Instant Genius - Peak Performance: How to get the most out of your workout, whatever your level of fitness

Episode Date: July 21, 2024

Most of us know that we should probably be trying to get a bit more exercise, but fitting gym sessions into our busy work and homelives can often be tricky. And even then, we still have to decide what activities suit our needs best when faced with the intimidating number of options that are out there. In this episode, we catch up with Dr Sinead Roberts, a lecturer in sport and exercise nutrition at the University of Westminster. She tells us why the good news is that doing something, whatever it is, is nearly always better than doing nothing, why it’s a good idea to do strength training even if you don’t want to be a body builder and how to get through frustrating plateaus in progress. The Peak Performance miniseries features interviews with some of the leading figures in sports research to give you everything you need for a science-packed summer of sport. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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audio.com to learn more. Hello and welcome to the Instant Genius peak performance miniseries special. Over the course of four episodes, we'll be delving into the science of all things related to sports and fitness. Whether you're looking to get the most out of your gym time, or for the most effective way to recover after you may have pushed yourself a little too far, we've got you covered. I'm Jason Goodyear, Commissioner-Editor at BBC Science Focus. Most of us know that we should probably be trying to get a bit more exercise, but fitting gym sessions into our busy work and home lives could often be tricky. And even then, we still have

to decide what activities suit our needs best when faced with the intimidating number of options that are out there. In this episode, I catch up with Dr. Shunayd Roberts, a lecturer in sports and exercise nutrition at the University of Westminster. She tells me why the good news is that doing something, whatever it is, it's nearly always better than nothing. Why, it's a good idea to do strength training, even if you don't want to be a bodybuilder, and how to get through those irritating plateaus in progress. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Oh, you're very welcome. So first off, can you introduce yourself to the listeners and tell us a bit about your background and what you do? So I am Dr. Shanaid Roberts. I am a performance

nutritionist. So I primarily work with athletes to use nutrition to support their health and performance inside and outside of sport. I always joke that I don't really care about nutrition. That's obviously a little bit tongue in cheek, but my primary interest is physiology and how we use nutrition to optimise someone's physiology, but also still in a way that's practical and enjoyable. I'm also a lecturer in sports nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Westminster and do some research there as well. All good stuff. So today we're talking about exercising, you know, and we're all busy these days with, I don't know, work or or pets or whatever. And, you know, most of us probably want to get into a little bit better shape.

But there's so much information out there at the moment. It's difficult to know where to start. So I think one thing people looking to pick something like this are often where they start is by, you know, I'll get a pair of trainers and I'll start running. So is that a good idea? this is probably one of those answers and topics which is going to be endlessly frustrating to a listener, but also hopefully very useful in that anything is good. You know, anything is better than nothing. And quite often I think we worry so much about doing the perfect thing when the perfect thing doesn't really exist or is unachievable.

So yeah, picking up a pair of trainers and going out for a brisk walk and then as that becomes easier starting to jog and as that starts to become easier, starting to, to run is fantastic. I would say, without making a terrible accidental joke, you know, with exercise, if you're currently doing nothing, don't try to run before you can walk. You can do too much because you can create an injury, etc. But absolutely, if you enjoy running and you enjoy being outdoors, go run outdoors. If you enjoy running but hate being outdoors, find a treadmill. If you hate running, don't run. Find something else, you know, to a degree there are obviously the best. sets of exercises for different outcomes.

You know, if you're a weightlifter, you kind of need to lift some weights. If you're a runner, you need to run. But for most of us, for general health, it's just about getting the body moving, getting that heart rate up a little bit, and hopefully enjoying it in the process and getting a mental as well as physical benefit. Yeah, absolutely. So sticking with running, like I've heard people say when you start, you should do a bit of running, a bit of jogging, a bit of walking and build up your ability.

