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The Relaxed Running podcast is a behind the scenes conversation with the best athletes, coaches and professionals in the world of distance running. From training, hydration and nutrition to racing and recovering, we learn from the best in the world.
Relaxed conversations which are packed with actionable takeaways to help you take your running performance up a notch. Save yourself years of guess work and learn from the people who are doing it at the highest level.
Lawrence van Lingen (00:00.812)
Hey, how you doing?
Tyson (00:02.309)
Hey brother, how are you? Good to see you again man.
Lawrence van Lingen (00:04.238)
Yeah, good things. Happy New Year. Yeah. Am I supposed to move this closer? Let's try and get our faces the same size.
Tyson (00:13.199)
Yeah, yeah, it's the constant battle. I don't know if you can see is can you see if my Audio is does it look like my lips are moving to a different speed to my audio Okay, I thought that might have been the case what I'll do
Lawrence van Lingen (00:23.841)
Yes.
Tyson (00:30.311)
Man, give me one second, I'm gonna log out and log back in again, okay? Yep, won't be a sec.
Tyson (00:51.703)
Okay, my audio is not gonna sound as good right now, but I'll make sure that when we actually post it, I put it through little AI thing, which makes it sound studio quality. So don't stress if I sound a bit tinny right now. Awesome, man, yeah. It's actually, so it's a podcast that's been bought out by, sorry, a product that's been bought out by Adobe, and it's like $11 a month, and it's so good. Like if I'm ever recording remotely and I don't have my stuff, it's.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:02.508)
Okay, no problem. Is that like auto tune?
Lawrence van Lingen (01:14.048)
Yeah.
Tyson (01:19.871)
It's mind blowing how good it is. So right now I'm just on my Mac audio and you can put through this program and adjust the intensity of the studio quality that you want. And then honestly, sometimes I'm like, I don't know why I spent $700 on the microphone that I just stopped using because that program is so good. it's, yeah, it's still, anyway, I won't bore you with details, but I'm having troubles.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:24.513)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:36.651)
Crazy. Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:42.187)
Well, the microphones and the phones are so good now, you know.
Tyson (01:47.927)
It's incredible. It's incredible.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:49.547)
I've been using this little one just because I think if you hold it, it just takes an echo out and I'm not doing post-production, you know. So that should sound pretty good, hopefully.
Tyson (01:58.721)
FISHFUL
I shouldn't be doing post-production, but for some reason I am. I'm getting, just by nature of doing so many, I'm getting pretty good at it, which I never thought I would say. Anyway.
Lawrence van Lingen (02:05.119)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (02:10.399)
How many podcasts do we have now?
Tyson (02:12.759)
Man, this is like 270 or 260 maybe. Yeah, dude. It's pretty much just been every week for five years. Yeah, it's so fun though. Like I know you probably, it's so fun just being able to be a guest on podcasts, which I hear you mostly doing. But even this, like once you get past the setup and the technical stuff, like, actually, I love the conversation when the conversation finally begins. But it's just all that, it's all the tech stuff that.
Lawrence van Lingen (02:16.83)
Fuck! That's a lot.
Wow.
Lawrence van Lingen (02:35.114)
right.
Tyson (02:41.109)
I just have to sort out, but anyway, blah, blah. Man, I already hit record. I can edit all that first part out. I had a little bit of a scaffold of a few things that I was gonna talk to you about. Essentially, I took a couple of notes from your conversation with, I always stuff his name up, Dr. Chatterjay, Dr. Rangan Chatterjay. Rangan, Rangan, yeah, Dr. Rangan. And I thought there was a couple of things in there that I'd be keen to scratch.
Lawrence van Lingen (02:42.824)
Yeah, cool.
Lawrence van Lingen (02:49.322)
again.
Lawrence van Lingen (02:54.163)
Yes.
Lawrence van Lingen (03:00.595)
wrong yeah wrong wrong wrong
Tyson (03:10.921)
scratch the surface of even more. That was a great chat.
Lawrence van Lingen (03:12.807)
Yeah, yeah, it was good. He's yeah, he's a great guy and he's you know, he's yeah, he's really good at what he does. But he, you know, he's got a really good perspective and a really good medical background to him, which is pretty cool because like some people think like what we're doing is a little bit woo, you know, I think like neuroscience and modern sort of understanding of hormones and behavioral studies are starting to to align.
Tyson (03:15.703)
They seem to have a good life.
Lawrence van Lingen (03:42.534)
And we started to realize like, actually, you know, we probably do need to modify the way we converse with people and create environments to change and save places to, you know, the real goose of high performance now all into sort of oxytocin and, you know, as a high performance hormone. Yeah.
Tyson (03:57.335)
Yeah, what was interesting, I liked it. Yeah, sorry, man, I cut out a little bit there. I thought I didn't mean to interrupt. One thing I liked about what you guys were doing, and one thing I respect about him is being from that medical background. You said something during the conversation where was like, medical practitioners are often taught just to focus or specialize on a smaller and smaller part of the body. And you can tell when you say that, like, I reckon this is where things get...
Lawrence van Lingen (04:02.151)
No, no problem.
Lawrence van Lingen (04:17.832)
Okay.
Tyson (04:24.543)
woo woo for some people because you say that to someone in the medical industry and they go, yeah, of course. And then you say, no, but everything's connected and they go, here we go. Like we're definitely about to talk about birth work. And what I loved about that is for him, it was like a natural progression of where the conversation should go. I just finished reading it. Awesome book. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's called good energy. It's relatively new by Kelly means she was like a former, she was a, I'm not sure what the actual name of this doctor is. She was like a sinus doc.
Lawrence van Lingen (04:31.953)
Yeah.
at time.
Lawrence van Lingen (04:40.027)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (04:46.693)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (04:53.637)
Yeah.
Tyson (04:54.007)
And she was ahead of her class. She was dominating. She went in and she was doing like 500 sinus surgeries a year or something like that. And then over the period of a few years, she started to realise that these surgeries that she was doing on people, like the people would come back in three years with the same problem. And she's like, what am I doing? Like, and her struggle was she was on half a million dollars a year or something, maybe not that much. And she's like, well, how do I say goodbye to this? But eventually she did. And she went down this
Lawrence van Lingen (05:01.115)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (05:10.309)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tyson (05:21.879)
for lack of a better description, like holistic medical path. And it's unbelievable. Yeah, I've recommended it a few times on the show, but yeah, I'm kind of a, I'm really big fan of that holistic approach. And there was one thing that I was thinking maybe we could start the conversation from today. Another thing you said to Dr. Rangan was that you thought around about 90 % of athletes or 90 % of people in general aren't breathing correctly.
Lawrence van Lingen (05:25.359)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (05:48.198)
Yeah.
Tyson (05:50.453)
And I thought, is the step to launch a conversation from?
Lawrence van Lingen (05:54.437)
Yeah, I'll put an asterisk on that and say 90 % of the people that come and see me don't breathe well. Like it's really eight or nine out of 10. But remember, people that come see me usually have a problem. So we're dealing with a slightly skewed population or segment of the population. And yeah, but it and to just like, let's say with a breathing.
Really, really healthy breathing, in my opinion, is rare. And if people have it, I ask them, what do you do about breathing? What's your thoughts on breathing? Do you nose breathe? you, you and I mean, you could sort of create a checklist. And the one is that they're all probably nose breathing when they sleep at night. They're certainly not mouth breathers. A lot of them genetically have great noses. I don't have a genetically very amazing nose. You know, often these people have really big nasal structures and big...
intakes like a racehorse. And some of them do do sort of some some sort of breath work. So it might be sort of almost a little bit more genetic in life. But what we find is like, let's just to define it very, very clearly, when your chest goes up, your diaphragm should descend down. for people that can see me. OK, so as I breathe in, your ribs need to go up again and your diaphragm needs to go down.
