The Rich Roll Podcast - A Masterclass On Movement & Mobility

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Movement is inherent to our nature. It’s not a chore, a box to tick, or an obligation—we’re born to physically connect with the world around us in whatever capacity we can. The eighth in our ongoing series of deep dives, in today’s masterclass you’ll learn how to start a movement practice, the importance of mobility exercises, proper running and walking techniques, how to maintain and even improve your mobility as you age, pre and post-natal fitness, how to set and achieve your movement goals, and more. When we embrace movement, even in the smallest ways, we open the door to a world of possibilities. In my case, a walk led to a run which led to ultra-endurance racing and ultimately, to an entirely new life altogether.  My hope is that this masterclass gives you the education and inspiration you need to adopt a form of movement that brings you joy, a mobility routine that nourishes your body, and that you discover something new about yourself, your purpose, and your meaning along the way. Show notes + MORE Watch on Youtube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Inside Tracker: Insidetracker.com/RichRoll Momentous: LiveMomentous.com/richroll Squarespace: Squarespace.com/RichRoll Caldera Labs: Calderalab.com Plant Power Meal Planner: https://meals.richroll.com SriMu: http://srimu.com/rrp Peace + Plants, Rich

The Rich Roll Podcast. Our relationship to fitness is broken. Don't look for perfection. Look for steady, gradual progress. Look at what you're doing within the environment and try and make small changes within it rather than add too much to your day. Don't do it because someone else is doing it.

Do it because you want to do it. It's something you can choose to do to really powerfully influence your mental health. To move is to be human. It is something that is inherent to our nature. It's not a chore. It's not a box to tick or an obligation. Movement is what our bodies are designed to do.

We're born to move. We're born to explore and to physically connect with the world around us in whatever capacity we can. From walking to swimming to dancing with friends to playing a pickup game of basketball. The options for meaningful movement are limitless. And the best part about it is that it doesn't have to feel like work. Create the joy first and everything else will follow.

Movement can be playful. It can be deeply enjoyable and even meditative, not to mention an endless litany of downstream benefits from improved sleep and physical stability to longevity. So today, we're going to dive into those benefits as well as the hows and the whys of all things movement in today's masterclass, the eighth in our ongoing deep dives into the RRP canon, where you're going to learn how to start a movement practice, the importance of mobility exercises, proper running and walking techniques, how to maintain and even improve your mobility as you age, including specific mobility exercises. We're going to cover pre- and postnatal fitness,

mental tricks to stay motivated, and how to set and achieve your movement goals. My hope is that this episode gives you both the inspiration as well as the tools to begin or improve upon a practice that feels natural to you, that brings you joy, and that ends up transforming your life as you follow that journey. Fitness does not have to be about six-pack abs, perfect pictures, weight loss, overtraining, or destroying your body for the sake of some impossible standard. Fitness can be more about listening to your body and moving in a way that's pressure-free, that's positive and fun. And this is the perspective of Sadie Lincoln. Sadie is the founder and CEO of Bar3, which is a fitness company focused

not on weight loss, but rather on body positivity and personal empowerment. In this first clip, you'll hear Sadie explain why she decided to redefine the word fitness and how she thinks about it now. But first, a quick word from the sponsors that make this show possible. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too

well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide.

Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. All right, let's do the show. My husband and I co-founded Bar 3 in 2008 is when we opened.

I've been in the fitness industry my entire professional career. I fell in love with it in the 80s, like meeting Jane Fonda in my living room with my mom. It just drew me in right away for various reasons. And when we opened Bar 3, we didn't use the word fitness because I had it anchored to negativity and being a chore and something that I didn't identify with. And it wasn't until about eight years in that we took back that word fitness and we're redefining it. So what is that redefinition? First of all, I want to point out there's nothing wrong with fitness as we all know it. It's just

my relationship to fitness is broken. And so I needed to redefine it. And I noticed that a lot of other people do as well. I just wasn't happy in my own body during that era. And I was not identifying with fitness, the product that we were selling. And I had a lot of shame around it. Explain that. I'm sitting in meetings with all these people

learning about these crazy numbers and the crazy growth of our company. I'm also learning from all these amazing consulting firms and the statistics and data that our health is on the decline. So as the industry is booming, our health is declining significantly. So that's confusing.

Right. I'm always like, huh. Obesity, diabetes rates are going through the roof. significantly. So that's confusing. I'm always like, huh, why aren't we getting better? Obesity, when fitness as a product and service was invented in my mind, 1980. Obesity has doubled since 1980. And yet the health club industry has grown even more than that. Upper right corner, year over year, it's a $30 billion industry to this day. What is not working here? Fitness is working. Fitness, when you study it in a lab, you've studied it in your body. I have too. It works. Fitness is not broken. Fitness is good. What I have discovered is that

our relationship to fitness is broken. And there is so much shame in that relationship. And there is so much shame in that relationship. How predominantly to this day fitness is sold is that you start in the before picture and then you do the products and services in a certain order and you become the after picture. That's how it's sold. Let's look at that for a second, the before and after. If you think about an after that's in the future, it's imagined. It's not real. There's nothing real about the after picture.

And literally when you see a before and after picture, which still is prolific and that's what sells, it's someone else. How they've achieved a physical measure of success. Sometimes there's a diarrhea behind it that's like how I feel as well, but it's often a physical manifestation. So we can't ever get to that person. And by the way, that person's not that person anymore either. There is no presence in the before and after picture. There is no presence in that. And there's a shame in that. So fitness has been sold on, you are not whole yet. If you do these things, you'll be better. And every year there's a new idea and a new fad and a new product and a new supplement and on top of it there's this extreme nature of fitness this more extreme you go the better

results you'll get so I always think of like there's comfort zone where you're in the center and your comfort then there's brave space where you go just outside of that comfort and that's where in the body like you're lifting weights let's say and your body goes to fatigue and failure and then it rebuilds that's brave space the body, like you're lifting weights, let's say, and your body goes to fatigue and failure, and then it rebuilds. That's brave space. You're rebuilding your muscle. Same with our mental capacity, just going just enough so that you're rebuilding, building resilience, building strength. And we do need that sand and the oyster that make the pearl. We need that rub in our bodies physically. But the industry goes so extreme that we go into panic zone. So many people enter exercise and they go too hard.

They get injured. They anchor it to pain, to shame, to not looking the part. And then we get promised in one sweat sesh, you're going to be skinny and beautiful and perfect and awesome. Right? So there's just so many ridiculous, when we all talk about this, we're always like, that's so ridiculous. I know better. I know better. But the world says that all the time. Right. Intellectually, we know better, but emotionally we don't, right? And it plays into that thing of I want to belong. If I look that way, I'll be attractive. I'll be successful. I'll be seen as successful. I'll be worthy. I'll be happy. I'll belong. And would if, this is a question we all ask ourselves all the time, would if we exercised to practice being honest in our bodies?

Forget about even like feeling good in our bodies, just honest. And that everything I do in that moment is about honoring who I am in my physical self and what I need in that moment. honoring who I am in my physical self and what I need in that moment. The word fitness in and of itself is strange because part of it is aspirational, but it's also this pejorative. You think of fitness and you think about a treadmill and, you know, underneath a fluorescent light. Yeah, and anchored in that. And you think about a bunch of people walking around that look better than you and you're feeling less than,

that whole industry is built upon preying on people's insecurities to get you to join and then not actually attend so they can oversubscribe. Yes. Spot on. Yeah. And that's broken and not healthy, obviously. And it works. It makes money. Of course. And if you look at fitness as an analogy, I just over and over again, what we teach in our room at Bar 3 is such an analogy of life. There's 60 minutes of moving together as a group and aligning our body with intention, foundation, lining the body up, getting into posture with integrity. But the real work is looking inside and figuring out what do I need right now and then honoring that and moving in a way and taking shape in your body in a way that's right for what you need. When you're in a group, the expectation is that you're looking outside yourself and you're copying what everybody else is doing on top of these conditions that full plank on the floor is harder, so it's better and it's going to get me where I need to be.

So I need to do full plank. But if you're doing full plank and you have like burning wrist pain, maybe plank is better at the ballet bar. And if you stand up at the ballet bar and everybody's on the floor, that's literally and figuratively a practice of standing up for yourself and honoring what your body needs and honoring your values. Like body wisdom, taking care of my body and not disassociating with it and trying to fight through it. wisdom, taking care of my body and not disassociating with it and trying to fight through it. And that's what I think the real work is, is practicing that over and over and over again. I think I also read that you open the class by saying, you know, we're going to take you through this hour-long experience and I'm going to say a lot of things or the instructor is going to say a lot of things, but the most important thing is that you listen to yourself, right? Like you kind

of set that tone that provides that like kernel of empowerment for the individual. Because we need to practice that. We all know that. We all know when we sit quietly, there's those moments you know your inner self, your inner knowing is important. You're not just exercising your muscles,

joint mobility, posture, connection, endurance. You're not just exercising that., joint mobility, posture, connection, endurance. You're not just exercising that. You're exercising so much more. Yeah. And that is when we do all three of those things, I think of it as physical exercise, connectedness, mental exercise, connectedness. And the third that's really important is social connectedness, exercising social connectedness. Hence the three in bar three. There's so many good threes. The reason we're exercising is to acknowledge,

oh, I'm doing it like everybody else. I should be doing it like myself. Instead of trying to, copying skips understanding. That's one of my favorite quotes. I read that in a book, Rework. Copying skips understanding. And movement is an exercise of exercising body wisdom, of learning about your body. That's why I love it. Now I have my attachment to that versus it being a chore, shame, I'm not good enough, my injury is something I should push away instead of work with. I think I'm interpreted often as, oh, that's soft and sweet. It doesn't mean that it's not hard work. Yeah.

