Begin Again with Davina McCall - Why The Modern World Is Breaking Your Body, And How To Fix It! | Roger Frampton

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Reset Month 4: ALIGN Why Your Body Isn’t Broken, It’s Confused. In this powerful episode of Begin Again, movement expert Roger Frampton challenges everything we’ve been told about aging, pain, and flexibility. If you've ever thought, “My body just isn’t what it used to be,” this conversation will make you rethink what’s really going on. Roger reveals how our modern world, from the way we sit to how we exercise, has deprogrammed our bodies from moving the way they were designed to. He explains why it's not your age that's holding you back, but decades of learned stillness, and how to take your mobility back at any stage of life. From the shocking truth about when we start losing natural movement (it’s earlier than you think), to why the gym might be doing more harm than good, this episode is full of game-changing insights. You’ll also learn: -The daily habit that’s more important than working out -Why mobility is as easy and essential as brushing your teeth - What “training for your 80-year-old self” really looks like Whether you're recovering from injury, struggling with stiffness, or just want to move and feel better for the long haul, this episode will inspire you to rethink your body, and your future. ` Like, comment, and subscribe for more Reset Month episodes. Tap the bell to stay updated!💚 🎁 Don’t miss our RESET giveaway! Sign up for the Begin Again newsletter for exclusive tools and a chance to win over £750 in wellness prizes http://beginagainshow.com?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=reset Follow us here: 📸 https://www.instagram.com/beginagain 🎥 https://www.tiktok.com/@beginagainpod Follow Roger: https://www.instagram.com/rogerframpton/ By Roger's Books: https://roger.coach/books (00:00) INTRO (01:29) Intro to Movement & Flexibility (03:16) Modelling’s Impact on Movement (06:22) Future-Proofing Your Joints (09:40) Mistakes with Joints & Ligaments (17:39) Western Culture’s Aversion to Movement (23:53) LINT Ad (25:01) Ancient & Brave Ad (26:19) Basics of Flexibility (28:39) Importance of Balance (31:16) Listening to Your Body (40:25) Mindfulness in Movement (44:02) Achieving Change Through Training (47:22) Changing the Movement Culture (52:18) Insights from Movement Classes (52:34) Building a Mobility Habit (53:48) Mental Benefits of Mobility (56:13) Books: Stretch & The Flexible Body Discover Lindt Excellence… Expect Delicious. Ancient & Brave - Subscribe and Save 20% + Free Ritual Scoop at Ancientandbrave.earth/planet Ancient & Brave - Subscribe and Save 20% + Free Ritual Scoop at Ancientandbrave.earth/planet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Everyone has had the same message. As you get older, your body declines and there's nothing you can do about it. I just want people to realize the truth. The studies have proven that regardless of age, you can make phenomenal changes to your body. Where do we start going wrong? Well, we know if we want to live longer.

You have to, I got scouted as a model, and then someone said, you never wear a white t-shirt, sort your body out. But that literally changed my world because then I started exploring body weight and it's fendgely that led me to movement. We teach a kid in terms of their movement.

Don't fidget, sit still, that's decades have changed away from moving naturally. Decades. All right. So, yeah, decades. Do you not say that? Try and test every single potential movement that I could possibly do, apart from the one where my body says no.

And it really gets people attentive to filling their body. You've slightly given me a light bulb. A moment, yeah. You can train your body to do anything. Wow. Step one is... So I'm here with Roger Frampton, who is going to talk to us about mobility, flexibility,

and the importance of that, and how really from when we are born, we are almost immediately learning bad habits that then can just give us enormous problems in the future and how to combat that in quite a simple way, really. But that in a funny kind of way, modern exercise really is doing us a disservice. And there are many things that we can do to help. And he's got the answers. I don't have all the answers. Oh, I have some. I have some.

I have some, not just from my own experience, but from what I have observed in the world. And yeah, I'm more than happy to share them with you and chat to you because you are so in this space. Your space is helping people in their mid-life. And this tends to also cross over with being a time where people really start to be aware of how they're feeling and how they're moving and achy joints and noisy joints. and they start to be, oh, hang on, what's happening here? I mean, I'm hearing that from everywhere. Yeah. Everywhere.

I look, everywhere. Listen. I see it. I hear it. It's really interesting. I call this kind of time of our lives being in Sniper's Alley. Something's coming for us and we can feel it. And there's a lot I want to talk to you about.

There's in particular an amazing French woman who I don't know, 100, 20, 103, something like that and still doing yoga. I can't wait to talk about her. But I'd like to start off when you were talking about how you realized how important posture and your body was. And actually, you started life career as a male model. And I particularly love that because I was a male model agent. So how did you come to be a model? Like how did you get discovered?

Was it you and your brother at the same time? No, I was, well, I was a carpenter when I was younger. like Jesus and just saying it's just thrown out there that's a great line well just like this yeah just telling you there's a good I also had a part-time job in a bar yeah maybe not like Jesus no no and yeah just I got scouted and so I was just doing an MVP in in carpentry that was my world I was working in building sites it was you know years ago when Canary Wharf was first going up wow And that was my world. And I also wanted to have a spare time job.

And then, yeah, I got scouted. Someone came in. They were like, we think you do well as a model. And I was like, okay, cool. And then I went into, I was with select models. Yeah. And went in there, there was no digital. No.