And one of the things I think people get into problems is one of the cues that has been sort of, let's say it became a meme or viral was to engage your belly button or engage your core by putting, drawing your belly button in towards your spine. And that kind of tends to make the diaphragm go up. And so in my segment, you know, I'm either seeing people, let's say with chronic pain, back pain.
a hard to fix injury or elite athletes and you probably find well maybe that's a skewed population because a lot of athletes will reflexively tighten their core to create stability and it impairs breathing and you know it's really tricky it's a tricky sort of area to unpack but I if you're an endurance athlete breathing is really important and breathing should be uninhibited and open and that diaphragm needs to go down and it's not a given that it does go down I mean physiology will tell you it goes down
Lawrence van Lingen (08:12.674)
Well, maybe it goes down a little bit, but it doesn't fully, you know, doesn't fully excursive, I think is the right word. It doesn't fully go down. Well, there's a it'll be stuck sort of on the one side. And you as a listener will know that that's you if your shoulders sit up near your ears, you know. So when you're running, you can't really relax your shoulders. If you take a deep breath, it often comes up into your chest. You can practice that practically like if you mouth breathe and take a deep breath in. You tend to draw air into the upper part of your chest. If you
take a deep breath in nose breathing, you tend to find your diaphragm works a little bit more, you draw the air deeper and we want to draw the air deeper into our lungs and have that sensation of diaphragm going down. But it's really, really common. And then just one other caveat on that, just because you can sit down and take a deep breath in and your diaphragm expands. actually sitting is one of the times it becomes a problem. If you're lying on your back with your knees bent and your
breathing systems really relaxed, you might say, well, what's the problem? This is really easy. But that doesn't mean if we put you on all fours, you can, you can breathe in and your belly button can drop down. And it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean if you sit where your sort of stomach abdominal contents are sort of tending to push your diaphragm up that you could do it. Or doesn't mean if you get out of a car after a long drive that your diaphragm is really naturally functions optimally. So I think there's
Tyson (09:20.919)
you
Lawrence van Lingen (09:35.648)
You know, there is a bit of a range and we're not talking absolutes, but yeah, nine out of 10 people, I would say is breathing is suboptimal on many different levels. yeah, you I created a questionnaire on breathing at one stage and had people fill it out. And then it is pretty interesting, you know, like people have more breathing issues than you might think. It was just like who has sinus problem, who has blocked ears, who has payfee or allergies, you know, who has hiccups.
Tyson (09:47.58)
to this.
Lawrence van Lingen (10:05.567)
You know snoring like I don't know just you can just there's a lot that you can go into and if you have back pain, rib pain, chest pain, know if you gasp when you run like I'm now going to clear my throat of course because you're talking about breathing you know sorry you know do you gasp when you run do you pant do you is your breathing sharp and hard do you find like you know if you increase your exertion does your breathing slowly
increase or does it is this sudden step up point where like, now it feels sort of out of control, you know, and very few people can tickle the green boxes on something on an evaluation of your breathing.
Tyson (10:46.678)
Yeah, so when you're referring to these elite athletes or these athletes who are coming in and speaking to you, are you speaking solely about their breathing just from a relaxed point of view or are you speaking about, okay, like when you start to exert yourself a little more physically, that's where we tend to see these breathing problems start to rise.
Lawrence van Lingen (11:04.094)
I would say look on a spectrum. mean, I know a few, mean, a relative few on one hand, athletes that have retired from the sport because of breathing disorders and anxiety and specifically usually shows up in the swim or have had their professional careers radically altered by severe breathing issues. At the elite level, mean, you know, don't know, like like guys at a broken Kona
records, you know, can't breathe in the prone position, which is in the bicycle properly. They can breathe upright, they can breathe on their side, they can be standing, but cannot get their belly to extend in their diaphragm to drop down prone. So, yeah, the world and then with COVID as well is a lot of people, I think just from anxiety and tension ended up with with stuck breathing patterns or residual stuck breathing patterns. When COVID hit and everything shut down, we weren't allowed to see people.
I must have seen about 30 people on Zoom, all of them with sudden onset back pain and all of them were breathing related. So just the anxiety of getting the virus was upsetting me back pain or, you know, maybe it's because they they were at home or they were sitting or sitting behind Zoom, you know, but sitting and looking at a screen is bad for your eyes and bad for your breathing. There's a thing called screen apnea, there's breathing apnea. it's so on one hand, someone says that's ridiculous. You can't say that. I'm talking about a bit of nuance in this like
Is your breathing perfect? Most certainly, majority of people not. And you might not think it's that big a deal. But, you know, these things tend to play out. And what happens is if you have. If you have difficulty obstruction with something at rest. Then as we stress the system, those things tend to amplify. So if your breathing is little glitchy lying down, then maybe it's fine on an easy run. Maybe it's fine on a moderate run.
as you start doing intervals and as you start stressing your breathing system you might find that suddenly it starts being gaspy or less than optimum or maybe your cap on your blood on your threshold is actually the strength or robustness or resilience of your breathing. But what's very important, we see this with the triathletes because I think of the swim start and it's kind of combative and your face is underwater and you're getting kicked in the goggles or whatever.
Lawrence van Lingen (13:26.939)
And under stress, you're trying to qualify for the Olympics or you are at the Olympics or like the States up. Then you see these breathing patterns start to emerge and suddenly you go like, shit. and my love is where on this podcast, they say, dear. yeah. This is not great. You know, now suddenly you realize that I have a breathing issue. And the problem or the reality of breathing issues is that it's one of those things that.
Tyson (13:38.775)
Please, I would be a fan of each of you.
Lawrence van Lingen (13:54.522)
tend to get inside of your head and then starts to amplify and get harder and harder to settle down. So it's kind of like golf. You get the yips. You now, you know, you're so anxious about the start that it's almost inevitable that you're now going to have a breathing crisis or crisis. So it's all a big, very big range, you know, like, where are you on that spectrum? And like, if I had to go back on wrong, because I did get a little bit of flack from some people saying that's absurd. I don't think so, you know.
Tyson (14:21.951)
What's absurd?
Lawrence van Lingen (14:23.194)
Well, that is that high that people just say it's not that high that number, you know. But, you know, I did a questionnaire on the poll on Instagram and I think about 40 percent said, oh, my diaphragm goes the other way when I take a deep breath. And so it was four out of 10. But I mean, yeah, flip them on their stomach and then see or start putting them in different positions, you know, just because you can breathe in one position doesn't mean you can breathe in another position. And a lot of it like with. Yeah. So with with triathletes, let's say you're a runner and then you learn to swim late, it's almost in
Tyson (14:36.023)
Yeah, well, I mean, I would-
Lawrence van Lingen (14:53.017)
It's inevitable that you hold your breath at some point in your while you're while you're swimming. know, it's usually it's the kids that were taught properly to swim when they were young. you know, like, I don't know when when my child was was taught to breathe. I remember the instructor used to say bubbles, bubbles, breathe. And like I tell adults now, bubbles, bubbles, breathe. Don't hold your breath when you're swimming. You must either be breathing out or you must be breathing in. Don't go.
You you do that, obviously your diaphragm is going to get stuck. you know, and then there's a huge correlation between back pain and breathing pattern disorders. It's like, you know, the Czech physios genre in them. And then they came up with 85 % correlation between back pain and breathing pattern disorder. And 80 % of the population has back pain. So I don't think that I'm in my numbers or crazy numbers. Maybe I should just start keeping a log and actually keep a record and do a little study on it, I suppose.
Tyson (15:51.511)
As you were talking about it, I felt like it's one thing that I feel standing here, I was trying to pay attention to it. And I think as I'm relaxed, I feel like I tick the box of what it means to breathe well when you're relaxed. But I know for a fact, when I'm in the latter part of like a harder workout, I catch myself from time to time. And it trips me out that I'm like, Tosh, you've been working at this for 25 years, and it's amazing that there's still little glitches in the arm. Like it seems as though it's...