Like all of what I'm talking about, I think has a lot to do with being an endurance athlete, for example. There's nothing wrong with wanting to win. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with the results and the pain and like the resilience and the grit and the pushing through and the healing, the heart, that hard work, right? I just think that every one of us can practice that in a different way. And that there's not one way to do that, but it's always brave space that when I was talking about brave space, my favorite quote is the sand in the oyster that makes the pearl, the rub. And so like with bar three, it is challenging.

You do go to fatigue. It is a struggle. And then it's learning to breathe through that struggle and look at it without judgment or shame, and then work all the way through it. For a lot of people, the word exercise too often conjures unpleasant images of intense workouts, treadmills, and stair masters. And as Sadie said, calorie burning that's based on judgment and shame. And so it's no wonder that a lot of people find it difficult to even get started, let alone maintain a sustained movement practice.

But health psychologist and Stanford University lecturer Kelly McGonigal believes there's a feel-good form of movement meant for everybody. And she's here to help you find it. You think you don't like to move. You think you don't enjoy it. I believe that there's a form of movement meant for everyone. And no matter what body you're in or no matter what your past experience is,

there's probably a way that moving your body will give you access to something that you want, whether it's social connection or hope, a different sense of yourself. What is the feeling that I have when I marvel about how the body is almost designed to help us find happiness and meaning through movement? What's that feeling, that sense of wonder and awe, and what does it tell us about being human?

And when I had permission to think in that way, I feel like it opened me up to a different type of story as well. When I started talking to people about movement, one of the things I realized is when you talk to people who have found meaning in movement, that they become this version of themselves when they're telling you their story, that is this amazing mixture of both incredible vulnerability and strength, that somehow they both emerge and you can see like this full human and this tremendous glory and beauty. And I felt like I need to do that justice. I came across this paper, I think it was maybe a 2016 paper, where the scientists talk about this research and they just sort of throw out the term hope molecules. And I remember circling it. I think I like said to my husband, oh my gosh, you're not going to believe this term. It encapsulates so

much about why movement is amazing. And I feel like nobody else is using this term. It was just in this one paper. I'm not even sure the scientists have used it again, but let me explain what it is. one paper. I'm not even sure the scientists have used it again, but let me explain what it is. So this is the idea that our muscles are like an endocrine organ and that when you contract your muscles in any type of movement, they are secreting chemicals into your bloodstream that are really good for every system of your body. I mean, they're great for your heart health and your immune function, and some of them can kill cancer cells. All the stuff we know exercise is good for. But that a big part of these proteins and chemicals that are being released by your

muscles, which are called myokines, they have profound effects on the brain. So you go for a walk or a run or you lift weights and your muscles contract and they secrete these proteins into your bloodstream. They travel to your brain. They cross the blood-brain barrier. And in your brain, they can act as an antidepressant like irisin can. They can make your brain more resilient to stress. They increase motivation. They help you learn from experience. And the only way you get these

chemicals is by using your muscles. It's like this is part of how we become our best selves is we have to use our muscles. And then the scientists called them hope molecules because in this one study, they found that exercise could protect rodents from experiencing depression and post-traumatic stress disorder if you severely traumatize them. So this idea that these molecules are giving you hope even in very difficult times. So it's not innately human. That's right. It's not innately human.

So extrapolating on that idea, what do you make of that? What does that mean? Well, first of all, at a very practical level, it means when I go for a walk or I exercise, I will literally say to myself, you are giving yourself an intravenous dose of hope. I think this is how we should frame movement, that it's something you can choose to do to really powerfully influence your mental health and your resilience. And every time you move, you're doing that. I think to know that, to like look at your own muscles

and be able to say, thank you, legs, you're tired now. That was hard work. But like legs, you are a pharmacy of antidepressants and resilience and hope. Then sort of thinking like in a more philosophical way, again, one of the things that I feel like the anthropology and the science is pointing to is that movement is how your brain knows you are alive and engaged in life. And when you move on a regular basis, your brain basically says, I guess we have to be the best version of ourselves because we're in this thing called life. And so you mentioned some other things too, like when you exercise, you see increased levels of neurotransmitters

that tend to increase our willingness to cooperate and the pleasure we get from connecting with others that give us hope and courage. I mean, even that lactic acid, that metabolic by-product of exercise, that lactic acid seems to have an anti-anxiety and anti-depressant effect. This is like crazy stuff. It's not just an endorphin rush.

It's like at every level of our biology, when we move, our brain is like, I guess we have to do this thing called life. And so for people like me who've of our biology, when we move, our brain is like, I guess we have to do this thing called life. And so, you know, for people like me who've struggled with anxiety or depression, this idea that you can convince your brain to want to fully engage with life in a brave way or in a hopeful way through movement is so phenomenal. But I think there's a lot of people out there who can read the book or listen to what you're saying, and they can intellectually grasp all the finer points of why this is a good idea, but they lack that impetus. They look at it as burdensome or intimidating or something that they just don't connect with.

So a couple of things about this. that they just don't connect with, right? So a couple of things about this. First of all, I should say, in my experience talking to people, there are a lot of late to life movers who just need to define the right form of movement. And I don't think we get exposed to enough diversity of movement.

Like women who got in a boat to row and had their whole life thought they had the wrong body type, that they weren't athletes, but suddenly they got in a boat with other women and were whole life thought they had the wrong body type, that they weren't athletes, but suddenly they got in a boat with other women and were rowing and they were like, yes, my body was born for this. There are so many forms of movement that change the way you feel about yourself because they just create a different narrative about who you are. I talked to so many women who discovered things like power lifting or CrossFit or axe throwing,

where suddenly they were doing these amazing things with their bodies and they felt powerful and it was a side of themselves they'd never experienced before. And if you were to only listen to the way that the media usually talks about exercise, it's all about burning calories. It's all about what you look like. And you can get pulled into places where instead of being told, like, this is what it feels like to stand in your own strength, you're told, now you're burning more calories so you won't look as hideous as you looked walking in today. I mean, like, that is a very different experience. Too often people's movement experiences have been defined by this obsession with burning calories and improving your appearance and making yourself more acceptable to either yourself or the judgment of society. And it gets very confusing very quickly. And so I'm always encouraging people, like, what's the form of movement? If someone were to send you a YouTube video, what's the video you would watch and be like, wow, that's amazing? And what's the version of that that

would fit into your life? Who's doing that in a way that's appropriate for the body you have right now or who you want to become? That it's not about getting a tracker that's going to tell you if you've done enough yet. There's so much that gets in the way of finding the movement that will make you happy, that can make it feel like a chore, like a punishment. We have such a limited perspective on what those options are. We just think about the gym and the StairMaster machine and the little LED readout that tells you calories and time and while you're watching the news. And it's just, I mean, there's a whole- And although it's okay to distract yourself while you're exercising if that works for you,

but there are a lot of forms of movement where the more attention you pay to what you're doing, actually, the more pleasurable it is. But often I think the advice we get is just get on the treadmill and watch Netflix so that you're not really there and you can get through it. But I bet there's some form of movement where if you were really there, you would have an amazing experience,

a sense of yourself or a connection with others. Kelly's perspective is quite similar to advice I give all the time. For anyone struggling to stay motivated at a given exercise, the fix is always to follow your curiosity and to follow your joy. You don't want to go for a run? Fine, go play pickleball with some friends. The point is just to remain active because a sedentary lifestyle can lead to everything from poor posture, back and neck pain, limited range of motion, muscle atrophy, and even an increased risk of chronic lifestyle disease. This is why movement, especially specifically movements that focus on mobility, stability, and range of motion are so important to our physical and mental health. So in this next clip, mobility wizards Kelly and Juliet Starrett teach us the basics of mobility maintenance and how to pursue the sports and exercises you love injury-free throughout your life. You know, mobility is really the ability to be able to move freely through your environment

and do the things you want to be able to do with your body, whatever those things may be. Now, we offer a lot of tools, which we call mobilizations, which are things you can do to help improve your mobility and range of motion. But to us at the highest level, it's the ability to move freely, ideally without pain or at least minimizing pain and be able to do the things you love to do. We could also define mobility as do you have your native range of motion and can you control that native range of motion?

So are you a skilled person? And what Juliet said is all of that is important, but really what is it you want to do in your world and environment and how do you want to express this body? That's the most important thing. And I think that's where we got in the weeds. You know, hip range of motion is important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if it prevents you from doing something or you're having pain and that's also conjoined with the fact that you don't have access to that range, maybe that's the reason you should care. Well, and like, let me just give you one example. Like if you just asked anyone on the street, like, do you care about your hip range of motion?

They're going to be like, no, why would I care about that? But as an example, we were recently talking to a friend of ours who has a four month old baby and has both sets of parents visiting. And his parents are like in their mid 60s. So, you know, not that much older than us. And his mother is able to get up and down off the ground and sit with the baby, but his mother-in-law can't get down onto the ground or up off of the ground. And so can't sit on the floor and play with the grandchild. And that's one of those things that you don't think about until it's like a use it or lose it kind of thing. But like that right there is hip range of motion. So you may not care athletically about hip range of motion because you're not trying to run faster or lift

more weights or, you know, whatever an athlete might need to care about hip range of motion for. But, you know, most people would say, man, do you, you know, do you want to be able to sit on the floor and play with your grandchild when you have one? And they'd be like, yes, I do. And so that's one of the reasons why people should care about their hip range of motion. We find that a lot of people are confused about what a good foundational practice looks like. And we should be able to take those lessons and actually say, hey, look, we understand that you're not an elite athlete, but you're just a middle-aged dad who wants to stay up with his local mountain bike club. That's me. And what are the ways where I can do that in the context of my busy life so I don't have to throw everything away? And I think that

really is an opportunity for us to make sense of all of the bright people working in this high performance world. I'm sure you've heard of Chris Hinshaw's old man balance test, where you put your shoes on on one. Oh, this is great. Everyone, you're welcome. Everyone listening should do this test. You stand- What's it called again? Chris Hinshaw. And it's called the old man balance test. And he actually created it so that he would have something to compete against his kids and win. And so the idea is you put your socks and shoes on the floor

and you stand on one leg and you reach down and grab your sock and you put on your sock without putting that foot down and then you reach down and grab your shoe and put your shoe on and tie it and then you switch and do it on the other side. And it's a really great two minute balance practice. And that's how I put my shoes on every single day.

