Speaker 1: I get a team. I hope you're bloody great. It's me.
Speaker 2: So today I want to do something different. It's very different.
Speaker 2: I've never done a podcast like this before. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to say up front, some of you this will
Speaker 2: be interesting. Some of you we will be relevant.
Speaker 1: For some of you it might.
Speaker 2: Just be an interesting listen because you are a trainer,
Speaker 2: or you are an exercise physiologist, or you are a
Speaker 2: group exercise teacher, or you work with older people who
Speaker 2: or you work in the health wellness space more broadly.
Speaker 2: But I just want to give you some ideas. I
Speaker 2: want to share some ideas and thoughts and exercises and
Speaker 2: activities which I believe are really really underutilized and I
Speaker 2: believe are potentially powerful, helpful and potentially transformational additions to
Speaker 2: anyone's kind of day. So one of the things that
Speaker 2: happens is as we get older, quite often and quite obviously,
Speaker 2: we tend to stop doing a lot of things that
Speaker 2: we did when we were kids. You know, running and
Speaker 2: playing and moving in lots of directions and climbing shit
Speaker 2: and jumping shit, and you know, playing with balls and
Speaker 2: throwing balls and catching balls and just a lot of
Speaker 2: incidental fun based stuff that we did for no reason
Speaker 2: other than just to hang out with our friends or
Speaker 2: to have fun.
Speaker 1: Or to move or to.
Speaker 2: You know, whatever it was. But we don't do that
Speaker 2: when we get older. And while I understand why we
Speaker 2: don't do that, it would actually be great for us
Speaker 2: if we did maintain a level of I don't need
Speaker 2: to do this, but I'm gonna do this activity, a
Speaker 2: level of fun, a level of play into our day
Speaker 2: to day kind of operating system.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, you all know that I'm going.
Speaker 2: To advocate for strength training for older people and for
Speaker 2: you know, lifting and doing some pilarates or doing some
Speaker 2: body weight stuff, and doesn't matter where the environment is.
Speaker 2: And you know, walking every day, you know, ten thousand
Speaker 2: steps give or take something like that.
Speaker 1: You know all of that stuff. So today is not
Speaker 1: going to be that.
Speaker 2: Today's me suggesting some or giving you some movement options,
Speaker 2: some options for your body. None of them are particularly
Speaker 2: hard at all. I had a look at the list.
Speaker 2: I've got ten things on my list. My dad could
Speaker 2: do these. I'm not saying it could do all of
Speaker 2: them brilliantly. But Ron is somewhat restricted at the moment,
Speaker 2: and he's eighty five he's eighty six in a week
Speaker 2: or two in fact, next week July four, Happy birthday,
Speaker 2: old fella next week as I record this, And there's
Speaker 2: just a lot of stuff that we can do to
Speaker 2: maintain function as we get older, but we tend not
Speaker 2: to do a lot of really easy to do things
Speaker 2: just because.
Speaker 1: I don't know, just because that's what life dictates, that's
Speaker 1: where we're at.
Speaker 2: So by introducing some of this stuff, or all of
Speaker 2: this stuff, like I've said, there's ten things, it might
Speaker 2: be one, might be two, three, four or five. It
Speaker 2: could be the whole lot. None of them are hard.
Speaker 2: Like I said, Now, let me just preface this by saying,
Speaker 2: of course, this is not a personal prescription or program.
Speaker 2: If you are worried about any of these from a
Speaker 2: health or a safety perspective, for you, see your doctor,
Speaker 2: see your exercise physiologist, or your trainer, or probably a
Speaker 2: doctor and say, look, this is some of the stuff
Speaker 2: I heard might not be a bad idea to incorporate
Speaker 2: into my day to day.
Speaker 1: What do you think some of you will know?
Speaker 2: You probably don't need to go to that length because
Speaker 2: none of this is particularly intense or difficult or complicated
Speaker 2: or requires an immense amount of skill or conditioning. So
Speaker 2: without further ado, here are the ten things that I
Speaker 2: reckon are great, free, relatively easy to do, don't require
Speaker 2: any special equipment, don't require a special exercise outfit, but
Speaker 2: done consistently, can really make a significant physiological functional shift.
Speaker 2: And not just physiological and functional from movement point of view,
Speaker 2: but also psychological and emotional, because we know when we
Speaker 2: change our body, when we get a bit fitter and
Speaker 2: a bit stronger, and a bit healthier, and a bit
Speaker 2: more balance and a bit more all of those things,
Speaker 2: we get a bit more confidence, and we get a
Speaker 2: bit more joy. So it's this stuff is of course
Speaker 2: it's in essence it's addressing physiology, but it kind of
Speaker 2: there's a flow on effect to our mind and our
Speaker 2: emotions and our day to day states. So that's really
Speaker 2: portner as well. So the first thing I'm suggesting that
Speaker 2: you do, if you're interested in trying this, is just
Speaker 2: some real basic balance stuff. One of the things that
Speaker 2: happens as we get older is we lose balance. One
Speaker 2: of the biggest challenges and dangers and problems for people
Speaker 2: over seventy is what's commonly referred to as age related falls,
Speaker 2: and people fall for a couple of reasons. But one
Speaker 2: of the reasons. One of the reasons is they don't
Speaker 2: have enough muscle, They don't have enough strength to recover
Speaker 2: if they trip. But also another really crucial factor is
Speaker 2: they just their balance as shit. Their balance is not
Speaker 2: what it once was. And so we know that at
Speaker 2: any age, even my dad's age eighty five turn in
Speaker 2: eighty six, my dad can still improve strength and balance
Speaker 2: and coordination and you know, europic endurance and muscular endurance
Speaker 2: given the right stimuli doing things the right way. He's
Speaker 2: not going to make the Olympic team. He's not going
Speaker 2: to run a sub you know, four minute mile, is
Speaker 2: not going to bench press his own body weight anytime soon.