Lawrence van Lingen (16:08.022)
Thank
Tyson (16:18.175)
You know, you watch a Tiger Woods who is at the top of his game and he was still out on the driving range and he was still learning and he was still, he was just making, I guess he was just repeating that habit that he'd been taught forever because he didn't want it to go rusty. I guess when I look at it like that, it gives me a sense of optimism because it's like, it's not one thing that's just done and dusted and there you go, you're fixed forever. It's something that you just have to stay accountable for and make sure that it, you know, I always say that it's really helpful just to monitor.
stress levels throughout the day, because then you start to get like a bit of an idea of what a real sense of stress in your running feels like as opposed to how you feel when you're laying on the lounge room floor or whatever it might be. And when I look at that, it's sort of like a magnifying glass to the things that still need improving.
Lawrence van Lingen (16:55.753)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (17:03.167)
Yeah, and it's also mindfulness. And I think that the cool part of breathing, and I'm starting to be more confident in stating this, is the way I try and help people with running is very much to sort of have a strong parasympathetic base. And so your sympathetic nervous system sits on top of a healthy parasympathetic nervous system. I think in modern life, given screens, cars, urban environment,
And I think a lot of people are wired, but tired or live in a sympathetic state of overdrive. And again, this is going to be a spectrum. So it might not be full on, but, you know, certainly more than it could be. Right. You know, you go and have a off the grid holiday for three weeks in nature. You're to come back with a very, very different perspective on life. And, you know, so how far removed are you from that? But more and more like.
it, you know, going back to alternative health, you know, when someone starts talking about like everything works together as a system and we talk about specialization and generalization. One is just as David Epstein wrote a book, I think it's called Range was the book. One of his books is about specialists actually get worse at what they do, the more they specialize and it's better to be a generalist. Like, so that's his book. Don't don't shoot the messenger. But I personally and I think
One of the frustrations with Wu or alternative medicine is that often it's not that effective or it's there because modern medicine is not providing you with a solution. So now you're looking elsewhere. You know, I can tell you, like, I don't play around with things that really don't move the needle and that aren't very, very effective. I just don't. But what happens is to have agency in that space, like you can't teach a drowning person to swim.
You just that's not the time you rescue them, get them on land, get them to calm down. So let's say, for an example, I was working with an athlete and they're very academic and very bright and they have high retention when they read. So we know they're probably in a parasympathetic state or more parasympathetic when they're reading because they concentrate in a flow state. This is their comfort zone. They love books. They love reading. They love learning. Right. So I said, OK, we need to get into book mode now because we need to do movements. And they were kind of wired and
Lawrence van Lingen (19:30.288)
like excited and animated and not really concentrating and couldn't feel the movement. And a lot of athletes move. We talk about somato-visceral movement or central slow soft movements, which really is great for your parasympathetic nervous system. And a lot of athletes move exteriorly or outside in or braced or guarded or, and they find it hard to slow down and to move with sort of a slow, luxurious, deliberate list.
deliberateness because everything is rapid and quick because that's athleticism, right? It's very difficult to teach people how to move well if they do something quickly because if you do something quickly you'll do it the same way you've always done it before. So for her it's really easy. You just say, no we're going into book mode. She says, you know, and once she explained it she goes, oh yeah, now we have a calm person that can give and take and receive information and we could proceed. And so I think it is interesting we have
strength in parasympathetic in a happy place or in general. But, you know, there's a guy called Dr. Dirty. I need to listen more to him. He's very clean. He's a neurosurgeon and like a very, very renowned neurosurgeon. And he's way more in. I'm talking about some sort of spectrum of parasympathetic and sympathetic, and he's way more like, no, no, no, no. You need to be in parasympathetic or you're not. Whereas I always thought the two coexisted. You know what mean? So.
Yeah, he's pretty like, no. And his big thing is as well is like almost like manifesting or creating change or creating the opportunity for change has to occur in the parasympathetic state, which is exactly what I'm telling you, just in a different way. So we can't calm our breathing if we can't slow down, if we can't find some sense of peace and and and, you know, quiet.
Tyson (21:10.487)
Yeah
Lawrence van Lingen (21:19.779)
we really don't learn and if we don't learn how we're to change or how we're going to take on new techniques and how we're going to think rationally about it. know, people are really, really reflexive these days and it's getting worse. And I think part of it was COVID had a lot to do with it and social media has a lot to do with it. And so anyway, it's not woo, it's like serious neuroscience. Like you need to be calm and relaxed and you need to learn these things so that you can change quicker and learn it in this accelerated rate, because the difference is
I mean, you've seen it when you work with athletes, some athletes, you just like, just try again, try again. They just come back in a loop and they just stuck in that paradigm, you know. And when it comes down to hard to fix injuries, like you had a breathing pattern disorder, under stress, inner race, you really have to be comfortable in that space and you really have to do a good job. And you really have to move the needle. And so you, you know, I don't know, it's, it's, it's an interesting thing. But whatever you as a, as a therapist or coach or run coach,
Tyson (22:14.838)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (22:18.818)
However much you've learned and integrated in your body is your capacity to teach someone else. And so it is interesting. You have like coaches saying dogmatically, do as I say, not kind of as I do. And it doesn't land as well with, you know, when you're in the presence of someone that's pretty calm and creative and fluid and understands the stuff, you know, you just go, well, why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't this be easy? You know, when they really know what they're talking about, when the cues are on point. But I think my mind, I know I'm rambling on a lot now, but
Tyson (22:29.431)
I
Lawrence van Lingen (22:47.95)
I'll close off with, think my sort of one of my themes for 2025 is replacing running cues with running mantras. Because a mantra is something from internal and it comes from within and you understand it means a lot to you and that can help you be an author of change. Whereas running cues are often someone else's external judgment on what's wrong with you or
run and then you're working on that but that's that's more of an externality and I'm really really want to into a place where I think it's really important and healthy that people start to to be proactive and let things fall into place rather than always reacting and sort of playing whack-a-mole and then running because you're always on the back foot and it's just you know it's not the way
Tyson (23:39.841)
For sure. There's one thing that I notice a lot, and I'm guilty of this from time to time, you get very caught up on, okay, like do this with your left arm. Does that feel good? Cool. Let's keep doing that. When, think obviously it's so much more than just technique and so much more than just the way you move from the outside. it's almost like an internal expression through your running motion. One thing I heard you say which was so interesting, and I'd never actually even thought about this,
Lawrence van Lingen (23:44.558)
Thank
Lawrence van Lingen (23:50.242)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (23:59.746)
Yeah.
Tyson (24:08.431)
But Rangan asked, do you feel like you can understand a person's personality through the way they run? And you said yes. And I thought, man, that's so interesting. And I started to have a look through some of the athletes that I know. And I mean, I've been running for a long time now, so I feel like I can definitely understand that connection. But I'd love to hear you talk more about that. But a funny story before we do, speaking of unhelpful advice, I can't remember if I told you this last time.
Lawrence van Lingen (24:14.838)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (24:32.011)
Yeah.
Tyson (24:34.967)
My wife and I used to do sprints together. was just like a weekly routine. She slowed down a little bit in terms of her sprint routine since we've had a couple of young kids. But we were at a running track once and she was always self-conscious about the way she looked when she runs. And so we went out and said, babe, don't worry. No one's thinking about you. Everyone's thinking about themselves. Let's just get out and sprint. And one of the local coaches, after we finished this, we did like four times 80 meter sprints.
Lawrence van Lingen (24:37.289)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (24:49.13)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (25:00.949)
Yeah.
Tyson (25:01.995)
This guy with such boldness came up to my wife after her final sprint and he goes to her, hey, next time you sprint, I want you to think deer, not buffalo. And Jessie was like, I wasn't thinking buffalo. What are you talking about? Like every time we go for a run now, like whenever she starts to get tired, I'm like, come on babe, deer, not buffalo. Like we've got to focus now. And it says, I reckon that could have been the trigger point for her never wanting to.