And that's something- Mischief managed. That's just this little small behavior that we add into our day that's how I put my shoes on every single day. And that's something- Mischief managed. That's just this little small behavior that we add into our day that's easy and fun and you can challenge your kids to do it. And so that's just one of those things that we've snuck in and said, hey, there are ways that you can change your environment

and just slightly think about your environment differently so that these are just things you do without having to rely on willpower or motivation. So if you in the evening could sit down next to a ball, a tennis ball, a softball roller, and ask yourself from the day, what's sore? What hurts? What's achy? And I'm going to commit 10 minutes. The first part of this show I'm watching, I'm just gonna roll around on whatever, ails me, that's a really important conversation you could begin to have. And I'm talking about 10 minutes,

like that's super reasonable. And the reason we started shifting that from the day and the gym to the evening was that we saw that people didn't actually do it or wanna do it as a team. But in the evening, they had time and agency and nothing was happening at the end of the day. Like you're on Facebook, you're surfing Instagram. So there was this great moment where you could do

some self-care and 10 minutes a night usually turns into 12 to 14 minutes because you discover something. You can sit on your coffee table, put that ball right in your hamstrings, just roll around. Then the next sort of level there is we could say, hey, can you take a full breath in that position? So if you're working on something or you've got some aspect of your body that hurts and you push on it and that takes your breath away or you catch your breath, then we found an area of interest.

And it doesn't mean we need to shy away from that. It's okay that that's uncomfortable to compression. So one of the first things we can do is say, am I doing harm to myself? No, not at all. If you can take a full breath in and out, you're signaling to your brain, this is safe. Nerves are king of the breath.

The breath is king of the brain. That's Iyengar 101. And why breathing is such an important part of yoga is teaching your body to accept and be able to control those positions by breathing there. Your brain says it's not a threat. So if you find a painful spot or a sore spot or an uncomfortable spot, you found a spot.

And all you need to do is take a four second inhale there, contract into the ball roller and hold that for four seconds. We call that an isometric in the parlance, right? You're just building a tension or a movement without motion in the limb. And then exhale a long time for eight seconds, long exhale. And what you'll find is if you just repeat that cycle

a few times, whatever hurts in that area that you're working sometimes starts to hurt less. You're resetting some threat signals. And if you started doing that on your back, your hips, your calves, your feet, what you realize is, wow, I can make myself feel better. And because you did it before you bed, it's like getting a massage.

You tend to sleep a little bit better. You're down regulating. Yeah, and we snuck in breath to sleep a little bit better. You're down-regulating. Yeah, and we snuck in breath practice. And you had to get up and down off the ground in order to do that work. You ruined it. Exactly right. That's exactly right.

One of the things we know is that pain doesn't mean injury. It doesn't even mean tissue trauma or damage. It's a request for change. So part of what we're trying to say in this book is, hey, we can try to treat pain and use it just as another metric. Like if you were stiff this morning because you were a big workout yesterday,

you're not thinking, you know, you've got, you know, some, you know, you didn't contract rabies, you just are sore, right, from your run. And so if we can shift that narrative a little bit and then also empower people that, hey, there's a whole lot they can do. And some of that is sleep and some of that is sleep. And some of that is nutrition. And some of that is down regulation.

But a lot of it is there's some inputs you can do that are really safe and really easy. And then we can have the next conversation because maybe you don't wanna go for a walk because your knee hurts. Your range of motion doesn't have to change because you age. That's the one physical,

you're gonna be less powerful. You may be able to maintain your aerobic power for a long time. We know that that to be true, but your ability to express your range of motion in your joints doesn't have to degrade necessarily. You may have bony blocks and a patina of athleticism. You gotta work through the fascia and all that stuff. Right, but as we take the systems approach, you being able to get up and down off the ground or flex your knee all the way

doesn't have to go away. And I think that's important to remember to consider for people. As we age, we don't have to sacrifice our mobility or range of motion. There are practices we can adopt now that can secure our ability to stay fit and active well into our 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond. And few people embody this ethos more powerfully than Chef Babette, who believes that caring for our bodies is an act of self-love. Babette is a vegan superstar and the very model of fit and radiant at 72 years young. importance of taking care of ourselves as we age, how to form an easy and impactful routine, and the power of starting a new lifestyle with one simple movement at a time. Part of the whole self-loving thing is to be a part of all of this, to be able to move. You know, if I want to run a hill, I can run a hill. I don't want to have a life alert. I don't want to get in the bathtub and can't get out.

So I force myself to take baths sometimes. I'm not always taking showers. Make sure you can get your butt out the tub. That's the whole thing. When you get older, it's all about if you fall down and you can't get up. And you can't get... That's what people need to really understand. Now, of course, sometimes we have accidents that it's not any fault of our own, but when we just sit down and just let it go, that's generally what will happen to you. You lose strength. And another thing that I think is I'm not a superficial person. I enjoy the aging process. I don't look like I looked when I was 60. You know what I mean? But however it is, however this look is going to be as I age, I embrace it. Because just think, I had lived an entire lifetime looking different.

So you know what I mean? It's not a bad thing to have the crow's feet. I don't care to use anything to get rid of that. I'm okay with it. I want to see what it's going to be. I saw one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen before. She had lines like in this table. She was beautiful. She was beautiful. And if just to experience. She owned it and she's comfortable with who she is. Oh, she was just gorgeous. And that is how we should all be

because it's each step of the journey that we embrace and appreciate. And I can't wear the bushy eyelashes. I'm a little bit too old for that. That don't work on this face. But you did, when you turned 70, you posted these, you did like a bathing suit shoot, right? Oh, I remember the bathing suit shoot.

And that went bananas and like when everybody was sharing that. It did. It went crazy. That one went crazy. That was another like inflection point in your kind of story arc, right? Yeah, people really, really love that. I got a little bold the next year and did bikinis and stuff.

But this year, I am gonna do a beautiful photo of myself. But you'll see. But no more bathing suits. So I'm good for that. I still have my little calendars. I wasn't able to give them all away. And now it's the end of the year. You made like a bathing suit calendar?

Yes, I should have brought you one. Hang it up over here. Oh man, we got to get you one, Rich. We got to get you one. But the fitness routine, that's basically like strength training. That's everything. You're in the gym and some hiking or stairs.

You like to do the stairs and stuff like that. But it's pretty basic stuff. Now, I had a torn groin. So I hadn't been really doing too much of the hike because I'm a part of a docu-series in Houston, Texas. And so I was feeling good from the, I didn't feel like I still had the tear. And we went to the track and we got to the track, sister was sprinting and I was like, yeah, I feel really good. So I got up there and all the athletes were like, no chef, you haven't stretched. You haven't, I got out there and I, by the time I got to the end, I had to limp back. You know how a

grunt tear will do. It takes a long time, a long time. So we've been very careful, my trainer and I, going forward, not to stretch that too much. And stairs, I love stairs. And you know, I love running heels. I just posted a video when we were in St. Martin of me hitting a heel. I just love movement. I love knowing that I can move. I love that. I've often thought if something ever happened and I was the only person that could get to help, even at my age, I know I'm in shape enough to do that. Right. And maintaining that is so key, especially as you get older. Consistency. Yeah. Like the gym stuff becomes really important. I started with one pushup and every day I would add a pushup.

And if I couldn't add a pushup, I'd do the numbers that I'd done the day before. But I tell people that, I tell women that, start with one inch by inch. Life's a cinch. Yeah, whether it's pushups or anything. Anything. That's the way you do anything. Yeah. It's by starting with one.

Starting with one. Like I have to do at least 72 pushups on my birthday. So I'm gonna do it in the restaurant. Anybody that wants to come to the restaurant and hang out and either get down there and do some pushups with me. maybe I'll give you a taco. Especially. Free tacos.

Free tacos. Watch the push-up competition. Look, I'll give you two tacos if you can do all 72 with me. This is why you can't hire somebody to help you in the restaurant. You're giving away too much stuff. That's my husband. You sound like my husband. That's my husband. You sound like my husband. But I figured like this, if somebody suggested to me,

because I was doing sets of 25 and someone said, you know, I can do that many, but I do sets of 10. And then I thought, that's a lot easier because the time between sets is only like a minute or two versus three to four minutes when I'm doing sets of 25. So I'm going to do sets of 10. I might even get push out a hundred, honey. Yeah. Well, if you break it down into sets of 10, then it's easier to build and improve. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. To be clear, the goal shouldn't be to live as long as possible. It should be to live as vibrantly and with maximum mobility for as long as possible. This is longevity overlord, Dr. Peter Atiyah's scientific obsession. And in this next clip, Peter continues on this theme of maintaining mobility as we age by sharing movement practices one can adopt now to live stronger and more agile for longer.

