Speaker 1: Get everyone Sam here.
Speaker 2: Today is a really interesting episode because it's one of
Speaker 2: those things where we're talking with one of the world's
Speaker 2: best neuroscientists, and sometimes I feel like understanding the brain
Speaker 2: is just too complicated for a simpleton like myself that
Speaker 2: I don't delve into it because I don't think i'll
Speaker 2: understand it. And the refreshing thing about today's episode is
Speaker 2: it was exactly the opposite. It was explained by someone
Speaker 2: who's highly, highly intelligent but speaks in a way that
Speaker 2: hopefully you'll understand, and I understood, so I think you're
Speaker 2: really going to enjoy it. And then I'm going to
Speaker 2: answer some of your fitness questions to help kick off
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three in the best way possible. So we'll
Speaker 2: get to those questions later on. But now our incredible
Speaker 2: neuroscientist Chantell Pratt. I am joined from the West Coast
Speaker 2: of America up in Seattle by the incredible Chantell Pratt,
Speaker 2: who is a neuroscientist and author of her new book
Speaker 2: which is called The Neuroscience of You. Chantell, Welcome to
Speaker 2: the WOODLFE.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me so.
Speaker 2: Chanteau, You've done a lot of work studying the individuality
Speaker 2: of our brains and how they are all unique and differ,
Speaker 2: which I have to admit is very different to what
Speaker 2: most of us will definitely what I have been taught
Speaker 2: when it comes to the brain. I kind of thought,
Speaker 2: we're all in the same boat a little bit. So
Speaker 2: what led you down this path of finding I guess,
Speaker 2: the passion for the brain and challenging what has been
Speaker 2: so widely except for decades.
Speaker 3: I started out wanting to be a medical doctor, a
Speaker 3: physician anyway. I was deep into this accelerated pre med
Speaker 3: program and I needed to take one social science class.
Speaker 3: Took a class purely because it fit into my schedule.
Speaker 3: Is a night class introduction to psychology, and the first
Speaker 3: day of this class, our instructor started to outline the
Speaker 3: fact that the psychological principles were also biological by telling
Speaker 3: the story of Phineas Gauge. Phineas Gauge was a railway
Speaker 3: worker who suffered an accident that resulted in a railway
Speaker 3: spike being blown out through the top of his head,
Speaker 3: right through his frontal lobe, and the fact that he
Speaker 3: walked away from this would be phenomenal even today, But
Speaker 3: he walked away being fundamentally changed his personality changed, just
Speaker 3: the idea that you change this organ and you change
Speaker 3: the person and it was just game over for me.
Speaker 3: I'm like, how is that possible? There's a physical entity
Speaker 3: between your ears that makes you you? So when I
Speaker 3: went to study neuroscience, the fact that the normal that
Speaker 3: the typical paradigm for studying how the brain gives rise
Speaker 3: to the mind or how the brain gives rise to
Speaker 3: feelings completely ignores individual variation and averages across to people.
Speaker 3: Takes a mean or a sort of characterization or a
Speaker 3: sketch of a group of people to describe how the
Speaker 3: brain gives rights to the mind and the feelings and
Speaker 3: the mental life. I found this like utterly not only surprising,
Speaker 3: but unsatisfying, Like, Yeah, why do we care how groups
Speaker 3: of people's brains look in different contexts? And why do
Speaker 3: we form theories on how the group average changes when
Speaker 3: you have a group of people do different things and
Speaker 3: the theories can't account for why two people doing the
Speaker 3: same task are using dramatically different parts of their brain
Speaker 3: to accomplish it.
Speaker 2: I love how it sort of lit that spark in
Speaker 2: you and you've just you know, followed it intently.
Speaker 1: And so passionately for so long.
Speaker 2: Why still, then, do we have these sort of very
Speaker 2: not archaic, but very basic sort of stereotypes of I'm
Speaker 2: a left brain person or brain person. I'm either this
Speaker 2: sort of analytical think or this creative think. Here, it's
Speaker 2: are we just simplifying it down, way, way, way too much.