Lawrence van Lingen (25:23.827)
Yeah!
See you later.
Tyson (25:27.921)
in public again, she's obviously, she's a pretty petite young chick who's already self-conscious and there's some bloke saying, you look like you're thinking about buffaloes.
Lawrence van Lingen (25:38.823)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's a lot to add back there. know, can start from the bottom. Yeah, but that's again, you know, that's in someone's external judgment and with the best of intentions trying to help. mean, you your wife's going through a rough patch of the wrong date, the wrong time, and that is not going to land well and can have massive consequences, you know. But we don't know that. It's extraordinary. You know, my wife, she was an Olympian, made Olympic final sort of captain.
Tyson (25:42.603)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (26:06.663)
South African athletics team at the Olympics won basically every single middle distance to long distance national championship there was to win. So very accomplished runner, right? And ran largely injury free, right? So, you know, really good runner. The thing that was the catalyst for her to running was a teacher told her you'll never make it as a runner. And so it was, you know, it's not it wasn't motivation. It wasn't saying something cool. It's like
You know, and getting back to this change and why it's so important to change and authentically change is like, I mean, there's a great book by Robert Sapolsky called Determined. And he talks about you don't have free will. And I think once you read a book like that, you start to realize like it's extraordinarily hard to change for the better. And like he has that phrase in there, he says, you you're either going to become your parents or the opposite of your parents, but you didn't have a choice in the matter. One is
inevitable and the other one's a reaction. Neither of them are of choice, you know, and I think, you know, there we go with my wife. It's like, you don't know how that that cue is going to land. Yeah, but it's interesting, you know, but humans are reactive. Yeah.
Tyson (27:18.655)
I you down a wild path there. think originally before I started trying to tell you a funny story, I was keen to hear your thoughts on just that expression of a person's personality through the way they move.
Lawrence van Lingen (27:24.553)
No, no,
Lawrence van Lingen (27:31.12)
Yeah. So, so you, you, I advise you that you do that is you can, you can mimic people. So there's two, two movement explorations that you can do. One is you can see someone in public and you can mirror their gait. So copy what they're doing. Okay. If they have something pretty noticeable, like let's say they've got a hitch in their walk and they walk, then walk like that and then feel like, how does it make me feel? What's tight? What's not tight? What moves?
And you can play like a game like that, right? So that's from a purely sort of physical or mechanical point of view. And also you can play the game of postures. So I can just like collapse my chest, slump in the chair and just sigh. And if I stay like this long enough, I'm going to be low energy and after a while I'm probably going to be depressed. Or I could sit up and open up my chest and take a deep breath and look around and...
you know, pretty much I'll probably start feeling pretty inspired or so you can play those games. You can clench your fists and stand in front of a mirror and look at yourself and you'll start to realize I'm getting angry. You can stand in front of a complete stranger and you can literally open up your heart and you can both open up your heart at each other and you can literally have a sensation of sort of falling in love or strong affection for that person. So we very, very, you know, motion and emotions the same or posture.
but because we saw animation, we call it emotion, not e-posture, right? So you can play around with those games and it's pretty extraordinary what comes up. there's, medically now they're done sort of imaging and scan and they can actually measure where the blood goes with strong emotions. And one of my big ones is that I think I bump up a lot with is specifically also with...
females and pelvic floor injuries is shame. You decrease blood flow to the pelvis. Okay. And these all these, I mean, I wish somebody would write a really good book on this. Maybe that's what I'd write a book on if I wrote a book. you know, all these things like a king will make you kneel before them because you power this. You can't jump up. You can't do anything. you know, you don't have your feet. You're not on your feet. Right. And
Lawrence van Lingen (29:51.853)
Kings have Kings and Queens wear crown, which gives you a long, regal neck and it gives you a sense of authority. you know, this is my regal posture. Right. And so we can, you know, all of these things that are when you see them or think about them, they're so obvious and so, you know, wow, of course, that's how it works. You know, but we've forgotten that. And it's extraordinary. I don't know. It's just not taught in phys ed or it's not taught at your level two master's running certificate. You know, like
Tyson (30:00.278)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (30:21.665)
Hey, how you cue that person makes a difference to how they feel and how they see the world. And for me at the moment, like I'm done with reactive. You know, I think if you've had trauma and I think the world's a pretty traumatic place, you know, like just generationally, generationally, you know, two world wars last year. There's a lot of trauma. Shit happens. You know, I really think people are.
Tyson (30:38.1)
Thank
Lawrence van Lingen (30:47.774)
often in a victim mode and often are more reactive than they should be. From a common sense point of view, if you want to be effective as a run more movement coach, you really do need to people get out of reactive mode and into proactive mode and you really need to get them in a parasympathetic mode. Otherwise, I think you'd be inefficient at what you're doing. There's no doubt in my mind. I won't even try and do movement coaching or queuing with someone that's in a reactive state of mind. It's just
come back another day, try it again, you know, or get them out of it. There's no point. They're likely to focus on the wrong thing, internalize the wrong thing, and you're not likely to see change. So from my point, it's just off the table. But I really do think that, you know, for me, we want to acknowledge the person, who they are, how they feel, make them feel really, really comfortable.
make them feel like they're in a safe, secure environment and I really want to get out of reactive drills and reactivity because it needs to be proactive. I think it's important on a much bigger level than just being good at what you do.
Tyson (31:52.983)
Yeah. And so if you're working with someone for the first time, you don't have the background knowledge that when they're sitting down reading the book, they're in the best state for taking on new knowledge or taking on new movement. Where does that process begin? Is that something that you just, you just sort of ask a heap of questions and figure out where they're relaxed? Cause I always noticed that with my own running. Um, I've said this before, but my, my, the day I ran my three K P B, I remember, I don't know why I was so relaxed, but I remember
Lawrence van Lingen (32:01.271)
Yes.
Lawrence van Lingen (32:16.342)
Yeah.
Tyson (32:19.519)
Like on the start line, was like, I'm not getting down in start position. I'm just standing there as I just, was acting like I just didn't care. And there was to your point about standing in front of the mirror and being like, I'm so angry. There was like such a sense of ease that came with that mindset of I really don't care how this goes today. And I was like, how do you, how do you fail? Cause if you actually genuinely believe that to a certain point, then you're obviously going to be running pretty tension free because the outcome isn't the end of your life for that.
Lawrence van Lingen (32:23.382)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (32:46.048)
Yeah.
Tyson (32:48.471)
And I remember just running around and being like, oh, I felt loose, I felt free. I beat my best time by like eight seconds. And I was like, okay, there's something in that. And so I reckon for like the last few years of my competitive running career, every time I was at a start line, was just, you can't see my whole body, but I was just standing there with my hands on my hips, which must've looked so strange. But yeah, based on that first experience, worked. Whereas the flip side of that is if I ever go for a race or a run after my wife and I've had an argument.
Lawrence van Lingen (32:54.274)
Yeah.
Tyson (33:17.119)
I'm terrible at running. just, can't seem to get over it. I had a friend, Cale Simons, who before every 1500, and he was a good runner too. He ran like three, three, three when he was quite young, but before every 1500, he'd be like grunting and getting himself so angry before the race. And I looked at that and I was like, I would start to get anxious and feel stressed and be like, what is he doing? This is horrific. That's the opposite of, so it's a broad spectrum of the way people seem to respond to,
Lawrence van Lingen (33:18.924)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (33:25.878)
Yeah,
Lawrence van Lingen (33:32.736)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (33:37.728)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tyson (33:45.439)
or seem to perform, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Lawrence van Lingen (33:46.908)
Yeah, yeah. Well, you kind of ask the question, how do you how do you, know if for generally people, you know, people know where the happy place is, or they know where they feel safe and secure. And you can take them back to that to that. You can just say, you know, when are you safe and secure and when do you feel your nervous system is like training a dog like imagine you have a rescue dog and it's anxious and uptight and you want to stroke it or pet it.
and it's going to bite your hand. You have to teach it to trust. You have to get it happy and relaxed and then you can teach it tricks. Humans are not different. So you go can ask like, well, what's your happy place? Like, where do you, you know, and really try and move them towards that. And you think like, yeah, the world's changing as well. mean, what was applicable in the 70s or the 80s or the 90s or coming out of World War Two and coaching, you you did as you were told. And this is how it's done.