Is that the right way to do it? Yeah, that certainly can be a really effective way to do it. I should probably take a step back first and talk about the difference between physical activity and exercise. So physical activity is just movement. Exercise is about intentional movement to, for one, of a better way to describe it, get better at something. So if we're talking about running for the purpose of getting better

and in the process, hopefully helping build a robust, relatively injury-proof body, the idea of exercise is getting fitter, faster, stronger isn't something that the body wants to do per se. It's actually a stress response, but it's a positive stress response. So you've got to do an amount of exercise or amount of movement that gives the body some level of stress, that it goes, ugh, don't want to feel like that much stress again. Let me rebuild myself so that the next time this idiot decides to go and do a run, it doesn't hurt so much. So the exercise is about giving the body a bit of stress that it can recover and

adapt from, giving it a bit more stress because now that stress is easy. That's no longer a stress now. A bit more stress, a bit more stress and a bit more stress. So the reason that does actually answer your question, even though it probably seems like I've gone off at a tangent, is that when you start, it's not going to take much for the body to be stressed out. So like you were saying about when you start, well, what you might do is you might do a minute of running, a minute of walking, a minute of running or a minute of walking, or it might even be a minute jog, a minute walk, a minute walk when you start, because that feels stressful. But the more you do that, the easier that's going to become. So then you might do two minutes, one minute, or you might do a fast run

and then a minute walking and so on. So yeah, absolutely building up your tolerance, like not jumping straight into trying and doing a marathon, because if you complete it, you will probably be broken. It's about building up that tolerance by stressing the body. So you get a bit sweaty and the heart rate goes up and you might be a bit out of breath and then keeping pushing it. So let's fast forward then. Say I've been running for a while. I've maybe done a couple of 5Ks, 10Ks. What can I do to, you know, get my time done? Sprints, fart licks. Yeah, essentially a bit of everything. Cardiovascular fitness. So that's the main thing that's going to help you have the energy to run is a part of running. And then having enough strength in the legs to keep them moving

of however long you want to run is the other part of being able to run well. So you've got the cardiovascular and to a degree you've got you've got strength in the legs or at least strength endurance. They don't have to be super, super strong to squat, I know, hundreds and hundreds of kilos, but they need to be able to keep moving your body weight. So from the cardiovascular perspective, and cardiovascular is actually a little bit of the wrong way to describe it, more just from the energy side of things. So the energy to run. Something like a 5K, it's going to rely heavily on your ability to breathe in enough oxygen, pump that oxygen round the body with your heart, and then use that oxygen in the muscle. So there's kind of almost three components to a lot of

the energy requirements of running. So at the start, when you first start running, anything you do is going to improve all three of those things, because when you start, you don't really have capacity in any of them. But like you said, as you get better, you're like, well, how do I now get my time down? I'm doing the same things, but I'm no longer getting faster. And it's because the fitter you get, the more specific you have to get in your training to stress. Just focusing on the energy elements, you have to stress the respiratory system. You have to stress the heart. You have to stress the legs. The long, steady runs are going to be great for the heart. The really yucky sort of sub-threshold intervals where you can hold a lot on for a

while, but then you sort of want to roll around on the floor and maybe vomit. They're going to be great for the respiratory system. So that's when we start bringing in variety. So let's move on to strength training then. I think this is interesting. And I think generally people overlook it a little bit. And if you look on the NHS, they'll say, recommended two sessions a week of strength training. So how do we start with that? You know, not everyone wants to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or something. Yeah. So I guess the reassuring thing is it takes a lot of work to look like that. And most people don't have the time. You know, I'm a nutritionist. I'm not a coach, but I spend a lot of time in the gym and that's something people often say, and you still hear

quite a lot of women say, you know, I don't want to get bulky and you're like, don't worry, it's really hard. I've been trying for years and I still don't look like that. And again, it's about finding, I think quite often, we're well aware that there's many ways to get cardiovascularly fit. If you like, you know, you could run or you could dance or you could swim or you could play tennis. And I think if you're unfamiliar with strength training, people just think of it, like you said, almost just as that bodybuilder type thing. But strength training is just about moving load. So again, it could take many forms. You could bodybuild. And again, even bodybuilding and kind of trying to gain muscle doesn't mean you have to get crazy lean in the process and try and get on stage

