#1976 Exercise: How Much, How Hard, How Often? - Harps

We're stumbling towards two thousand episodes. Marching passionately. Is that better than stumbling, you know, speed skating, sliding in socks towards I don't know, choose your activity, but anyway we get in towards two thousand, which is good. Today is a freestyle. I've got quite a few interviews coming up. I've got three, I think tomorrow, three interviews. I was going to give today a miss because every now and then we're having a week with six instead of seven,

or every now and then five instead of seven. Most weeks it's going to be seven. But so today I was going to give it a miss, but I I got asked, I reckon, I got asked three or four times today, remembering I'm not working as an excise scientist specifically or a personal trainer anymore. But also that's my background is owning gyms, working in gyms, training and lead athletes, working with bodies and of all shapes and sizes and types and issues and conditions and challenges. So I'm still

regularly asked questions. And so for some of you who may be are fitness or health or wellness professionals, this might be some something that you skip, or it might be something that you listen to see what I think about stuff that you do or how you do it, and whether or not there's any convergence or divergence between our thinking and our practice and our theories. Or you might be somebody who just wants a little bit more insight or information. So I'm going to make this very

use friendly, very general, and there's probably nothing. There's maybe one or two things, but most of what I talk about today over the last seven years of course plus has been spoken about on some level. But let's just call this a little kind of fitness or exercise hit, a little installment of me putting my track suit back on and my exercise science and my personal trainer hat back on, and just opening the door to talk about

a few fundamentals. Because as you would imagine myself and most personal trainers, I would think, and exercise professionals get asked a lot of the same question, all same questions I should say. And so with that in mind, I'm just going to cover some general stuff I don't have I don't have a plan. I'm sitting here freestyling off

the top of my head. And the reason I'm doing that is because I should not need to plan a talk around this stuff, having been in and around Jim's my whole adult life and even before my adult life, and talking about the stuff about talk to you literally for decades. So I think I'm going to call this episode something like training or exercise, how much, how hard, and how often? Something like that, So let's start there. I think people get confused about intensity, that is, how

hard they should do something. And there's a thing that we talk about in exercise science and almost I guess more exercise psychology in a way. I guess it's the insection of psychology and physiology in that we talk to people about how hard they think working. And this is a very hard to measure thing, of course, it's it's almost impossible to you know, when we talk about as an individual experience, it's very hard it's very sometimes words

come out. What does that mean? It's very hard to objectively measure a subjective experience, which is why we you know, I'll say to somebody when they're doing something, Okay, ten is as hard as you could physic that's that's your absolute physiological human limit is ten out of ten zero one as you just really not making virtually any effort doing this thing. Now, how hard are you working? Like it's called your RPE or your rate of perceived exertion?

What's your score zero to ten? What's your rp PE on this? And what that does is it You would think it gives us an insight into how hard people are working, But what it gives us more of an insert And it does, But it gives us more of an insight for the average person anyway, into how hard they think they're working. And that's quite a different thing for most people, because most people don't truly understand how hard they can work. They don't understand their physiological limitations

or capacity. Now, don't assume that I'm saying that everybody should train at their limit. I am definitely not that everybody should explore the outer physiological potential. I'm definitely not saying that. I guess what I am saying is that most people And again none of this is individual advice or prescriptions, so don't take it as that this is me generalizing and waxing lyrical about the last forty years of my life helping people. But most people don't train

optimy for a range of reasons. But one of the reasons is they just don't train at a level where

their body really has to change much. So if we talk about whatever the exercise where, whether or not a strength training or fitness training, or flexibility training or balance or coordination or even a specific individual sport like netball or basketball or football, or I think we can and this is very bro science and layman's terms, but there's some absolute insight and wisdom and truth underneath it all. If we talk about people's training or exercise or workouts

in two groups, group one is the progressive group. Group two is the maintenance group. And there's more to it than this, but this is not a bad place to start.

