I'll get a team. It's Harps and Kate Kate save of course, Craig Harper. Of course. The name of the show is a You Project. It's a Thursday morning in the thriving metropolis of Melbourne. I'm going to say, thank you Jesus. It's not a thousand degrees, Oh my goodness, it's about a I don't know what is it? Twenty one degrees, it says on my computer, which is much more comfortable. How do you go in the heat, Kate? Are you any good? Or do you struggle?
Let's put it this way. On that forty degree day whenever it was, I got home from work at quarter to.
Nine at night and I was out of phone battery, but my watch notified me we are aware that your street has no power.
We will put it back on. At four am. My kids come running out of the house, going, mom, the television is not working, and I'm like, you're kidding. So I get home on that forty degree night and there are no power, no.
Air conditioning, no fans, no anything. So that wasn't great. And well worse than that, no batteries in the house, which means no torches. They had to get down the street, get some batteries and some torches, and.
It was some fun, no, I imagine. But you think about this, right, like, for how long we've been around modern modern humans, for all of that whatever it is, three hundred thousand years, we never had apart from the last one hundred years, we didn't have any of this shit. And now we're all like me included, We're like, oh my god, like they didn't have anything. They just had fucking heat. Yeah, right, team, way back, we had a little kind of an echoey first minute or two because
we had a few tech issues. But we think, you know, I'm the worst to tech. I think you're just slightly better than me, Kate, So between the two of us, this could be a technological train wreck. But let's hope.
When was the last time you did a nineteen degree? You need that to work this stuff these days.
Oh yeah, I know, I'm look for my age, I'm probably okay, but yeah, I'm it's not difficult to perplex me. Like sometimes I'll ring Melissa and I'll go, ah, it's broken. She goes, have you done this? And I go nah, And I do that and I go, oh, it's not broken. She's like see ya. It's like so annoying how she can even do it without looking at my computer? Yeah, she goes, Okay, go down in the bottom corner. There's
one of these Oh no, there's not. No, there's not yeah, in the bottom corner next to the Oh, I go, oh there is too. Yeah, cool genius open that. And then there's there's this option. Oh yeah, so there is then click on that and I'm like yeah, and then she goes, now, choose that, and I go ah, But she does that like I've got everything in front of me where I can see it. But you know, but
how much can she bench press? Though? Seriously? Like course, I mean, you know you're good at technology, but really, let's see you in the gym where it matters. How have you been What have you been up to?
Oh, I've been doing some isolated muscle training recently, actually, so that's new for me.
What does what does that mean? Tell the like, what is isolated muscle training? So I'm just to me, that's just isolation movements in the gym, single joint movements. What are you talking about?
That is exactly it. So I found out I have stage four cartilage damage in both knees bakers in both knees and for Telemel tracking on one side. So then that basically meant no running. But I've gone and seen some great people and I've actually signed up at Keyser the you know, the physio kind of ye and all of their exercises are just single isolation because it's all for rehab and wow, they have a super different philosophy.
So you only do one set of exercises for a maximum of ninety seconds to one hundred and twenty seconds. If you get past ninety, you lift the weight. But because you work the muscle to failure and I mean complete failure where you are a shaking mess and you cannot push the machine out, it is a really good feeling afterwards. You feel like you haven't done much at the time because each exercise you're only doing one set, but you walk out and your whole body has got the shakes.
Wow. Different and so you know, the interesting thing about strength training, I don't know what we're going to talk about today, as we said before we press the go button. But interesting thing about the strength training is there are a myriad of ways to do it. You know, training for power training, for speed training, for hypertrophy training for core strength training, specifically to be better out of sport.
You know, I need to be stronger in this plane of movement, but not just stronger, but to be able to generate more so relative to what's going on in Australia. To be able to hit my backhand better or quicker, or you know, control my hips and my glutes and my core while I'm rotating around this moving ball and all that stuff. But it's interesting like free weights, dumbbells,
bar bells, kettle bells versus pin loaded. You know, I'm going to put a pin in a stack of weights and everything is fixed, so I don't have to balance the bar or the bar bell or the dumb bell. All I've got to do is push this thing on this chair generally that I'm sitting in, and then on top of that stuff like kaiser or Keyser and some hydro hydraulic stuff. There used to be a lot of that.
Not so much anymore. Can I just ask? So when you're doing, say a leg extension for our listeners who don't know what that is, just pretend you're sitting on a chair like you probably are, and you just lift your foot up to be the same height as you need. So you take your leg, your lower leg, which is vertical, you bring it to horizontal and anatomically that's just called knee extension, or in the gym we would call it
leg extension. Uh. When you do that on the way up as ecentric of course, muscle underload, and on the way down you'll generally lower it. Now with keyser, is there resistance both ways or just on the right, so that now is working quads on the way up and hamstrings and gastroc on the way down.
Yeah. Yeah, then now you've got me thinking, hang on the obviously leg press is working both ways. They do? They have it loaded both ways.
On the way up.