Speaker 2: But what we know is that bodies are adaptable. And
Speaker 2: if we go from doing nothing to like, if you
Speaker 2: go from doing no balance work and then you introduce two, three, four,
Speaker 2: five minutes a day of balance work, all things being equal,
Speaker 2: you're going to see an improvement. It's not high risk,
Speaker 2: it's not dangerous, it's not there's not too much exertion.
Speaker 1: So when I say balance.
Speaker 2: I'm suggesting you start with something like this, just standing
Speaker 2: on one foot and you might want to do this
Speaker 2: initially near a bench or near something, eyes open by
Speaker 2: the way, eyes open facing the bench, where if you
Speaker 2: feel like you're going to fall or over balance, you
Speaker 2: can catch yourself, you can grab yourself. So my suggestion is,
Speaker 2: you know, obviously one foot a time, one foot off
Speaker 2: the ground, one on the ground, one off the ground,
Speaker 2: and maybe installments of ten seconds. Start with ten seconds,
Speaker 2: build up to fifteen and build up to thirty, build
Speaker 2: up to maybe build up maybe to a minute. And
Speaker 2: you might want to have your hands on your hips.
Speaker 2: You might want to have them out to the side.
Speaker 2: It probably doesn't matter too much. Typically you'll find it
Speaker 2: a bit easier if your hands are not on your
Speaker 2: hips but rather out to the side, because it allows
Speaker 2: you to adjust and adapt and correct.
Speaker 1: A little bit.
Speaker 2: Now, I know this seems like as I'm saying this,
Speaker 2: I'm like, this is so bloody fundamental. Do I really
Speaker 2: need tell to tell people how to do this? And
Speaker 2: probably not, I probably don't need to tell you how
Speaker 2: to do it, But just the idea of saying, you know,
Speaker 2: what if I incorporated three million, three minutes of balance
Speaker 2: a day, so I did you know, right leg, left leg?
Speaker 2: I'm just muck around like that, and I do three
Speaker 2: minutes a day, that's twenty one minutes a week of
Speaker 2: balance stuff. If I do it every day, that's twenty
Speaker 2: one minutes a week. I'm investing into training my muscles
Speaker 2: and my nervous system in a new and different way
Speaker 2: to improve a really important component of fitness and mobility,
Speaker 2: which is balance. And then you'll find, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: you get to the point where you can do thirty
Speaker 2: seconds really easily and it's not a challenge, then you
Speaker 2: might want to try again stand close to something that
Speaker 2: you can grab, but you might want to try with
Speaker 2: your eyes closed, and that kind of that makes it
Speaker 2: a whole new ball game. So I'm suggesting balance stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, even like for those of you who are
Speaker 2: you know, relatively fit, strong, functional, you might go Craig,
Speaker 2: That's that's like too easy for me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go cool.
Speaker 2: So what like, for example, I do is quite often
Speaker 2: let's say I'm washing dishes. I might think this is bullshit.
Speaker 2: This is one hundred percent true. If I'm washing the dishes,
Speaker 2: I will see if I can wash all of the
Speaker 2: dishes on one foot, and then I'll dry all of
Speaker 2: the dishes on the other foot, so I might be
Speaker 2: doing a task. Sometimes I'm currently sitting at my desk,
Speaker 2: but it's a stand up desk, so it comes up
Speaker 2: and down. Some days, I'm doing a podcast where I'm
Speaker 2: chatting to someone and I'm standing, not sitting, and I
Speaker 2: will just swap feet. I'll stand on one foot for
Speaker 2: as long as I can, and then I'll stand on
Speaker 2: the other foot. I'm still present, I'm still having the conversation.
Speaker 2: No one knows what I'm doing, but I'm working my
Speaker 2: nervous system and my muscular system, and I'm improving or
Speaker 2: working on my balance while I'm doing something else. And yes,
Speaker 2: that would equate to a man multitasking.
Speaker 1: You welcome.
Speaker 2: The next one, which is a no brainer, is stair
Speaker 2: walking or maybe a light jog, depending on where you're at.
Speaker 2: Stairs are great walking upstairs one at a time or
Speaker 2: maybe two at a time. I have stairs in my house.
Speaker 2: I probably walk up and downstairs twenty times a day.