And people, like you look like Salazar. I don't think Salazar changed as much. think the world changed around him and he pretty much stayed consistent and, you know, and now he's banned for life because he's totally inappropriate. So I think the world is changing. But I mean, I don't see the textbooks changing as quickly as the world's changed. So so there's, you know, there's that as a notion. And I think, you you or the run coach or the person trying to help someone else, you you really need to
walk the walk, know, it's no good rationalizing these things. You're to get it wrong. And the more you, know, more you heal yourself, the more you can help other people. So I think it's a bit of a two way street. And after a while, you know, your intuition starts getting better, your ability to read people. You know, I don't know if I read facial expressions very well and I don't know. I have some problems with, you know, personally, like my wife can just, you know.
I mean, her sense of her second, her sense of her instinct to read a person is extraordinary. I'm not sure if I have that, but I once I communicate with person, I do think I've been doing it for so many years. Your intuition gets pretty good and you can, you can really nail it down quite quickly. Certainly, you know, well, when I started as a chiropractor, I mean, it used to take two and a half hours to do an interview and work up a patient and
Lawrence van Lingen (36:10.277)
dual test, know, you know, later on that dramatically drops, you know, you just start to your questions by more point your screening gets more points. I suppose you just keep practicing, you get better at it.
Tyson (36:23.371)
Yeah, such a good point. I just finished reading Tom Brady's book TB12. I'm not an NFL fan, but I've become a Tom Brady fan. I first got interested in him by default because I watched the roast of Tom Brady on Netflix and I was like, you know, well, I kind of, I just kind of loved a guy at the top of his game or who was at the top of his game, just getting shit from some of the world's best comedians. It was so funny to me. And I thought, okay, like obviously there was money in that, but there's also
Lawrence van Lingen (36:29.615)
yeah, yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (36:33.103)
Yeah. All right.
Lawrence van Lingen (36:48.245)
Yeah.
Tyson (36:51.947)
like an element of good nature. Like you've got to be pretty bold to sit up there and have the best comics roast you. And so I sort of went down the Tom Brady rabbit hole just to learn a bit about him. And his book is so interesting, man. So he, I don't know if you've read it, but he speaks about how he's achieved such longevity in the sport of NFL. Cause he explains that the average NFL player, I think he said it's like a three and a half year career and often it ends due to injury. And when you think of such a high impact sport,
Lawrence van Lingen (36:55.003)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (37:06.043)
Bye.
Tyson (37:22.005)
It's like, that makes sense. But he explains that as a quarterback, he, I don't know if this was his professional career or his career. It must've been his professional career. He played for 20 years or thereabouts. And hearing him talk about how he did it is so fascinating. There was one particular thing that he spoke about that I was keen to pick your brain about on top of everything you would expect, sleep, nutrition, recovery.
Lawrence van Lingen (37:23.534)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (37:33.527)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tyson (37:50.721)
hydration, like all the stuff that we know when people speak about longevity or just general health. He spoke about the word that was mentioned more than any other word in his book was playability. And I'm still trying to completely wrap my head around what he means by it, because the way he explained it to him, I think he's different to the way that it applies to a distance runner. But when he was speaking about playability, what he was saying that pre and post every session, every game that he does, he works with
Lawrence van Lingen (38:01.827)
Yeah.
Tyson (38:19.031)
a particular, I don't know what, like maybe a chiropractor, masseuse, something in that realm. And this guy will get his elbow into certain parts of his body and just go over and over. And he's contracting and releasing his muscle as he does it. And through that contract and through that release, he's explaining that he's training his mind to be relaxed upon impact. And he said that so many of the issues that come up in players' lives or players' careers is they'll take a knock.
Lawrence van Lingen (38:22.211)
Yeah.
Tyson (38:47.307)
their body wasn't ready for the impact. And as a result, it doesn't know how to dissipate that force. Doesn't know how to deal with that. Whereas him, he says, now I've trained myself, I get hit hard, my muscle fully absorbs it, fully deals with the impact. And then we just play on. And I thought, man, that's such an interesting take because I noticed in the world of distance running and something that I've had a little experience with is as you get older, whether it's due to a lack of movement or maybe he explains potentially an over
Lawrence van Lingen (38:51.467)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (38:59.095)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tyson (39:16.471)
and over-focus on things like strength routines in the gym. He no longer lifts weights as he used to. He just does essentially band work. And I couldn't help thinking about how this applies to running, because I've had a couple of calf issues over the last couple of years that I've been trying to navigate my way through. And part of that, I think, was just I've been away for a long time and came back with too much passion, and I was just excited, and I went, bang, I trained like I did in 2014 before I'd ever had an injury. And my body was like, no, this isn't happening for a while.
Lawrence van Lingen (39:21.441)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (39:40.897)
There you go.
Yeah. Yeah.
Tyson (39:46.167)
But this pliability factor I wanted to pick your brain about because it's something I've never actually heard spoken about in the world of endurance sports. But we do know that as you get older, your muscles, I guess, become a little more rigid if you're not focused on it. And it's ability to be forced is obviously hampered.
Lawrence van Lingen (40:00.267)
Yeah. Well, you don't have to-
Yeah, totally. so tension, I think people conflate tension and strength. Okay, and tension is the enemy of strength. To be strong and quick and reactive, you need to have very little tension in the muscle. I mean, it needs to be toned. can't just be a low-tone human being with... But for sprinters, the best sprinters in the world spend their entire life learning how to be relaxed and sprint relaxed.
and take the tension out of their body. A boxer will shake out their arms because if they're rigid or have tone, their reactions are slower. So they can't move out the way of the first and they can't punch hard. know, it's extraordinary here in the United States. you know, verbiage and the vernacular is what a cultural narrative is. Tension is good. And elite athletes have elite athlete tendon stiffness and people are cued to tighten your ankles or stiffen your foot or lock your foot or decrease your ground contact time.
And that's all very well, but you have to release tension and a tissue that is relaxed has adequate blood supply and total muscle has to have full range. A really good example, this is pelvic floor. For most people, know, for females, particularly listening to this, if you have sort of pelvic floor issues, it's because you don't have range of contraction of that pelvic floor muscle. And generally speaking, it's held too tight with chronic tension and then it becomes dysfunctional.
There's just millions of examples. So for me, strength, think people put a lot of it. We talk about being reactive. You're putting a reactive, guarded, tense nature. In your mind, intent is everything. It's so, so, so important. The intent behind an activity. if you on a superficial level or on one level, can say, OK, I'm going to go do strength training and that helps with injuries and you can't go wrong with strong and that's bandied about all the time.