like a bodybuilder. It's just a style of training. Or, you know, you could do something that's more pure strength focused. So the bodybuilding is all about getting as big muscle as possible. If we do something that's more lift as heavy weight as possible, that could be something like powerlifting. So focusing on big compound movements like squat, bench, deadlift. Or you could do something like weight lifting, which is a very technical power-based strength, which is a snatch and a clean and jerk, for example. Or you could do functional strengths. You could do something more like strong man. You could throw sandbags around lifting. heavy stones, roll logs around places, flip tires. So again, there's lots of ways to do strength

training. And what's really great in kind of today's world is there are in most places lots of options for you. That's really interesting. So personally, I exercise with kettlebells because I like to do full body movements. So what's the difference between doing, like you say, a compound movement compared to isolation exercises? It is essentially how many muscle groups you're recruiting to do the exercise. And again, no single type is inherently better than the other. It's going to depend on what you want to improve and how much time you have. What's the most efficient way to exercise?

You know, big whole body things can be very useful if you're like, well, I kind of want to get a bit of everything, but I got 30 minutes. But equally, again, it's that piece where typically, the stronger you get in the big movements, the more you also need to pair that with some isolated movements to target smaller muscle groups that don't necessarily get the same level of stress with one of those bigger compound movements. Right. So I think sort of similar to that. One thing that a lot of people may be confused over is, in order to get stronger, I need to lift heavy weights. But you can get stronger just lifting light ones, right? Yeah. So again, it comes back to sort of, as we said, with running, that stress point.

So, you know, you're not going to be able to lift a super, super heavy weight if you're only lifting. So say you're not going to be able to lift 100 kilos, unless you're inherently very strong, freakously strong, just by training with 10 kilo weights. What you can do is, obviously, if you're lifting 10 kilos and at the start, you can't lift it at all and you get to lifting 10 kilos, then you've got stronger, but there will be a limit to the amount of absolute strength. You can't sort of jump ahead. But what you can increase by keeping with that 10 kilos is your strength endurance. So by that, I mean that when you start, well, I might be able to lift that 10 kilos twice, but by the end of my training program, I can lift it 100 times without breaking. Then you haven't

necessarily hugely increased your absolute strength. So the biggest single weight you can lift, but you've increase your capacity to continuously move load and move weight. Another thing is about how much should you rest? It depends. But actually, that's a much broader debate. So it's a very hot topic in research, which is, you know, what is the optimal for both strength and muscle gain? What's the optimal number of repetitions to do? What's the optimal number of sets? What's the optimal rest between sets and I definitely can't pretend to know what's best. I think we still don't know, you know, there was some really interesting new sort of articles come out recently on it. But ultimately, a lot of the time, when we get to that sort of level of detail, it's really

when you're very well advanced in your training that it's going to make the biggest difference. I think someone who's starting out, it's just about how much time have you got? What program are you following and what does it say, unless it's a terrible program. If you do what it say, you're probably going to get stronger. But you know, if you can do a set and you can immediately do another set, you should probably pick a heavier weight because it's definitely too light, you know. Yeah, that's great advice. So another thing that I think a trap, I suppose, that people fall into, especially when they first start, you know, maybe they've not done any exercise for a few years. And they'll start overtraining and they'll get, you know, shin splints or put their

back out or something. So what can we do to avoid that other than just calming it down a bit? So this is probably where my pinnickety science side is going to come out in that very, very few recreational people over train. They under recover or do silly things for one of a better way of describing it. Overtraining is actually a pathology, like it's a medical condition almost, where you are doing so much training and so much stress on the body that your body doesn't physically have the capacity to recover. and you typically will see it in ultra-endurance athletes or potentially sort of functional fitness athletes who are just doing a crazy amount of volume. Most people, most of us, if we're doing too much,

it's not really that we're doing too much, it's that we're doing too little on the recovery side. And that could be not eating enough or not eating enough at the right time. Or you've got to think about exercise in the context of the rest of your life. and you often see it if people have jobs where they're sat down all day, they might do a lot of exercise, but really we're still just active couch potatoes.