Speaker 2: You think about that over seven days, that's one hundred
Speaker 2: and forty times a week. I'm climbing stairs. And that's
Speaker 2: obviously not part of my exercise program. That's incidental, but
Speaker 2: one of the by products of me climbing stairs one
Speaker 2: hundred and forty times. It's probably more, it's probably two
Speaker 2: hundred times a week. I'm up and down the stairs
Speaker 2: all day because I work from home as well. But
Speaker 2: one of the byproducts or benefits for me having been doing,
Speaker 2: you know, two hundred flights of stairs every week of
Speaker 2: my life for the last thirty years or so that
Speaker 2: I've been living where I currently live, is that my
Speaker 2: legs are actually really quite strong. So I've got quite
Speaker 2: strong quads, quite strong butt, sorry to tell you that,
Speaker 2: and quite good muscular endurance because I'm getting up and
Speaker 2: down the stairs all the time. Now that's before I
Speaker 2: even train my legs in the gym. But what we
Speaker 2: know also when you're obviously when you're going up a step,
Speaker 2: you're stepping with one foot ones remaining them bringing up
Speaker 2: the other one. So there's an element of balance as well.
Speaker 2: So if you can walk up the stairs, for those
Speaker 2: of you can walk up the stairs without holding onto
Speaker 2: a railing or a rail, I should say, if you
Speaker 2: need to do. But walking up stairs and downstairs is
Speaker 2: great for strength, great for a bit of muscular endurance,
Speaker 2: great for aerobic endurance, and if you want to up
Speaker 2: the intensity of course, you can step two steps at
Speaker 2: a time, you.
Speaker 1: Can vary the speed, you can do more volume. But
Speaker 1: even you know.
Speaker 2: Consciously doing five minutes a day where it's not incidental,
Speaker 2: it's intentional. Or it could be a hill, it could
Speaker 2: be a ramp. There's a ramp right near me which
Speaker 2: is about eighty meters up, and I quite often I
Speaker 2: walk down to the bottom of that ramp and I
Speaker 2: run up the ramp and I do that. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't sprint up, but again I might do that
Speaker 2: five times, and that down and up the eighty meter
Speaker 2: ramp might be sixty let's be honest, but it's really steep.
Speaker 1: It's really steep.
Speaker 2: And I do that five times every time I walk
Speaker 2: past it, and that probably takes me in total four minutes.
Speaker 2: So things like where we are actually carrying our body
Speaker 2: weight uphill, be that you know, on a ramp or
Speaker 2: an actual hill or stairs, greatful lower body strength, great fitness,
Speaker 2: of course, you know, essentially pretty easy to execute.
Speaker 1: And if you are older and more.
Speaker 2: Frail and with worse balance, do it, but do it
Speaker 2: slower and more carefully and hold on to the rail,
Speaker 2: and you might graduate to no rail and more reps
Speaker 2: or more stairs and a quicker speed over time. Number
Speaker 2: three on my list is which I've spoken about once
Speaker 2: or twice, is backward walking. Now, of course, when I
Speaker 2: say walking backwards, this can be fraught with danger. I'm
Speaker 2: suggesting you don't do it, you know, in Chapel Street
Speaker 2: in Melbourne, or you don't do it in the middle
Speaker 2: of people or a crowd. Of course, I would suggest
Speaker 2: that if you want to try a bit of backward walking,
Speaker 2: go slowly to start.
Speaker 1: Do it on grass. The reason that I love.
Speaker 2: I actually really love backward walking. I do that probably
Speaker 2: a couple of times a week because I walk past
Speaker 2: and oval and the oval that I walk past, I
Speaker 2: try to walk from goal, well, I don't I walk,
Speaker 2: not try to.
Speaker 1: I walk from gold to goal up and back.
Speaker 2: So I guess goal to goal up and back is
Speaker 2: maybe three hundred meters maybe a bit more. Where I
Speaker 2: walk backwards the whole way, and so there's nothing around me.
Speaker 2: I can't trip over anything. There's over grass, there's grass
Speaker 2: I'm walking on. I should say what's over grass? And
Speaker 2: I guess you know. The beauty of this is that
Speaker 2: you know, when you think about when we walk, obviously
Speaker 2: we're always are generally moving in a forward direction most
Speaker 2: of the time now and then laterally, but generally we
Speaker 2: don't step sideway as much. We don't step to the
Speaker 2: right or to the left much. In terms of the
Speaker 2: total steps that we take per day, for most of us,
Speaker 2: very close to one hundred percent of those steps would
Speaker 2: be taken moving forward, obviously, But what is great for
Speaker 2: our us, I'm going to be honest, our glut sclop
Speaker 2: medius and all of those muscles around our bum in
Speaker 2: our bum and our hamstrings, even lower back muscles. What's
Speaker 2: great is backward walking because we're getting a bit of
Speaker 2: strength through that kind of posterior area or that posterior
Speaker 2: chain of muscles some people call it, where it is
Speaker 2: quite often compared to the muscles on the front quads
Speaker 2: hip flexes, all of that quite weak. So backward walking
Speaker 2: is great. Also, backward walking is something that is recommended
Speaker 2: by a lot of physios and a lot of EPs
Speaker 2: for alleviating back pain. And I have had a history
Speaker 2: of back pain, and since I've started it's not to
Speaker 2: say that you can if you do backward walking you'll
Speaker 2: never have back paint again. But for me it's been
Speaker 2: a game changer and so I've probably been doing it
Speaker 2: consistently for about three years and I've really had no
Speaker 2: significant back issues. Well, I have had zero significant back
Speaker 2: issues over that time. Whether or not that's coincidence, whether
Speaker 2: that's correlation or causation, who the fuck knows, but I'm
Speaker 2: going to keep doing it. Number four is what we
Speaker 2: call a wall squad. Now, this is when you probably
Speaker 2: know what it is. It's like you put your back
Speaker 2: against the wall, preferably probably not a probably not a
Speaker 2: plaster wall, unless you're sure it's in front of a
Speaker 2: stud Probably you know, something quite sturdy, and then you
Speaker 2: slide your torso your upper body down the wall until
Speaker 2: your legs are bent at the knees and they are
Speaker 2: in a right angle position or a ninety degree position
Speaker 2: at the knees. So you're now supporting your body weight
Speaker 2: against the wall.