Lawrence van Lingen (42:01.17)
But what you can't do is you can't have poor technique and then slap strength on it and then hope to have a positive outcome because probably you now have a great power comes great responsibility. So now you have more strength with which to move badly. We understand in a car with a bigger engine with poor alignment, it's a worse outcome. It's not better outcome. So strength obviously needs coordination and timing. You you talk to
people that lift heavy hypertrophically in gym so they want to look big and they you know like Arnold Schwarzenegger let's say well Arnold Schwarzenegger was extraordinarily flexible so I don't know how he did it but you know a lot of people that train in gym get bound up and tight and have rigidity in their muscles and aren't pliable and they can't jump you know you go and ask a good bodybuilder to jump they can't get this high off the floor because they have you know so that pliability and elasticity is not there and another way of thinking about it is like what's
What's the definition of fragility? Fragility is like a porcelain cup. It can't handle extreme change in temperature. You can't grip it from the sideways. know, robustness is flexibility or durability. And, you know, we are 70 % water, give or take, and we're supposed to be pliable and fluid. And we run that. We certainly swim better. Yeah. And it's really, really important for health and tendons that have chronic tension and then you tend to
decrease the blood flow in them. That's like, obviously you've got a tendon under constant tension with poor blood flow. And I mean, how could that be healthy? You know, but it's just not. I think it's because it's different lenses. So sometimes I'll look at someone, I'll say, OK, I'm to put my nerve lens on and then we look at them and say, like, what's the nervous system doing? What are they nerve region trap and nerve and will glide and slide nerves and you're almost like looking at the
Tyson (43:37.292)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (43:55.376)
At a Rubik's Cube, from the one side is nerves, right? Turn it. What's the fascia system look like? know, turn it. What do your muscles look like? If you're assessing muscles for most people, they're only interested if they're strong or weak, you know, and there's like it's one really small part of this whole fascia tendon nerve integration like and why they weak, you know, maybe your hips dropping because of I, you know, most of the time you can solve hip drop way quicker by teaching the person the correct timing and shape of running.
than you can by strengthening the glute medius. It's far more effective, far quicker. I mean, it can happen in one run. You're going to go and strengthen your hips and gym for quite a long period of time. But what gets in the way of strength, especially for runners, is like when we do strength with runners now, I tell them if you're to lift heavy, there should be no sensation of muscular effort. OK, and you've got to rest. It's a neural response.
We go way deeper than just the muscles. So if you're to do heavy hex bar lifting, you're to do four sets of four. You're going to rest two, three minutes in between. And no endurance athlete, you know, like your work ethic doesn't allow you to do that. What do you mean I'm going to do four reps and walk away and it's not that heavy? And I could certainly have done another four and now I've got to rest for three minutes. You know, it's just like this is I want to feel the burn. I want to suffer. I want to feel.
Tyson (45:08.119)
you
Lawrence van Lingen (45:19.053)
like blood lactate, I would feel the muscle burn and you know, here you're just doing explosive, walking away and then resting properly. When you come back, it must be as though you haven't even lifted and then you lift again and it doesn't feel like you've done enough and you do four sets of four and you walk away and you think like, well, what was that? That's not work. You know, the last time you rested three minutes between reps was when you did a 20 minute effort. So.
Tyson (45:42.193)
Yes.
Lawrence van Lingen (45:45.293)
So, know, I think, yeah, in the vernacular, in the intent, is extraordinary. And, you know, I worked in downhill mountain biking. And then you can, you think these guys are going to be tight to hold the bike. They've got to be loose. They've got to be relaxed. They've got to be fluid. They've got to soak up the terrain. You know, I worked with the one, he was, he's actually the current world champion in downhill. I worked with him years ago and he had a guy that did telemetry and like we corrected his biomechanics, stacked up his joint and helped him a bit. But the guy measuring the telemetry said his
His body had changed by 15 percent. And I said, that seems a little little because we did a lot of work. And he says, no, no, that's a lot. So I said, well, how much? Give me a representation of what 15 percent change in body biomechanics on a downhill mountain bike looks like. He says 15 percent is is more than the bike has evolved in the last 20 years. So from, you know, narrow bars, rigid shocks, tiny tires to the big fool.
dual suspension, downhill, big rigs. His body changed more than that. But that's all pliability, flexibility, adaptability. You tighten and you lock your body and you're to go into a tree because you can't corner. You have to be fluid. You have to take. And I'll tell you another cool story. And I'm waffling on a bit, but I'll tell you a cool story. You talk about back pain and the cause of back pain and glitches in your nervous system. I had a young cyclist and she had very bad back pain.
at 21, which you shouldn't. You shouldn't have bulge discs at 21. you know, if you're going to have disc bulges, it should happen in your 30s, mid 30s to 50s, right? So she's got very severe symptoms and you truly get out of trouble. And then she crashes again. And she mentioned she always crashes on the same side. So we do a little bit of screening. And one of the things we did with mountain bikers is we'll have them tumble over to the right and tumble over to the left to make sure that they can bail out both sides, because if you
have, you they have multiple traumas, multiple concussions, lots of injuries and you can, you can get fearful or guarded or whatever. So we do this with this young lady and she can do it roll in on a mat. Really, really safe. Like just roll over her left shoulder. We get it to roll over her right shoulder. She says, no, I can't. So said, what's the matter? And she's like, she can't breathe. She's anxious. Her breathing is short and guarded. Right. So that's the first cue. We could pick it up in the breathing pattern. Okay. And
Lawrence van Lingen (48:11.122)
So said, okay, so I we'll just take a moment and said, something happened probably in this situation. So see if you can just sort of close your eyes and feel what emotions come up or what comes up or do you know what upsets you? And she says, no, I know exactly what this is. So when she was 11, her dad went down a single track, sort of technical section to see if it was okay. Stopped and said, you're fine, come on down.
Tyson (48:20.406)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (48:38.791)
So she came down, made the section, was super happy, but didn't slow down quick enough and dropped her shoulder and right, you know, impacted her father. OK. And knocked him backwards and he nearly fell down a hundred meter drop off and nearly died like he really did. He like had to grab on the branch and he was holding on. And, you know, he nearly she nearly killed him when he was 11. So now you've got, you know, there's your there's your elite.
sort of cyclist with back pain, eating back surgery and crashing always on the one side and a neurological system totally glitches every time she gets into, you know, right shoulder turns or she turns towards the right and then the system goes into a state of panic. And why wouldn't it? And so that's also a lot of with breathing is you clearing out these glitches, these these these learned and acquired traumas or inappropriate responses. So when you do mobility, you should breathe through your mobility and always
pay very careful attention when you hold your breath if you're breathing suddenly hitches so you're going and then you know and again that's why you do not want to hold your breath generally speaking when you do endurance sports you know
Tyson (49:50.099)
Wow. So when you say mobility, are you referring to just general stretching, yoga? Because there's a, that's one thing that I got confused about reading Tom Brady's book. like, there's, I've been in the sport and I'm actually quite interested in flexibility and quite interested in this muscle health naturally, but I'd never heard of pliability. And now I'm like, okay, here's a whole other rabbit hole. And then I signed up for an app and I'm like, this is just, it feels like I'm just doing yoga, but doing less of it. Like I'm trying to understand exactly what I'm doing.
Lawrence van Lingen (49:59.592)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (50:03.581)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (50:09.371)
Yay.
Lawrence van Lingen (50:18.148)
Yeah, I, you know, for me, we do mobility, I do very little stretching. It's moving in a safe and secure way through different positions and you opening doors from stability comes mobility. So learning to stack a joint like a lot of people don't know how to stack their joints or don't know how to stack their posture. And so muscles will be inappropriately stabilizing. Like let's say your head's really, really heavy, right? So I'm sitting here, my posture is not the best. Your head weighs what a
I have a heavy medicine ball. Let me see what this this is five kilograms and it's a little bit less heavy than your head. OK, so I can hold this for a long period of time like this. As I go forward, I almost can't hold it. And now what? have a muscle tension, you know, so so massive amounts of tension in your body are compensation mechanisms. People's tights, hamstrings are tight because your pelvis is so twisted that
you'd fall on your face if your hamstrings weren't pulling you up. That's why sometimes you stretch your hamstrings, you get back pain because they were inappropriately doing a job that they're not designed to do, but they were doing some other job. So a lot of flexibility from my perspective comes from if you use a muscle as it was designed to be used and it has an appropriate relationship with the joints and the bones around it, you tend to have appropriate flexibility.
