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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Hello, everyone. Good morning. It's the springtime here in The UK, and the sun is shining. So if you listen to this, you're in The UK, you better be out getting your steps in or something along those lines, at least in the sun or something. If you can, obviously.
Speaker 1:Today's podcast, I wanna cover a research study on exercise. Now, when people think of exercise, they think they gotta go to gym five times a week, blah blah blah blah. Spoke about this before. But what happens if we just do a bit of exercise? What happens if we actually enjoy it?
Speaker 1:What's the impact of these small minor tweaks to exercise and how we do it? And what can I do for our health? Because if I were to ask you, do you wanna live a longer, healthier life? You'd say, obviously, of course I do. And one pathway to improving this is of course consistent exercise.
Speaker 1:Doing one workout, two workouts a week. This is going help with heart disease, stroke, type two diabetes, many cancers, depression, dementia, loads of things. The unfortunate thing is that over the last ten, twenty, thirty years, the only exercises that have been pushed is bodybuilding workouts, P90X, and crazy one, the workouts had to be crazy. And then we've got the CrossFit and the Hierarchs. For most people they're just kind of out of question, know, it's like, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 1:There's many levels psychologically to getting involved in those types of things, and the people that do get involved love it, but to be realistic, the chances are most people are not going to get involved in those types of exercises and systems, and we need something else. And is something else worth doing? What are the results you're going get? Is how the study worked. Michigan State teamed up with scientists Portugal to study how exercise, intensity related to exercise consistency.
Speaker 1:They wanted to know basically if a participant worked out at an intensity they enjoyed or at least didn't hate, would they be more likely to hit the gym? So they recruited 47 people between the age of 18 and 45. They had some previous experience in health club setting but none had shown up for more than five workers per month before. Just of worked out sometimes. So they worked with personal trainers, sixty minute workout, and there was a mix of resistance training, some stretching and cardiovascular stuff.
Speaker 1:And then the trainers in one of the group suggested to alter the intensity for something they could enjoy or could do. Trainers assessed participants essentially on if they wanted to go higher or lower intensity movement or access they didn't like and to think of listen to your body, if you don't like the exercise, do something else, blah blah blah, and it was an eight week intervention. So maybe thinking obviously if you enjoy it, you're going to do it more, obviously, right? But the participants who learned to regulate their exercise intensity based on personal preference, they basically exercised more often and enjoyed it more. There's no shock there.
Speaker 1:But what the number that shocked me was is that the people that hit the gym, that changed the intensity and the preferences, hit the gym 14 times during the eight week period. And the people who didn't, who were just told, this is your workout today, you're gonna do this, and I say, turn up eight times on average. So it's nearly double. It's nearly double. And I think this is the important part about when we do an exercise, you're in control.
Speaker 1:If you go to a class, if you go to a personal trainer, whatever it is, you say, listen, I'm gonna push myself after intensity. I wanna push at. Like, I'm not comfortable with you pushing me to the the limit and I feel sick. I don't wanna do that. I'm here for my health and I know I don't need to push it that far.
Speaker 1:I'm here to enjoy and I'll push it more when I'm comfortable. A lot of PTs will work the opposite way to that, where they push you at their intensity, but you can reference this study if you want. Like, if I want to be turning up once or twice a week consistently, I need to make sure that I can do what I can on the day. And the interesting thing about this is that they measured the participants' heart rate. Okay?
Speaker 1:And the heart rate was the same whether they were in the, oh, I need a I need an easier workout today versus that the other groups that just had a continuous, like, kind of moderate to difficult workout. And you know why that is? Because often, before we start a workout, before we start some exercise, many of us are like, I don't feel great today. I don't feel like I've the energy today. I know what's coming, it's going be pain.
Speaker 1:But say, okay, I'll do something as long as it's easy. Don't want do squats today, I don't want do deadlifts, okay, I just want to use the machines, want to be something nice, and I don't want to do sprints, just want to do incline walk, I want something easier. Once they get started and the endorphins start kicking in, your heart rate goes up, you start feeling energized, you start thinking, okay, I can do this, and subconsciously or maybe even consciously, I'm going push myself now. This is always the case, you know. I think back to the days when I used to play football and rugby when I was in secondary school, know, I used to wake up at like 8AM, oh, I've got to go play football this morning, I just want to play Call of Duty instead, and you're like, I don't want to play.