We have an hour of the day where you're like flinging your body around and doing crazy stuff and then you are sat down for the whole rest of the day. And that's going to prime you potentially for injury because you're putting huge stress on your body and then you're making it sit in a chair and not move probably in bad posture for the rest of the day. So it's more about, okay, well, are there? other things I can be doing, like, again, taking a runner, well, could they sit with a little exercise ball under their foot, you know, at their desk to kind of stretch out their feet? Could they stretch? Do they actually cool down and warm up? It's a bit pot kettle black because I'm terrible

at all these things, but I know what you should do. Yeah, so that's another one with warming up and cooling down, you know, say I'm going on on a 30 minute run. How should I warm up for that? Or say I'm doing a 30 minute set of kettle bells, you know, what should I do? It's not a good idea to go straight in, is it? No. So again, I'm not the best person to talk about sort of specific protocols, but, you know, what you want to do is you want to ease the body into the stress. So, you know, anyone who's healthy enough to do this, can try this at home in that if you are static and cold, and actually don't try this, you could get an injury. But, you know, if you were to go from, I've just been sitting down for six hours and then you immediately tried to sprint full speed,

you probably won't run very fast. It will really hurt your legs and you'll probably be gasping for breath at the end because you've just given a sudden shock to your whole body. What you need to do is you need to get the blood pumping around your body. You need to get your heart rate up a little bit. So it's primed to deliver what it needs to the muscles. Not it just goes, oh my God, I need to catch up really quickly, which just goes horribly wrong. So that's one aspect of warming up and the aspect of warming up that, you know, I'm most familiar with from the exercise physiology background. But, you know, the extent to which you need to to warm up, it's probably something to chat to, yeah, your PT or your coach or whatever program you're following will probably have a warm up built in there. And again, if it's a good program, you should probably follow the warm up. It's going to be sensible. This summer, serve up the cookout classics, craft mayo and dressing. Toss green salads with delicious ranch dressing or zesty Italian. Serve smooth, craveably creamy potato salads with mayo. We all know it's not a cookout without craft. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

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I'm 44, but I can't do what I used to be able to do. And a lot of people are like, oh, you know, older than me, or even my age you say, well, you know, I'm too old for that. I can't do that anymore. But there's always a benefit, isn't there? Yeah, like, and again, Typically, the aging element of sort of physical capacity is normally multifactorial. I mean, yes, our bodies do wear out. But there's usually also a component that part of the reason we can't do

the things that we used to do is when we were 20 years old, we had zero responsibilities, minimal stress and all the time in the world. And 25 years later, we are quite stressed out, have jobs that require quite long working hours, are probably too exhausted to do anything at the end of the day, sit down, have developed 20 years of terrible posture. You know, so it's not just our bodies are declining. It's our lifestyle factors also challenge recovery, which is what makes it all a little bit more challenging and, you know, more niggles, etc. But the body does wear out. But it's just that case of, I always describe pretty much everything as, and bear with me a moment, a highway. And how narrow or broad is your highway? The broader your highway, the broader your highway,

the more buffer you've got to swerve without falling off a cliff. When you're younger, your age helps that highway widen. So you can do loads and still bounce out of bed the next morning. You get older and that highway narrows just because you do wear out of it. You can make it a little bit wider again by eating well, sleeping well, minimizing stress. So your body's in a really robust condition for its age. And again, it widens a bit and you can be a bit more lax with other elements of your recovery

or the extent to which you decide to, I don't know, have some ego lift off in the gym with your friends and aren't broken for sort of 10 days. So it's all about, I don't really like the word holistic, but it is really all about all elements of your life give you more or less physical capacity in the gym as well. So we sort of touch on it a little bit, but we're talking about sort of overlooked areas of fitness and one which personally I think is flexibility. What do you think about that? Yeah, definitely. If you're not doing a sport that promotes whole body, flexibility, then yes, you're probably going to seize up more and more, particularly as you get older. And, you know, sports can breed limitations depending what you do that you may need

to counter. So, for example, cyclists typically terrible upper back and shoulder mobility because they're like that the whole time. So, you know, they've got to work on opening that up. Otherwise their body, yeah, like, you know, their body will, your body will adapt to what you typically do. So if you typically slouch, you'll have quite weak muscles there, so you need to set up, yeah, and that sort of thing. Like, it's how you train your body. Your body adapts to how you train it. And that's also in the sense of if you don't train the flexibility and the mobility. And again, I'm someone throwing stones in a glass house because I think my body's held together by knots at this point in time. But, you know, if you don't practice it, you're probably going to lose it.