Speaker 1: So you're leaning so.
Speaker 2: Your upper body and the top of your is leaning
Speaker 2: against the wall. Your head is also against the wall.
Speaker 2: Notice that your head is also against the wall, shoulders
Speaker 2: against the wall, back pressed against the wall, top of
Speaker 2: your bum against the wall, and then your legs are
Speaker 2: at right angles in front of you, your feet are
Speaker 2: on the ground, your knees are bent to ninety degrees
Speaker 2: and you are just holding yourself there. Now, the way
Speaker 2: that people do this, which makes it easier, which we
Speaker 2: don't want is Oh. Also, by the way, I just thought,
Speaker 2: how much backward walking in three to five minutes whenever
Speaker 2: you get a chance to do it in terms of.
Speaker 1: Volume wall squat.
Speaker 2: So what you'll see a lot of people do is
Speaker 2: their lower leg instead of it going straight down to
Speaker 2: the ground vertically, they have their feet way forward, which
Speaker 2: means it's the knee. The back of the knee joint
Speaker 2: is not at a right angle, not at a ninety
Speaker 2: degree angle. It's at a more obtuse or a bigger angle,
Speaker 2: which takes the pressure off the odds.
Speaker 1: We don't want that.
Speaker 2: We want we want your need to be right angles,
Speaker 2: your feet flat on the ground, and everything else against
Speaker 2: the wall. Now, what what does this do? It builds strength,
Speaker 2: It builds lower body strength. And it's a static contraction.
Speaker 2: So your muscles are not you know, increasing or decreasing
Speaker 2: in length through the movement.
Speaker 1: They're just static.
Speaker 2: So there's no eccentric or concentric contraction. There's just a
Speaker 2: static hold. Now you might start with fifteen seconds and
Speaker 2: go fuck with your fuck, that's pretty hard. Cool start
Speaker 2: at fifty you might start at six seconds, you might
Speaker 2: start at three minutes.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 2: But also if this is for you potentially dangerous, don't
Speaker 2: know who you are, I don't know what your current
Speaker 2: level of function is, then maybe don't do it. Having
Speaker 2: said that, like if I was going to get my
Speaker 2: dad to do this exercise I'm describing to you now,
Speaker 2: instead of his legs being at right angles, I would
Speaker 2: have his bum a bit higher on the wall, if
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. So he's not in such
Speaker 2: a deep squad. He's kind of in a partial squat,
Speaker 2: halfway between being upright and being in that position that
Speaker 2: I described. But even for someone who's eighty five being
Speaker 2: in something of a wall squad, even if it's like
Speaker 2: a half wall squad, that's a good place to start. Okay,
Speaker 2: So we've got the balance stuff, the stairs, the hills,
Speaker 2: the backward walking, the wall squad. Next one, I literally
Speaker 2: have one of these, and my dad has one. I
Speaker 2: took him up one two months ago, which is just
Speaker 2: a rubber ball or a tennis ball you can use
Speaker 2: to squeeze and you go, well, what's that about. Well,
Speaker 2: we know that there's an absolute. There's research in fact
Speaker 2: correlating stronger grip strength with longevity and not only a lifespan,
Speaker 2: but also health span. Now we're not saying that just
Speaker 2: including squeezing a ball into your program is going to
Speaker 2: make you live ten years longer, but we do know
Speaker 2: that there is a correlation between that because generally, when
Speaker 2: someone's stronger in the grip, they're stronger in the forearms,
Speaker 2: they're stronger in the body, and so on. So there,
Speaker 2: whether or not that is causal or you know, causation
Speaker 2: or correlation, I'm pretty sure it's correlation more than it
Speaker 2: is causation. In other words, a strong grip doesn't make
Speaker 2: you live twenty years longer, but definitely you know that.
Speaker 2: Really easy, Just grab a ball, squeeze it in, hold
Speaker 2: it as hard as you can for three seconds, let
Speaker 2: it go. I'm doing it right now in my office.