Speaker 3: Yes, I love to ride, you know, right off into
Speaker 3: the sunset on my individual differences matter, shy horse. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but the brain is really freaking complicated. Sure, on the
Speaker 3: one hand, we have to pick some dimensions to simplify
Speaker 3: to understand anything. Sure, and starting with a characterization of
Speaker 3: how most people work or you know, how the average
Speaker 3: brain works, is a good place to start. What I
Speaker 3: like about the right brain left brain thing, there are
Speaker 3: two things I like about it. One is it is
Speaker 3: people use it, and I think it's one of the
Speaker 3: only kinds of labels we have to understand or to
Speaker 3: describe what we all know intuitively, And that's that we
Speaker 3: don't all work the same, right Like the one size
Speaker 3: fits all approach to neuroscience doesn't fit anyone very well. Right,
Speaker 3: just like one size fits all T shirts don't fit
Speaker 3: anybody very well. So we have this intuition that not
Speaker 3: everyone works the same and the right brain the left
Speaker 3: brain analytical versus right brain creative thinker is something that
Speaker 3: we can grab onto as a way of describing sort
Speaker 3: of characteristic differences between people. What's cool about that story
Speaker 3: is the science that it's actually based on, So it's
Speaker 3: not garbage, it's not myth, it's based on an actual
Speaker 3: scientific fact about how the two hemispheres of the brain work,
Speaker 3: and these differences between people. One of the fundamental differences
Speaker 3: between people in terms of how our brains work is
Speaker 3: actually a difference within us, and that is that everybody
Speaker 3: has two hemispheres. Well not everybody, but most typically developing
Speaker 3: people have two cerebral hemispheres in their brain, and these
Speaker 3: two hemispheres are halfs of your brain process the world
Speaker 3: largely independently. They get input and they create computations or
Speaker 3: understandings of the world. They vote about how you can
Speaker 3: behave and then they share information with one another. And
Speaker 3: this kind of symbiosis or collaboration between brains is what
Speaker 3: drives most of our behavior. And because of that sharing,
Speaker 3: we don't necessarily feel divided. But there are two perspectives
Speaker 3: happening within our own minds, and one of the most
Speaker 3: interesting differences is how distinct those two perspectives are. So
Speaker 3: in a typical strongly right handed individual, the left hemisphere
Speaker 3: is processing the world by dividing it into very skilled
Speaker 3: small problem sets, like processing the trees in a forest.
Speaker 3: It is larger in some areas, faster to do a
Speaker 3: lot of computations, and this kind of lopsidednes This larger
Speaker 3: left hemisphere allows us to become specialized for things like
Speaker 3: language calculations, et cetera, newer kinds of human thinking tasks.
Speaker 3: But what's interesting about this, and one of the main
Speaker 3: points of my book, is how different doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 3: better or worse. It's just a continuum of trade offs.
Speaker 3: What's interesting about this is that the way the brain
Speaker 3: becomes lopsided, which allows this left hemisphere specialization, is actually
Speaker 3: by shrinking parts of the rate hemisphere, so it actually
Speaker 3: sort of handicaps the area of the brain that does
Speaker 3: spatial navigation and three dimensional processing of the world. I
Speaker 3: just read a book called The Dyslexic Advantage that talks
Speaker 3: about how people with dyslexia tend to be better at
Speaker 3: like mechanistic or world building things that require this three
Speaker 3: dimensional view that takes place in the rate hemisphere.
Speaker 2: So my wife and my seventeen year old daughter are
Speaker 2: both dyslexic and have ADHD, and at first in our
Speaker 2: relationship I used to get frustrated because I'm quite the opposite.
Speaker 2: You know, I can sort of see words and numbers
Speaker 2: really really easily. But if we were together, I would
Speaker 2: be the one that gets lost. Or if a pram
Speaker 2: arrives to put together for our kids, all stare at
Speaker 2: the instructions for about three days and still not to
Speaker 2: be able to do it. In my seventeen year old
Speaker 2: to be able to put it together in about eight
Speaker 2: seconds without the instructions. It's like, it's fascinating. How do
Speaker 2: we identify what type we are? Or at least you know,
Speaker 2: as you know, narrow it down as much as possible.
Speaker 3: Well without being able to come into a lab and
Speaker 3: get a picture of your brain, which I assume the
Speaker 3: people who read my book won't do. Yes, the most
Speaker 3: straightforward instinct or insight you can get about how lopsided
Speaker 3: your brain is is by thinking about the relative skill
Speaker 3: of your two hands.