Polaroids made me a little book of black and white pictures. Gave me an A to Z. Yeah. Sent me around London into this weird world of people taking pictures of you in different outfits. And we all know that, um, obviously there is an expectation on you to look good. But when you were, when you were younger, when you were young, young, who was your pin up then? Um, well, I grew up around 90s movies, right? So John Claude Van Damme, these are, these are the known, Joel Convon, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, right? These are the kind of,

these are kind of people that I look up to. They're the hero. They got the girl. They ran off into the sunset and they all happen to have six-packed so what i'll do is just work on my body so i mean so my whole fitness thing you know before i was into modeling it was just you know go to the gym bicep curls back day chest day leg day yeah get as big as you possibly can uh but that doesn't really work for the modeling industry like they they want you to be in a like a 38 suit at the time now it's probably vastly different but yeah if you want to walk down the catwalk they want every silhouette to look the same they did and so So the owner, Tandy, I remember her.

So well. So she said, you. Never wear a white t-shirt. Like you, T-T-T-T-T-shirt. Never wear a white t-shirt and stop lifting weights. Now, thank you, Tandy, because you literally changed my world. Because then I started exploring body weight, and that's how the whole journey. Yeah.

We were just saying before a criticism, right? And at the time, you know, imagine a girl the same age as me, 18, 19, and someone saying, you sort your body out, right? Because essentially that's what happened, right? And I was like, oh, right, I guess I should go and do that. Stop lifting weights, you know, start. But then I found body weight and gymnastics and it's fendgely that led me to movement. So that was probably the most beautiful thing that ever happened.

But at the time, I felt pretty stupid. You talked a little bit about the fitness kind of ideal then of being the Van Damns, the Schwarzneggers, and that that was training in a completely different way to the way you train now. Can you just talk to us a bit about the old school way of training back then if you wanted to be massive? What was it like the regime? Yeah, I guess now as well, you could do it with like, you could also, you could just talk about intentions, right? So when I did it, it was like you train your biceps because you're trying to get this to look big because you're trying to show off or you're trying to find a mate or you're trying to attract another.

So even now when I'm at the gym, there's other, you know, there could be an 18 year old, and I'm next to me and they're focused on biceps girls because they have different intention. They have different objective, different goal. I'm all about long-term ability. So we could train next to each other, be doing things completely separate. Yes. But it's because my intention is that I'm here and they're there. But yeah, it was just legs.

Everything that you can see, right? And especially the front, that's the most important. Don't give us a mirror. That's so true. Chest. Chest is that chest and biceps. You never miss those. Men are always big on shoulders.

Yeah. And shoulders are hard to do. And yeah, you're just trying to essentially simulate like an image, a visual, right? And you're just copying what everyone else is doing. What seems to be working for the other guys. Exactly. So you don't really consider anything else. And it's quite quick.

It's quite quick to see, it's quicker to see results with muscles than it is with joints. Well, when you work with joints and tendons and ligaments, like, they take many years to develop, which is why people quick flexibility, because you don't see quick results. Like, you can be a very quick, you could learn running really quickly. But with joint work, you know, I did this viral video ages ago, and it was like, this is why you're going to quit. And it's because you won't see results quickly. Yes. And you have to measure it over months, even years, which is why I'm always saying to people, you know, today, right, I train this morning and I'm training for 51 year old me, me in 10 years.

Yes. I'm not training for me today because I won't see any change. Yes. So my visual is just like, I'm doing this for him and he's going to appreciate that, but he's going to train for 61 year old me. Yes. That's how the chain moves on. That's a really nice idea. It's the only idea you should have.

In 10 years' time. With this work, with joint work, it would be crazy to assume that you can see results quickly. And if you do, you try to get results quickly, you'll probably get injured because the ligaments don't adapt that quick. So you'll get injured, you get set back. And then you go, oh, you know, there's something wrong. You know, there's something wrong with me. Or, you know, they might go, oh, this might be because of my age. But it's not.

It's just that you need to do it really slowly and repetitively. This is as boring as broccoli. What are you talking about? I love broccoli. What I mean is that if you eat some broccoli today, you won't go, oh, wow, that broccoli really did it. But if you eat broccoli all over your life, then you'll go, oh, it's actually, you know, it's good. It shouldn't, this work shouldn't be exciting. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing that I like about. Just destroys the dreams on broccoli. What? I love the broccoli, not in a soup. What? I mean, I want to get everywhere. But I'll start off with what happens as we age to our joints, our texas.

and our ligaments. Where do we go, start going wrong? Okay. Should we start at the heart? Yes. All right. In the 70s, you were taught that your knees shouldn't go over your toes. Yes. That rounding your back was bad for you. That there were such as things like certain exercises are good and certain exercises are bad. We should avoid. If you get injured, you just tie it up.

Do you remember those cartoons where everyone was just wrapped up? We literally thought that if people got injured, we should just wrap them up and keep them really fragile like a piece of glass. And it was also common in the 70s that age equals decline, right? I would say that went on into the 80s, even and 90s. And it wasn't just from your peers. This was from science. Yeah.

This was from your local doctor. This was from everyone growing up, your parents, your guardians, everyone had the same message that as you get older, your body declines and there's nothing you can do about it. And this is just real. It's just happening. So, I mean, this is now, we know, and studies have proven that regardless of age, you can improve the movements of your joints. Of course, people have certain limitations, but within that, joints can be improved regardless of age.

One of the reasons that people think is age is because the amount of time that they haven't spent working on their joints. Yes. Because from, like, if you look at any three-year-old, they're moving beautifully. Yeah. And that's almost the epitome of natural movement. If you just watch it, if you observe a three-year-old and you just leave them alone, and you just obviously take their phone away and just leave them, right, you will see beautiful movement.

