast, is they might think all day every day, I'm just thinking about fucking human behavior and psychology in performance. It's definitely not the case. I think I would spend more time fucking off, goofing off than the average person.
And why do I say that? Will one?
I live by myself, so I'm not saying that's a good or a bad thing. I just live by myself, so there's no one else in the house. I can. You know right now as I'm recording this, it's eleven twenty one AM. If I finish this podcast and go, you know what I'm gonna go midday, I'm gonna go lie in my bed watch an.
Hour of shit. I can do it.
It doesn't fuck up my day, it doesn't derail anything. So I think there are definitely times, there are definitely times where the most healthy thing to do, the most logical thing to do, the most even productive thing to do over the long term is to do not much, is to goof off, is to have fun. I think becoming overly analytical of everything can be a problem. All right, and the next question is from Allison jen Hi. Allison, what's the first thing you would recommend people tiding up
their nutrition for weight lot? You know, the challenge with this question is there are just way too many variables for there to be an absolute starting point that will be optimal for everybody. For example, we can, you know, we look at micros and macros, We look at fat, protein carbohydrates, we look at vitamins and minerals, that's the
macros and micros. We look at calories in and calories out, and a lot of people would a lot of people would answer this question, probably Allison by saying, you know, just just make sure that your energy balance is somewhere in the right ballpark, you know, so if you're having two thousand calories a day in expending about two thousand,
so you're not in calorie surplus or calorie excess. And of course, while there are many variables around how we lose weight, and there are many factors which influence weight loss and perhaps more importantly, fat loss, invariably there is a caloric equation that needs to be factored in. I'm not saying it's the only thing. There are many things but that's definitely.
One of them.
But perhaps where I would start, and this is more based on me, and I guess also a lot of people I've worked with, which is trying to understand you maybe didn't expect this answer, but the psychology, the psychology and the emotion behind our eating habits, patterns, and behaviors. Also, you've written what would I recommend for people tidying up
their nutrition for weight loss? I think people are far more educated and enlightened and aware and knowledgeable about weight loss and food now than we've ever been for a range of reasons, the main one being we've got all the information in the world we need pretty much our fingertips.
I'm also aware that knowledgeable people, people with the knowledge, people with the education, people with the understanding, still choose cake, still choose lots of booze, still put way more calories in their body than they need, still make bad decisions on the same day that they also want to that they also talk about being leaner and healthier and changing their body compositions. As an exise scientist and a student of psychology, I am more interested in the why than I am the what.
What you eat matters?
What you're putting in your body, how much you're putting in your body, the quality of what you're putting in your body, all those watts matter. But the thing that I am most fascinated with, especially around this topic of food,
food and humans, is a fucking fascinating subject. Like we've never had more access to my to more high calorie, high salt, high sugar, high fat, low nutrition food than we've ever had, like we have got you know, food is so accessible, so available, and some of it so cheap, and I in the middle of all of that, I am fascinated with the psychology, sociology, and emotion of food. So I wouldn't do a deep dive on the actual micro's macros calories in out as much as I would.
Why the fuck do I eat this way? Why do I choose something that I know is not a good choice? Why do I I consciously put things in my body which are a form of self sabotage for the woman who wants to lose weight, lose that improve health, improved performance, improve energy, improved function. So as perhaps atypical as this answer might be, yes, food matters, micro's macros calories, all
of that. The science of eating matters. The practicality of eating what we're putting in our god and what impact that food or booze or coffee or tea or whatever, what physiological impact that has, That really matters. But for me, it's trying to understand the human It's trying to understand all of the decision making and all of the thinking, and all of the storytelling and all of the behavior around the food that I think is the thing we really need to dive into. Alrighty now, I know that
was brief. But what I'm going to do because I have an appointment in about ten minutes. I just looked at my little pooter and I realized that. So I'm going to do a few of these. I think three or four of these little episodes. I'm not sure how long this is going to run for this one, but I'll come back later or tomorrow I'll do another one. Feel free to go to my Facebook page, probably the You Project facebook page. The New Project podcast facebook page is the best.
If you've got questions.
And what I'll do moving forward periodically is I'll do these as often as I can. Keeping in mind, as I shared with many of you, I'm under the pump a little bit with my with my study and my research. I'm swimming in the deep end of the PhD pool at the moment, trying not to drown.
But I like these.
I think these are a good little kind of a break between the end. I've got a bunch of interviews coming up for the rest of the week, but we'll call that day one Q and A. I might do another one today or tomorrow. Definitely there'll be a few of these up. I'll answer as many questions that you've already sent through as possible, but also feel free to jump in the group and ask another one, and I'll get to that when I can enjoy day. Kids,