No, they're controlling right your speed. So you're little. You actually use an app when you're in there, so it's and the app is saying move, move, move, hold hold hold move, move, move, hold, hold hold. So every little part of the movement is three seconds moving, three seconds holding at one end of the exercise, three seconds moving, three seconds holding at the other end of the exercise, which is quite different to your three seconds up three
seconds down that you might do in the gym. And that I guess you're doubling the time under tension, and you're because you're in these pin looaded machines and everything is adjusted by two pounds, so super adjusted, and everything is adjusted to the range of motion. So if you have a back, knee hit problem or whatever, they only let you go as far as you have zero pain and then that's where they stop your range. So as
you get better, you get better range. But it means there's no fear of going into something that you should be banned from doing because that caused the problem. You know that it exacerbated. But when you can do that movement in a really narrow range, you can build and strengthen. And that's kind of the part of the premise behind it is it's a way to get back to doing things that you used to be able to do that you can no longer do in a smart, pain free
way to then use outside of the gym. And I think in the past I've never done any of this sort of I'm not a bicyc curls person. I'm not a single you know, I'd rather do compound exercises, do your squats and push ups and chin ups and whatever else. But it enables you to do those things better because wherever your weakness is, you're starting to strengthen. And for me it definitely glutes. But even on these machines that are supposed to isolate without their ex fizz or their phisios,
there your body tries to cheat. Your hips try to tilt back instead of tilt under. For me, my feet try to always point up in the air so that I can use my calves or you know, use my lower leg instead my glutes to do abduct or adducter exercises, so they really tighten you in like you have belts in machines, so that they stop you being able to use any other muscles. And because you can do two pounds very very light increments, you can adjust all the
way back down to week. You're not listening your traps or you're trepresiest for anyone who's listening around your neck. So if you're doing upper body, you might be doing a seated roll or a lap pull down, and you find you're always using your traps. Well, they can get it to the point where you reduce it down so precisely that you're not using the wrong muscle groups and you're actually only getting the muscle groups at a week.
Yeah, that's interesting. I mean when you travel around gyms and you just watch people train, this is not an indictment or an insult because it's very natural that we compensate or we cheat, not consciously cheap, we cheat. So if you watch someone doing I'm just trying to keep it simple for our non weight training listeners. But let's say you do something like an upright row where you hold the bar bell a straight bar or what they call an easy bar or a Z bar pretty much
in front of a groin. Like that's your starting position, and you're holding the bar and then you pull your elbows higher than your wrists and you pull the bar up under your chin. Now, if you get a moderate weight so that the teaching chees, bend your knees a little bit, bend your hips a little bit, and keep the knees and the hips at that angle. We don't want you standing straight up like a board because we
want to protect your lower back. So there's a little bit of flexion and your hips, a little bit of flexion in your knees, you know. But then what happens is people get to the point where now it's hard. Well, now they start raising their calves. And now they start bending and straightening their knees and bending and straightening their hips. And now they take what should be a pretty controlled
movement and make it a far less controlled movement. And our natural tendency unconsciously is to when something gets hard, bringing other muscle groups to make it easier. And like the amount of obviously I owned gyms for over quarter of a century and all the other shit, right, but the amount of people that like often dudes, because dudes are dumb. Some dudes are dumb in the gym, some
are not. But that would go in and say, all right, and they're benching, for example, everyone knows what a bench press is, but they're bench pressing one hundred kilos for three terrible reps, right, And what they're doing is they're lifting it off the rack. They're bringing it halfway to their chest rather than all the way. And then they're lifting their ass way off the bench, their heels off the ground. They're squirming like a fucking squid on a beach, right.
Their head's going all over the joint, their shoulders are going up, you know, and then they grind out three terrible reps with terrible form. All they're doing is stroking their own ego, trying to look good in front of others. They're increasing drastically their risk of injury. And I would go up and I'd say, I will give you one thousand dollars if you can do one rep to your chest, pause it for two seconds, Do not lift your ass, do not lift your heels off the ground, do not
squirm under the bar. Just lift the same weight that you were just doing, and do one perfect rep. And I never lost my money, right, yes, right, so, and then I would say, this is what I want you to do. Put on sixty kilos and do eight perfect reps for me, And often they couldn't. So the dude that was doing one hundred terrible reps can't do eight perfect reps on sixty percent of the weight. So we have to get ego out of it, and we have
to realize, like what is actually safe. But also you can train intensely but safely, you know, and your muscles don't count or recognize, oh, this is a twenty versus a thirty kilo kettlebell or whatever. All your muscle does is adapt to the stress that you put on it. And so trying to you know, even like people don't realize I'll shut up after this, I shouldn't start talking about weight training. But I don't really do it that much on here, but obviously it's my pet area, one of them.
Well, people, everyone should be weight training, so I think it's a relevant conversation. If you're not, you should be.
So exactly so, even thinking about so, let's say back to the upright road, where you're pulling it from your groin and you're pulling it up the front of your body, elbows higher than your wrists, and you're pulling it up under your chin or up to your chest or whatever. So when you're bringing it up, that's concentric. I'm not teaching you anything because you're an excise physiologist, but for our listeners, right, so, pulling it up it's an upright rod.
