The Uneducated PT Podcast - #22 Steven McMahon - Take A Breathe Change Your State

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

In this episdoe we speak to my good friend Steven McMahon about the will and skill when it comes to fat loss. Steven is a soon to be physio and has been a trainer and nutrionist working with many clients over the years helping them to become the healthiest and happiest versions of themselves. 

Hello and welcome to the uneducated PT podcast with me, your host, Carlo Rourke. The goal of this podcast is to bring on interest and knowledgeable people from all walks of life, learn a little something from each conversation and for you, the listener, just learn something from each episode. So don't forget to subscribe to the channel, press the box below, show some support, and I'll see you on the next episode. Right, guys, what's the crack? How is everybody?

Hope everyone is well. And so I suppose firstly, my name is Steve. And I'm very similar to Carol. I do things very, very similar to Carol. and stuff in Cardiff and bounced off each other I suppose the last maybe a year, maybe year and a half. And so today I'm going to talk you through, I suppose, just that last fundamentals

for healthcare workers are just very, very busy people. So I run a program called the Allied Health and Performance Program where I help people that work in healthcare lose weight without it kind of compromising their day job or without it kind of having to impact or take over their life. So I suppose who am I, right? Is it a good question? The only thing you need to know is I'm just someone that wants to help

Okay, it doesn't really matter who I am. It doesn't matter what I do. It's the same with Carr. It doesn't matter who we are. And I'm just someone that wants to help. I'm someone that has a really, like, I just have a real passion for helping people and live a very active and healthy lifestyle without it absolutely taking over.

I've been through all the phases of fitness myself. And I'm just someone, I'm a regular dude. I have a lot of big social life. I want to achieve a lot in life. But I also want to be able to be active and healthy. And I want to help other people do the same. So I suppose, in essence, for context, and just to give you a bit of a background and a very short one.

I hate when people go on monologues about themselves, so I'll keep it nice and short and sharp. I'm a personal trainer. I'm also a performance nutritionist. I'm a mindset coach and I'm almost a physiotherapist, so I'm in my final block of placement as a physiotherapist, so I'm nearly there, and I just run the Allied Health and Performance Program. That's in essence, that's who I am.

If anyone has any questions, you can answer people or ask me later, but in essence, that's who I am, and that's who we speaking to you. So why am I here or why is Carol put me here today? I just want to give my two cents. This is just my two cents on fat loss. This is my two cents on living a healthy, active lifestyle, losing weight and doing it all kind of within a normal lifestyle and kind of away from what I would associate as the current fitness industry

or state of the fitness industry, right? So I wanted to talk to you guys about a successful fat loss journey. Okay. Because a lot of us go on a fat loss journey or a lot of us will go on some sort of, you know, I wouldn't even call it a journey. Sometimes it can be really, I don't know, talking about a journey, it makes it sound very like fantasy. Like it sounds very like, oh, I'm going on a journey.

It's very up in the air, like what would you do? But in essence, it's just going on a diet that actually works or making a lifestyle change or behavior change that actually works. So we all want this or this or, for example, something like this, okay? Or even we might just want to avoid something like this. okay so whoever is here tonight most of us myself and carol included we all just want to keep things under wraps we want to keep our body fat at a percentage that we're happy with and while enjoying our life and do not normal things so our jeans fit our shirts fit and that we feel confident and healthy in ourselves but we also need and want to okay continue doing the things that we need to in life

so socializing minding the kids doing work doing the housework although i've never really ever seen someone look dis happy while doing housework. But we also want to keep doing these things. These are really important. And I suppose something that I have kind of come full circle around in terms of the fitness industry since starting physiotherapy or being a physiotherapist is I'm much more focused on these things. Okay.

I believe that fitness should be like your part of four priority. It shouldn't be your first priority. You have loads going on in your life. This should not be your first priority. Your first priority should be probably your kids, your family, your relationships, the things that make you happy and the things that you value the most. and I suppose I just want to give you my two cents on how to make that work. Okay.

So the big question is how, all right? And I think that's something that I always look for in my own clients. When I'm taking on clients, I always look for people that are like, how people, not why. Okay. They're how people are like, how do I do that? Because if you're asking, why am I doing this? That's a bigger, that's a bigger question. But how is it really important question.