And they'll go, they'll squat, they'll get up, they'll sit cross-legged, they'll kneel, they'll hang, they'll love to go to the playground, they'll twist, they'll climb. And they'll do it without their parents teaching them. Their parents don't go, here you go, here's your little squat lesson today, right? No, this is just beautiful and natural. And then you get to like four years old. And now it's like, fidgeting is now naughty, right? Don't fidget, need to concentrate.

But it's been proven now fidgeting is actually helpful when you're, you know, when you're trying to learn. Don't fidget, sit still. Look at the adults sitting at the table nice and still. And so we teach these little beautiful movers, right, that to be an adult, to be a grown-up, if you want to be like them, you have to slowly learn. So if I'm 50 and since four years old, I've been. been told that, you know, it's all about stillness. And in school, I don't get taught sport. I get

taught, I get taught sport. I don't get taught movement. I get taught a specific sport with specific roles in a human-made concept. Then suddenly, I'm now 46 years away, right, from where I was moving naturally. So then my brain's going, well, it must be my age. But it's not. It's 46 years, if you were 50, of course, depending on your age, of not doing natural human movement, of potentially not spending many hours on the floor, scotting, hanging, kneeling, etc. So then we have this association that it's age, but it's not. It's fascinating when you just said we teach kids sport but not movement. And I suddenly thought, that's so true.

It's like, I mean, it's great, obviously, for cardiovascular, it's great for team building and fun if you enjoy a certain sport or whatever. But we're not taught how to move properly for our bodies at an early age, which would be fun. You'd still enjoy it. It would be good for you. What are the biggest things that we lose in terms of ranges of movement that are completely second nature to us when we're little?

Man walks into a dentist. Yes. Dentist says, I need you to floss every day. Yes. I go, which do you should I floss? There you go. The ones you want to keep. You can see.

Oh my God. Yes, okay. It's the same with joints. Which joints do you want to keep moving well? Okay, your ankles, your knees, your hips. So the ones that you keep moving well, they're the ones that you're going to get to keep. So that's the analogy of move it or lose it. If you don't, and you can apply that to a joint movement, right, if I don't put my wrist through its full ranges of motion, and I teach.

my body that I need that motion. My body will assume I don't want it. If I don't squat on the ground, my body goes, well, I guess we don't need to squat anymore. Yeah. I'm an energy-efficient machine. I'm not going to keep squatting for when you get older. I don't care.

So I start to just shut down. And I will, because I'm about survival, I'm talking as a body, I'm about survival, I'm about energy efficient. So I'm going to close down everything. And I'm going to keep shutting it down. And unless you're constantly working on trying to restore those movements, but this will apply to any joint

to your toes, to your ankles, to your knees, to your hips, to your shoulders, to your spine. So the practice of mobility is keeping those ranges open. And the more we work on those ranges and keep them, then we get to keep them. Yeah.

But if we don't, our body will just go, no problem. No problem, I will get rid of them. And I feel like people feel that we're going to get to save it. We get to keep it for a later day. And it's, you know, I always use a teeth analogy. It's just like, as long as you're eating, you need to brush your teeth.

Right. And as long as you're living in a modern world full of technology and conveniences and chairs and comforts, you need to have a practice where you're moving your joints on a daily basis. And if you don't, your body will just shut them down. Do you know an area that I've really noticed that happening for me? And I would like to consider myself quite self-aware in terms of my body. and I'm quite flexible and I enjoy moving, but is my wrists. Right.

So the plank, I am okay at the plank, but if I go for too long, this range of movement is shortening, and I've made a resolution. This year I want to make a commitment. I don't want to say resolution, because it's actually could be a year-long thing, and I'm going to need to work on it and spend time on it. But my partner has spent the last year and a half learning how to do a, handstand again. Love it.

And he's got really, really good at it. So much that the other day I looked at him and it was like 16 seconds, 20 seconds. I was like, wow. And it looked so beautiful. It could see his fingers working and his elbows were bent. And I thought, I haven't, I don't think I've ever been able to do a handstand even when I was a kid. And now I feel like this, my forearm is so tight.

Right. I will really struggle to start. I'm going to commit to trying to find the mobility in my wrists and my forearms again. Fantastic. That is where I can feel I'm snoozing and I'm losing. But you've already achieved step one. You've noticed it. Right.

And then you have two choices. It's like, well, I've noticed it. Am I going to go into it, right? Or I'm going to get away from it. Yes. And it's very tempting. It could be if you say, my wrist is tight.

When you go to your training, you might want to kind of avoid that because you're like, oh, there's something, there might be something wrong there. Whereas we want to go into that because obviously we don't want to injure it and you don't want to cause pain there.

But we want to read those signals from the body. You literally said, I feel, right? You're sensing it. Can feel it within. And so, yeah, it's lovely that you're going into that. And a handstand is, I mean, an expression of wrist. Yeah. Mobility.

Yeah. Sure. Yeah. I did some yoga a year ago with a girl called Roshin. She's on my platform and she was doing handsstand preparation. And I fully went into it going, I'm not going to be able to do this. You know that thing where you tell yourself, oh, I can't do this. And I did a little thing where it was like a little, we'd gone through 20, 30 minutes of stretching.

and, you know, doing things that are going to prepare us for a movement. And we did a little movement. And she said, so just try and do a little jump and see if you can get any kind of balance. Not put your legs up or anything, but any kind of balance where you feel that your arms are taking the sport. And it said try again, try again. And the third time I did it, I found a one second moment. I burst into tears. Really?

Yeah. I think what you're teaching people at our age is quite an emotional thing because I think we believe, like you said, that we are shutting down and actually that's not true. We don't have to. For sure. I feel that. I got an email.