That's the concentric or the pulling hard part or the working hard part. Then you lower it, well, that's called eccentric. Now, eccentrically, we are about one hundred and fifty percent stronger than concentrically, right, So what that means is if you can genuinely bench press one hundred kilos, well, you could probably lower one hundred and fifty kilos. That is, control it down. So what people fail to recognize is that you should be working equally hard on the concentric and eccentric phases of
the movement. So rather than you know it's like you see someone do a barbell curl. They curl it up from the front of their quads up under their chin in maybe one or two seconds, and then it essentially falls back to the starting position. So for those of you who do curls, dumbbell, barbells, z bar, cable, whatever it is, try this next time you do a curl or a set of curls. On the way up, however long it takes two or three seconds on the way down, dub double it. So if it's two seconds up, it's
four seconds down. Now that's six seconds per rep. If you do a set of twelve, that's seventy two seconds under load time under tension. That fucking kills. Whereas the average person will do twelve reps in twenty seconds and put the bar down. So even if you use the same weight, the same resistance, but you slow down the time under load drastically, you increase the intensity safely because
there's no swinging, you're not using extra weight. You increase the intensity, which means you increase the adaptive response, which means you increase the gains, which means you increase the outcome and function all just doing the same exercise in a different way.
And if we relate that to a pinloaded exercise to anyone who's using machines in the gym, the key part there obviously they're going coming up and coming down, but actually holding at a point where you are not locked out and on a machine, this is easy because you don't want the white plates to touch when you come back down. So if you hold at that point for three seconds, move for three seconds, hold at the highest point without locking out, hold for three seconds, then lower,
you're actually twelve seconds. So yeah, twelve seconds under tension for every single rep. And I think that for me is probably the reason why I'm finding this so much more effective for those weaker muscles. And you said something early on that we don't think we're cheating or we don't mean to cheat. Well, I sit there thinking, okay, I could probably get three more out, but then I
can feel my toes sticking up in my shoes. To try and use different muscles in my leg or I can feel my back lightly arch so I can get a bit more power from other muscle groups. So I think we do know, but we don't stop moving and try and make it harder because naturally our body wants
to do take the easiest path. So it's a real conscious decision on your last one or two reps when you're fatigued to make it harder for yourself by really relaxing the muscles that shouldn't be working when you're doing these single muscle focus exercises. And I think that's where you get that uncontrollable shake, because it's that weak muscle that's under that huge tension that doesn't usually activate.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think also it's probably important to point out to people that when you're doing what Cat's doing, which is trying to isolate a particular muscle or muscles through the course of the session, you're doing that for a reason, right. But then out in the real world, when you pick the suitcases out of the back of the car and then you carry the suitcases up to the check encounter, you don't need to be doing that because you're using you know, like you're
using a functional technique. Where well, of course you're going to use your traps. Of course you're going to lose use your glutes and your core muscles. Of Course, you're going to use your biceps when you bend your elbow, because that's what biceps do, they bend the elbow. Of Course you're going to use your triceps eccentrically when you're lower it because you're now extending. So it's a really
integrated and natural system. But I think when you're in a gym and you go, you know what, Like I had to address a big issue that I had, which was an upper back lower back in balance. So my lat's are romboids, so all the muscles around my back, upper back, everyone were for me for my potential about nine out of ten, nine and a half out of ten for my we're not talking about mister Olympia, but I'll fatty harps. But my lower back that I neglected, I trained it, but I didn't train it as well,
was relatively a four. So whenever I got injured, guess what I got Live back injuries, you know, and guess what. Live back training not sexy, not fun, not convenient, not all that shit, right, And I can't.
Lift as much weight or anything either, so it's less satisfying. I am exactly the same. I've actually got fatty infiltrait in the muscles of my lower back because they do not activate, so they're lazy even though we use them, they're lazy, whereas the same thing with the upper back. With you much stronger in the upper back, but when you have an MRI and you can actually see fatty infiltrait only in that very lower section, I'm like, wow,
they actually just completely switch off. And that's where for
me it was walking down down the stairs. Obviously, when you're walking down the stairs using every part of your legs, but because I wasn't my VMO so vastest medialists, so that one of the four quadrucept muscles on the inside of the leg was weak and my ITB on the outside of the legs was tight, I would use the outsides of the legs, which made my knees point the wrong direction and my weak inside part of the leg wasn't activating, which is just literally worn down my kneecap.
I've got no heartleage left on the kneecap, and the started boss to arthritis because when I walked down the stairs. My glutes aren't turning on properly. My VMO is an activating. So these isolation muscles. I did three sessions at the Kaiser gym. I walked. I got up on a Monday morning and went downstairs to get my coffee and I came back up and I went hang on. I didn't feel my knees after three sessions, I did not feel my knees walking down the stairs.
So yeah, it was that's amazing.
Really really quick change. So I've got a long way to go, but yeah, very quick.
And also let me point let me point out everyone I have. I don't know if Kata's I don't think so, but I have no affiliation with Kays. It's starting to sound like an ad. Yeah right, it's starting to I'm going, Oh, by the way, this is not an infomercial for them. I've never set foot in a center. That doesn't mean I don't think it's I have no opinion, but I've heard good things, right, And anyone can.
Use these gym, these machines in a gym, anyone can do a single loaded exercise energy.