He also explains the function and importance of dynamic neuromuscular stabilization, muscle recruitment, how to identify and unlearn poor movement patterns, and how to be a lifelong athlete. how to be a lifelong athlete. You'd be amazed at how many people, even in their 40s and 50s, don't possess, even though they're strong enough to meet the metrics of their 90-year-old self, they already show signs of weakness

in terms of instability in their hips, instability in their knees, horrible patterns of walking, pelvic tilts that are too far forward, all of these things that they can sort of muscle their way through when they're younger, but it becomes problematic later. Athletes are the best cheaters, right?

The more you're a grinder, the better you are at cheating your way around bad movement patterns. Right. And so the downstream implications of that become cataclysmic. Yeah, you have to start to unlearn that stuff. So that's what began for me in 2018. I mean, and you know how it presented actually was,

I was getting tennis elbow. And I'm like, it's really odd, cause I don't play tennis. So that doesn't seem like a likely injury. And that's when I first met a guy who kind of got me on this path using something called dynamic neuromuscular stabilization. And he watched me do pull-ups.

He's like, let me see you do a pull-up. And I was like, dude, I own this baby, watch. Did a million pull-ups for him. And he's like, yeah, it's horrible. Like your technique is so bad. You have no scapular control whatsoever. You are transmitting so much force into your elbows doing that because you can't keep your scapula in place. There is a fundamental difference

between having a strong muscle and knowing how to recruit it. And for me, the aha moment came with my hamstrings. I have always prided myself in having just the strongest legs, right? I mean, you know, cyclists have strong legs. I deadlift tons of weight. I do insane amounts of stupid leg curls. You name it, I'll do it. But when I was placed on the floor in a very simple position, laying on your back, knees bent, feet flat on the floor, could I, without screwing around in my pelvis, flat on the floor, could I, without screwing around in my pelvis, just pull back with my feet, a pure hamstring recruitment? No, could not.

Yeah, I can't do that either. Yeah, couldn't do it. And so what that says is, it doesn't actually matter how strong your hamstrings are, you can't recruit them. And if you can't recruit them, your pelvis is tilted forward. You have to be able to keep those hamstrings recruited

to keep that pelvis in the right position. I mean, it took me a year of daily, I mean, just grinding away at these movements and this practice. And now it's hard for me to remember what it was like to not be able to recruit my hamstrings. You can unlearn these patterns, but the irony of it is

the more of an athletic background you have, the longer it will actually take you to unlearn these patterns, but the irony of it is the more of an athletic background you have, the longer it will actually take you to unlearn because you have more bad stuff. Those neural pathways are so embedded. They're so wired. The good news is you have the reps on how to do stuff. So I think it's a wash. Taking an untrained person and teaching them versus taking a highly trained person and teaching them takes about the same amount of time, but for different reasons. One of the things that you've talked about quite a bit

is noticing how natural it is for your children to do all of these movements that then become so difficult for us as adults because we've unlearned them and our sedentary lifestyles kind of detach us from our kind of natural blueprint and ability to do those things. So most people listening or watching this our sedentary lifestyles kind of detach us from our kind of natural blueprint and ability to do those things.

So most people listening or watching this probably have to sit in a chair for their work and we're sitting in chairs right now. What are some of the practices that could be adopted to help keep us connected to that natural ability that is kind of innate in our unconscious? I mean, for me, I've taken a very deliberate approach to that.

So four or five years ago, when I got introduced to this pattern of movement called dynamic neuromuscular stabilization. Yeah, talk about that, it's super interesting. Having now been connected to a number of these practitioners, I have found this to be one of the most important systems that I've incorporated.

So initially my exposure to it was basically to fix problems, right? I was fixed. I had two nagging issues four or five years ago. One was this elbow issue, which again, I couldn't understand what was causing it until I realized it was inability to localize my and control my scapula.

And the other was just my right SI joint nagged. You know, it just had this little nagging pain in the right SI joint. Certainly didn't ever raise to the level of lower back pain, no sciatica, nothing like that. But whenever I deadlifted really, really heavy, 50% of those days I would be punished with some right SI joint pain.

And again, these two things seemed completely unrelated until I got under the hood of what was going on with my movement patterns. And I realized, you know, like every, whatever I was, 45 year old, I didn't know how to move. So what started out as kind of rehab has then just morphed into life movements. So I do an hour a week in person with a DNS teacher. So a guy named Kyler Brown comes to my house once a week, we just hammer DNS movements together. And then I'll spend 10 minutes every day doing them on my own. And that has been kind of life-changing. Now, of course, with my shoulder injury,

Kyler is overseeing the rehab there. And so we're now incorporating really good shoulder rehab coupled with the DNS principles of getting my scapula to relearn how to move. Because when you have this type of an injury and you have surgery, the brain really wants to shut off how this thing works. So now we're just gonna basically reprogramming it. So what is an example of a DNS movement or exercise?

The first one and the core one. I'm trying to understand, visualize it. The very first one is something called learning how to access intra-abdominal pressure. So, I think most people who think about breathing have a pretty good sense that you aren't just breathing into your thoracic cavity, right? A good breath has to have the diaphragm going down.

You have to get into the abdomen. What DNS does is it really explains to you how a child is breathing, which is, if you imagine the waistband of your pants or your shorts, when a child is breathing, that thing is fully expanding. So they have purely concentric force in their abdomen with every breath. And again, if you look at a really good power lifter

or something, you'll see the same thing. I mean, the amount of intra-abdominal pressure that they have to generate to be able to move such heavy loads is essential. And so that was literally the very first thing we worked on is just, can you access pelvic floor pressure? Can you create enough pressure into your pelvic floor? Can you maintain it while you breathe? So that, first of all, it's just hard to do that out of the gate. And the second thing is you can do it, but you're not relaxed. So you'd have to be able to do that, hold it while you can breathe around it. The next things for me that were very important, I have a very congenitally narrow C-spine. And if you look at an MRI of my neck, you wouldn't believe what a disaster it looks like,

even though I've never really had an issue, but I'm being very preventative about it. And so one of the other things I'm working on is learning how to use the deep neck stabilizers. So these are muscles that ride on the back. They're inside, you don't see them. So they're not these scalene muscles that are in front. They're the muscles that sit on the vertebral body, sort of deep in my neck. And it's learning how to use those muscles to keep my head forward. So I'm not relying on these muscles here. And so that's a lot of movements where I'm on my back, chin is forward, using the cue of the eyes looking forward, which kind of lights up that circuit and using various pelvic positions, arm positions, and leg positions in there. So it's very subtle and gentle, but it's

more about like, how do I connect my intention and my mind to these muscle groups to get them to just activate? The starting positions are, now it starts to get very elaborate. Basically, if someone Googles sort of a DNS progression, you'll see how complicated it will get because you're basically walking through the first two years of development. So the stuff I just described is like, you know, is the fetus basically. And you start moving into a three month position, a four month, five month, six month position where now a child is learning how to roll. Well, they roll in a very connected way. So when they're reaching for something with this arm, they're completely connected across their oblique sling. And they're going to initiate that movement down to their foot. This is the other stuff that was just like, when I look at videos of me four years ago and videos

of me now, I just don't know what the hell I was doing before. Like how I was getting away with the nonsense of being completely disconnected, you know, scapulas all over the place and all that sort of stuff. And here's the other thing, the best athletes in the world kind of naturally do this. That's another thing I've learned is that there are some really exceptional athletes out there who have never once spent a minute learning DNS, but when you look at them, they have somehow managed to preserve those neuromuscular pathways. And that is essentially a big part of what their athletic gift is.

And I would imagine it's pretty good for injury prevention, right? If you have the ability to recruit all of these muscle groups, you're inherently more stable and resistant to a lot of the injuries that are occurring from those imbalances. Yeah. And that's why for me, it's a once a week, you know, do the lesson once a week, you know, push how much further can I get in those things?

And then it's part of what we call our dailies. So we have, for our patients, we program things called dailies. Like whether today's a zone two day, a strength day, a rest day, you still have your dailies. You got your 10 minutes of daily. So I assume there's practitioners, trained practitioners who can teach this, but are there YouTube videos? Like if somebody is listening to this, I mean, how should they go about researching this

or finding somebody? So I did a podcast with one of the probably six or seven most prominent teachers in the United States, a guy named Michael Rantala. And we have the video of my interview with him. And then also a few introductory movements, probably another hour worth of videos we made.

And I suspect there's gotta be a ton on YouTube. Peter mentioned how athletes get away with not utilizing proper technique when they're younger. But as they age, the improper technique begins to cause pain and injury downstream. And I feel this is especially true for runners. Getting started with running seems as easy as lacing up shoes and running out the door.

And of course, to some extent, that is easy. It is easy, but proper running technique is vital to avoiding injury later in life and staying a runner for as long as you can. Born to Run 2 authors, Chris McDougall and Eric Orton, expand on this sentiment by sharing leg stiffness drills, barefoot exercises, and the power of movement snacks, bite-sized mobility and movement practices,

any athlete can adopt. This idea, and you talk about it in Born to Run too, like don't teach people technique when it comes to running. Like everyone's an N of one and there is no right or wrong way. And we all know how to run. So you just go out and run and like don't mess around with that, which is insane when you deconstruct that,

like you use the example of like the basketball player, like you don't just throw the ball up in the air and hope for the best. Like it's a skill just like anything else. And there is a right way and a wrong way. And so much about our modern lifestyles and we can get into all of that, drive us into situations where we're compelled to do it improperly. And that leads to all of these, you know, modern lifestyles, and we can get into all of that, drive us into situations where we're compelled to do it improperly.