Speaker 1:And then you're three minutes into the game and they've scored or someone's hit you with a tackle and it wakes you up, you're like, let's go, I'm ready now. It just took out two to three minutes of just getting stuck in. And even though you think, before this game I'm not feeling it, you get stuck in. You end up having some of the best games you ever had. Especially in rugby, you wake up on Sunday mornings and usually it would be raining and freezing in the mud, it was so cold.
Speaker 1:And you'd be raining outside, be warming up in the rain, going back in the changing room thinking, what are we doing? What are we doing this sport for? And then you go out and you start playing, you're like, ah, then within a few minutes you do your first tackle, someone tackles you and you think, alright, let's go, you know? And I think it's just how we are as humans. There's also this two minute rule where you say I don't want to go for a jog, don't want to go for a walk and you go do you know what, I'm just going to walk two minutes, I'm going to walk down to the bench and back.
Speaker 1:And you walk for two minutes and you think I'll actually carry on now, I'll do five, ten, fifteen, twenty. Just how we are. We need to essentially trick ourselves in a way, and then when we get into it we push more. This study just proves that if you have more pleasant exposures and you know you're in control and you can start at any intensity you want, you're more likely to, do it, you're more likely to get the benefits of it and you're more likely to just be generally happier about exercise. Now exercise is something to add in, I've mentioned that you do walking, you can do interval walking, the Japanese method of three minutes normal walk, three minutes kind of walking at a pace where you would struggle to hold a conversation and that's where you start maybe.
Speaker 1:Because some of you guys are now trying to speak to many different people through the podcast, many different levels of strength and different accessibility to workouts and gyms. Some of you might not have gym membership, so don't be fooled that you have to have this gym membership with all these machines and PT and stuff to get results. You can start with the interval walking, which is three minutes normal, three minutes faster, and then you can make it harder by doing your pills and stuff. You can start there, it's going to work your cardiovascular stuff, it's going to improve your general fitness. Then you think, okay, well maybe I better get a pair of dumbbells or some resistance bands and I'll do something at home once a week.
Speaker 1:There was another study I was reading about what we call weekend warriors and they noticed the weekend warriors, the people that just train on weekends, so in a week they don't train, no time working, whatever, gets to weekend and they'll do the Saturday and Sunday they'll be very active, they'll do some activity, do some workouts and they call them weekend warriors. The weekend warriors had improved health markers over the ones that weren't weekend warriors at all. So it just goes to show that something is always better than nothing when it comes to exercise and that's brilliant news for us. I don't try and push exactly what you should do too much on exercise because this study proves it. It's got to be something you enjoy, it's got to be something you can comfortably do, you have to reduce the anxiety before the session starts.
Speaker 1:I used to sometimes feel a bit I guess doing jujitsu, you you'd turn up to a jujitsu class and you would know who's there and who you're sparring against. Especially in Brazil when I was there and you have these black belts and stuff and you think I'm not feeling great today, I've got injured finger. You have to do before you spar someone is say hey man, I've got injured finger, I'm not feeling great, I just want to go light. And then you go light and you realise that's just a pleasurable experience I've had and all it took for me was to ask the person can we go light. If you don't, the default is like a tough role, it's going to be something you might not enjoy, you're going to get submitted a lot.
Speaker 1:It's the same with these workouts and stuff, going to PT's or doing workouts you find on apps or on YouTube, even though the person is trying to lead you in terms of intensity, you can stop and say, 'That's enough for me right now, I'm going to stop, take a breather, I'll join back in the next set.' These are all obvious things we should be able to do but we feel pressured that we have to do a certain way. So something is better than nothing. If you don't have the time and the energy in the week because you're working, you've got kids, whatever, be a weekend warrior. Say, okay, Saturdays and Sunday mornings, whatever it is, we're gonna go and do something active exercise wise. You know, and that's fine.