Speaker 2: Right, So hold on really quick, you got dogs playing
Speaker 2: here that this.
Speaker 3: Is about the left hemisphere's ability to stay goal oriented
Speaker 3: and focused versus the right hemispheres noticing ability to be
Speaker 3: reflexively wondering wh the dogs is summery.
Speaker 1: We cave it real in the chel dog's backing. It's oh,
Speaker 1: part of the shot. I love it.
Speaker 3: Well, Okay, So number one, Handedness is a continuum. You know,
Speaker 3: most of us identify as right or left handed, but
Speaker 3: in fact the degree of handed the sort of degree
Speaker 3: of skill between your hands, varies on a continuum. And
Speaker 3: what's interesting is that it's actually the we can, the
Speaker 3: strength of the we can that determines how balanced you
Speaker 3: will be. So so one way to do this if
Speaker 3: you go to my website, which is Chantelpratt dot com.
Speaker 3: There's a research tab and I've linked to other people's research.
Speaker 3: So one thing you can do is check the boxes
Speaker 3: exercise where you actually take a mouse with your right
Speaker 3: hand and left hand and see how many bubbles you
Speaker 3: can check in sixty seconds, and just compare the relative
Speaker 3: strength of your two hands. Most people cannot, like not
Speaker 3: do anything with their non dominant hand, but some people can,
Speaker 3: you know, would never open a doorknob with their non
Speaker 3: dominant hand, where others can do it. No problem. And
Speaker 3: there are other things you can do too, like if
Speaker 3: you're strongly you know, right hand dominant, and also like
Speaker 3: always go up the stairs with your right foot, or
Speaker 3: would sit like would also like look into a microscope
Speaker 3: with your right eye. These are all hints that you're
Speaker 3: strongly right side dominant, which means that you have this
Speaker 3: left lop sided brain because control of the body and
Speaker 3: the brain are switched to the left side of the
Speaker 3: brain controls the right side of the body.
Speaker 2: This is so powerful because you need to understand what
Speaker 2: you are naturally and then you need to embrace that
Speaker 2: to reach your potential by working out this is who
Speaker 2: I am, and this is if I do something from
Speaker 2: a career perspective that utilizes my natural kind of way
Speaker 2: of thinking and skill set, then I'm just going to
Speaker 2: be more successful because I'm working. I'm working in the
Speaker 2: space that I'm stronger. But you're saying if you take
Speaker 2: that too far and you neglect to the other side completely,
Speaker 2: that actually causes a lop sidedness, and you better off
Speaker 2: having a balanced approach where you sure utilize your strengths
Speaker 2: but don't neglect your weaknesses.
Speaker 1: Is that sort of what you're saying.
Speaker 3: That's a very interesting take. I think there are advantages
Speaker 3: to being everywhere on the spectrum, right, Like, just like
Speaker 3: you said, like you know, verbal instructions come quite easily
Speaker 3: to you, but you would like get lost in a
Speaker 3: new building or whatever. You know, there's a cost to
Speaker 3: this linguistic advantage that's pretty new in our brain's evolution.
Speaker 3: And right now we live in a society that highly
Speaker 3: prizes being able to read. Right, So all of education
Speaker 3: for better or for worse, and I think it's for
Speaker 3: worse because language is really new in terms of skills
Speaker 3: that our human brain is able to do. And I
Speaker 3: think what has happened is that we take for grited
Speaker 3: some really computationally hard but older things that our brain does,
Speaker 3: like navigation or just basic like memory organization or spatial
Speaker 3: rotation or motor function. So like, think about the fact
Speaker 3: that we have all these computer algorithms that can beat
Speaker 3: the world's expert in chess, and we think, oh, that's
Speaker 3: like chess or go or whatever is you know, really
Speaker 3: that's a smart quote unquote way of behaving. But a
Speaker 3: computer these ais can beat us. But yet we don't
Speaker 3: have a robot that can move a chess piece. With
Speaker 3: the acuity of a five year old. So we have
Speaker 3: an idea of the way, the optimal way of being
Speaker 3: that's defined based on a cultural norm of right now,
Speaker 3: but really doesn't appreciate the sophistication and the importance of
Speaker 3: all the computetions of our brain, be they motor, be
Speaker 3: they navigation. You know, we have this like idea of
Speaker 3: how to focus, how to communicate that really involves like
Speaker 3: Western educational systems and working in an office nine to five,
Speaker 3: and really largely ignore what our brains evolve for the
Speaker 3: broader range of things that are defined us success in
Speaker 3: the human brain. And so what I you know, sort
Speaker 3: of went into this thinking is like why do I
Speaker 3: have eighty six billion neurons and I can't do two
Speaker 3: things well at the same time? Like what is the
Speaker 3: point of this brain design? Why are we so bad
Speaker 3: at multitasking? Are like changing our behavior in goal oriented ways?