Okay. So there are two parts in my mind, okay, to losing body fat, like successfully losing body fat there are two parts to it there are skill problems and then there are will problems all right the course of this presentation we're going to focus on focus on will problems so when i talk about skill and will problems a skill problem would be i don't know how to track calories a skill problem would be i've no idea what i'm doing in the gym a skill problem would be uh i don't know how to food shop i don't know how to cook their skills that you can develop all right will problems are when it comes down to your attitudes your behaviors, your beliefs, your mindset,

and all the things that are associated with willpower, with your motivation, with your discipline, all that kind of stuff. And today I'm just going to focus on that because I find, and that's one of the biggest things because any Joe soap can teach you how to use my fitness pal. Any Joe's up can teach you how to do a few squats. And I feel like one of the biggest things that's not being, I suppose, tackled in the fitness industry because Joe,

it's probably just not a very educated area. It's not something that a lot of people know about is the kind of will problem side of it. So after coaching about 300 people, okay, bear in mind as well, just for context. I'm actually 27. I look about 13, but I am 27. I am pushing on as small of it. I have coached a lot of people. So I've been in business for about five and a half years.

And I've coached a lot of people. And I'm not just saying that because I'm trying to show off. I can confidently say, right, poor decision making on account of mindset challenges is the reason a lot of people don't succeed at fat loss. okay so just just to re- reframe that again poor decision-making okay really important on account of mindset challenges or life challenges is the reason most people don't succeed at bad loss so a lot of people will go through a journey where they'll start off in a dight and it might get three or four weeks into it and they're super enthusiastic and they're they're really optimistic and they're motivated and then we come to some sort of mindset challenge some sort of derailing event some sort of i have to go to our wedding or i went

on a three-day bender because i had to be because i was on a stander and i was on a step tag and suddenly the next week is a little bit me. The following week is like, oh, I'm finding hard to get back on track. And we start making poor decisions. And that's where things start to unravel. And there's a lot of people that have been on that journey. I'm not saying to all of you guys have been on that journey, but that's a very, very common team that I've seen.

A lot of you guys will recognize this. And I think Carol has talked a bit about this before. It's just self-sabotage, right? So you might be familiar with the term self-sabotage. And that's what we're going to talk a little bit about right now. So a quick side nut, right? here's a whistle stop tour of how our brains make decisions

right this is kind of a general note obviously there's going to be caveats there's going to be variations but a very quick tour of how our brains come to make decisions right who here likes tea so is an acronym all right we all have thoughts

we all have emotions and feelings and we all have actions and behaviors on a general basis from a day to day routine okay our thoughts influence how we feel and how we feel affects how we behave or how we act

and that's how we go on a day-to-day basis so to give you an example okay let's just say for example you walk up you jump on the scales and the way in scales is up you will have some sort of thought on that you won't just come to mind it won't be just blank you will have a thought okay the thought

might be like fuck or the thought will be like Jesus why is that up I don't understand I've been doing all the things I need to and that thought is going to to stir up some feelings. And those feelings might be like, for example, God, I'm so disheartened, or I feel a little bit shit. I'm a little bit dejected. God, I don't know what to think. Like, does this even work? And based off of those feelings, you're going to take action. And there's kind of two

ways you can go. You can either look, that'll either spur you on. Or like, I got to keep going. I got to do better. I got to do whatever crack is. And sometimes in the first couple of weeks of a diet, there's the first couple of weeks of trying to make a lifestyle change or behavior change. It'll spur you on. But then the other side of it is it might be like, I feel shit. And all I want to do is order Chinese, sitting couch with the duvet and watch a marathon of Netflix. Okay. And so the general idea here is just that our thoughts affect our emotions and our emotions affect our behaviors and the actions that we take. And even if we're to go one level deeper, our actions and behavior dictate how we look.

Okay. Because if you're somebody, right, that consistently takes actions like regular exercise, regularly eating within our calorie targets or ranges, regularly eating high protein meals, regularly eating lots of fruit and veg, regularly getting lots of sleep, regularly getting lots of sunshine, most of us would end up looking really, really well.