It's probably a couple of weeks back. It was a guy called Tim. He said he was sat on the beach. He's 66 and he was sitting there and he had the sun blasting on his back and he was looking out and he's just watching these little kids Making suncastles and they were squatting and they were playing and they were doing kids stuff like Cartwheels and handstands and throwing themselves about and falling over and get up and he said something to me that really hit deep Really just you know from what you just said He said I'd love to get up and just move my body just for the sake of moving it, but I would feel embarrassed

I would feel it's not culturally acceptable for me just to get up on the beach. And that cut deep for me and I was like, imagine if instead of him sitting on the beach and observing this beautiful movement that we're all born with, imagine he was sat on a park bench in a park in Shanghai. And instead of your little kids running around, there was 70 and 80 year olds, squatting, hanging off bars, dancing, playing, right, being human movers. He would suddenly see people older than him, his age, his peers. Suddenly he would be the odd guy.

He would be the odd one out on the bench. But he would feel free and open. So this is not about that Tinder didn't know which exercises to do or how to get started. He's a born mover. But he didn't have permission. There was no permission has been taken away from movement since we were four years old.

It's been taken away. But this is so cultural. This is really about the West being behind in terms of what is happening. You can go to China, you can go East Asia, South East Asia, Japan. You will go through most parks and you will see people getting up before breakfast and doing their movement on building sites. They do some kind of practice before they start. And it's just when you see that,

The house of cards completely, for me, collapses. When anyone talks about Asia movement, it's just like, take a trip to Shanghai. Just go there. You don't even have to go to Shanghai. It goes to this freaking YouTube or whatever. Go just put old people training East Asia, whatever. But look and observe. And the theory then collapses about age.

You go, well, what about these millions of people? Like, what are they doing different? What they're doing different is their culture said, movement's important. Movement's important. And here we said education is more important. So we're going to kind of skip that bit. We'll do your little bit of PE and teach you a little bit of sport,

but get your head down and focus. Pay your taxes. Yeah. It's really a story about permission. And do you mean, I live in Gloucestershire, right? If I walk down the road, right, and where are the 50 plus, 50 plus, 60 plus, Where are they? They're not in the streets, dancing, playing, moving, practicing.

They're not there. So what am I going to think? There's just, I would be the odd one out to even get involved. It's not even like an age problem, right? It's like, this is a cultural issue. Divina, you can be moving beautifully. You have nothing to fear about getting to your 70s and getting to your 80s in terms of mobility and movement, right?

You can adapt regardless of age. And the messaging from the 70s was out of date. I wish they'd just gone to China and just walked for a park instead of just throwing this messaging out. But yeah, it's something that can be unseen. And yeah, I think a lot of people need to tap into that. And when you do, you suddenly go, oh, oh, I can change. I can improve. It's not too late.

It's not. I mean, there's so much wrapped up in that because I'm always looking for some kind of inspiration for me as a woman in terms of physicality, positive, fun, mental attitude, disgraceful ageing, fun, you know, like, I need people out there being their funniest, naughtiest, most flexible, strongest, you know, living their best lives. So that I feel, so I feel a responsibility in a way to be that for younger women. Yeah. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of our new sponsor. No, it's not a chiropractor business. It's Lint Excellence Dark Chocolate,

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when people think about flexibility as well right they think about like the splits because that's how it's like oh cool that's almost like how I judge flexibility the split and I think that becomes the problem it's like for me I don't really care about the split I just want to be really, really good at the basics.

So what are the basics? Like, think of the basic. Because I really don't want to add and give people more to think about and more to add. The basics of what people did as a three-year-olds, right? To sit on the floor to get up and down with the floor with ease. Yes. Which it happened, just happened, to be loads of longevity test. So a good few one, get up and down and off the floor cross-legged.

It's a perfect example of mobility. It's got the flexibility component. Let's do it. Let's do it. It's actually a really good example of mobility. So flexibility is like you sit on the floor cross-legged. And the mobility is can you get up from that position? So then you have strength within your flexibility.

So then that's how I would refer to is like a mobility piece. And you're talking about you need both. It's not just flexibility. It's mobility and flexibility and strength to help you execute. Together. Yeah. So it's the blending of the two. So you wouldn't like, so for example, I don't have this strength thing that I go and do over here.

And then this flexibility thing. that I go and do over here. My training combines the two. Yes. Like that cross-legged one is a beautiful example because as you get up from the ground, you want to be like a bamboo tree, right? You want to be able to bend but not break, right?

Is the example. If you cannot talk about mobility and Eastern practices, I don't have bamboo trees. No. Exactly. It's a must. It's a must.

I don't really get that. You've got to have that. You know, I know that I've always thought of it as flexibility, but I've never really thought of this idea that those two things must be together, otherwise there's no point in having it. And also that you could be flexible and sit down on the floor,

but not be able to stand up because you don't have the mobility because you don't have the strength to back up the stretch. Yeah, because a lot of people see it as, say people come down or whatever to come to my training, you know, I'm doing strength and now I just need the flexibility. It's like, well, you're strong here, right? And now you're trying to touch the toes in terms of flexibility, but I'm not really trying to get you,

to do that. I'm trying to get you go, can you combine these two together? Like, balance is a good one. There's loads of tests around balance in terms of longevity. So standing on one leg, standing on one leg with your eyes closed, for those, for those who find that easy. It is hard, isn't it? It's challenging. Standing on one leg with your eyes closed is really hard. It's a good long-term goal for people to work towards. Of course, you would scale that back. Yeah, you would start being comfortable with a wall, right? Before you even do balance, then you would learn to balance with your eyes open.

then you can learn to balance looking up at the ceiling. It's just looking up, you'll find your balance is harder. Yes. Yeah. But I mean, it's a good one. It's a big one for fools as well. You want to be able to train both sides equally as well. Yes.