Speaker 3: And what I've come to realize is that a lot
Speaker 3: of things that feel frustrating or feel like sticking points
Speaker 3: for us are precisely the thing that allows us to
Speaker 3: do something else phenomenal. Right, And so like, for instance,
Speaker 3: I think that attention and the fact that we are
Speaker 3: actually not. I think I know that the reason we
Speaker 3: can't focus on multiple things at once, or we can't
Speaker 3: operate based on multiple goals at one time, is because
Speaker 3: this remarkable flexibility of human behavior. Humans can like I
Speaker 3: could say something to you right now. I could say, please,
Speaker 3: every time my dogs bark, stand up and do a
Speaker 3: jumping jack. You know, I could tell your listeners that,
Speaker 3: and they could do it immediately instantly, despite the fact
Speaker 3: that there was no reward system in your life. I
Speaker 3: think I would be willing to bet that there's no
Speaker 3: situation in your life in which doing a jumping jack
Speaker 3: when you hear a dog bark was rewarding or important
Speaker 3: where you ever practice that. But I can use language
Speaker 3: to reprogram your brain instantly, or reconfigure the networks of
Speaker 3: your brain to have them do something that they've never
Speaker 3: done before. But that takes up about a third of
Speaker 3: the neurons in your frontal lobe. And we could play,
Speaker 3: you know, for two hours. I could say, well, okay,
Speaker 3: jumping jacks for dogs or this or that, and there
Speaker 3: are almost infinite number of things that you can do.
Speaker 3: The flexibility of this system requires a whole lot of
Speaker 3: brain power, and because it's taking up about a third
Speaker 3: of the frontal lobe. These networks in the brain that
Speaker 3: don't have specialized jobs, they're flexible. They can be recombined
Speaker 3: in different ways to do different things. I can't do
Speaker 3: more than one effortful thing at a time. If I
Speaker 3: maybe if I get really lucky and find two things
Speaker 3: that don't overlap and need the same neurons, maybe I
Speaker 3: can kind of juggle between those two things. But most
Speaker 3: animals don't do that. Most animals move through the world
Speaker 3: in stimulus response ways and sort of practiced behaviors. It's
Speaker 3: precisely the human flexibility, the nature of our flexible information
Speaker 3: processing that creates this information bottleneck. So that you know,
Speaker 3: I guess what I would say to your listeners is
Speaker 3: be careful what you wish for a lot of things,
Speaker 3: like forgetting is really important to generalizing and learning categories
Speaker 3: of things. You know, people who can't forget have a
Speaker 3: real hard time learning any kind of abstract principle. So
Speaker 3: a lot of the things that we want to be
Speaker 3: better or different about our brands are actually really optimally
Speaker 3: working for us.
Speaker 2: The education thing I find fascinating because I was only
Speaker 2: talking with my teenage daughter because she's just she's doing
Speaker 2: her year eleven exams, she's just finished them. Who's not
Speaker 2: wonderfully academically. You know, she's dyslexic, so she struggles to
Speaker 2: finish her exams in the allocated time and all this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. She gets very distracted when she's trying
Speaker 2: to study in focus. But she's creatively brilliant, and she
Speaker 2: knows that she wants to study fashion. She wants to
Speaker 2: go to New York and study fashion.
Speaker 1: And part of.
Speaker 2: Me is like responsible dad saying it's really important you
Speaker 2: finish your schooling and you take it seriously, and the
Speaker 2: other parties, I'm not worried about you at all because
Speaker 2: I actually think you what you want to do is
Speaker 2: what you should do, and you're just going to flourish.