And I think this is the point is that we understandably we don't really understand what's going on in our body because we're not. We're not we're probably not tuning in enough, which we can tune in more, that's optional, but we don't really understand. Oh you know quad muscles. Oh quad, there's four yeah, yeah, yeah, there's four different that it's actually not that big thing on the front of your leg there, that that's not a muscle. That's
four muscles, you know. And so yeah, when you have one muscle that's relatively stronger on one side than the comparable muscle on the other side, then that's going to create a pateeller tracking problem, which you've got, you know. And then instead of the teller sitting where it should, it slit sits slightly probably in your.
Career cap for people.
Yeah, yep, yep, knee cap yep, sorry apps, sorry everyone. So, if it's on your left side, then your teller or kneecap's pulling left. If it's on your right, it's pulling right because the it b leo tibial band, which also, just to confuse you, isn't one of the quads.
But people will know what this is if anyone's ever laid on a foam roller on their side the pain you go through the roof if you roll over or it b and it's tight. And I think I know why mine's tight because the phone roller sits in the corner and I look at it and I go, you are torture beyond torture. I will never get on you again. And that's exactly what I need.
That's so true, dude, because think about how many people go to do to the gym and do the stuff they like, not the stuff they need.
Yes, yes, And I hate the glutes stuff because I cheat, like you know, and who wants to isolate the thing that's weak and hurts when you use it, like the phone roller. Who wants to lay on something that is like getting elbows of forty people and putting their full body weight on and then rolling in little circles like it hurts.
Yeah? Fuck that. How you know what I'm hopeless at. So my quads and for my age, my quads are not bad. I train my legs twice a week. My glutes are not as good, but they're all right. Plus the fact that I walk ten kilometers a day doesn't hurt my leg strength, not that that's strength training, but the fact that I move so much helps function. But you know the ab ad machine, the abduction adduction machine. So, folks, this is where you sit in a thing. I'm not
going to be graphic, but it could. It almost looks gynecological.
This thing, right, the leg opener and the leg.
Closer, yes, and so on. So what you do is essentially you sit in there, you put one leg in this kind of looks like a cup holder, but it's a leg holder on each side, and then you open your legs out, which is called abduction abduction, and then you're using the muscles on the outside of your legs for a more accurate description, and then you bring it back in also under load against resistance. That's called add adduction. Well, we all need to train our abductors and adductors, but
almost none of us do. Well, we don't have to, but it's not a bad idea. Right. Oh, I'm so weak. I'm sorry.
That was what I was complaining about to start with. When I said so as it got hard, right, what I did is pointed my toes up to the ceiling so I could use my carbs to squeeze this thing
in instead of my inner thighs. And then on the way out as I was doing it as well, I used the top of my thighs, my cords it was strong to open it out instead of using the glute, and so I knew I was cheating, But God, it hurts so much that you really need to stop and pause and take some load off, I think, to be able to get it to the point where you know that you are isolating those inner thighs or those outer thighs without recruiting any of the lower back, or using
your feet as lead, or using the top of your thighs. And the other thing I found with the abductor ab one, when you squeeze it in, if you can hold and make the plates touch or your legs touch for like three to five seconds, you won't be able to do very many of them, whereas if you just clap them and then go back out clap them, you could go all day. So you've got to really hold that squeeze.
And the same as the adductor one, when you push out to the furthest point, if you want to activate the glutes, you turn your feet out to the side and then those poor little glutes don't know what's going on, Whereas if you keep your feet forward, or even turn them in. You won't use the glutes as much, so turn them all the way out and you'll find you really isolated and they burn.
It's so funny when you're like me, You've been training a thousand years and the gym's your natural habitat, and then you go do something that you should probably do more of. Right, So a full disclosure, because I'm still human and emotional. I try to be as strategic and logical as I can, you know, and I tend to do most muscle groups two days a week or thereabouts,
you know, split it up, split routurne. The other day I went, I never really like my abs are quite strong, because I do a lot of things that involve abs, you know, like when I do tricep pushdowns with a rope on a pulley, I do them either facing away from the weight stack or towards the weight stack. But either way, I'm on my knees and I'm in that almost a kind of spinal flexion. I am in some
spinal flection which requires app contraction. Blah blah blah blah blah. Anyway, the other day I was thinking, I don't really train my lower abs much, I'm going to go do some hanging leg races. Now, hanging leg races everyone. You can do them a couple of ways. So the easy way is you just well easy, You hold onto a chin up bar, you hold your body weight. That's something we'll talk about in a moment, just holding your body weight.
So you hold your body weight, and then you can either just bend your knees and kind of almost like crunch your knees up to your waist, or you can lift your legs with straight legs up to about belly button level, so your upper body is vertical hanging and your lower body is horizontal out at ninety degrees to your upper body. Well fucking he fuck my, oh my god, because I don't think I've done them for three years and I felt like somebody had done abdominal surgery on
me overnight when I got up. And yeah, I've since done it again and it was not as horrendous, but yeah, I've got it.
And that range of motion is so because you're all the way from the bottom to the top of the abs, you're working them, rather than that more shallow range when you're inflection already, and it's a bit more isometric, so you're just holding it there. But when you're doing that lead range that whole toolso or the Yeah, really hard. And I'm sure if you've got big quads, you've got a heavy lower body to have that hanging off just your abs is a lot of mention.