Speaker 2: I'm doing this squeezing movement.
Speaker 1: It's hilarious.
Speaker 2: So squeeze the ball for two or three seconds, let
Speaker 2: it go. Squeeze it two or three seconds, hold let
Speaker 2: it go. Do that five times each hand. Now, even
Speaker 2: if you can only squeeze a little bit, whatever, you
Speaker 2: can do one hundred percent for you is one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Your maximum squeeze might be someone else's easy squeeze or
Speaker 2: vice versa. But what we do is when we do that,
Speaker 2: where increasing grip strength, hand strength in general, forearm strength,
Speaker 2: and certainly you know it's a very easy thing to
Speaker 2: do with some pretty good benefits.
Speaker 1: Speaking of balls, number six is bouncing the ball. Now.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite sayings is we don't stop playing
Speaker 2: because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing,
Speaker 2: which I think George Bernard sure said. So I'm definitely
Speaker 2: not taking credit for that, but you know it seems funny.
Speaker 2: But the ball that I told you that I squeeze,
Speaker 2: it's a yellow rubber ball. And I often, probably sixty
Speaker 2: or seventy percent of the time when I go walking,
Speaker 2: I take that ball with me and I often just
Speaker 2: walk five k's say, seven thousand steps just bouncing the ball.
Speaker 2: I'll be listening to a podcast or listening to a
Speaker 2: lecture that I need to for UNI. I'll be walking
Speaker 2: and I just bounced the ball on the footpath in
Speaker 2: front of me, or the dirt in front of me,
Speaker 2: from hand to hand, so across in front of me,
Speaker 2: right to left, bouncing off the ground in between left
Speaker 2: to right, bouncing off the ground in between, and again balance, coordinate, coordination,
Speaker 2: put your teeth in harps. Really easy to do, fun,
Speaker 2: good for you, good for hand eye coordination, and something
Speaker 2: that creates a positive effect. And also like it's fun.
Speaker 2: I know it seems weird and people look at me sometimes.
Speaker 2: In fact, a lady said to me recently that looks
Speaker 2: like fun, and I said, I'm a twelve year old
Speaker 2: trapped in a sixty one year old body, and she laughed,
Speaker 2: I said, and she said something like we should all
Speaker 2: be so twelve, you know, or something like that. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's fun, and you know, it's I don't know.
Speaker 1: To me.
Speaker 2: I get in a little bit of flow state.
Speaker 1: Just walk bounce, walk, bounce, walk bounce.
Speaker 2: So you can use the same ball that you do
Speaker 2: for your ball squeeze. Number seven still includes the ball,
Speaker 2: although it could be a different a different ball. And
Speaker 2: this is really coordination and a little bit of mobility
Speaker 2: and strength and balance, which is throwing and catching.
Speaker 1: Most people don't throw.
Speaker 2: A ball after they're about eighteen or not regularly, or
Speaker 2: even fourteen or fifteen. So five hundred meters from where
Speaker 2: I live and by the way, I'm not trying to
Speaker 2: be self indulgent here. I'm just giving you examples, like
Speaker 2: if you want to find a way to do this shit,
Speaker 2: you'll do it.
Speaker 1: You'll do it. And if you think, you know.
Speaker 2: One of the challenges with this stuff is it doesn't
Speaker 2: seem high tech, it doesn't seem like groundbreaking. But if
Speaker 2: people just did this stuff, but they just don't like
Speaker 2: if old people just squeeze the ball all the time.
Speaker 2: If old people, and I mean that with complete respect
Speaker 2: because I'm one of them, walk some stairs. If old
Speaker 2: people did some not think about it and not do
Speaker 2: it three times, then never do it again. If old
Speaker 2: people just bound the ball or throw a ball right,
Speaker 2: and it could be throwing it to another person. It
Speaker 2: could be an underhand throw. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 2: an arm over your head, external rotation of the shoulder,
Speaker 2: you know, world champion throw.
Speaker 1: It can be under arm catch, under arm catch.
Speaker 2: So right where two blocks from where I live, there's
Speaker 2: a small park on a corner, and in the middle
Speaker 2: of that is like a half basketball court on one
Speaker 2: side and like on the other side are half a
Speaker 2: tennis court with a brick wall in the middle. And
Speaker 2: so I just go on the tennis side, and I
Speaker 2: just throw my ball at the wall. I throw with
Speaker 2: one hand, I catch with the other. I throw great
Speaker 2: with my left hand because I'm left handed, and I
Speaker 2: throw shit with my right hand because I'm left handed.
Speaker 2: But I throw whatever hand I throw with, I catch
Speaker 2: with the other. I do that for about one hundred throws.
Speaker 2: Then I keep doing my walk. Now again, like these
Speaker 2: things that seem really simple and childish are so good
Speaker 2: for your nervousness, so good for your balance, so good
Speaker 2: for your hand eye coordination, so good for keeping you young.
Speaker 1: But you know, we just need to get out and
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: My suggestion to you, if this is resonating, and if
Speaker 2: you're forty five or older, maybe an idea for you.