Speaker 2: What would your advice be to parents who are looking
Speaker 2: to help their kids through schooling, and not not necessarily
Speaker 2: my age children, but as they get older and they're
Speaker 2: kind of understanding how their brain works and embracing that individuality.
Speaker 3: You know, I study predictors of learning success. So we've
Speaker 3: shown that if you close your eyes and do nothing
Speaker 3: for five minutes, you can tell by the patterns of
Speaker 3: connectivity in the brain how easily someone will learn a
Speaker 3: natural language like French or even a programming language like
Speaker 3: our Python or Java. So there's something in the way
Speaker 3: your brain is connected that can determine how successful you'll
Speaker 3: be in a particular environment. Does this mean that if
Speaker 3: your brain isn't working like that, like give it up,
Speaker 3: don't even try and learn a language. No, Because the
Speaker 3: number one predictor of success of most of the hard
Speaker 3: things in life. I think as soon as I say this,
Speaker 3: you're going to say, duh, like this is obvious is motivation, right,
Speaker 3: And so what I think happens in schools is that
Speaker 3: you learn that you're not good at something, yeah, and
Speaker 3: you have to work harder to do that thing. And
Speaker 3: that can be very non motivating. If you're not inherently
Speaker 3: driven to learn algebra and you don't know why you're
Speaker 3: going to need algebra in your life and you struggle,
Speaker 3: it can be this sort of self fulfilling prophecy, right,
Speaker 3: because you have to be more motivated, you have to
Speaker 3: work harder to learn this thing for whatever reason, and
Speaker 3: you don't think you're going to be good at it.
Speaker 3: There are a couple hidden layers here. One is it
Speaker 3: doesn't mean you're not good at algebra, or it doesn't
Speaker 3: mean you're not good at a foreign language. It means
Speaker 3: that in the way that that is being taught to
Speaker 3: you right now is not the natural way that your
Speaker 3: brain thrives. So I think, like the messaging you send
Speaker 3: your kids is not you're bad at this. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: how is the best way to expose you to this information?
Speaker 3: This is hard for everybody, and it's you know, easier
Speaker 3: when it's matched to the way that your brain learns,
Speaker 3: because I can give you you know, for every person
Speaker 3: I've ever talked to about learning, there's a story about
Speaker 3: someone telling them they were no good at something. You're
Speaker 3: not bad at math. You're having a hard time learning
Speaker 3: the way this is being taught to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean just just reframing it like that. I
Speaker 1: mean that that.
Speaker 2: Simple sentence that you just said is every child needs
Speaker 2: to hear.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. And how crappy would the world
Speaker 3: be if everybody was smart in the same way. There's
Speaker 3: a reason that our brains work differently because in a team,
Speaker 3: you know, you were talking about like ADHD also right,
Speaker 3: like imagine that there are our ancestors were like hunting
Speaker 3: and gathering and you've got a team of people. You
Speaker 3: need somebody to keep you on track. You need somebody
Speaker 3: to tell you, hey, we've already been in this neighborhood.
Speaker 3: But you also need somebody to notice the thing that
Speaker 3: nobody's expected.
Speaker 1: Yeah, save everybody's life.
Speaker 2: I knew today would be we scratch the surface our listeners.
Speaker 2: That which there will be a lot of them that
Speaker 2: are really interested in this and would like to buy
Speaker 2: your book. It is called The Neuroscience of You. And
Speaker 2: then if people wanted to find out a little bit
Speaker 2: more and do some of your tests that that mouse test,
Speaker 2: the right side, left side one, I'm going to absolutely
Speaker 2: go away and do that. They go to Chantelpratt dot com.
Speaker 1: Is that correct?
Speaker 3: That's correct, that's correct, And there are a bunch of
Speaker 3: other games you can play there. You get it for
Speaker 3: each one. You can click. If you want to actually
Speaker 3: do research, do a little bit longer, maybe fifteen minute
Speaker 3: tests and okay, that will then contribute to the research.
Speaker 3: If you don't feel like you want your brain being researched,
Speaker 3: you can just click just for me and they'll get
Speaker 3: a short and sweet version that also gives you feedback
Speaker 3: on how you did and what it means, and I
Speaker 3: think that's a great way to get started.