Speaker 1:Get the benefits from the health benefits from it. Notice I'm not talking about exercise in a sense of fat loss. And I get this question all the time, covered it in the first few days of podcast, but I want to reshare it slightly now. Exercise isn't a great tool for fat loss because once you reach a certain amount of exercise sessions a week and intensity, your hunger levels are going to go up a lot and you're going to typically consume more calories, carbs and stuff because you need to recover from the workouts. People find it hard to stay in a calorie deficit when they work out a lot.
Speaker 1:It's really difficult. It's a very stressful state for the body to be in if you are doing a lot of workouts plus you're in a deficit. Some people are trying to run marathons or ultramarathons and they want to lose some fat. They're really contradictory goals. It's not recommended that you're trying to lose fat whilst running ultramarathon or doing the training.
Speaker 1:You might lose fat as a side effect and you might eat at maintenance and you might lose some fat along the way, and that's fine, but to under fuel your body during these long training sessions and recoveries is not gonna be good for your performance and overall stress, and it's recommended. So when it comes to exercise for fat loss, a bit of exercise might help in a bit, but when you look at your total energy expenditure over a week, how many calories you burn in total over a week, if you look at working out a few times a week for two, three, four hours, it's like three to 4% of your waking hours you'll be spending doing some exercise. What you do the other 96% has a far bigger impact and this is why steps is important. You can scale the steps, you can walk, you can go from 5,000 steps a day to 10,000 steps a day in four weeks say, you gradually increase it, Your hunger goes down if anything by increasing your steps to that range. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You're not like getting spikes in hunger. You feel good. Mental health improves because you can get steps in, go outside. You're burning more calories and it's like something that's predictable and you can do it daily without the down or the negative stress impacts of doing a lot of workouts. So that's why the steps and general lifestyle outweighs a couple of workouts a week or three or four workouts a week.
Speaker 1:I know you might go to the gym three or four times a week, you do strength training, you feel like it's a tough workout, When you think about doing weights, for example, half the time you spend in resting between sets and the other half you're doing the actual work. So you might be doing fifteen to twenty minutes of actual work when you're doing weights and when you're doing three or four, it's like sixty, eighty minutes a week, it's a miniscule amount and you shouldn't be thinking of working out in terms of fat loss, you should be thinking of working out in terms of the health benefits it brings, performance, strength, mental health, all of these things are far more important than we get from exercise than trying to lose fat. Fat loss is easier controlled by increasing your non exercise activities such as steps, trying to be generally more active in your day to day living, so taking phone calls, walking or standing up, taking Zoom calls, standing up or being able to walk, parking your car further away so you walk a bit more, generally just sitting up, standing up, instead of laying on the couch for three hours watching TV, maybe stand up for half an hour to an hour to watch something or sit upright.
Speaker 1:There's little things and tweaks you can do like washing dishes. Just being more active, this type of lifestyle, has a big impact versus exercise. I just want to clarify that because when it comes to picking an exercise, picking things to do, don't think about is this going to help me lose more fat. Think about will I enjoy it, will I stick to it, is this something I can change intensity of, And is it something that's not going to give me injuries? Is it not niggling here and there?
Speaker 1:There's some things you can do that would do. Some people try boxercise or something and realise my wrists are hurting a lot and I'm punching punching punching and I can't have bad risks in my job or whatever, think maybe boxer size isn't the right thing to do. Stuff like that. So have a think about it. I think this is an interesting study.
Speaker 1:It's obviously a very common sense study. We would probably have determined this before the study was done. Does enjoying and reducing the intensity make you more likely to work out? Some people would say maybe not, people just need no pain, no gain commit, but actually knowing that we can adjust and enjoy better has a huge impact. You will likely turn up to double the sessions versus just sticking to one intensity set by someone else and not yourself.
Speaker 1:Something is better than nothing for exercise, progress over perfection when it comes to tracking and just get on with your life guys, enjoy it, live one day at a time, that's all you can do. That's it. I'll be back again with another podcast tomorrow, speak soon.