And that leads to all of these, you know, injuries and persistent problems that sideline people unnecessarily. You know, I tell a lot of beginning runners, don't view starting running as a workout or as a form of fitness or a way to lose weight. Create the joy first and everything else will follow. And that goes into learning to be efficient,

not thinking it has to be hard. And that's kind of what we really dove into with Chris is that I worked kind of the real easy end, but also he did a lot of hill sprints and a lot of other higher effort training to develop that efficiency and economy that was revelatory. He was in a matter of a couple of weeks doing so much more than he had ever done just by changing things up. Let's hone in on the form piece for a little bit. I think with Born to Run, it became a little bit reductive in the sense that

everyone just thought it was about minimalism and barefoot running. And that is a piece in there for sure, right? But that's really kind of evidence of a broader concept around form, technique, and lifestyle. I think the further we get away from the ground in a shoe, the more we are getting away from allowing our feet to work in a natural environment.

And I think what people really need to understand is that how we use our feet really dictate how we stabilize. You know, our first line of defense as runners is with our big toe and our arch. That's our stabilizer. And that really dictates how. That's our stabilizer. And that really dictates how well we use our glutes. So how we use our feet directly relate to how we've kind of hear the important stability strength we need to be healthy, strong performance or

longevity based runners. But for me, even more so it's, it's what we're doing for the structural system is that a lot of what's in the book- Waking up all those muscles and groupings. And using them in an appropriate manner, activating things. We were in Lawrence, Kansas, what, two days ago or whatever it was. And kind of our MO for these events have been

start out with some of our skills in the book and then go for a run. And we did some neuromuscular jumping and what we call leg stiffness. Leg stiffness is a crucial element for performance and longevity for good health and running. And so we went through our leg stiffness exercises and then went for a trail run.

And after the trail run, two gals came up to me and they said, those exercises transformed my running in a matter of 30 minutes because normally I would not be able to run that trail as a steady run. I felt like I could run forever. What does that mean, leg stiffness? Essentially, your ability to land and get off the ground as quickly as possible, helping your cadence. So, I see cadence and leg stiffness go hand in hand for performance and for longevity or that real feel good we want out of running where it takes away tightness. When we

hear leg stiffness, that's a good thing. It doesn't mean lack of mobility or tightness. It's your ability to use and operate the springs and rubber bands in your body to land and snap and get off of it as quick as possible. I see. Yeah, cool. Talk about a little bit about the movement snacks. I mean, that's sort of drill oriented,

but I like how you've encapsulated that and turned it into like a fun thing. of the injury chapter, where maybe the movement snacks are a strategic way to begin to add more mobility or give you a sense of where you're lacking in movement while you're then implementing some of the remedies for that specific injury. These are developed by a friend of ours, Julie Angel, who comes from a parkour background. And so what Julie, Julie is actually a filmmaker

who started to film parkour athletes. And as an observer, she realized, oh, they've got some really kind of cool, full natural movement skills that a lot of people could benefit from. So she extracted movement snacks from the isolated movements of parkour athletes, like precision jumping or quadrupedal movement.

Right, crawling around on all fours. Yeah, yeah, but that kind of thing too, to balance on your left foot and your right hand at the same time and move forward. And then she realized these are fun, they are non-threatening, and that if you do a little bit of bear crawl for like 30 seconds and you stand up,

oh, everything feels loosened. And so I think it was kind of a genius move by Julie to create movement snacks because you take that group of people, I'm not a runner, I don't wanna do that, I don't do that. Oh yeah. So the parkour community will form a big circle as a way of saying hello.

And then they will bear crawl to the center and everyone will high five and then they'll reverse and bear crawl backwards back out. That's the warmup. But they've now extended their entire chain of motion, their arms, shoulders, backs are loosened and they're ready to go out, back out. That's the warmup, but they've now extended their entire chain of motion. Their arms, shoulders, backs are loosened and they're ready to go out and work out. So that's what we basically adopted all these things

from Julie's and movement snacks. Cool, well, let's end this with a couple drills, things that you can, I don't know if we can like, if it's possible to articulate it in a way where people can kind of understand, but like one or two things that people could start to practice where they can get a gauge on like, oh, this is why I feel this way

because this thing is weak or what have you. Yeah, so maybe we can hit it from two sides. One, what we call the foot core, where we can train our feet. We've got muscles on the bottom of our feet and there's some simple, but very, very potent ways to train your feet. And it's a simply, you always kind of want to work barefoot and simply taking off your shoes and socks and balancing on your forefoot on one leg. And Chris is sick of me here and saying

this, but you're going to feel it where you need it. The weakest link is going to show up. It might be for someone, hey, they start to feel it in the feet and the arch, or it might be the calves, or hey, they're strong down there. They bike or they do mountain running. And so they're strong down below the knee, but they start to feel it in their glute. And that's how the feet really affect everything

up through the leg. So again, simply barefoot, forefoot balancing. Right, I've noticed, and I don't know whether this is an age thing or a weakness thing or whatever, but my balance got really bad. Like, you know, when I stand on one leg or I'm putting my underwear on or whatever, I'm like, why can't I just, you know, hold myself up in a stable way? And I think too, in doing these simple foot core exercises that you're going to start

to see or feel a difference between right and left. And then you can start maybe making a correlation of, oh yeah, I'm kind of tighter on this side and making a correlation of how poorly or how well you're using each foot based on how you're feeling as an athlete. The genius of these exercises that Eric came up with is,

I wanted everything to be something that I would personally do. And if I ain't gonna with is, I wanted everything to be something that I would personally do. And if I ain't gonna do it, I'm not gonna put it in the book and things like the one foot balancing, if you're waiting for the coffee to brew, you got two minutes on your hands, you can do this. And that's what I really like about it.

These are extraordinarily practical, but have a great residual effect as well. And that doesn't mean they're not potent. I mean, as you're listening right now, take off your shoes and socks and balance on your forefoot. It's not an easy thing. And you can see how challenging and difficult it is. And with that, in that position, regardless of good or bad form, we're asking ourselves to be in that position every step as we run. And you need to be stable there. And that's how we can really train the feet. The self-correcting part of this is that Eric doesn't give you any instructions on how you, he goes, just move your arms and move your legs however you want to get that balance. What you

find is you self-correct. You realize, oh, if I just kind of tighten my core up a little bit, if I straighten my posture, I do my arms like this. And so you do it for 30 seconds and your body will find that balance that you were struggling for just by putting itself in that position. Yeah, the tweak for me is embracing the fact that so much of that is about like creating those neural pathways. It's not about suffering. Like, you know, the athlete in me is like,

I'm gonna do it until it hurts. Or how many of these lifts, you know, am I gonna do? Well, I'll just do it until it's burning like crazy, but it's not really about that. It's really about just developing the habit as a preset. And that's about like your mind connecting with that movement. It's not about hitting anything hard.

It's the best warmup you can do because now we're turning our electrical system on before we go out and run. Yeah. So another one, leg stiffeners we talked about is simply, there's three types of strength. We have concentric, eccentric, and isometric. And the eccentric and isometric is very rarely talked about.

And especially the isometric, where it's that when we land as a runner, there's a moment in time after our land and before we take off that is really, really crucial for injuries. That isometric hold. A lot of runners don't have that. So leg stiffener exercise would be simply standing on your right foot, barefoot, and just taking a short leap forward and sticking it like a ballerina without a whole lot of leg movement. You want to stick it without movement and just kind of progressively hop forward with that stick, two or three, five second stick to create more leg stiffness,

to allow you to really get off the ground. Right, so that creates the ability to be resilient in that isometric position and avoid injury. And it's a great way for people who are training for a hilly race that might not live in that area. Now we're training that eccentric landing as well that we get from downhills that maybe they don't have. Yeah, cool.

So as you just heard, Eric and Chris shared the benefits of adopting exercises and drills to support running, but often mental endurance is far more challenging than physical. So what do we do when we feel uninspired to stick to our goals? How can we cultivate lasting motivation? Well, the trick is to break goals down into very small, actionable steps. Focus on running 10 minutes rather than five miles. This is the mindset of my friend, the very exuberant endurance superstar, Hela Sidibe. A man who holds a 2,000-plus-day running streak.

He's been running every single day since May 15, 2017. And in this clip, Hlla shares why achieving your goals starts by making them pressure-free and attainable. That's when I started taking responsibility and said, go do what you can do and focus on that, put your energy there, not the areas you can't.

And what was that? I mean, when faced with the prospect of your professional career not panning out, what's next? I literally told myself one day, I'm tired of making excuses. I gotta do something that I can hold myself accountable for. And then fitness comes to your mind, you're an athlete.

And I said, hell, whenever you tell yourself you're gonna go to the gym for a week straight, you go two, three days, you tap out. And I said, what is something that I'm afraid of? Running hit me immediately. So playing division one, even at the pro level, running, I was always afraid of it. At UMass Amherst, the track team used to look at us.

Are you guys the UMass track team? You guys run so much. Our coach was very proud of me. He rest in peace. Sam Cook was very proud to say, you guys are going to be the fittest team in the country. So anything you do, any mistake on the line, we want to play top teams the day before. He makes us run. So I was fitness test.

I was afraid of it. I couldn't sleep the night before. I could play 90 minutes, no problem. Because with soccer, you're heading 50, 50 ball, you're attacking, you're defending. It's not just solely focused on running. So I asked myself, what are you afraid of? And running hit me.

And I said, you know what? I'm gonna go face my fear of running. Let me just go 10 minutes a day for two weeks and zero pressure. It doesn't matter if 10 minutes mean you don't even get to a mile, that's okay. So I told myself that. Within the first week, I fell in love with it immediately.