Also, one thing I was going to talk about. And then you go wherever you want to go. It seems like we're talking about strength raining today. We did not plan this, but fuck it. I like the conversation is, so, when you do any movement, there's part of the movement in the concentric phase, when you're actually doing the work like pulling the weight or pushing the weight the concentric bit rather than resisting the weight as it naturally goes
back to its starting position whatever that was. But there's there's a the point where you are the movement is easier. I'll explain this with a practical example. So for example, when you do bench press, you lift it off the rack, you're on your back, you lift the let's say just the bar whatever it is, or whatever the weight is. You lift it off, and then you bring it down. Now, the first let's say between the top of the movement
and your chest. The bottom of the movement is let's say that's one hundred, one hundred range of movement out of one hundred. So as you bring it down, it's easy. It's easy because you've got what's called a biomechanical advantage right now. The lower that you come, even though it's the same weight, the heavier in inverted commas it becomes. So let's say you've brought it down ten centimeters, it's very easy to push it back to the top, same weight,
same arm, same person. You bring it down twenty centimeters, it's harder, even though it's the same weight, because you're now at a biomechanical disadvantage. It is literally requires more strength. Then you bring it all the way down to your chest right and then you've got to get it. So generally, with like a lot of exercises, people are weaker if we look at the totality of the range being one hundred. Usually towards the end of the whole movement, the last
kind of thirty to fifty is where they struggle. So here's my suggestion, boys and girls. If that's you and you go, oh, it's easy up here, but it's hard down here. Lower the weight maybe by half and only do the bottom half, So only do the hard bit.
So one of the things I used to do with powerlifters, bodybuilders, AFL players, lots of elite athletes is we do normal bench but once a week or once every ten days, maybe we would just do the bottom half of the movement where it is hardest, where you have the least biomechanical advantage. And so what you're doing is that bottom fifty percent, especially thirty percent maybe where it's real hard.
You're getting that area stronger because once you get past a point, you can just lock out, you know what I'm saying. So it's like identifying any weakness, not even exercise to exercise, but even range of movement within the same exercise, where lots of guys who were stuck. Virtually everyone who fails on bench press fails at the bottom, virtually everyone people rarely fail at the top of the movement, do you know what I'm saying? In other words, they
have to give up at the bottom. The amount of barbells that I have pulled off mainly men where the bars stuck on their chest because they just crash and burn. So that's another idea, And you can it's like even doing say a body weight squat. This is a very easy to test and easy to do. Let's say you're doing a body weight squat. Let's say you've got your hands out in front of you, say, parallel to the grind, one hand on top of the other maybe, and then
you go into a squat. So you stick your bum out and back, you go down, Your knees go forward, your ass goes back, and now you bring your ass down to be about the same level as your knees, which we would call that roughly parallel size. Roughly parallel. Now, if your knees are okay, go a tinme it. By the way, all this is not medical advice. This is
us talking about training. So if you've got issues, see a doctor, right, But all things being equal, take your ass a tiny bit lower than your knees, like an inch, a couple of centimeters, and then come back up, but only half and then go back down. Do not straighten up. Keep your legs under because what happens with most people at the top of the squad, their knees lockout, their quads switch off. Everything switches off. So now everything's not underload,
it's relaxed. What's holding you up is your skeleton, not your muscles. So when you do that, just say, for example, this is one of many examples, but you do that squat and you slow it down and you reduce the range of movement by half, and you're only doing the bottom half you would do, say maybe you can normally bang out forty bodyweight squats, you would struggle to do fifteen this way, even though you're only doing way less
reps and you're only doing half the movement. But because there is no recovery, it is total time under tension all the time. Yeah. So I love shit like that.
Yeah, And that takes me back to the leg press machine, where it's safe if it's pin loaded. So don't do this on a free weight leg press. But when it's pin loaded, if you reduce your range in the middle of it, you can go to failure and literally to the point where your legs shake so much that they fail. And you're not going to get hurt on a pin
loaded machine, So you can reduce that range. And I think this is the whole thing where I felt so so to this training because the weight was definitely less than what I would leg press on a free loaded machine, but reducing that range to that little middle part where you don't straighten your legs and you don't come all the way in where you could actually sort of take a bit of a break and lean up against your body just doing that middle part. So it hurts, doesn't it.
Yeah?
Going back to fitness and exercise, I know what else is new. I did fitness testing the other week with that ever lab program, and I mean VO two max testing, max group strength testing, max push up test, a jump test which I dismally failed, but the others I blew myself away at how mentally strong I was. I don't think I'm as physically strong as I am mentally strong that I would not give up on the VO two Max. My you know, my devices tell me it's about forty seven.
I tell what tell people what votwo max is.
Ah, So you're it's a maximum amount of oxygen per kilo per minute that your body can take in the way that you test. This could either be on a stationary bike or on a treadmill. You wear an ox You wear a mask, and that mask captures all of your oxygen and carbohydrate and your mix of that, and with that mask on your face as you're increasing your
incline on the treadmill. Incline increases the most like you're you're going from don't quote me on the Bruce protocol, but whether it's twelve percent incline to then fourteen or sixteen percent to twenty percent, your speed is only going up slightly. You might be walking at four kilometers and then it's six or and then you get to a twitch eight kilometers on I think it was a sixteen percent incline. You can try and walk it, but you kind of need to jog it because it's so steep.