So we've touched on nutrition briefly. But another big thing is supplements. So, you know, there's so many out there. It's a massive business. Are they any good? For the most part, no. There's a guy Ron Maughn, who's like the almost the godfather of sort of recent sort of supplement research. He has a quote that is something along the lines of, if it works, it's probably banned. If it's not banned, it probably doesn't work. There are some exceptions. And that's pretty much sums up the supplement industry. And there's kind of a multi-step process because first you've got, well, does it work? then you've got, well, does it work for me? And then you've got, well, what's the trade-off with the money I'm going to spend on that and the other things that could benefit me?

Supplements are the cherry on the icing on the cake, because also, you've also then got the consideration, well, if you have a shocking diet, a supplement is like sticking a sticking plaster on a gaping wound, like just eat a vegetable for the most part, you know. And again, even as Ron Moore said, there are some exceptions. So, for example, if you do not see summer sunshine on your skin safely for about 30 minutes a day, you probably need a vitamin D supplement, and that's a, you know, an NHS guideline. And you definitely need it in the winter months unless you're jetting off somewhere wonderful, because vitamin D is made in the skin in response to sunlight. And if you're not seeing sunlight, we're not making the vitamin D. So that's one of those exceptions.

Similarly, Omega 3, the key omega-3 is EPA and DHA. They're only found in oily fish. If you don't have oily fish, well, you're probably going to benefit from a supplement. And again, I will caveat, no one start taking a supplement unless you've spoken to a medical professional about your or nutritionist or dietitian. Definitely don't start taking things off the back of this, but this is just sort of what we would typically be recommended for most people. And then beyond that, caffeine is a stimulant for most people. You can have too much of a good thing. You know, you can get too jittery. So there are certain ones like that. When it comes to sports performance, the reason I spoke about those first actually is because as health is the first principle of sports

performance, you deal with the health elements first, like the vitamin D and the mega threes. When it comes to sports performance, the most well studied and actually typically beneficial for most healthy individuals, healthy adults, is creatine because that has both cognitive and muscular benefits that support general health as well as strength and also energetic performance. Beyond that, it starts to become very context specific. So there may be certain supplements that benefit an individual in a certain circumstance, but it's not going to benefit everyone because a supplement will typically benefit your limitation. So just as an example, something like nitrates, if we're talking to a sports performance, so nitrates can have a

benefit to aerobic activity. So that activity that's very heart breathing determined, it's not a sprint, it's longer duration. If oxygen delivery is your limitation, if oxygen delivery is not your limitation, cool, it's going to make it better, but given that that's not what's stopping you get faster is not going to do much. So, yeah, the short answer of that is cut down your supplements rather than increase them, at least from a sports performance perspective. Obviously people may be taking them for other health-related reasons, but yeah, most of them don't work, or won't work as much as saving your money and going on a holiday once a year for your physical and mental health. I think everyone's going to love hearing that.

So we've talked about an awful lot there, sort of by way of summing up, say someone's listening, and they just want to get a bit fitter. You know, what are your top tips? Find something you enjoy. Find something that you can do at least three to five times a week for at least 30 minutes at a time. Find something that's a bit hard and that you can keep making harder. And then the fourth one is the first one again.

Find something you enjoy. Exercise can have huge mental benefit as well. and also you're more likely to stick at something that isn't grim every day that you go and do it. So I think it's just about moving the body. I think we overcomplicate nutrition. We overcomplicate movement so much of the time. And it's just about find something and do it. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius,

brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was Dr. Shinaid Roberts. To find out more about the science of sports and fitness, check out the episodes in the Peak Performance Mini-series. If you liked what you just heard, please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius on your preferred podcast platform. The current issue of BBC Science Focus is out now.

Pick a book copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or download us on your app store of choice. You can also find us online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analog warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist vocal,

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