And good luck trying to stretch that out. Steve Magnus, interestingly enough, was talking about he couldn't he couldn't pass the reach and sit and reach test for his hamstrings. you're talking about like elite athletes are often not that flexible. You know, if you overuse your hamstrings, they're often not very flexible. We see massive change. You know, I'm all about hip extension based gait. You know, you teach someone how to extend from the hip and fire the hip before the hamstring and use the hamstring as a spring.
people's range of motion massively improves. And that's you can just run your hamstrings long. You if you're walking backwards, your hamstring length, your flexibility will massively improve. So a lot of flexibility for me is I'd rather teach a person to fish than feed them with fish. You know what I mean? So if they can go, oh, hang on a minute, when I move like this, I'm more flexible.
Lawrence van Lingen (52:43.064)
That for me is a big win rather than saying your hamstrings are tight and it's causing problems and you need to stretch your hamstrings. And this interplay, I can just tell everyone like your pupil dilation, the muscles at the back of your neck, and the muscles at the back of your neck and the lower back and your hamstrings are all linked and breathing screens hamstrings. They're very, very linked. can do eye access. You can bend forward and try and touch your toes and see how
Flexible you are and then do I exercises and try it again. You'll be more flexible You know, or you could roll your foot with it. Yeah,
Tyson (53:14.453)
And so what did you say? Breathing? Breathing? was the middle word?
Lawrence van Lingen (53:19.821)
Breathing, eye pupil constriction and so if you stare it so there's a thing called screen or email apnea. Okay, so you hold your breath when you get a message. You hold your breath when you read an email. Staring at a screen, your pupils don't change in the your pupil is fixed and dilated. It doesn't change. And then your eye muscles don't work because you I'm just staring at the screen. I'm looking at you. If I was in nature, I'd have looked far close near.
looked for the rustle in the bush, tracked a bird, at the clouds. OK, so that staring at screens affects your breathing because of the relationship between your one on one level, your eye movements. So eye tracking is linked to the muscles at the back of your neck. So if a ball were to come past me, I'm going to follow it with my eyes, my head moves. And so you your the muscles at the base of your occiput.
Tyson (53:51.211)
Yes.
Lawrence van Lingen (54:15.042)
are linked strongly to your eyes because of this movement wherever my eyes go, my head goes, right? So when you stare at a screen, you start getting upper cervical tension. You have decreased range of motion at the back of your neck. If your back of your neck's locked, your lower back's locked. If your lower back's locked, your hamstrings are locked. And it works the other way around too. It's bi-directional. And people with...
You know, we talked about breathing restrictions and disability. Tight hamstrings affect your breathing. You can try this. You just sit on the floor with your legs straight out in front of you and take a deep breath. It's very, very difficult to breathe and you won't be able to get your arms up above your head properly. Whereas if you tall kneel, so you kneel, there's no tension in your hamstrings. Your chest will open up. It totally changes the dynamics of your chest.
So anyway, you play around with these sort of games and then you go like, OK, well, there's a deeper layer. I mean, that's one of the things I tell athletes. said, like, the problem is you're trying to play a game and you don't know the rules and I'm going to help explain the rules to you. You know what mean? You don't go play football with Tom Brady and you don't understand the rules. It's going to be bad. OK, so so the trick is to try and explain the rules and for people to have a sense of understanding and curiosity about their body and start to realize like it's not.
Tyson (55:21.079)
Thank you.
Lawrence van Lingen (55:32.599)
And again, getting you out of reactive mode, you know, and becoming more proactive and doing the right things and things tend to fall into place.
Tyson (55:41.067)
Yeah. I heard you say, we touched on breathing, touched on backwards walking very briefly just then we spoke about the backwards walking a little more in our last episode, but I, I'm keen to just pick your brain on something else. heard you say, cause you gave out like a public disclosure announcement to say, Hey, if you breathe well and walk backwards, your life is going to change. And I was like, that sounds like something I'm interested in doing, but what is, what is it specifically that it's doing and why is your life going to change through those two?
Lawrence van Lingen (56:05.129)
Dan.
Tyson (56:10.387)
Really simple practices.
Lawrence van Lingen (56:12.499)
Because it's it's how do I say this simply? So so if you did like from a. As explained by a neurologist, right, if you do visualisation or manifestation from from a neuroscience point of view, and I mean, I need to take notes and then I can explain it sort of on a better detail, the different pathways that happen. But there's a very, very distinct reason if you want to change your habits of why visualisation and mantras actually do work. I it's not just woof.
Right. So generally speaking, they'll agree. You need to be in a parasympathetic state and then you visualize or you have a mantra or you have a manifestation. So, you know, you've got to choose what you want to manifest in life. Generally speaking, not things like you want to be of service. Humans need to be of service. We we grew up in small cohesive units. We need to serve each other. You'll be your happiest in your life if you're serving other people and making your doing benefit to the community around you. That's just.
101 neuroscience, right? So along those lines, when you walk backwards, you start it generally speaking, it helps people's parasympathetic nervous system a lot. And if you work on your breathing, you start to be more parasympathetic. If you can. So let's say Taylor Nibb walks backwards and she sort of said it publicly. So I'm not saying anything she hasn't said, but it calms her down. She literally walks backwards because it calms her nervous system down. Right. She finds and it's common with people. It happens a lot. Right. So we're walking backwards.
It changes the way you run. It makes you in a more parasympathetic state. You start to link that to your breathing and suddenly running changes because now running becomes a mindful meditation act. You're doing a hard thing. It generally gets harder and harder, but you push through and persevere. You're setting up from a from your whole feedback in terms of in a neurochemistry. Again, it's like if you do hard things, that's how you have a healthy do a thing, get a reward response.
Generally speaking, that that sort of segue is what creates this positive change in your life. The parasympatheticness, the change in your gait, the fact that doing a hard thing with ease. You tend to start finding a sense of ease in life. You tend to think like this is hard, but it's not that hard or not straining or not striving. And I think the biggest deal is like you need to have agency in the world and you need to shape and create the world.
Lawrence van Lingen (58:42.403)
And you do that without immediate expectation. So that's delayed gratification. And once you're practicing that, every time you run, suddenly you're going, shit, I'm manifesting and I'm meditating and that's running and I'm doing a hard thing. And you start to go, things doors just start to open up. A drowning person has very, very few options and he has really shitty instincts. OK, like I've reached out my hand to a drowning person. You know, I'm a skinny guy. He was a big beefcake.
done a lot of gym, there was ego pride, didn't want to get seen to be rescued on the beach. He just turned around and swam straight into the in the rip current where the rocks were. I mean, now he's endangered my life, his life, the lifeguard's life, his friend's life. You know, like it's a really bad decision. Why? Reactive, can't think, hyperventilating, ego involved. But when you calm down in your parasympathetic state and you're competent in your field, you know, you have a totally different experience.
And you start to make really good decisions. And also you start to recognize, that person that's holding his hand out, he's there to help. And I can accept his help graciously. And so people start to see, you know, like if I, I don't know, if I walk in a crowded room and someone calls my name, I'll turn around and listen to their name. Or if I say to you, look around your room and try and remember this. Then I say, look around and notice everything that's red. Once you're looking for red, you'll find all the red objects.
But if I have to say, well, how many red objects are in your room? You have no idea. Right. So once we start changing our view, our mindset, the way we move and we start having agency in the world and we start being, you know, we start to see opportunities and you and once you in parasympathetic is oxytocin is a really, really good high performance drug. It's the drug of trust. So once you're a trusting and safe environment and you start practicing trust and safe, you start trusting others.
and you start to see the opportunities and you trust them. And it literally reframes your whole world. I think that's how I'm explaining it.