Oh yeah, and you can't. The average person definitely couldn't walk at eight kilometers on that endcline. Yeah.
And so the guy said to me, I said, what would you be happy to get to? And heros fifteen minutes? So I did sixteen minutes that last.
Minute did got you did?
Oh my goodness, like that mental I have to beat what what he thinks he could get. And this lovely man was in his early twenties. I'm in my early forties and I had to beat him. I just And I think that's what made me so proud at the end of the test is when you analyze the results. My aerobic threshold and my anaerobic threshold were well below how far I took the test. I got into such an oxygen debt in the test through mental through my
competitive site. Let's just say that that I was willing to kill myself to win this challenge.
Okay, please don't kill yourself, you know, but what is fascinating about this? I love this and I don't want you to kill yourself. Also, listeners, we're not recommending you do what Kate did, right, We're just having a chat. But so you know, there's a thing in the psychology of exercise called rate of perceived exertion, and essentially everyone we've spoken about it here before. It just means how hard you think you're working. So let's make an imaginary scale.
One to ten is you're working as hard as you humanly can, like you couldn't work any harder if your life depended on it. That's ten. One is your fucking round. Three or four is you going all right, but you're not really killing yourself? Seven or eight is you think you're working real hard? Ten is you think you're at
your physiological limit. And the funny thing is that I've literally, I have personally seen this thousands of times because I spent so much time with so many clients, literally delivering over fifty thousand PD sessions myself, not my team, myself, right, my team over a million, well over a million, right,
So I'm not guessing, I'm not theorizing. I'm telling you, I've seen thousands of people who did not have a fucking clue of what they were capable of, and their story about what they were capable of was so fucking far from what they were actually physiologically capable of that their body was not in any way the problem. Their
mind was in every way the problem. So this is that's why when you know, the first book I ever wrote, terrible title, but it was called Fatitude, and the reason was you couldn't write that now was twenty five years ago, but fuck it, but it was because I realized, even as an excise whatever I was, specialist blah blah blah scientist, that's XI scientists. At that stage, I realized that, oh, the body's not. Of course, the body is an issue. We've got a factor around the body. We've got to
navigate various whatever issues. But at the end of the day is the body for most people, the thing that gets in the way of them getting better, whatever better means. Let's just use that as a blanket term. A bit, a stronger, healthier lena, more functional, more resilient, whatever, Right, Well, the answer to that is no. The answer to that is basically your physiology is at the mercy of your psychology in that your body doesn't choose how hard to go.
Your body gives you data and feedback, of course, but your body doesn't choose to have fucking honey smacks on neutral grain for breakfast. Your mind does. Your body doesn't choose to sit on the couch. Your mind doesn't. Of course, people going, oh, you haven't been in my body, I have one. Well, not literally, but and also I've worked with people with advanced cancer in the gym. I've worked with my mate Johnny, who's got a spinal cord injury
and a traumatic brain injury for eight years. The guy that started lifting a broomstick in a chair was told he'd never walk, right. I've worked with people who are at such a fucking massive physical disadvantage that I think, and I never say shit like this, but I have a pretty good fucking understanding of human potential on a physiological, psychological, and emotional level. So it doesn't surprise me that you did that, because you're the check who built this fucking
amazing company. You're the chick who went on Shark Tank. You're the shit, the chick, the shit you are, You're k Kate, You're the shit. You're the chick who overcame all these personally, all these medical and physical challenges when you were young. You're the chick who just went when
everyone went no, you went nah, fuck you yes. And I'm not piercing in your pocket because I've never seen any of this stuff publicly, but I would be surprised if you didn't outperform that guy's expectations because I know you and you're all fucking Mary Poppins, but you ain't like I see well through the Mary Poppins persona, and it's lovely and you are lovely, and you're a good
communicator and you're genuinely a good person. But you've got a little bit of the C word in you, which we don't say on this show, but you've got a little bit of that in you, and I think you know me too, like I'm I've been understandably, I've been
underestimated since I was the fattest kid at school. And it's still like some people still think I'm I've just been I've had great opportunities, or I'm lucky, or I'm like, okay, okay, Well you haven't lived my life and you haven't been where I've been, and that's okay, and there's no self pity in this. But I know what I've done. You
don't know I would have done. You know, so that what people can't take away from you is your willingness to do what they won't do, because rather than then say I'm weak or I'm pissy, or fuck it's too hard, or they'd rather find fault in you than go and look in the fucking mirror and go, is there any chance that I am the problem? Nah? Fuck it, it's Kate. She's this. She's that. They'd rather run you down than take ownership of what they're not doing. Steps down off soapbox.