For fools, did you say? Yeah. I thought, did you know what? Not four. Fools. I was like, you can't call us fools. If you're a fool, you should do balance. But the eyes shut thing, I find frustrating because I think,

why can't I do this? I should be able to do this. Oh, I would just, yeah, can you do it for a second? That's probably a good way to start. Yeah. And can I do it for two seconds? I know it sounds ridiculous, but in 60 days, then you're, you know, you're working towards. So you've just said 60 days.

Is that how long you think it takes to? No, I was literally just basing it on like if you wanted to get a one minute balance, but you would just try and do one second every day. Right. And the next thing you know you're at a minute. But I mean, like, if any goal seems like quite far, right? You're like, for example, you just said, you know, standing with your eyes closed is difficult. Is it difficult for one second?

Should we try? Can we do? So, is that, hang on? Go on. I'm going to stand here behind. I know you can't hear me. One second balance. I can do that.

Okay, close your eyes to one second. You ready? Okay, hold on. One, four, five, six, seven, eight. There you go, eight. So you're eight. So we literally went from you can't balance T, you can balance for eight seconds with your eyes.

It's the longest I've ever done. Congratulations. You're here. I'm like, he's here. Don't lose the plot now. Okay, we've got one minute break and then we're back. 60 seconds. We've got 10 sets.

I've got it. Well, teachers, perhaps you get a hug in between and then you get told that you get in one minute you're going again. Yeah, but I love that. Really? I'm just sad No but you literally But what you just demonstrated

It's beautiful You literally went standing on one leg With your eyes closed It's difficult And then you just said Well actually I can do it for eight seconds So I would write that eight seconds And then next day

You know You're doing big things this year So next day It's going to be Okay what did I get Maybe it's less Maybe it's five And the next day

What is it Maybe it's a little bit more It's nine I'm not that tired that day I had a better sleep Whatever So Should you notice things like that

like fatigue, sleep, because again, I think something that happens to particularly perimenopausal menopausal women is sleep disturbance. And it does have a massive kind of knock-on effect on everything, really. How important is it to mobility and flexibility sleep, do you think? Yeah, well, I'll say to that. I love to measure. Whenever I'm training, I love to, like, measure progress. Do you write things down, or do you?

Yeah, like, say, for example, like what you did with the balance. Yes. Like, I would definitely be writing stuff down. So you could do that hanging from a bar. You're trying to get, maybe you want to hang from a bar for one minute because you want to improve your grip strength because you want to live longer. I don't know. Just throwing it out as an idea.

I've just bought a squeasy. Oh, okay. To help with a grip. Yeah. Oh, get on a bar. Hang. Yeah, I've got to find a bar. Like, yeah.

Where do you? There's one right there. Well, they get on one of these. Yeah. Here you go. There you go. Round two. But at home, like, it's quite hard to find somewhere.

Yeah. Put a bar. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. You'd have to go to a gym, really. Adult playgrounds. They're more popular. There's a calisthenics app that has loads of adult playgrounds in the UK.

Wait. There's a call. Yeah, I can't remember what it's cool. But basically you put in your postcode, it tells you your nearest place where an adult can go and train outdoors. It's probably more popular in London. Like, I train a lot in Primrose Hill. Yeah. They've got a little adult thing with loads of bars that you can just go and hang from.

But yeah, if not, you can get something that you can get, you can put on your doorframe at home. Oh, yes. You've got a doorframe bar. To pull up. Yeah. You'll pull up. Yes, I've seen that. So it doesn't matter if your knees are bent.

No, I mean, when you start, you can even have your feet on the ground. You just want the benefit of, you know, it's like someone pulling your shoulders above your head. It's like someone stretching you, but then you're also building strength at the same time. Another thing that I thought about when you were talking about, you're talking about, snooze you lose was an enormous issues. I mean, I know it to be one for women, but I don't know about men. I think you'd probably know better than I do is frozen shoulder. Right.

That lots of women later in life get frozen shoulder, which is really painful and difficult and just seems to get worse and worse. What's good for that? First, I have to say I'm not a physio. All right. Okay. I just have to note that. Yeah.

But what I would say is most movements that you see within a gym don't really explore full ranges of motion in your shoulders. Your shoulders should be able to move overhead, behind your back, over here, in all of those directions. Here, exactly, shoulder extension, which is where you train where your shoulders behind your back, hanging from a bar. It's your shoulder's overhead work. You want to explore all of these ranges of motions with your shoulder, which kids will naturally do. Yes. If kids love to go to the playground, what are the first thing they do, they hang? There's a book by Dr. John Kirsch, which is on why people experience shoulder pain.

And the first thing he starts with, which is why I love his work, is we stopped going to the playground. And because of that, we no longer have a shoulder functioning like a shoulder. It stops being a shoulder. It becomes a half shoulder. And then especially if you, on top of that, you're doing sports that require very repetitive movement in singular directions, i.e., tennis right so remember sport isn't human movement

a sport is a human made concept the construct of hitting a ball over and over which has rules which you're always using the same arm

and you're always doing the same movement yes so this shoulder is not designed it's not evolved to play tennis it's evolved to move in all of these

every single position I could possibly move with my shoulder all of these I should hold a minute here we go your shoulder

and if you're Again, if you want to see a full expression of shoulder movement, you know, take a three-year-old to the playground, watch them be really happy climbing around. And yeah, so of course, if we don't move our shoulders in that way, they're going to talk to you and they're going to tell you that there's a problem. After my breast operation, the surgeon said, make sure when you feel right, when you feel ready, that you start moving because you instantly feel like you. you want to protect, protect, and you become quite rigid.