Speaker 2: Of course, you know you're going to do something or nothing.
Speaker 2: That's okay, and that's up to you, of course, but
Speaker 2: you might choose two, three, four of these and go,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to start to do this. I'm going
Speaker 2: to start to do some of this just because it's
Speaker 2: easy to do and there's some real.
Speaker 1: Value in it.
Speaker 2: So the next one that I'm going to.
Speaker 1: Share with you is.
Speaker 2: It's it's this is more for older people, but it's
Speaker 2: called I call it a clock step, and what it
Speaker 2: is is so this is probably I mean, anyone can
Speaker 2: do this, but especially for people who are say sixty plus. Now,
Speaker 2: if you know someone who's sixty plus or seventy plus
Speaker 2: or eighty plus, you can.
Speaker 1: Get them to do this.
Speaker 2: And this is a really good exercise. So let's you
Speaker 2: need to have a little bit of an imagination. So
Speaker 2: you're standing on the floor. You've got a little bit
Speaker 2: of space around you. So where you are standing is
Speaker 2: the middle of a clock, right, So remember this activity
Speaker 2: is called clock step clock step.
Speaker 1: So you're in the middle of the clock.
Speaker 2: Then you are you step forward from the middle of
Speaker 2: the clock, which on this clock that's on the ground.
Speaker 2: So you're stepping up to twelve let's say, left foot
Speaker 2: forward and then right foot and then back to the
Speaker 2: middle of the clock. Left foot back, right foot back. Cool.
Speaker 2: So you've just gone from twelve o'clock back to the
Speaker 2: middle of clock. Now you go to nine o'clock on
Speaker 2: the ground, which is to your left. So you step
Speaker 2: out left foot to the nine, bring your right foot
Speaker 2: to the nine, then step back to the middle of
Speaker 2: the clock with your right foot, bring your left foot
Speaker 2: in to meet you you're back in the middle of clock.
Speaker 2: So now you've gone twelve o'clock, nine o'clock, and now
Speaker 2: you step to your right, which as we look at
Speaker 2: the ground, as we step to the right, that would
Speaker 2: be our three o'clock on our clock. So we step
Speaker 2: out to the right with our right foot leading this time,
Speaker 2: not left, so and we step laterally, so in other words,
Speaker 2: we step out.
Speaker 1: To the side.
Speaker 2: We don't, so we keep facing the twelve o'clock. So
Speaker 2: we're facing straight ahead, but we're stepping to the right.
Speaker 2: Take right foot out, bring left foot to meet right,
Speaker 2: then bring left foot back into the center of the clock,
Speaker 2: right foot back in, and now you know what we're
Speaker 2: going to do. We're going to step back to the six.
Speaker 2: We're going to keep facing forward, and now we're going
Speaker 2: back to the six left foot, back to the six
Speaker 2: right foot, and then back into the middle of the clock.
Speaker 2: Right now, so it's just a four way kind of
Speaker 2: step where we're going forwards, we're going sideways, left, sideways right,
Speaker 2: and then we're going backwards. But even just doing twenty
Speaker 2: of those, twenty of those is probably going to take
Speaker 2: you two hundred seconds, So like once around the clock
Speaker 2: is maybe ten seconds. I actually haven't timed it, but
Speaker 2: I'm guessing summer in that now, two hundred and seconds
Speaker 2: of that. Let's round it down to one eighty to
Speaker 2: make it three minutes.
Speaker 1: That's quite a bit of work. That's quite a bit
Speaker 1: of work.
Speaker 2: Some people might start with three, some people might start
Speaker 2: with five.
Speaker 1: Just start whereever you start.
Speaker 2: And this is really good for like if you've got
Speaker 2: a mom or a dad, or a grandma or a
Speaker 2: grandpa or somebody, or it might even be you where
Speaker 2: you know you've had a hip operation or you've got
Speaker 2: some kind of balance issues, or I don't do this
Speaker 2: at the moment because I probably am a little bit
Speaker 2: to advance for that. But there'll be a time in
Speaker 2: my life where I really probably you know, in the
Speaker 2: not too distant future, where I incorporate that and if
Speaker 2: you really then want to go, I want to do
Speaker 2: a more advanced version of that. Will then when you
Speaker 2: step to the point on the clock, you bend your
Speaker 2: knee a little bit and you do almost like a lunge,
Speaker 2: like a lunge where you step into it, you bend
Speaker 2: your knee, then you bring your other foot forward. Now,
Speaker 2: whether or not you're going to twelve or nine or
Speaker 2: three or six o'clock on clock, you can still do
Speaker 2: that same kind of knee bending lunch movement. Again, if
Speaker 2: you're worried about any of this, clear it with your
Speaker 2: physio or your exercise scientist or your exercise physiologist or
Speaker 2: you know the appropriate health fitness professional.
Speaker 1: Two to go.
Speaker 2: The second one is the second last one is easy,
Speaker 2: easy to explain, and relatively easy to execute depending on
Speaker 2: how you do it. So the second last one is
Speaker 2: just weighted walking, and so you can do it a
Speaker 2: couple of ways. There are actually vests that you can buy,
Speaker 2: but I'm trying to do this without any equipment for you.