So what that means is, if you are a person who works out, whatever that looks like, in a gym, out of a gym, at home, the garage, at the park, at the beach, up and down the hill, you know, in the karate dojo, at the CrossFit box or whatever they're called, or you know wherever yoga pilates, whatever you do, and your goal in that environment, your goal in doing that thing is improvement. That is, you want to get better. You want your body to change, You want physiological adaptation.

You want something about your body to be different in a good way, in a positive way. So you could want more strength. You could want more cardiovascular fitness. You could want more power or more speed, or more balance, more muscular endurance, more aerobic endurance. You could want to develop certain skills that are physical skills. You could want to become better at marathon running. You could want to improve through that tennis. Right, So we do this thing.

We go to the gym, or we go to the workout environment, or we go to the tennis court or the basketball court, because we want to improve, We want to train, We want to do stuff with our body to make our body either one do something better like a skill perhaps or even a fitness thing or a strength thing. And two we want our body to overall from a health and a wellness and a functional point of view, we want it to for want of a more science y term, we want it to work better.

We want it to work better. Now, my observation and my assertion, your honors, is that a lot of people are basically exercising and training and working out, all interchangeable those words, in a holding pattern, in something of an exercise version of a physiological version of groundhog day. That is, the kind of stimulating their body the same way. For many people going to the gym, for example, they do kind of the same exercises, if not exactly the same.

They do the same volume, the same intensity, same sets and reps, same speed on the treadmill, same revolutions on the bike, same exercises for their chest and for their back, and for their biceps and triceps and glutes and hamstrings and core and all of that shit. They virtually do the same thing the same way, with the same recovery and the same intensity and the same volume, with the same recovery time between sets or efforts. And then they say,

how come my body's not changing. Well, there are way more variables than just exercise, of course, sleep and genetics and nutrition and chronological and biological age and a myriad of things but just talking from an exercise point of view, our body won't adapt. We give it a reason to adapt.

So when I build strength, when I build cardiovascular fitness, when I increase my explosive power, when I build my flexibility or range of movement around the joint, that is a physiological response to something that I'm doing to my body to get my body to do a thing. Does that make sense? So? I think that I think that a lot of us are quite emotional and quite irrational and quite a logical about how we work out. And by that I mean I don't mean illogical, irrational, out

of control crazy. I just mean that many times or oftentimes we are more concerned with familiarity and even comfort and doing the thing that we've always done. So it's more emotionally driven. I like this exci I like this treadmill, I like this bike, I like this cross trainer, I like this whatever it is. And so the thing that we like and the thing we're quite good at, we

do that, right. But the thing that you like and the thing that you're quite good at is going to give you the least potential for change, for growth, for development, for adaptation, for improvement. Guess why because you're already pretty fucking good at it, which means that you've gone from not being good at some stage to being good, well

done you. There's been adaptation. But now we turn up to the gym or to whatever the training venue is or environment, and we kind of do the same thing, the thing that we're good at, the thing that we have an emotional attachment to, and we tell ourselves stories like I don't want to left weights because I don't enjoy weights, so I'm not good at weights, or I don't want to do any running because and look, if there are a literal physiological reasons why you're medical or

clinical reasons why you shouldn't, well, I understand that. But the problem for me, the problem with that mindset is that we are thinking, I don't want to do that basically because I don't enjoy that. And the underlying kind of thinking for many people is that I want to do the thing that I'm good at because then I feel confident in the gym or that training environment and it gives me a bit of dopamine. It makes me feel great. Now that's important, and that's good. I'm not

saying we shouldn't do things. We enjoy. I'm saying we should also insert some things that for us, it's not our wheelhouse, it's not the thing we're great at. It's not where we're most comfortable and most familiar, and it's the place where we're actually a little bit of a fish out of water in that sense, a metaphoric fish out of water. So, for example, let me give this example about let's say running versus swimming. Now, let's say