And I was so pleased she said that because it gave me the courage to kind of start using my arms and my shoulders again. I kind of think, look, it's okay, you know, keep moving. It's amazing advice and advice that, again, what we spoke about at the beginning, that they didn't give in the 1970s. Yes. And you saw in cartoons, people wrapped up, right, be careful, don't. They're near it again.

And the message now is never like, okay, don't, I'm going to push into pain. I'm going to go strong. I want to go hard, right? No, that's definitely not the message. But you want to start to open it up slowly. If you've got a, you know, a shoulder, there's a problem around your shoulder. There's some pain there. Start to move your shoulder in as many different ways as possible.

And explore the possibility of where there is pain and where there isn't and work with your body. what do you mean so I'm always rather interested because I've always thought probably because I was born in the 60s that if you feel pain stop yeah definitely but what do we do how do we work with it okay so here's like an example right here's my wrist yeah and just say I've got I've done something to my wrist my wrist can move in many different directions you can go sideways you can go up we can go back it can go down right you can rotate so it's rotation so if I'm moving one way and there's pain. That's my body sending a signal, no, we're not ready to go there. Okay, no

worries. I'll play with some other movements. And I can do that with any joint. I'm just showing a really visual example. And I can just, I'm going to play around. I'm going to try and test every single potential movement that I could possibly do with my wrist, apart from the one where my body says no. Right. So I don't go, oh, I've injured my wrist. Now what I'm going to do? I'm going to go home. Yes, of course. I'm going to leave that. And now I'm going to do my squats over here because my wrist is, my wrist is bad. Your wrist isn't bad. Your wrist is. giving you a little message here. So what can I do that doesn't involve pain?

Yeah. And it really gets people attentive to feeling their body, right? So it's internal work of awareness, right? Internal awareness. This is why it's, you don't really want to just always put iPads and phones in front of kids because they are internally aware of their body. And when you put a visual in front of them, their awareness becomes outward. Now suddenly they're completely obsessed with this thing

and when you're obsessed with this thing if you're in the office, you're working, you're at your laptop. What are you not focused on? Feeling sensation within the body is just gone, right? This is just absorbing all of your attention. You're all here and you're not where you're not, you're not here. So, yeah, it really gets you to tune in with, you know, what pain is, what pain isn't because you never want pain, but you want discomfort.

There has to be some fine of discomfort like, but not pain. As you practice more, with any of this work, it's why I always do this work. My trainer is just really slow, annoyingly slow. It's just really slow, conscious movements where you tune in with how you feel. When you say that, what do you mean slow? When you move fast, like your body is an energy-efficient machine. It said it doesn't care about your long-term ability, but it's not storing it for you. So it will always do things in the most energy efficient way.

So if I need to get to some food, which is over there, your body's not going to go right, perfect posture. I'm going to walk over in the most, all right? It's just going to go, I need to get from A to B in the most energy efficient way because I don't know I'm going to be alive tomorrow. What I need is food now. And so how I get there, your body doesn't care about. We can focus on the how.

We can now have a conversation and go, it's quite likely in 10 years. I'm going to be alive and I'm going to really want my mobility. So we can have a really, we can future think, right? But our body is not like that. It's like, it needs to get there. It's not planning for the future. We can plan for the future.

This is why people brush their teeth every day, right? We can plan for the future. We know, if we don't, the consequences. So regardless of whether I've got a hangover or whether I've got a busy day, here's a weird thought. You'll probably brush your teeth, the day before the day of your death.

Yes. Yeah, you'll probably get up and brush your teeth. It's such an ingrained habit. Yes. And my argument is like, well, if you want to look after your teeth, you should probably start looking after your joints or just the ones that you want to keep. I mean, I quite like that word mindful.

It's like mindful movement. Think about how you're moving to get to the food that you really want. And I access a lot of information about my health or things I like picking up little nuggets from the internet and the Tulligan brothers had talked about

brushing their teeth mindfully. And ever since I read that, I have started to stop getting my toothbrush in my mouth and then walking into my bedroom and while I'm brushing my teeth, turn my bedside light on and then maybe turn the bath on

and put some... I've started just standing there going back, up and down all the way around. You know what I mean? Like actually really think about it. Do you find that difficult? Yes. Because I'm always multitasking, which isn't, I mean, kind of in your world is not what

you want at all. You want to be actually thinking about what you're doing. That's not to say you have to radically slow it down or make it, but just be mindful of what you're doing, not thinking about something else because you're then not thinking about your movement. Yeah, I love that. And it sounds difficult. And you get the same thing with like mindful eating and just actually like literally tasting the flavor.

But I feel it's so about like trying to do a million things. Like when I came down here, I was driving and listened to a podcast and, you know, I'm thinking about this and that. And, you know, my brain is quickly doing, you know, multiple things constantly, like all the time. And so it's just kind of how it is these days. but in a practice at least of training is a time where you could just work with your body and just be with it. Like take the AirPods out, take the phone away

and just feel, feel. And listen, listen, listen. Your body was going to tell you so much. What I wanted to ask you was, in terms of pushing a stretch, how far is it okay to do? and should we always warm up? What does that look like?