So I ran to Alexa Torres, my fiancee. I was like, I think I can do this for the rest of my life, but I don't wanna get ahead of myself. Let me do this every day for a year. That's how the whole run streak started. Right, so it was really born out of this frustration and a little bit of confusion about what the next chapter was gonna look like.

Yes, exactly, exactly. That's how it all started. It's also interesting that your frame on running is through the lens of punishment. When you are on a sports team, it's not run specific. It's like that's, you know, being told to run is what happens when you get in trouble.

Literally. It's like the stick. If you have teammates of mine, I get so stressed the night before a fitness test. They can see it. They're like, hell, are you okay? I'm like, I just can stressed the night before a fitness test. They can see it. They're like, hell, are you okay? I'm like, I just can't stop thinking about that beep test tomorrow morning.

Or like the Cooper test where you gotta run two miles under 12 minutes. And if you don't make this time, you gotta be in breakfast club, which is extra fitness before the actual practice. And the actual practice has its own fitness in it. So it really got me all confused and scared and petrified. But you're super fit.

So when you started this streak, I think you said you went out and ran 10 minutes or something like that. Yeah, it was 10 minutes a day. That was the goal. But you're certainly capable of doing more than that. Yeah, way capable. And then that 10 minutes didn't even last.

It was just the first week I was, ended up finding myself running even four miles. But the whole point of that idea of saying 10 minutes a day was to have zero pressure. Because I know if I were to tell myself, hello, you got to run at least five miles a day. That's something at that point in my mentality and physical ability for running,

I wasn't something I was kind of capable of maintaining, but I knew it was something attainable to do 10 minutes. So it was a mental thing. So that made me feel like, okay, you're doing this with no pressure, enjoying. Spring was in the air, it was May 15th of 2017. So it was just a perfect amount of time for me to be out there. So it was just a perfect amount of time

for me to be out there. So that's why I said 10 minutes. Have a change and staying motivated. You know, what you've done is so inspirational and I feel like you do such a good job at communicating these ideas in a relatable way. So for the people that are watching or listening who are feeling inspired

and know they need to get off the couch and do something. It doesn't necessarily have to be a run street, but perhaps, you know, are in the process of rethinking their relationship to their body and their selves and the trajectory that they're on in life. Like, how do you speak to that person? I always say, do something that's pressure free and do something that's attainable. Those are the

biggest factor for me. And pressure free meaning don't do it because someone else is doing it. Do it because you want to do it and do it on your own timing. Don't feel like you got to get it done. If it's a goal, whatever, you don't have to get it done in 10 days. If you need a month, a month is okay. So just do it pressure free. Because because of that, I fell in love with running. I never thought there was no chance. And now I get excited to run. And I know running is tough. It has its brutal days, but like I'm still excited to go at it.

So do it. You don't feel the pressure of maintaining the streak? Nope, zero pressure. And I always say this too, this is how I feel about it. The day that I feel like it becomes more of a pressure and I'm not liking it, I'm gonna stop. I'll stop. And I don't know when that day-

Give yourself that permission. Yeah, and I know I'll find something else. I'll find something else. So making sure it's not, I don't have to go, I know I don't have to go run to keep a streak going, but I just do it because it feels good, I enjoy it, and I wanna keep sharing it. So pressure free, do it, something that's attainable.

And just think about even spending five minutes a day goes a long way. If it's something you love already or you're thinking about, you've been thinking about, that's all the time to start doing it. So if that means just spend five minutes a day, it's about volume. Five minutes a day for seven days a week is gonna add up.

But if you just do it today and you take a few days off, that's not it. If you can do 10 minutes a day, that's also 10 minutes you can at least find out of your day if it's important enough to you. So as long as you want to do it and just pressure free and get after it and don't think about anybody, even don't compare, even if it's running, don't compare yourself to these people who are doing hundreds of miles, these fast pace or these, whatever, everybody has their own process, their own journey. And if that's the goal, you'll get there just one day at a time. That's it. I love it, man. Yeah. One day at a time.

I think Hella is really spot on when it comes to comparison. It doesn't serve you and it won't get you any closer to your goals. But when you hit plateaus, injuries, age-related physical changes, or even postpartum changes, it can be hard to not compare yourself to others or even to your old self. But Robin Arzon wants you to turn these plateaus into launching pads. A global fitness icon and vice president of fitness programming at Peloton, Robin delivers a sermon on positive self-talk, on gratitude, pre- and postnatal fitness, and how to form a movement routine after giving birth.

Speaking strictly about fitness, walk me through the prenatal phase and how you thought about your fitness, and now postnatal, like how you've approached it, whether it's different or has changed based upon pre-strong mama Robin. Prenatal. Okay. So I trained and I taught five days a week live throughout my entire pregnancy. And then everyone fell in love with you because you were like, this is like, oh, she's pregnant. Like there was an emotional bond, I think, that you created with the people that care about you.

Well, I announced the pregnancy on the bike. So that, it was like a very major, you know, pregnancy announcement. But that felt very logical to me because I have shared parts of my life, whether it's my romantic journey or my, you know, of course, as an athlete and as a woman, as a Latina, like there are aspects of myself that I infuse into my training and my workouts. And so announcing the pregnancy felt logical,

especially because I knew I was going to teach, you know, hoped to teach throughout my pregnancy and I had a great pregnancy. So that was possible. And I continued to run, strength train, and cycle throughout. I got my prenatal certification, so I did prenatal classes as well for Peloton. And I was like, oh, I got this. Postpartum, however, that piece of the journey was daunting. It felt like putting myself back together again. I just wasn't used to slowing down to that extent and being that vulnerable and having no control.

I mean, there were so many days that the fatigue was crushing. I was recovering from a C-section. So major abdominal surgery. And there were, I mean, for probably the first six weeks, I was like, oh my God, am I ever going to be moved the way I'm used to moving? And the pressure of being this celebrity fitness personality. And what if I can't do that again or be that person that I want to be or know how to be? I had real moments of imposter syndrome, especially when we're run like a network. So I took five months

of maternity leave, but when we were planning for me to come back, they're like, you know, production's like, what do you want to teach? You know, we have to put something on the live schedule for X day. And I'm like, I don't even physically know what I'm going to be able to do. You know, that felt really intense. And I developed a mantra then during that postpartum period of consistency over intensity because I knew I couldn't go hard in the paint, which is I'm apt to do. Like that is much more my flavor of intensity.

And I thought, just do something every day. And in the beginning, it was literally breath work, like literally feeding my daughter and doing 360 diaphragmatic breathing because I knew that was going to repair my core. That was weeks of that. And then it was walks and, you know, little by little amounting to a lot, but it was frustratingly slow. And now I'm stronger than I ever have been a year later. And how much of that did you share transparently in the Peloton classes? Because I feel like that on some level is much more relatable to can speak my language or I can find a relatability there that perhaps even strengthened your connection

with your community. Definitely. I was super honest, especially in those first few classes. You know, in that six month period, my first six months back on the bike and back in strength classes, you know, I'd already been doing my own training,

you know, during my maternity leave, but it's different. It's different doing in front of the camera. Those first few sprints feel like, am I ever gonna get it back? But your body does remember. And I think being honest about that journey, especially as a woman in very anti-snapback culture.

Yeah, I wanna talk about that because there is all this pressure, like how quickly can you get back to where you were before? And your whole thing is about letting go of what was before and let's focus on moving forward. Yeah. My refrain was, what if a plateau is a launching pad? What if a plateau is a launching pad?

And for a really long time, like I'm supposed to wear the new Peloton collection and I'd have to go back and be like, I actually still need this other size, you know? And I had to reframe the story around that and focus on what my body could do rather than, you know, what size the tag said. Sure.

And it's all good now though. Feel strong. I'm stronger than ever. Yeah. But it was little by little amounting to a lot. I mean, it was truly like the smallest steps. I remember runs on the West Side Highway. I ran the New York city marathon about,

I think Athena was nine months. And when I tell you that I didn't look at a watch, I would old school, like map the distance for my runs and not run with a single stitch of like pacing because I couldn't even take that information. You know, I couldn't be like,

Oh, but your pace was this. And then no way I showed up to the New York city marathon, actually having zero idea how long it was going to take me. Like couldn't be like, oh, but your pace was this and that. No way. I showed up to the New York City Marathon actually having zero idea how long it was going to take me. Like I was just like, I'm going to go. But it's liberating that way. It was so liberating. And it was a refreshing back to basics. Like it was like, I'm doing this because I love it and because I feel better doing it rather than any external gaze. Yeah. I shared a little thing about this on Instagram the other day. My version of that is just getting older and dealing with injuries. It's a limited version of

what you experienced on an extreme level. But at some point, the GPS watches and all the stuff are no longer tools, but they're vehicles to shame yourself. And at that point, they're counterproductive. And I've been spending more time like letting go of all of that stuff. And what it does, it does exactly what you said, which is it reminds you why you're doing it, which is that it brings yourself joy, and that's really the most important thing. So rather than like looking, where am I at?

It's impossible to look at that and not immediately measure yourself against the fittest version of yourself, which is a really unkind, unfair thing to do to yourself. I mean, I noticed myself doing that and I did do runs on the Peloton tread and it was, thank God I had it because I literally during nap time, I like, I don't even know how I did cross that finish line, but I cobbled together. Like I'm talking like 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon. And that would be my run, you know, when I was supposed to run five miles that day.