I'm a really good runner. I'm not a bad runner, by the way, I'm not brilliant, but I run quite For my body type and everything, I run quite well. I run quite efficiently. I'm quite biomechanically efficient, and I can run at a reasonable even at sixty one, I can run at a reasonable pace. And I could not that I would, but I could probably not run for six months and then walk out the front of my house and head off and run for five ks with not too many problems after a six month layoff. But

that's not a six month layoff exercise, just running. Right, So let's say for me, what would be considered to be a decent run at a decent pace for me, I would do that relatively easily. Versus me going into the pool where now I'm going to swim. I'm going to do the equivalent swim to that run where I'm not a great swimmer. I'm not biomechanically great. I'm inefficient. My body mass is ah h, my body composition, I should say, is quite lean. I've got quite a bit

of muscle, quite little fat. So for me to float, for me to keep my body near the surface of the water so I can move through the water, well, for me to not fucking sink. Let's be honest, all of that stuff is difficult. Now, what I'm going to enjoy the most is going for that run. What I'm going to get the most value from, the most benefit from, the most adaptation from, is the thing that I actually

want to avoid, which is the fucking swim. Now, I'm not saying you should do this and you shouldn't do that. I'm just explaining to you a principle. We don't need to enjoy everything. And I think this is a psychological and emotional barrier for many people that if there's a kind of exercise that they don't like, they just go I don't enjoy that, so why would I do it? Well, here's the answer. Because it fucking works. That's why it's

going to help you. You know, Let's say thirty minutes of me running at a steady pace, quite efficiently, quite biomechanically smoothly versus me swimming with my shitty technique and my bad biomechanics and trying to keep my fucking body from sinking to the bottom of the pool. Thirty thirty minutes of running versus thirty minutes of the equivalent swimming.

For me, I'm going to get me personally, I would get way more benefit in terms of cardiovascular benefit, muscular endurance benefit, coordination, and also interesting caloric expenditure or energy expenditure, because here's the funny thing, and this sounds counterintuitive, but the least the less coordinated or skilled I am at a particular physical task, the more energy I'm going to burn. So let's say you had a twin, and let's say your twin was an amazing skipper, quite fit and very

good at skipping. Now let's also say you're quite fit, but you can't skip to save yourself, you're shit at skipping. You can do it, but you're not good at it. Like if ten out of ten is world champion skipping. Your twin who's same shape and size and weight for this particular story, as you give or take, they are an eight out of ten skipper, right, So they're really good, really efficient biomechanically, they can do it what looks to be effortlessly. It's not, of course, And then you over

there doing the same thing. Now, let's say you and your twin both do fifteen minutes of skipping. You both fit, you're both strong, you're both in good shape, but he or she is way better at skipping than you. Your energy expenditure will be way higher than your twins. Right. So I'm not saying so avoid skill development, of course, I'm just saying, sometimes the things that we are bad at are actually the things that are going to give us the most stimulation and potentially the most value and

the most benefit. Right now, So how hard should we train? I can't really answer that specifically, of course, because that answer for every person is different. And you know when we talk about intensity, of course, intensity or how hard something is for an individual is of course relative to the individual. As we just said before, you know, as with the illustrations I've given. So let's say you're really good at something you're fit, I'm fit. We've both been

training for a bunch of time. And I do something and for me it's nine out of ten hards. You do it at the same level as me, and for you it's a five. So it's not like the same thing equals the same rate of perceived exertion or intensity. Perceived intensity from person to person, it varies. For some people, fast walking is their absolute upper limit. For some people, to walk for three minutes is for a range of reasons,

very difficult. For some people to run for an hour at fifteen kilometers an hour, running four minute k's and covering fifteen k's obviously in an hour would be easier than for some people to go for a ten minute walk fast because it all comes down to the strength and fitness and level of condition and level of function and performance of that individual body. How hard depends. This is why you know we might want to involve somebody

personal trainer and excise scientists and exercise physiologist. I was going to say a doctor. Doctors are great, don't get me wrong, I love doctors, but doctors are not really trained to prescribe exercise, although of course they can talk to you about your blood pressure and your resting heart rate and perhaps you're working heart rate and all of

these things. So definitely, if you're near your doctor in the next little while and you say you want to think about leveling up your exercise programming or turning up