Because I also want to talk to you about complete, I cannot wear completely flat shoes. I couldn't wear those. I couldn't wear converse. I couldn't wear the new trendy toes in the thing. Oh, like they, well, they vibran fingers. You know the ones I mean, right? Yeah.

That look like gloves. Yeah. I couldn't wear those because it would kill my Achilles almost immediately. Okay. Which you don't want to. Which you don't want to. I don't want to do anything that causes pain. If you're wearing, someone says like this thing is the best thing you could possibly do and you do it and you're, you're feeling pain.

It's just an owner. But is it true that physiologically some people just aren't suited to some types of exercise or some shoes or should everybody be able to wear completely flat shoes? Well, there's a flip side to it, which is we don't live in a world of concrete and part of surfaces. Like yeah, if we were if you were, you know, brought up and around grass and soil, right, or if you went to the indigenous

culture, right, they'd be confused to why you're wearing shoes, right? They're just going to be wandering around and their feet are perfectly capable even more structurally than your hands. And you'll literally see their feet are just freaking like it's ridiculous, right? And our feet are all bent and twisted

because we just wear fashionable shoes that squash our toes literally squash our toes together and And, you know, it starts for many, many years. Should I be aiming for flat shoes like you? Is this the dream? Should I not get injured in a flat shoe? Or is it not a realistic with my physiology?

Maybe I'm just not meant to, maybe I'm just always meant to be in a stiletto. Well, it depends. Just say, right, how long, let's, okay, let's approach you for this. Oh, how long have you not worn barefoot shoes for within your lifetime? Well, I even struggle with the flip-flop now. I like, 10 years, 10 years. You said earlier your late 50s.

Yes. So you said 58. So 58 years, right? And then you try to go to barefoot shoes, right? Remember what I was saying earlier about how joints and tendons and ligaments adapt, right? Your literally ligament has been adapting since you were three years old. And it's been adapting to the current gate that you walk in. Yes.

And so that's decades. of change, decades. All right. Decades. Do you know what I say that? Five. So you just have to consider that if you can't

you can't just suddenly change it overnight. So you might want to reduce it a millimeter. And then you can even get a barefoot shoe and then you can put something in it which gives you a tiny bit. Like a little lift. Right. So you can slowly,

but it will be the same as training. It has to be. over a very long period of time and super slow but if someone has been always wearing shoes with the heels in then they wear barefoot shoes and they're like oh no barefoot shoes are bad for me I feel pain it's like no you've been wearing these other ones

for a very long time and you try to make transition into this in a day it's like your body's like I have completely adapted I have adapted to the new environment that you give me which this is what I do I'm a body I just adapt to whatever you teach me to do I've adapted to this heel environment

I cannot now sit in a squat. No. And if you try to make me do more, I can't because I've completely adapted over many, many years. Yes. So, yeah, it takes time. It's almost like a training. Yeah. So when I first started wearing these, like my cars are burning.

I even went out and when I'm running in them and literally my whole car. Running those? Through training, through years of practice, through building up to them, you should be able to. But you shouldn't be able to do on day one. Can I ask you then? You said about the world is concrete and if you live on grass and everything, would you run in those on concrete? You can train your body to do anything.

Wow. You could train to run bare feet on concrete, but you would need to build up to that. Yeah. Because then that would be like. That's blown my mind because I just, I mean, you know what's interesting now is that this is kind of my training, normal gym trainer. You should see my bloody running trainer. it's got some weird like

leany forward like wedgy heel like this thick that goes thinner and then to hear so I'm like literally rocking on my shoes if you see you know what I'm yeah they're wild yeah yeah they are making it worse no it depends on the intention is it do I want to be a better runner

or do I want really good functional moving feet for the rest of my life and so it's functioning you went so then you that was a weighted answer then. Do I want really good for the rest of my... Do I want short-term wins, right? Because it's always that.

So it's like, yeah, that's beautiful. And it does work and it gets you better at running. Yes. But I wouldn't do that because that's not my goal or something that I really care of. Well, in 10 years it's not going to help you. Right. I'm like, well, you know, how do I... What's my objective?

I want amazing moving joints for as long as I could possibly have. And so every question... would always be about, well, is that going to help? Like, would I now go and play tennis? No, it's not going to serve my purpose. If someone loves tennis, beautiful. You know, play tennis. And that's your objective because you want to get good at tennis.

If you want to get better at running, great. But just always know if you're getting better at something here, it doesn't always serve this over here. So I'm like head on with this, you know, function. What's your dream then for people? for me it's not even I just want people to realize the truth and over

in the Western world it's just we just have this equation like people come in to my classes and the first they just start talking to they start telling me their age and they're not telling me their age because there's some useful information that I really need to know

they're really tapping into a deeper cultural thing where they in their head have equated their number, their amount of candles on their birthday cake, with how they're moving. They've done that in maths. And they're like, this is my mom, this is my age, and this is my movement. And they, it's completely locked. They haven't taken a trip to China. They haven't seen the, like, the house of cards collapse yet.

They haven't gone, if this were true, if age was decline, every single person your age, We'd all be just slowly going downhill and there's absolutely nothing we could do about it. But globally, it's not the picture. It might be true here, but it's not the picture. And I just want to open people's eyes to that and go, it's not that. And you can make phenomenal changes to your body. It's going to be slow. It's going to be boring.