Like it was not as I would have had done it in past marathon training cycles. But the most important catalyst was not crossing that finish line. It was how I was talking to myself along the way. And- Talk more about that. It was, okay, so I'll do'll do so pre-run putting on a pair

of pants that were bigger than I have ever trained in before. Right. Go out, lace up, finish that 10 mile run, finish that 13 mile run, come back kinder to myself because I completed what I said I was going to do, even if it took me however much longer than previous versions. And it actually brought me back. So I, when I started running after, after I was held hostage and I started, I was started running during law school, it was the first time I was made aware of my internal conversation of like the actual thoughts, whether it was like in first person or third person, they were going on in between my ears. And I was brought back to that in that training cycle, postpartum as my ability to either use the words to cat, what kind of spell am I going to cast with

the words that are going on internally? And it was either going to be, I had a choice. Like, are you going to berate yourself for the size of these pants? Or are you going to tell yourself, oh my God, like you are outside. You have, your husband's able to watch the baby. She's healthy. Like you're healed enough from this post C-section to even lace up, you know, you were craving to even get outdoors, you know? So there was an element of gratitude and kindness that I had to incorporate into that training cycle. And it ended up being the best were craving to even get outdoors, you know? So there was an element of gratitude and kindness that I had to incorporate into that training cycle and it ended up being the best four months of training of my life. Yeah. It's a choice, right? But sometimes it's hard to make that choice. Like, is there a mental trick or tactic that you would deploy to get out of that negative headspace and

inhabit that more positive gratitude-oriented perspective? Yeah. I would often ask myself, what do you have right now that you used to dream about or pray for? And in the specifics, it was like, just last week, you couldn't even go three miles. So you would have been grateful that you can even run an hour today, you know? And asking myself that question is like an internal reset. Like I remember the beginning of the pandemic during quarantine, I was pregnant during the pandemic and it felt, the walls felt like they were closing in some points, you know, for all of us. And I started that as a journaling practice, but I would force myself to answer, you know, what is it that you used to dream about or wish for that you have right now, but I would force myself to answer, you know, what is it that you used to dream about or

wish for that you have right now, but like within these four walls. And then I noticed like, oh, there's that painting that I got at whatever trip, or there's, you know, the couch that I bought with my husband, you know, little things that I was able to kind of put that gratitude filter on that it really helps. I mean, there were, of course, there were some days that I was like, God, this feels cheesy, But the practice of it really helped ground me and anchor me. I really agree with Robin when she said gratitude is integral to motivation

and accepting where you're at in your movement journey. But oftentimes, seasonal changes can present obstacles when it comes to movement. Wintertime weather makes for cold runs or icy swims. Who wants to do that? So in this next clip, two-time Olympic swimmer, Ironman master and my coach, Chris Howlth, shares off-season and cold weather routines,

as well as discusses how to maximize strength and mobility work during the winter months and how to cultivate strength and mobility work during the winter months and how to cultivate consistency and steady, gradual, sustained progress. What do you think is the biggest mistake that most masters or amateur athletes make around this time of year? Well, it's the thinking that you have to keep this

perfect string of workouts going, right? If you get 80% of your week done, if you get three, four days together, strung together, done well, and you miss a day, that's fine, right? We're all not going to be a hundred percent on any of this. I'm never a hundred percent on any of this, let alone most of my athletes, life gets in the way, right? We all went pro in something other than this master's sports. And so not judging ourselves, not worrying too much about missing a day because the next day you're going to come back more motivated, more focused, as well as fresher and more recovered and feel better doing it. So don't look for perfection. Look for steady, gradual progress.

Consistency. Yeah. Because especially as masters athletes, as I like to call us, especially as swimmers, we remember how we used to be, right? And we have this image when we take on an event, whether it's an Ironman, whether it's a swimming race, whether it's a running race, how we used to be and how, when we had a lot of time and no kids and not a career that demands a lot of us and so forth. Oh, that's what it felt like. That's how I felt. And that's how the rhythm of the training went. Well, that was 20 years ago, right? Like you forget and you have to adjust those expectations. And that's why I always say we can take on any endurance event. We you have to adjust those expectations. And that's why I always say,

we can take on any endurance event. We just have to adjust the expectations. However you wanna achieve it, we can achieve it. But let's work around what the expectations are. For the endurance athlete out there, how important is the strength work, like time in the gym this time of year? Well, besides that,

I will always say it's individual to the person. Strength work is quite important. The beauty of strength work that fits really well in with the seasons of endurance training and endurance athletics is that this is a great time of year when the rain is here, the snow is here, the cold temperatures to work on those things. It's again, taking advantage of the environment we're in.

Spending the next 12 weeks, 16 weeks on strength and mobility, especially mobility more than strength. And mobility ties in stability work, what I call chassis integrity, core stability, things like that. So that then come the spring, we can put a bigger load on the body when it's time. But yeah, I'm a big believer in strength work, not for everybody, because what's

are the best use of our limited time, right? So some people, we do just need to run, right? We just need to get them moving and running or walking in some cases. Others, we're better off spending that strength time if they're in the more temperate climate on the bike, right? We can do hill repeats on the bike at a low cadence and really work those leg muscles, very similar to squats, but you're doing a very sports specific. Do you have a specific mobility slash strength

slash core workout that you recommend people? Yeah, no, I sort of fudge them all together from a variety of different people that I've worked with, things that I've liked, plans that I've applied and see how they work. That's the fun part, right? For me, even now at this time of year, I'm going through some different strength work

and versions of strength work that I will then in two, three weeks, hand on to my athletes. Like some of that kettle ball stuff? Yeah, kettle ball, a lot of- Kettle bell, I did it again. I had Mike Mahler in here. I got like crucified because I had Mike Mahler in here

who's like an expert in kettle bells and I was calling him kettle balls. Yes, kettle bells, medicine balls, dumbbells. I like all that because again, we want to manage the load and kettlebells because they're so versatile, allow you to do a lot of that work. And guess what? For 30 bucks on Amazon, for 50 bucks on Amazon, you can get a pretty good set and do most of this stuff in the comfort of your home, 30 minutes. And you are getting huge benefits from that strength work.

Single leg lunges and squats and explosive jumps and so forth from a leg standpoint, core work and all kinds of crossover work that you can do with kettlebells that works really, really well. Yeah. All right, well, we got to close this episode of Coach's Corner down, of crossover work that you can do with kettlebells that works really, really well. Yeah. All right, well, we gotta close this episode

of Coach's Corner down, but like I want you to just imagine it's late January, it's dark, it's cold, it's wet. You set that goal at the end of December, but your enthusiasm is starting to wane. What are the key most important things that people can kind of latch on to, hang their hat on to carry them into the spring months?

Well, you've heard this from me many times before, but there's some more tricks to it in the meantime. And that is just doing something, a little something every day, right? Consistency. And don't beat yourself up if it's only 30 minutes, that's plenty to get the heart rate going. But let's say

you're on a treadmill, right? Or on a trainer, bike trainer, where you put your bike on a resistance trainer. Like things that I say to my athletes is, you know what? Let's say you have the TV on. Every time there's a commercial, that's when you run harder. You run at two miles an hour faster. And then when your show comes back on, back to easy, right? Use everything in your environment to your advantage, to keep you motivated, to keep it fun. Save that TV show that you want to watch on Netflix for being on the trainer or save that song or that music or that podcast or your podcast for when you're on the treadmill, right? And you're stuck in the dark times or in a gym with a billion people and you don't really want to interact right now. You just

want to exhale. You've had a long day. Save that for then to listen to that music or that new CD or CD. CD, yeah. How old are you? Exactly. Or a podcast, and so again use those things to your advantage to get you out there every day the other thing that i use and my athletes know this is i put out an index card when i go through hard times every night and i put it right by my coffee in the morning so that that index card has my workouts for the day on it. And just seeing that index card there with a few intentions, I mean, it's not big, you know, so small little index cards, lying there and seeing it first thing in the morning

when I'm tired and sleepy and walking, turn on the water, you know, already, okay, well that I can do, right? It's just that index card. I have to put that in a box at the end of the day. At some point today, I wanna get that done, right? I like that. Another little trick that I use is to prepare for the following day's workout

the evening before by doing simple things like, okay, it's a run. So I'll pull out the shorts and the socks and like kind of get everything ready and organized to make it as easy as possible to begin that workout the next day. And I think just the simple act of organizing that creates an emotional investment

that makes it harder for you the next day to not do it. Or have it with you, like you have it in your car with you at all times. But I also like to do the, the podcasts are really intriguing, right? Because you see what the topics are and you load them the night before and you look forward.

You create your playlist. Exactly. And you look forward. Oh, I'm curious as to what this guy has to say or what she is contributing. This one's only 30 minutes though. So I gotta make sure I have, I know what's gonna follow that.

So I don't have to stop. Yeah. Well, but we all also know once that initial momentum happens, you're out the door, you're going, right? No, I mean, not that, but like, I don't wanna have to stop my workout to hit play on the next thing.

Like I want it all cued so it'll just flow, right? For sure, for sure. Yeah, get in a little something every day. Don't try to string together too many days perfectly in a row. Just look at yourself big picture. A lot of times I also say, where do you want to be

on January 31st? Nothing crazy, not something for June yet. How do I want to feel January 31st? How do I want to feel February 28th or whatever it will be this year? So give yourself short-term outcomes that you say, okay, that I can achieve. I just need to be a little bit better at the end of January than I was at the end of December, right? And then you're making progress so that you can set the marker for next month out there of this is what I want to achieve, right? You can chart it. There's a lot of ways to keep you excited about the next week. But if you have short-term goals that you feel good about achieving, it'll just create momentum once again. If you can master just a little bit of movement every single day, it can really have a dramatic difference in not just your physical health, but also your mental health. But tying in more natural movements throughout your day, that's even better.

more natural movements throughout your day, that's even better. So closing out our movement masterclass is natural lifestyle coach and barefoot ultra running phenom, Tony Riddle, who is going to distill down everything we've covered today to the basics by sharing how to turn daily mobility exercises into habits, as well as talking about how to nourish flexibility

and mobility and why we all might actually need to relearn how to walk. So if you were going to pull out a prescription pad and write a prescription for me short of getting rid of all the chairs in my house and knowing me as a runner and a multi-sport athlete what is the prescription around squatting or other things that i could be doing or somebody who is like me could be doing um and there's many people like you i get to see a lot of people like you um i wouldn't go as extreme to taking your furniture away. It would be too much. Don't worry, it's not going to happen. Your family wouldn't handle it.