the volume a little bit, definitely talk to them. But in terms of somebody who can assess your fitness and do some kind of an evaluation and get where you're at and then base prescribe a program for you based on your body, your fitness, your strength, your current state, your level of conditioning, taking into account you know your biological age and chronological age perhaps and your injuries and your medication and all of your medical issues and all

of that. Then somebody who's very well qualified in the space. Preferably somebody should I say that you're preferably somebody with at the very least a certificate for in fitness if you're an Australian, because honestly, there are some personal trainers who don't have a degree but are brilliant. They're brilliant, and then there are some people with degrees obviously who don't have the same knowledge or skill or experience. So just somebody that is good at it. How do you

find that person? Generally through recommendation, But I think that I don't know, you know, when you go to like I might go and meet someone who's going to paint my house and I don't know what it is, but I can chat to that person and not always, but about nine out of ten times I get it right, Like I go, I think this is the person for me. I think they know that shit. I think their genuine and I think they care. I think I'm going to get a pretty good product, even though I know fuck

all about painting. I know a lot about people, and I think you know a lot about people. Right, So whether or not you know a lot about the body and anatomy and physiology and progressive overload and sets and reps and volume and what's what and all that that

that matters a little. But what matters more is that you can have a conversation with someone and clearly articulate what you want, why you want it, where you're at, and then you can you can assess that person as to you, whether or not you think they're full of shit, or they're competent, or they're confident, or they care about you and or you trust them. So we need to give our body a reason to adapt. We need to have a body that have a body, have a program

that is developed and designed specifically for our body. So me talking to you now, you need the program that is the best program for you, for you, no one else, based on what you want to do, what you want to change, what you want to achieve, where you are currently at, what is your current status physically, what is your current ballpark level of strength and fitness, balance, coordination, general wellbeing, health, energy, all of these things. And we

have a conversation with somebody. If not do your own research, It's never been a better time to do research. But of course you need to you need to be careful because it's not all wisdom, and it's not all actual science, and it's not all actual great information that we're accessing, right, So you've got to look if you can filter through

the bullshit and people trying to sell your stuff. Which is why I love it when somebody can, even if they don't use a fitness professional over the long term, even in the short term, or an exercise professional someone who's great just to get the ball rolling and just have somebody involved in the process who does have sound knowledge and skill and experience, so perhaps help you avoid injury and perhaps help you be more productive and effective.

So you might get you on your own. It might take you three months to get to a certain point. Maybe you'll do that in you know, six weeks or eight weeks if you've got better guidance. Who knows, though, But that's just me thinking out loud. So what do we want to be So here's a few guidelines. We want to be consistent. Now, no shit, Sherlock. Well, that might seem like the dumbest, most uninformative, obvious piece of advice,

but let me tell you. Very near the top of the list of reasons why people don't get in shape and succeed and maintain it over the long term is that they're not consistent. Gyms can rely on the fact that people will sign up, they will pay their money, they will join on a direct debit and it just goes for fucking ever unless they cancel it. They will join unto a direct debit, paying you know, anywhere between eighteen and forty fifty dollars a week, depending on what

gym you go to. And many of those people that do that are not going to the gym within a month or two, or they are going very very sporadically at best, they're definitely not living up to the own to their own expectations that they went into that membership with, or that that you know, joining the gym with. Right, So consistency is key, It's absolutely key. Now, what I'm about to give you is very broad, generic. This is

not personal, This is not for you. This is me thinking out loud, and I'll rationalize my thoughts as I go. So I think everybody, but I think virtually everyone should do some strength training. But I think definitely people forty and above. The reason that I say that is because while we start to unless we're putting some intervention in place, we're doing something to make it different, we really start to typically lose muscle and bone density and strength and

function and fitness and even cognitive function. Really around forty it starts to accelerate or decline more, I guess. And also because I think in the old days, this was one hundred years ago, I wouldn't recommend people, you know, twenty year old's, twenty five year olds do weights because you know, life was so physically demanding one hundred years ago. You know, we walked more, we lifted more, we worked