Tyson (01:00:43.945)
It's awesome. Yeah, I am. Before I let you go, of the one of the I used to be a really big fan. I mean, I'm still a big fan, but particularly in high school, I read a lot of Tony Robbins books. And he had a few checkpoints just throughout the day. If you're feeling rubbish, if you're feeling stressed, he would go, it's stuck. Okay, what are you focusing on? What's your physiology doing? Like to your point earlier, he's like, we all know what confidence we all know what depression looks like.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:00:56.662)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:01:06.594)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tyson (01:01:10.891)
the language that you're using, like how you're talking about your situation or how you're talking about yourself. And then like the story that you're telling yourself, this is kind of different. This is like when you're trying to achieve something now, but like the story, the strategy that you're using and the state that you're going into it. So whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed or stressed, I go through that sort of checklist and I feel like just by nature of the conversation, as we were talking, I was just putting different things into different categories and seeing what they fit.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:01:13.836)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:01:21.649)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:01:33.939)
Yeah
Tyson (01:01:35.907)
It just makes so much sense that if you want to perform better in any part of your life, whether it's just with flexibility and mobility to your triathlon performance that you sort of have to have a tick or at least an attempted tick next to a lot of these markers.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:01:41.388)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:01:50.047)
Yeah. Well, I'll tell you something really interesting is so, you know, we talk about the flow rope and so the flow rope, you always move from the center out, which I think is the opposite of reactive or moving from the outside in. Like, you know, novice hits a golf ball, they'll hit hard with their hands and their core hardly moves. Where's a really good ball striker, their hips are way ahead of their hands in the club face. You're moving from the center out like things move from the out and
Rope flow really helps with that. also, again, just like backward walking, for some people, it really, really helps calm their nervous system down. I think it's got to do with the ability of the sympathetic nervous system in your thoracic spine. But anyway, it calms people down. I've had numerous people and also it releases tension. So you talk about this in hell tension and often, you know, we still deep hell tension talk about pliability in our spine and deep trauma in our spine. know, Bessel Thunder Coke, the body keeps the score guys pretty adamant about that.
I've had numerous people, so I didn't know this. I had to go and research it and try and read up on it. Some people don't have an internal voice. So that, you I have an internal voice that speaks. OK, so some people don't have one. So I've had, I think, two or three people swing the rope said, I suddenly had a voice inside my head that's talking. They became aware of the internal voice. And I was like, well, that was really interesting. But what happens remarkably often is people become aware of
Tyson (01:03:07.127)
Thank
Lawrence van Lingen (01:03:16.808)
how negative the internal dialogue is from swinging the flow rope. That's happened like 10, 15 times. People have said, I suddenly realized how negative my internal dialogue was. And that's also that's almost when you become self aware or more self aware or you know, the the pause between a stimulus and a response and you start to realize, that's actually inappropriate. And then that's kind of like that's also one of the reasons why things will change is
you know, people start to become more self aware, aware of the dialogue. then again, you're using a fantastic tool of running is you're using running to change your internal dialogue and to change your life. I've recently become sort of online buddies with Chris Evans. He's a Virgin radio DJ. He has a breakfast show. You know, he cleaned up his life. He's a big party animal. I cleaned up his life. He's sober. Running totally, totally changed his life.
And it is such a powerful agent for so many people because again, you're practicing a very, very powerful form of manifestation and mindfulness if you choose for it to be that vehicle. But some people aren't, you know, the problem is some people are running to burn calories, running away from their problems, running to punish themselves. You know, my really good friends back in the day, used to coach them, you know, cycling and I said, OK, we're to have like one week rest. You've got to get off that bicycle for at least one week.
Tyson (01:04:23.019)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:04:41.32)
They came and pulled me aside and they said, Lawrence, we can't. We'll go ride the back route so no one's going to see us riding. And I said, but come on, guys, just one week. And they said, it's the bottle or the bike. You know what mean? yeah, trying to reframe and it takes time, takes perseverance and takes persistence. But trying to reframe and realize that running is a very, very powerful form of self-help, of self-growth.
Tyson (01:04:50.615)
I
Lawrence van Lingen (01:05:07.43)
you know, and learning to love and trust yourself and say you are enough and I have enough. And because from that sense of self love and self trust, you can learn and you can project and pay it forward and be of service to others. And then suddenly doors start to open and things start flowing towards your life. So there's the woo. But it's back to neuroscience again.
Tyson (01:05:25.269)
I love it man, I love it. Dude you've been busy the last couple of weeks, I've seen you jet setting all around the world, yeah. Can you plant your feet for a couple of weeks now or what's the next one looks like for you?
Lawrence van Lingen (01:05:32.941)
Ugh.
I'm trying to. I was wiped out when I came back from New Zealand. I really was. I was just so tired and I really needed a bit of downtime. My sort of energy levels have switched up and I made a... I manifested and said, well, I'm not going to travel that much, but I'm going to Dubai next week or in 10 days time, work with the triathlete and a shake.
And then, yeah, I'm trying to, I want to ski a bit and have spent time and I've got work to do on my online community. Yeah. So I'm trying not to travel, but it doesn't look like it's panning out so far. I'm going learn to say no.
Tyson (01:06:16.979)
Man I really appreciate you coming back on I've been looking forward to it know we were back and forth a little bit trying to make it happen but um, it's always a blast I love it. I know the listeners absolutely love it. So I'm sure this would be no different. So thanks brother
Lawrence van Lingen (01:06:22.992)
Do it.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:06:29.605)
Yeah, thank you. And how's your comedic app going?
Tyson (01:06:33.633)
Dude, it is so addictive. So I live about an hour and a half out of Melbourne. And so I'm down there two or three times a week. I always say that a lot of the energy I used to put into like my competitive running has sort of transferred across to comedy, but it's very, it's interesting. Cause I would say from my running, I came at it from like a very discipline based, like it was easier because you could go, okay, well, this is what my training session looks like. Here's the event that I'm training for. Whereas with comedy, you can sit down and try and write for an hour.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:06:48.433)
That's amazing.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:06:57.273)
Yes.
Tyson (01:07:02.389)
and you just get nothing. And then you can be in the car and a car will come across in front of me and I go, that guy looked funny. And then seven ideas pop into your head. And so I kind of love that balance of discipline and being open to that creative voice, which just seems to pipe up from time to time. So yeah, I listen a lot to Rick Rubin, sorry, because he seems to say about that, that unique balance between discipline and just openness.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:07:11.247)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:07:17.315)
Nice. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Tyson (01:07:28.791)
And yeah, there's this so dude, the best way I can explain it is whether you absolutely kill or whether you absolutely bomb it, you can never allow that to be your last gig because it's just, it's either your ego is just off and away and you're like, how good am I at this? Or I can't let that be my last gig. That was horrific.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:07:29.017)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:07:37.837)
Nah. Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:07:46.039)
Yeah, but that's in everything in life. I think it's just amplified in what you do, but that's the same for running. you can't let your results, you know, seem people win a gold medal and just be in sort of near catatonic depression because they thought that that thing was going to sort all their problems in their life out. And a lot of people are, to be quite frank, are running away from their problems, you know, running towards they think like, you know, and no, we have to live in the now and we have to this is there's only now nothing in the future is going to make your life better.
Tyson (01:07:52.705)
Yeah.
Tyson (01:08:16.566)
Yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:08:16.799)
And that's why we talk about mastery, medals. And you have to just express yourself and let the chips fall where they may. It's hard, but it's the path of courage. Cool, man. Well, that's awesome.
Tyson (01:08:23.927)
It's so true.
For sure, yeah, it's funny. Yeah, man, I love it. I'm really obsessed. I've got plans, actually. I've got family in America. So I'm pretty keen to get over there. Austin seems to be a great scene for it right now. with so many of the big comics who moved away from LA during COVID have gone there and set up a cool scene. So I'm pretty keen to get over there and just see what it's all about, Anyway, yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:08:40.075)
Yeah, yeah.
Lawrence van Lingen (01:08:49.033)
That'll be amazing. Well, I look forward to watching your progress. Okay. Yeah, give it. I'm pumped. Okay. Take care. Bye.
Tyson (01:08:53.847)
Thanks brother. Yeah, yeah, I'll start tagging in some clips. Alright brother, thanks again man. See you dude. I'll end that there.