It'd be too much of an emotional crash. Julie might be into it. I don't know. I think, again, you have to take it back to say, right, after a certain amount of time, like after this, immediately after, I'd be taking things to the ground again, just because of the length of time you're sat here. I feel bad that we're not sitting on the ground doing this podcast. Again, we can squat after.

That's the beauty of it. I was on a flight for 11 and a half hours, right? And I'd get up, I'd get up regularly, go to the back of the plane, do the mobility sequence, open my hips up, do some shoulder mobility, squat, you know? I saw that on Instagram. I hope you had an aisle seat.

And then I'd go back to the seat. No, I managed to get extra leg room and I had a window seat. Oh, you did? So did you have to climb over somebody every time you wanted to get up every 20 minutes? Yeah. And as I was explaining earlier, the lady next to me was really demonstrating the behavior that was encouraging me even more. I was like, oh, wow. So yeah, I would, again, just look at what you're doing within the environment and try and make small changes within it rather than add too much to your day and i think that's where a lot of things fall down is we think oh where am i going to find the time to do that so it's very simple to be able to slide a chair away hold the edge of the desk do a few squats lifting your chest up and use the desk as

an anterior support a lot of people i see don't just don't have the ankle function ankle mobility to perform a squat so allow the heel to come up and just keep the shape and just drop onto your haunches so it's almost like a straight body your butt will be resting on your heel and your knees will be forward you just do a few rhythm little bounces in that position then stand again and then you're ready to walk other disciplines that we're going to we will cover just go through a few kneeling positions that you can do on the ground and a little mobility sequence that you can play with within that and again they're just rest positions like long sits or straddle sits and things like that the other thing for the upper body is i recommend for everyone to do is put a bar up to hang off so

hanging is even more ancient if you think than running right so it goes back into what would be our primate foundation so if we go right down climb down that phylogenic tree, we get to the brachiating apes, to how to restore and open up the rib cage and open up the lungs would be to basically just hang, simple hanging systems. So you go through different hanging positions and we have in the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder,

and your scapula, your shoulder blade, we have all the same brachiating abilities as all the other apes. And I find people people just some people have trouble changing light bulbs now so it's really important to just keep nourishing that 80% of shoulder injuries i'd say is through the lack of brachiation and then we try and do things like dips in the gym but the scapula is internally rotated and raised then again it's just blowing up the shoulder so hanging will help reset or straight arm strength forget about bent arm strength forget about pulling patterns just get used to being completely

straight in the arm then your posture hang from it again that will help mobilize the shoulder but it will also open up the tendons the ligaments everything and even the arteries through that pathway you'll lift your rib cage which will then make your breathing clearer and then you can play once you're in that position. You can start to go through active hangs. So trying to keep your arms straight whilst lifting your chest up into your hands. So there's no bend in the elbow. And that starts to strengthen the lower trapezius, which is in the mid back. A lot of the disciplines that we see are about mobilization and flexibility. And you can do all the flexibility training you like. You can do amazing work for the mid-back, but if you don't have the strength to hold it there

through the lower trapezius, gravity is going to take over. What about doing pull-ups and chin-ups? And those are pulling. But great, but on a straight arm strength to begin with. So there's Ido Portel's work. So he has like a hanging tutorial thing. And I would suggest that you basically set a timer.

So you can have a timer. I work with clients to start with 10 seconds hanging, and then they're off the bar. And then I give them 30 seconds rest, then they go back up. Then that will turn to 20 seconds, 30 seconds, and a minute. And the way this then starts to unravel is you start to build a relationship. It becomes a new habit. So I'll give you an example of someone who I coach who's 78 he's a old guy called yahoodi he rocked up at my gym door when he was 72 so six

years ago and he was completely stooped scrunched up old posture he brought natural birthing into the uk wrote a book called birth and beyond a real manual for childbirth amazing guy but gravity and age were taking over and so i really want to learn how to walk and i was okay so it's a good place let's get you off on the treadmill and so at the age of 72 you want to learn how to walk so interesting right so what people up he went on the treadmill just recorded him showed him his posture oh my god i can't believe i look like that you know i got all bent over and these are these boxes that i was introduced by a coach called lee and basically you have like the it's the conscious competency model so i've recorded them up until that point they're unconsciously incompetent and then i showed them the video and now they're consciously

incompetent and then i go through the drills they need and then they become consciously competent and then over time doing the same drills and the same method which we're going what you're wanting me to break down what would I do that then becomes unconsciously competent and that's how you learn the skill but remembering the next time you get recorded you still be unconsciously incompetent so you keep feeding that so he basically just wanted to learn how to walk we go through walking go through that model with him and i prescribe footwork for rewilding the feet how to get the feet in the foot shape rather than a shoe shape so his feet were compromised by 72 years of inappropriate footwear that were compromised in the shape of the foot get that back then ground rest positions so we then went

through the various different ground positions what i would prescribe for him and then hanging and that was it and then he had a hanging bar in his home so this guy now since then has climbed everest base camp bhutan mount kenya atlas mountains and basically this is his morning routine so he wakes up now in an air purified room trots downstairs gets to the office on the second floor hangs from theified room trots downstairs gets to the office on the second floor hangs from the bar goes into the office gets on the mat does his mobility sequence has a standing desk answers emails go downstairs preps his smoothie prebiotics probiotics symbiotics puts his vivos on walks down to the tube gets to the tube doors open he gets on people usually say because he's 78 would you like a seat he's like no i'm okay and up he goes he hangs on the bars he hangs on the bars while the tube's moving feet

off the floor tube stops doors open right next one next time the doors close then he squats and he squats and then he does breath work so he does between breath work hanging squatting and a bit of surfing so surfing you don't hold on to anything you just try and get your support on the train and that's at the age of 78. He's just made small changes all the way along. And he's- Using his commute as therapy. He's in incredible shape now.

Wow. And his spine straightened out? Straightened out. It's completely upright. Wow. But the difference is, it's how he looks now. So he doesn't look like the 72-year-old. He looks great.

He looks in amazing shape. A newfound confidence within it. It's kind of a beautiful act of humility to walk into your gym and say, teach me how to walk too. That takes courage. Most people wouldn't do that. And it's interesting to think about walking as something that we might have to learn or relearn. Like we were talking about this in the context of running, like born to run, we're all born runners. We don't think that we need any instruction.

It's all instinctual and intuitive. And I suppose on some level it is, but through the means by which we live our lives in this Western industrialized society, we've reshaped our bodies that have now created a situation in which we probably do need to formally learn how to run. And you just pointed it out to me when we were out on the trail, like all these things that I'm not doing correctly, but I could be doing better because I'm unconsciously incompetent in certain aspects of what I do, even though I've been doing it for a long time and I've

done it at a decent level. Yeah, a really decent level. But there's still so much to learn, you know, and I know that I'm not working at my capacity because I've never had anybody formally instruct me in anything. Okay. So if you're in an office and your HR department won't allow you to have a standing desk, again, you slide your chair away, you do some squats. I have a whole squat tutorial that we can send out to the listeners as well. Yeah, it's great. I'll put a link in the show notes. So we can do that.

And then that gives you some tips as well of what you can be doing behind the desk. 10,000 steps. Everyone loves banging on about 10,000 steps. But for me, if you have 10,000 poor steps that might lead you to an injury, it's probably not the best model. If you're wearing compromised footwear with a dodgy heel and a pointed toe box, it's not the best model. So I would go- Most people are wearing those kind of shoes. Yeah. I would cut back and just say, okay, what's the more natural environment for a foot?

It's nature. It's creating a foot-shaped shoe. So go to minimal footwear. There's some amazing brands out there. Vivo's one, but there's others. There's some primal office wear that's come through. And it's trying to basically even get into the feeling that it's not about running in those shoes. It's about living in those shoes.

And that will give you an amazing foundation. So if you're into all your disciplines, it could be Pilates, yoga, it could be running be running we're talking about it will only enhance that those disciplines will just get better because you'll be moving in the appropriate systems and creating the right muscle action tendon actions for them which means the next day you can get up and do the same thing without the tension All right, everybody, that's it. We did it. This masterclass was packed with just an absolute battery

of resources to spark, to sustain, and to fully adopt movement and mobility practices that are useful and most importantly, meaningful to you. But the biggest lesson I took away from compiling this very special episode is that physically embodying a dream, a vision, a belief, or a purpose through movement is really the only way that you can and will ever make a change. Because as I say relentlessly on this show, mood follows action. You cannot think your way into anything. You can only do something about it. I truly believe movement isn't just a physical practice that benefits the body. It's actually a means of evolution. Because when we embrace movement, even in the smallest ways, we open the door to a world of possibilities.

In my case, a walk led to a run, which led nourishes your body and that you discover something new about yourself, your purpose and your meaning along the way. the way. Quick reminder that links to the full episodes for each of the individuals excerpted today can be found in the show notes at richroll.com. And in closing, keep moving, more exploring, more joy, and of course, always more plants. Peace, love, namaste. Thank you.