So on National TV when I was nineteen or twenty, there was a show called Dog Eat Dog and I was a contestant and they slaughtered me. They called me a piece of blonde fluff on National TV and as you can imagine. I've just met my who is my currently husband, and he was playing footy with all these footy mates and I did not know this show was on either did he. But some of his mates have called him and said, Hey, Fluffy, that's what they call
me after that show. That nickname has stuck for many years. Hey Fluffy's on the TV. Turn it on. I had no idea this show was going to air, like I knew it would one day. And I crushed them in the end, But the whole way through they completely bagged me out that I was a piece of blonde fluff and this, this and this, and I was so satisfied in the end, I wo up coming third. I didn't win it, but that being underestimated because I was blonde, I was female, and I was the youngest on the
show by a heap. And I think those little things kind of grind that. There's been many, many of them that. My other favorite one is we need a real CEO because of my gender. Apparently I'm not real. So I've got a few real winners like that that I think. That's that's the scene in there.
Yeah, it's funny, isn't it. It's like, like with you, I mean, that's largely just because of your gender. And you know, it's like, it's so funny that people would essentially criticize you, and I know this is a dumb thing to say. In twenty twenty six, we're much more aware and now, which is not to say that it hasn't stopped. For being attractive and for being a female.
I'm like, well, half the world's female bro also being pretty, not that it's a prerequisite for anything, but she can't help how she looks, so you know, chill out.
The blonde hair.
Bantage when people see the blonde hair, and if I'm not overweight or whatever, there's there's an instant hate from some people until my challenge is always to break them down and try and get them to like me and understand. Oh, we're very similar. We both we both get frickin' periods, we both had babies, we're both probably going through perimenopause. We both maybe have teenage kids that are very hard to manage. Oh, maybe we lost our parents, maybe we've
lost whatever it is. When you can break them down and find the human side of them, they're like, oh, you're not too bad, that's right.
You're human. Yeah, it's so interesting. But you know what also is interesting as I get older, which I don't blame people for this, I totally understand, but you know not that I've said many times, I'm not genetically gifted. I'm not any of that. I'm not special at all. But I have created an operating system and a set of habits and behaviors built around how to optimize me, and I just do those. I don't do them when I'm pumped or excited or motivated. That's just my default setting.
And so as a byproduct of that, you know, touchwood. Who knows what's in the future. But anyway, it seems that as of now, I'm okay, and you know all that. Don't drink, don't smoke, don't eat shit, don't do drugs, never been drunk, never been high, you know, train all that. But because you're sixty two, people expect something different and they you know, when people they talk to me, Oh,
where was I? Oh, that's right, when I went to get my ears done, right, because I've got ustation tube dysfunction, I've got you know, all this shit going on, and I had an operation last week and I had a general out of sex. So anyway, I get it. But they come in and they start talking to me like, I'm my mum. Now like, hello, mister Harper, how are you? And I'm old, come on, bro, call me jumbo Craig Harps anything, not fucking mister Harper. And they're like, then
the lady who was a sweetheart, it's a job. But she's like, have you had any falls lately?
Wow, I'm like, off my motorbike or what? Dude.
I'm like, ah, But then I go She's looked at the thing and she's seeing how old I am, and oh, you know, I probably look like a fucking two hundred year old prune in the head. And I'm like, I get it, and I said I didn't quite get I said, sorry, can you what did you say? She goes, have you had any falls lately, mister Harper? And I'm like, you'll have a fall in a moment, bro, That's no, no, not really. But I'm like and then I went, well,
of course, you know. It's like but we get and I don't think I I well with you, that's totally malicious and bullshit. But I think, you know, people go, oh, well, he's this old. I'm looking in his form and he's coming in for an operation on his ears, and you know, and so you're treated soon.
Like obviously this is where you're heading, because yeah.
You're not treated on how you are, you treated on how they think you probably are.
But anyway, but that is a really that is that happens in the medical systems. I've worked in hospitals for two decades and exactly what you said happens all the time. And because I'm so aware of this, my mum a couple of years ago, she came to my house and the poor grandkids when she'd left, would go my children, Grandma keeps farting, and I'm like, what do you mean? Anyway, called mum and I was like, Mom, can you not
like do that around the house. She's like, oh, I've told you, I've just got this flatulence and I don't understand it. This, this, and this. She goes, I've had this bloating. Anyway, A couple of ways goes by, she goes, look at my tummy. So Mom's fifty two kilos. She lifts up her top and she's super toned and she's got this pot belly and I'm like, oh, that's weird.
And she's like, well, I told you I've got wind and I've you know, I've got all this blutein and I'm like, Mum, that is like that needs to be looked at. That that is a real problem. She goes, oh, I've had it since January. I've been to the doctors twice. They keep telling me it's constipation. Takes some latulo's And so I said no, no, no, you need to go to emergency and you need to tell them that this has been there like this for a few months now.