Speaker 2: But so I have two vests, two weighted vests or
Speaker 2: two vests that I can put weight in. And the
Speaker 2: weights that I have are three pounds. Don't ask me why, Well,
Speaker 2: ask me why why? Because it's American, so it comes
Speaker 2: in pounds. But I can put up to what is it?
Speaker 2: I think it's one hundred. It's about one hundred. Goive
Speaker 2: will take one hundred and forty pounds, which is about
Speaker 2: sixty four kilograms, which is crazy in one of my vests.
Speaker 2: Obviously I've done that like twice. It's hysterically hard.
Speaker 1: I don't do that.
Speaker 2: But what I often do is, which is for me
Speaker 2: relatively easy. I put twenty kilos in one of my vests,
Speaker 2: and so which is it's solid. But I can walk
Speaker 2: with a twenty kilo pack or a twenty kilo kind
Speaker 2: of vest, you know, relatively, I mean it's it's I'm working,
Speaker 2: but I can do five ks with no real problems.
Speaker 2: Now think about this. I go from my current weight
Speaker 2: is eighty one kilos, I put on this vest and
Speaker 2: now I'm now I weigh in inverted commas one hundred
Speaker 2: and one kilos. So now the same guy with the
Speaker 2: same lungs and the same strength, and the same bones
Speaker 2: and skeleton and bone density is moving twenty more kilos.
Speaker 2: You think twenty kilos as a percentage of eighty is
Speaker 2: twenty five percent, right, as a percentage of eighty, twenty
Speaker 2: extra kilos is twenty five percent. So even though it's
Speaker 2: only twenty kilos more, it's twenty five percent more of
Speaker 2: my body weight. So now I've increased my body weight
Speaker 2: in inverted commas by twenty five percent.
Speaker 1: So what does that do for me?
Speaker 2: Well, that increases That makes my heart and lungs work faster,
Speaker 2: so there's cardiovascular benefit, increases bone density because I'm carrying
Speaker 2: more weight, increases strength, increases muscular injury. It's whole bunch
Speaker 2: of stuff, right, And it also with me, it makes
Speaker 2: me really activate my core, you know how the kids
Speaker 2: say that. It really makes me make sure that all
Speaker 2: of the muscles around my lower back and stomach, so
Speaker 2: that whole kind of belt around your waist are really
Speaker 2: switched on and activated. So core muscles, lower back, postural muscles.
Speaker 2: Now you're all going, well, I don't have a fucking vest.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I get you.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: You could find.
Speaker 1: You could not wouldn't be very comfortable, but you could walk.
Speaker 2: With a couple of bricks, you could walk. I think
Speaker 2: most of you are going to have somewhere a.
Speaker 1: Backpack or you know.
Speaker 2: Like one of the things I do is I walk
Speaker 2: to the supermarket sometimes where I will buy maybe ten
Speaker 2: kilos of groceries and I walk down without them obviously
Speaker 2: walk back with them. So I've done a ten kilo
Speaker 2: carry back from the and it's a bit uncomfortable, and
Speaker 2: I've got more weight in one hand than the other
Speaker 2: and this, but all of that discomfort and that imbalance
Speaker 2: means I've got to work harder. I've got to work harder. So,
Speaker 2: if per chance you have a backpack, if not, maybe
Speaker 2: you want to buy a real cheap one from somewhere
Speaker 2: target ten dollars one and put some weight in there.
Speaker 2: You don't have to put in I would start with
Speaker 2: five kilos. And again I probably shouldn't say that. It
Speaker 2: depends on who we are, but most people that I
Speaker 2: know that would do this. You can probably start with
Speaker 2: five kilos. If you're a bit fitter and stronger, you
Speaker 2: can start with ten. And also the other benefit is
Speaker 2: because you're moving more weight because you're you know, like
Speaker 2: for example, this is bro science what I'm about to
Speaker 2: share with you, but I want to give you an example.
Speaker 2: Say when I walk, Let's say when I walk five kilometers.
Speaker 1: Let's say I.
Speaker 2: Walk for an hour, and let's say I'm walking at
Speaker 2: five kilometers an hour, so that's my average speed. And
Speaker 2: let's say hypothetically I expend four hundred calories in that
Speaker 2: five kilometer slash one hour.
Speaker 1: Four hundred calories.
Speaker 2: Now, how many calories I expend depends on, in other words,
Speaker 2: how much energy I burn depends on how much I weigh.
Speaker 1: One two how.
Speaker 2: Efficiently or inefficiently I walk. Interestingly, the more inn ficial
Speaker 2: or biomechanically inefficient I am, the greater the energy expenditure,
Speaker 2: whether or not I'm walking on a really firm surface
Speaker 2: or a soft surface. Like you know that walking on
Speaker 2: sand is much harder than walking on a hard surface,
Speaker 2: So thirty minutes of soft sand walking is exponentially harder
Speaker 2: than thirty minutes of walking around suburbia on a footpath.