It's going to be something that you need to do all the time. It's going to be a habit that you need to develop into your life. but it works. How can we change culture? It's a big one that, right? I think starting with ourselves. Yeah. I think starting with yourself

and committing to do that. Sometimes I've had people say to me, you know, what can I do with my kids? You know, I'd love to do the best my kid in terms of their movement. I'm like, well, it's really important what they see. Like if they see you sitting on the sofa, you know, watching TV,

and not having a practice of movement and not being invested in that or being invested in your long-term health, that's where they grow up and that's where they see. If they see you moving amazingly, mom and dad or guardian, whoever, going out and hanging, right, and squatting on the ground and sitting on the floor and teaching them that this is important.

And as you get older, you can still be mobile and you can still keep your movement. If they grew up in that environment, then it's just normal. You know, in the east, it's like, have you heard the term here, the gray tsunami? So it's this, I was into this business podcast and they went, it's called the Gray tsunami, which is basically that the whole thing is, what are we going to do with all the old people? Yeah.

Right. What are we going to do with the old people? Are you talking about that these people can't move phenomenally well? We have this crazy idea in the West that older people are a burden to society. side and need to be pushed to the side. What are we going to do with them? No one's having kids. And then the business podcast went on to how care homes is a really good business to get into because they will have these, right? In the East, it's about older people are wise. Connection. Get out in the parks, listen to your elders. Independent. It's a completely different picture.

And so it's not just mobility. It's literally like, older people to look up to, to learn from. And this is a huge cultural shift that's required, right? Massive. But starting with believing that you can be independent and mobile for longer than you think you can is huge, I think. Knowing. Yes, knowing that you can.

Yeah, just spend a few minutes on YouTube, literally, or whatever platform I'm not on time to use. Any platform, just put old people moving China, old people moving, Hi. Let me ask you, like, how can people access you? I do, like, little workshops in London, so anyone's welcome to come down. Do you know what's funny? I never used to, when I've, like, advertised it, I never put, who I wanted to come into that room. I never put, like, right, I want women or men or this age group or anything. I literally just put it out.

Oh, interesting. So what do you get? Now, 80% is 50, women 50 plus. Yeah. 80%. Men are just freaking stubborn. Women always trying to drag their husbands down He'll love it He really needs to know He really needs to do it He really needs to do it And he probably really freaking does

But he's too stubborn But yeah It's just ended up that way That it's 80% is women 50 plus So what happens is I get to see it Right? Each weekend

Like my reality Is people 50 plus Moving well Because I'm getting them squatting And moving And doing all this stuff So I live in a different world To most people in the West

If your peers Are talking about age and off chairs and making noises. You live in a different world to me. Like each weekend, I'm like, I just get reminded. Like, it's just like, when people are consistent and you see it and you see that follow through. Consistency is key, right? Yeah, it's the only thing.

I mean, when you said you snooze, you lose, it's so true of fitness, mobility, strength. Like it's so true of anything to do with your body, you've just got to keep ticking over. it's so important. And how much do you see it doing for people's mental health? Well, I think it's just really about getting people to connect with their bodies. Yeah. And, well, mentally, everything's like in your head, right? Everything's here.

Yeah, I mean, movement's probably one of the most natural things you can ever do. Movement is something we should all be doing. It's not even something we should be doing. It's just like we would, we would, we would, gifted a human body which is evolved to move. And we live in a world where it, this sofa is a sofa. If I treat this sofa like a chopping board, this sofa is going to get pretty ruined. Yeah. I can say this about any object within this room. This is a human body. It has beautiful joints that move in all of these different directions. And yet we use it to sit and stare at a screen.

Right? And not move at all. And then when it doesn't move, we go, oh, I'm getting older. Right? And it's like, no, it's just like these joints need to move. And if they don't, they just will slowly, slowly get shut down. And that's the bigger picture. So you have to move them. But anyway, I always try and get people to do 10 minutes a day.

I mean, we can all do that, right? Yeah, because it's not about, it's about trying to, It's about trying to do a behavior. It's about trying to, people go, oh, 10 minutes a day, what's that going to do? It's like, well, it means that you're going to be the person that always does training. I never want, you know, you to walk through the door and you're like, oh, 20 minutes, I don't have that today. But I can do, but I can do 10. I never want you to break the habit.

I want movement or mobility to be something that this is something that I just do. Yeah. The same as I'm tired and brush my teeth. Yeah. It's just something, I do a little bit of joint work every day. gay and that's just something that is a part of my life. And so that's the thing. And I'm not, I don't even care if you get results.

And I don't even, that's the last thing on my mind. I just want to mean like, when you're 60, you're the kind of person that spends 10 minutes to day to immorality. Yeah. And you're 70, you're the kind of person that spends 10 minutes to do immority. That's what it really leads to. I mean, I've got to say, so these, your two books, this one, I love. love in quite a major way because it's just given me so many new ideas for movements that I've never ever thought about doing.

That one, that was Britain like a decade ago. Yeah, well, this is just unbelievably useful. I love the pictures. I love the explanations. They're really clear as day and I feel like I could achieve some quite big changes with my body. and be proud of that. And this is like seven daily. So would that be like a 10 minute?

Yeah. Well, this one's more seven minutes. This is even less. So if you haven't got 10, you got seven when you do this one. Yes. This was more written over lockdown. A lot of people were sat at home

and this is more about stretching. So this is more about flexibility. The first one, the flexible body, is more incorporating strength and flexibility together. So it's like these. two together, get both is what we're trying to say. You're too going. That would be very helpful.

Can I just say this was really good for me personally. You've really galvanised me into wanting to do more. I've thought a lot more about this thing of all of those things coming together. mobility, flexibility and strength altogether. It's not just about flexibility. So I just want to thank you. And I really want to thank you from my entire generation. And the people that were born in the 70s.