Speaker 1: Beautiful. I love it.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us here on the
Speaker 2: wood Life.
Speaker 1: Have a great day.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: So I definitely think that chat would have got our
Speaker 2: brain's ticking.
Speaker 1: Excuse the pattern.
Speaker 2: There's a link in the show notes to Chantel's website
Speaker 2: where you can do one of her little brain tests.
Speaker 2: I say it little, maybe it's not little, but I'm
Speaker 2: going to go and do it. I think it's really
Speaker 2: interesting to find the uniqueness of our brains. Now we'll
Speaker 2: move away from brains to bodies as it is time
Speaker 2: for me to answer some of your exercise questions. All right,
Speaker 2: our first exercise questions for twenty twenty three, Which is
Speaker 2: good because I if nothing else comes of listening to
Speaker 2: the Woodlife this year, but it gets you moving more.
Speaker 1: That puts a huge smile on my face and is
Speaker 1: a massive win.
Speaker 2: So let's get into some of these questions that perhaps
Speaker 2: are holding you back, or you feel like when you're
Speaker 2: training you're not getting the most out of your training.
Speaker 1: You're still a little bit confused.
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan in training smarter, not harder, So
Speaker 2: if I can help you in any way that you
Speaker 2: modify your training and you get better results because of it,
Speaker 2: then that that's what I'm all about. So our first
Speaker 2: question has come through from an.
Speaker 4: Hey, Sam. I often hear about resistance training and how
Speaker 4: important it is to include two to three times per
Speaker 4: week as well as our cardio type of training, whether
Speaker 4: that's walking, running, swimming, But in terms of the resistance training,
Speaker 4: you very seldom hear people give detail of what that
Speaker 4: should include. How long should each session be, what should
Speaker 4: we be doing, should we be doing half upper body,
Speaker 4: half lower body or concentrate on full body for every session, etc.
Speaker 1: Thank you bye, And that is I mean this sincerely.
Speaker 2: That's going to be a question that's going to be
Speaker 2: hard to beat this year because I think you spot on.
Speaker 2: I think so many people are starting to get the message,
Speaker 2: which is a good message. I need to be doing
Speaker 2: some form of resistance training. Remember when we talk about
Speaker 2: resistance training doesn't have to be heavy weight training.
Speaker 1: It can be anything against a resistance.
Speaker 2: Two to three times a week to really get the
Speaker 2: best results both from a fat burning and a sort
Speaker 2: of tone and strength perspective.
Speaker 1: And it's correct. I one hundred percent agree with that.
Speaker 2: So if you're doing these two to three sessions or
Speaker 2: anywhere from two to five. Really, I don't think you
Speaker 2: need to be doing resistance training seven times a week,
Speaker 2: and then how you do it needs to depend on
Speaker 2: how many sessions you're doing. So if you're doing five
Speaker 2: resistance training workouts a week, I probably wouldn't do full
Speaker 2: body every time. If you're doing two or three a week,
Speaker 2: I think doing full body is a good thing because
Speaker 2: you're probably going to have a day of full forty
Speaker 2: eight hours in between your sessions.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're doing resistance.
Speaker 2: Training every day Monday to Friday, you're not likely to
Speaker 2: be able to train at the volume or the intensity
Speaker 2: that's going to give you the best results if you're
Speaker 2: doing full body every day, because you're going to be
Speaker 2: effectively training sore, fatigued muscles again.
Speaker 1: The next day, I like different splits.
Speaker 2: I like push pull legs, So that's one day I
Speaker 2: do push exercises, so I do all of my pushing
Speaker 2: movements my chest, my shoulders, my triceps. The next day
Speaker 2: I do all my pulling movements where I work my
Speaker 2: back and my biceps, and the third day I do
Speaker 2: my lower body. So I do three workouts a week.
Speaker 2: Two of them are focusing on my upper body strength
Speaker 2: but with very different muscles targeted, and then one of
Speaker 2: them is lower body. And I think if you can
Speaker 2: do let's say three to five strength training sessions a week,
Speaker 2: and if it's closer to five, you're doing more of
Speaker 2: a split, and if it's closer to two or three
Speaker 2: you're doing full body, then you're.