against resistance more. Everything wasn't you know, automated and electronic, systematized, and you know it was. Life was physically harder one hundred years ago. But these days, and again I'm generalizing, some people still have physically demanding lives and jobs, of course, but more than ever, we have people who aren't in that group. More than ever, we have people who spend the bulk of their life either sitting or sleep or lying right, the bulk of their twenty four hours a

day are not spent standing and walking. So we need to in my opinion, my considered and pretty educated advice is you need to be lifting shit twice a week minimum, if you're a guy or a girl. Now this is of course taking into account your capacity and medical issues and getting clearance and all that, but in general terms, two times a week, thirty minutes rock bottom. Now, that's not that's not my optimal. That's the if you if you have to just do this, that's my just do

this recommendation. If you can't do more, my desirable would be for the average person three or four times a week, for somewhere in the ballpark of forty five minutes. So even if we went the upper limit of four times a week for forty five minutes, we're looking at three hours a week of strength training out of one hundred and sixty eight one hundred and sixty eight hours in

a week. Of course, some of those are traveling and sleeping and all of those things, but it's not a big commitment for something that has so many fucking amazing benefits from increased bone density to strength and function and performance and balance and stability and activities of daily living as we get older, and cognitive function. There are so many benefits to strength training. You know, having more muscle also means you're going to have a faster metabolism, your

metabolic rate at rest. When you've got more muscle than the equivalent person of your size and weight with less muscle, you burn more calories at rest, which means you stay leaner. And we're not obsessed with how you look, but we know that there's a correlation between body composition and a range a myriad of health conditions. We know that, right, that's not a judgment of anyone. That's science. All right, cardio,

I'm thinking, I'm thinking more. But if the worst. If you can in some way manage ten to fifteen minutes of conscious movement, that's your rock bottom. I would love thirty minutes a day. I don't know who you are, where you are, what you're capable of. But of course, just modify this to suit. But if you can do thirty minutes a day of something, and also if those thirty minutes are three ten minute sessions over the day or six five minute sessions over the day, tickety boot, great.

It doesn't have to be consecutive minutes. And in fact, there's some evidence to suggest that three times ten minutes a day, depending on what you're doing and at the rate that you're doing at, it might actually be better than one chunk of thirty minutes. I'm not saying that unequivocally. I'm just saying it ain't the worst thing to do it in installments. So strength a couple of days a week minimum cardio most days if you can. Now also,

I'll swing back to that, all right. Stretching flexibility, this is my kryptonite. I am shit at this. I still stretch. I could lie and say every day that is not true. I stretch most days. I did the lead dead lifts tonight at the gym, which I got back from an hour ago, and I spent probably ten twelve minutes stretching lower back, legs, glutes, hamstrings, so that I'd be fine to do that. So most days I'm probably doing minium ten maximum twenty. I would say on average fifteen minutes

a day. Probably not enough. I could do more. But if we do this every day or most days, things really happen. Right now, let's talk about walking. We walk less as a species over the evolutionary timeline of three hundred thousand years or thereabouts, depending on which model you're looking at. But let's just go a fuck load of time. We now walk less than ever, and our energy expenditure, typically in first world develop countries is less than ever

because our overall movement. So when we talk about or when I talk about movement and expending energy through movement, so we've got structured exercise, lifting weights, stretching, doing some cardio, you know, playing tennis, running a marathon, throwing a javelin bloody whatever, you know, climbing up and down some stairs. So there's that conscious, kind of intentional, structured I'm working out kind of stuff. And then there's the other stuff

that is just incidental movement through the day. So some people naturally walk or typically walk fifteen thousand steps a day without trying to walk fifteen thousand steps a day just because they're busy, you know. And it might be somebody also who has what we call high occupational activity

high occupational activity level. So what just came to mind, I don't know why, but is somebody like who works at a golf course, like a greenkeeper, who's just all day every day walking around or you know, jumping in and out of his little buggy or whatever. But by the end of the day, he or she has done fifteen twenty thousand steps without actually going for a walk. Right,