Speaker 2: So and then I guess the last one. There's probably
Speaker 2: another one that I can't think of. But the last
Speaker 2: one that I can think of is whether or not
Speaker 2: you're walking on an incline or flat or stairs or hills,
Speaker 2: or that's a variable too. But back to me going,
Speaker 2: Let's say the variable that I change is I'm now
Speaker 2: twenty kilos heavier. Well, I'm going to expend I don't
Speaker 2: know the exact number, but I would tell you that
Speaker 2: I'm going to expend a significantly greater number of calories
Speaker 2: more energy doing the same walk five kilometers at the
Speaker 2: same speed five kilometers per hour over the same time sixty.
Speaker 1: Minutes one hour.
Speaker 2: Right, doing the exact same thing but at a heavier
Speaker 2: body weight in inverted commas. I'm going to increase energy
Speaker 2: expenditure significantly, and also I'm going to get a much
Speaker 2: greater cardiovascular benefit because my heart rate is going to
Speaker 2: be up because I'm working much harder to mobilize one
Speaker 2: hundred and one kilos not eighty one kilos. So a
Speaker 2: range of benefits, but don't be me. You could start
Speaker 2: with two ks, you could start with one K. Like
Speaker 2: whatever you are carrying is an extra challenge that you
Speaker 2: don't normally have, so think about that. And my last
Speaker 2: one is the easiest thing. My caveat with this is
Speaker 2: if you suffer from or deal with low blood pressure,
Speaker 2: you might want to maybe give this a miss, or
Speaker 2: if you're not sure if what I'm about to share
Speaker 2: with you is you know, safe for you, or it's
Speaker 2: definitely not a high risk thing by the way, but
Speaker 2: still let's be sure check with your medical professional. And
Speaker 2: that's just box breathing. And we've spoken about box breathing before.
Speaker 2: And while this ain't going to make you run fast
Speaker 2: or a jumphire, or it's not going to.
Speaker 1: Make you jacked.
Speaker 2: For those of you who overthink, for those of you
Speaker 2: who deal with stress and anxiety and who struggle with
Speaker 2: the internal chaos and turmoil. At times, this kind of concentrated,
Speaker 2: focused breathing can be life changing, life changing, if not
Speaker 2: state changing, in the moment. And so my protocol, so
Speaker 2: box breathing is essentially we breathe in for a period
Speaker 2: of time. Then once we fully breathe in, we hold
Speaker 2: our breath for the same amount of time. Then we
Speaker 2: breathe out for the same amount of time, and at
Speaker 2: the end of that full exhalation, we hold our breath
Speaker 2: for the same amount of time.
Speaker 1: And then that's one box.
Speaker 2: So in, hold out, hold, So we've kind of gone,
Speaker 2: you know, around the square, so to speak. So for me,
Speaker 2: I tend to do five to six seconds. I don't
Speaker 2: sit there with a watch or a clock, but you know,
Speaker 2: so for me it would be in I don't know why,
Speaker 2: I'm demonstrating breathing, in, breathing and breathing, and then I
Speaker 2: get to the end of that, I hold that for
Speaker 2: five or six then I breathe out slowly five or
Speaker 2: six and at the end of that exhalation, when you
Speaker 2: really want to take a breath, you just hold. And
Speaker 2: what that does is it activates our power sympathetic nervous system.
Speaker 2: So the calm the farm, not the fight or flight
Speaker 2: the other one. And typically typical symptoms lower heart rate,
Speaker 2: more relaxed breathing, lower blood pressure, changes in biochemistry where
Speaker 2: we now our body starts to produce calm chemicals, not
Speaker 2: you know, the kind of stress chemicals, and it puts
Speaker 2: us quite quickly, or it can put us quite quickly
Speaker 2: in a much better space. So I recommend box breathing,
Speaker 2: you know, once or twice a day, or.
Speaker 1: As often as you need it.
Speaker 2: But again, all of those things, so number one is balanced,
Speaker 2: Number two is stare or he'll walking.
Speaker 1: Number three is backward walking.
Speaker 2: Number four as wall squats, Number four as ball squeeze,
Speaker 2: So just grip strength stuff, bouncing the ball as number
Speaker 2: six throwing catching. Number seven the clock step, remember standing
Speaker 2: in the middle of the clock blah blah blah, weighted walking,
Speaker 2: So exact same protocol. Just make yourself a bit heavier.
Speaker 2: And the last one box breathing. Now I'm not going
Speaker 2: to win an award for that program. It's not groundbreaking,
Speaker 2: it's not revolutionary. But the truth is that most people
Speaker 2: don't do any of that stuff ever, most people, well.
Speaker 1: Not intentionally anyway.
Speaker 2: So if you're a person and you want to start
Speaker 2: to make.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure you're a person. Let me say that again.
Speaker 2: If you are a person who wants to make a
Speaker 2: few changes, there might be something really simple in there
Speaker 2: which is.
Speaker 1: A kind of a stepping off point for you.
Speaker 2: All right, team, Or or you might want to share
Speaker 2: this with someone for whom you think it's relevant and
Speaker 2: might be helpful. Love, your collective guts is see ya.