Speaker 1: Going to be holding yourself in really good stead. Our
Speaker 1: next question is from Allison.
Speaker 3: Hey, Sam, I just wanted to know what your thoughts
Speaker 3: were on swimming and running for cardio and which one
Speaker 3: is better and why.
Speaker 2: They're both great. Allison, I think it really depends on
Speaker 2: what you're training for. Are you training for general fitness.
Speaker 2: If you're training for general fitness, I would have both
Speaker 2: of them if you can, in your weekly routine because
Speaker 2: they're so different. One of them's wonderful cardio of vascally
Speaker 2: but no impact, and one of them's wonderful cardio vascually
Speaker 2: bit high impact because our feet are banging against the ground.
Speaker 2: But if you're training for a marathon, I'd probably be
Speaker 2: doing more running and maybe the swimmings once a week
Speaker 2: or once a fortnight as a bit of a cross
Speaker 2: training recovery session, but if you're not training for a
Speaker 2: specific event, I'd include both in my weekly routine.
Speaker 1: Our last question is from Jodie.
Speaker 5: Hey Sam, just wanting a bit of advice of what
Speaker 5: sort of exercise I can do that won't put extra
Speaker 5: pressure on my lower back. I do have a sway
Speaker 5: back and I get a bit of pain in my
Speaker 5: lower back with a lot of exercises. So it's usually
Speaker 5: when I'm doing something horizontal like a plank or in
Speaker 5: pilates with leglowers, but I also feel pain or some
Speaker 5: pain with some standing exercises, like if I'm doing bicep curls,
Speaker 5: my back starts to ache. So any suggestions would be great.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 2: That's a great question, Jody. I'm a bit of a swaybacker,
Speaker 2: so welcome. Welcome to the club. I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's a great club to be a part of, but
Speaker 2: your glutes are your best friend. And what do I
Speaker 2: mean by that. The reason you get a saw back
Speaker 2: is your pelvic tilt is out of whack, which means
Speaker 2: you've got a big curve in your lower back, a
Speaker 2: big sea curve because your pelvis is tilting backwards. So
Speaker 2: you need to get good at tucking your pelvis or
Speaker 2: your hips under and then holding that position with your
Speaker 2: glutes squeezed. And to be honest, whether you're in a
Speaker 2: plank position horizontal, whether you're standing up in front of
Speaker 2: the mirror doing bicep curls in a vertical position, it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. And I guess the thing here is we
Speaker 2: think about it really consciously when we're doing a plank
Speaker 2: because it's a static exercise where we're not doing anything else,
Speaker 2: So working on that pelvic tilt, squeezing those glutes becomes
Speaker 2: a really simple thing to focus on. Then, when we're
Speaker 2: doing shoulder press or bicep curls or something else with
Speaker 2: our arms, even with our legs, we tend to forget
Speaker 2: our better perfect till because we're focusing on our biceps
Speaker 2: or our triceps or whatever.
Speaker 1: It might be.
Speaker 2: You need to do your bicep curls side onto the mirror,
Speaker 2: and you need to tuck your pelvis first, squeeze your glutes,
Speaker 2: and you need to continually remind yourself are my glutes
Speaker 2: on them? By that, I mean are you clenching a
Speaker 2: walln up between your butt cheeks? And if you've relaxed
Speaker 2: your butt cheeks, stop doing your bicep curls, reclench, and
Speaker 2: then go back to your arms. And if you do that,
Speaker 2: whether you're horizontal or vertical, first of all, you'll get
Speaker 2: a better bum. Second of all, you'll get us less
Speaker 2: sore back, and third of all, your posture improved dramatically
Speaker 2: across your whole body. I promise you, over time you'll
Speaker 2: correct it.
Speaker 1: And you'll be very thankful that you did.
Speaker 2: There we go.
Speaker 1: Three brilliant questions.
Speaker 2: You've obviously been waiting for me to get back from holidays,
Speaker 2: and away we go.
Speaker 1: Just make sure if you've.
Speaker 2: Got any questions fitness, food, whatever they are, there's a
Speaker 2: link in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you,
Speaker 2: and I'll see you next week.
Speaker 3: M m m m m m hmmmmmm mmmmmmmm mm hmmmmmm