It's incidental, It's part of their day. So you know, I think overall we need to take into account how much movement are we doing taking into account incidental stuff walking to the shops. You know, I every day I live near a bunch of cafes. As you know, I used to ride to the cafe that was like ride my motorbike that was five hundred meters away, and I know that's disgraceful. And then I had a bit of a moment and realized how disgraceful I was being, and

I went, so I'm going to walk. I'm going to always walk, and I've you know, so for not last nine months that's just gone through My incidental and intentional walking has gone you know, through the roof. So these days I walk about two and a half to three times the amount of steps that I did this time

last year before I had my revelation. And for me, that just not only is it good obviously from a physical point of view, but there's a bunch of things that have happened to me doing this that I didn't even think about. So one was and I wasn't fat or overweight per se, but I was probably about eighty four eighty five kilos and I'm now eighty kilos and

my strength is the same, which is pretty amazing. So over nine months, I've lost around five kilograms and maybe I've lost a little bit of muscle, but definitely not much. And so my strength is the same. My body is leaner, which it means there's less stress on my heart and cardiovascular system. I move better, I feel better, I have more energy through the day, my brain works better because

I'm taking all these steps. I would say half of the steps that I take are at the beach because I live near the beach, and it's just trying to figure out how do I cre eight an operating system for me? So I'm gonna ask it to you. For you, how do you create an exercise? Like obviously there's more, but now we're talking about exercise. How do you create an operating system around movement, be that intentional or incidental, accidental, you know, or that which is really structured and programmed

and consistent and process driven. Because we need we need both of those, and we need to make sure that one, like I said before, we're consistent too, that we're doing the thing that is the right kind of exercise for us based on our body, our age, our needs, our physiology, and our goals of course, and then we need to make sure we're doing it at the right level. And that doesn't mean it's got to be gung ho or

it's got to be you know, intense. Maybe maybe the best intensity level for you for a lot of stuff is low, low intensity, more volume, less intensity. I know for me, most of well most of the just general movement stuff I do is low intensity. It's me walking typically three times a week, I go for a run, and my run is now, this is a kid that grew up running, or when I was a kid running ran I ran a lot. I ran far and wide, and I would consistently run, regularly run ten kilometers a day.

For years and years and years, I would run ten kilometers a day. And these days I know that I can walk out at the front of my house. I told you about the five k run before, but I don't do that too much. But I will go out and run two or three kilometers, which takes me around probably four and a half minutes per k. So that's nine minutes for two k's or what is that thirteen and a half minutes for three k's, give or take. Sometimes a bit quicker, sometimes a bit it's lower. So

I'm not running like an Olympic athlete. But you know, me and my sixty one year old body, pretty good pace going okay. But when I even when I run two k's, I get home, I feel great. I feel like my blood pressure is low, I feel like my body's just super happy. My brain feels good. I get a bit of dopamine, and even with that nine minute two kilometer run, I literally feel physiologically better. I just feel better for hours. So it doesn't need to be high volume, it doesn't need to be high tech. You

don't need a gym. I love gyms, and I love that they are a great resource for not much money. But do you can you get great results without a gym? Of course, of course you can so. But you can't get any results if you're not doing it. So jump in.

Send me a mess in the group. If I've inspired you a little bit, or maybe just kicked you in the ass a little bit, and you've decided that you're going to do something about it, how about you go to the new project Facebook page, you project podcast facebook page and just say harps, I'm in I'm doing it, and I'll reply to you. I'll absolutely reply to you and tell me what it is that you've decided. Might be a specific goal, it might be a broad goal, it might be you know what, I'm just going to

stop being the one day soon person. I'm going to stop doing that. I'm going to stop stopping and starting. I'm going to stop being the part timer who gets part time results. I'm going to be the all timer. I'm not going to become obsessed I'm not going to become crazy or a fitness addict. But what I'm going to do is I am going to keep doing things for my body that work on a consistent basis because

I can't get a new one. So feel free to go to the Facebook page, You Project podcast Facebook page, leave me a message, I'll send you one back, and all the very best kids