And I said, you're going to the toilet and she goes, oh, barely, it's you know, it's coming out like string. I'm like, Mum, this is please go to emergency. Do not go to the doctor. Right. I sent her to emergency three times and she came back with so there was lactilo's, then there was more the coal, and they kept telling her it was constipation. Mum is blonde, thin, loud, and extremely confident, well looking at this point, and so they kept sending
her home. I flew to Africa this particular night and the day before I left, Mama's babysitting my kids, and I said to her, have you got this like sorded. Have they scanned you? She goes, oh, I had a scam. They said it's nothing, it's just old age. And I said, Mom, they don't know you. They don't know you exercise two hours a day, they don't know that you have a flat stomach, and all of a sudden, you've got this huge protrusion. And I said, you need to go back
there and not leave until they find something. And I actually said to her, Mum, I think you have cancer and she's like, oh, nah, couldn't be. This is and this. I got on that plane to Africa and in the air I got a text message when your fine kind of goes in and out, and it said, now I understand why her shop was closed today. Send my wishes to your dad. And I'm like, who, well, who is this? What is this? I was stuck in the air and when I landed, I called Dad and I said, what's
going on? Your mum collapsed at home. She's got bow cancer. She's in for surgery. I'm at the hospital and they're currently operating. I hope she's going to be okay. And I was like, I knew it. And I was ropeable because they sent her home three times, and they judged her by her age because she was seventy. They didn't consider anything else. There was no other past medical history. But I mean, I've got photos on my phone because I took photos of her stomach because she has a
flatter stomach than me. And I'm like, this is not right. And if you're passing wind and you are shitting string, you've got a blockage. I don't know what the cause of that blockage is, but if you've been on lax it is for four or five months, it's not constipation like anyway. So I and this is we banged down about this last time. Take responsibility for your own health. If there is something wrong with you, you know there's something wrong with you, don't stop looking like it's your body.
They are not living in your body. If there's something wrong, you need to do something about it. And because mum has a high pain threshold, she actually collapsed, which she had to go to hospital. Dad had to call to take her to hospital. If she hadn't have collapsed, she just would have got along with Well, it must just be a constipation, you know. That's what they've told me three times. My doctor twice and emergency sent me home.
Wow, and I think, well, I'm sorry, obviously, be your mum. God bless her.
Yeah.
Just tell our audience when did your mum pass away? It was it last year.
It was three months after this that she passed away of no known cause. So they took her body, they did the autopsies. The coroner's report came back three or four weeks later. No cancer in her body, no heart attack, no no stroke, no cholesterol or plaque built up anywhere in her body, nothing at all. Her cancer had been completely removed, she'd been completely put in remission and they found no cancer in the autopsy. So she actually died
of no known cause. I went to africa Apool that year and we found her dead on the floor on the fifteenth of June. A couple of months later, and even more frustrating, that particular morning, she actually went back to the oncology center because she woke up in the night and said to Dad, my dad, Oh, I've got this funny pain. Dad goes, is it yeah, and she goes, I don't know. I don't think so, Oh it's gone now I'm going back to sleep, and he goes, we
can go to work. This morning, can you call into the medical center and just tell them you had this pain. So sure enough she went there and they told her, oh, look there's a you know, we don't think it's anything, but if you feel it again today, you best call an ambulance. So she actually went and got a check
up at nine am that morning. I called her at eleven am that day and said, oh, you don't need to pick up the kids from school, And by five point thirty that night she was found collapsed in her shop after dragging in a forty kilo rack from out the front that she did all day every day because
she was strong. But apparently it wasn't harsh. And the only thing they say on a coroner's report where there's no known cause of death is the only thing they can't see in the body when it's dead is electrical activity. So unless there was some sort of electrical thing with the hut up that had never been diagnosed before and no other herd issues, that is the only pausible thing. No one knows what she died of.
This wow wow, Well, a cardiac arrest as opposed to a heart attack, which often they can come at the same time, but often a cardiac arrest is just a cardiac arrest, which, as you said, is usually something going on with the electrical activity of the heart, which is what my training partner had. He had a cardiac arrest at the gym, but no heart attack. Yeah, yeah, you know, so well that is yeah. We we could go on,
we could go on. We better wind up. But I just think so I want to say, I understand like people listening to this are going to go, yeah, but I trust my doctor room and I go and he or she says this, And I'm not saying you shouldn't trust them. I'm just saying you also need to understand that even though they might be great people with great whatever motives of knowledge, they're human and they're going to
get stuff wrong and they're going to miss stuff. And if you instinctively or intuitively feel like there's actually something that's a problem, that's not you being neurotic. That's you maybe having some real quality intel from your body, you know, and look, the worst thing is or the best thing is, it's nothing, And you look like a bit of a
worry wart and no drama. Good good be a worry wart sometimes, like you know, better off than just sweeping it under the cognitive carpet or the metaphoric carpet, and gannah, it'll be right, it'll be right, and battling on for five months with the distended stomach and all that stuff.
So yeah, we've both got great older parents. My dad just turned eighty three last week, twenty second of January, and he, because of losing mum, he thought he'd go first. He's ten years older than month. He now, Oh, if he has the slightest sneeze, he will go to the doctor and go, well, I heard a snooze, you know, do you think this could be something? So he gets everything checked out. But he is proactive. So this man that had never strength trained, never exercised before, exercises every day,
walks twice a day. And do you know what he wanted for his birthday? Protein shake. I spent one hundred and twenty bucks on two kilos of protein for him.
Good for him, and good for you, good daughter. I thought you would have just taken him a couple of chickens and built him a thing at the backyard. Kate, where can people connect with you? Find you, follow you and see what you do when you're not doing podcasting?
With Fatty Harps yep so Instagram, Beefit Food Australia or Kate save and LinkedIn You're the best.
We were going to which we're not. We were going to bang on about Oprah but that the Oprah boat has sailed everybody, but yeah, one day, all right, Thanks Kate, thank you,