Okay, we'd have probably a low percentage of body fat, or we'd have a reduced percentage of body fat, our energy be really good, we'd be in good form, we'd probably be more confident. So our actions and behaviours are what actually lead to you having a lifestyle change, our behaviour change, are you looking and feeling differently?

So, the next step to this is a situation. Okay. So situations are what incurred the thoughts. Okay. So again, the situation in that particular instance was the way in scales. Now, there's two ways this can go on. I'm going to actually just pop this up a small bit out of the way. So we can see. All right, there we go. So we always have a situation which leads to a thought. Okay. This can go in two directions. We can have good decision making, okay? Or we can have poor decision making. So, I'm not sure where the balloons are coming from. The balloons keep popping up on Zoom for me.

Sorry, Carla. It seems like having a party here. And now it's not coming up on my side, I don't think. No. Balloons keep coming up on my side. When I put my hands in the air, balloons just pop up around me. I'm not sure what's going on. Oh, yeah.

See that happen to people. Anyway, you're good. You're good. And so we have a situation. We have a thought on it. Okay. And we can go one of two ways. Okay.

And of either of those ways will lead to a certain feeling. Okay. So if we just move on to the next slide here. Okay. The fun part, right? is you get to choose which thoughts you pay attention to. Okay? And I'm gonna let's let's,

I just want to even let that sink in again, right? You get to choose which thoughts do you pay attention to. So even if you are up with, okay? And you have the thought, well, fuck. Okay. Excuse my French. And you're just like, shit anyway. This is a lot of shit.

Okay. That's a thought, right? You get to choose whether you pay attention to that or not. And it may seem a bit like, what's this guy talking about, but you can choose to pay attention to that. Just like we have other thought processes like, I wonder what I'll have for dinner later.

or Jesus, I might buy that dress online or I wonder what kind of care I'm going to buy next. They're all thoughts that you can choose to focus on or you can choose to pay attention to it. And it's the same with thoughts that come with situations like being up in the way and skills. Okay. So with that in mind, okay,

when you choose to pay attention to thoughts, right, it changes the actions you take. Because remember, thoughts lead to emotions, emotions lead to behaviors, actions lead to whatever outcome that you're looking for. Okay? So you can choose what ones you look at. You can choose which ones that you pay more attention to.

And that changes your actions. And an even cooler part, right, is you can actually change your thoughts altogether by doing something really, really simple. Okay. By drinking your tea backwards. All right. So bear in mind, tea backwards. So if you were to look at this upside down model. Okay.

So it used to be thoughts affecting emotions, affecting actions. This also works the other way around. when you take action or behavior without thinking a whole pile about it, it changes your emotional state or your emotions are how you feel. And that changes your thoughts. And to give you an example, right? How do we normally feel after exercise? Right.

We usually feel great. We feel fantastic. We feel it's great. It's getting to the gym as the hard part, okay? Because we know we feel good after going and doing a bit exercise, but it's a walk out and the sun, but it's going to the gym. We feel great after exercise.

And the reason being is we take action or we do, with certain behavior, which changes how we feel. And when we feel great, our thoughts are different. So even if you were up in the way and scales, if you took action straight away, like, if you just went straight away to the gym, you're like, I'm going to go to gym and I'm going to go exercise afterwards, you'd be like, geez, I feel good. I feel less stressed. I'm not too worried about it anymore.

Okay. And then suddenly your thoughts are like, right. Okay. What can I do to make sure that the Wayne scales goes down as opposed to like, fuck this, I'm going to get in Chinese. Okay. So this works the opposite way around as well. And this is what I mean by you can choose.

like what thoughts you pay attention to, but you can also change the thoughts by going in a different direction with them. Okay? So I suppose just there to give you that example here, it's just exercise and how you feel and what kind of thoughts you'd actually have after the gym and about the food you'd eat,

as opposed to you jump in on the way and scales and you're having the thoughts, paying attention to that thought, and then the chain of events that happen post that kind of an opportunity or that type of situation. All right? So what if you can't exercise at the time that something like this happens. Let's be realistic here. So as I said, I work with people that work in healthcare.

People that work in healthcare don't have the opportunity to just go and exercise whenever they have a bad thought. They can't just be like, yep, I'm just going to go exercise. That's going to make all my problems disappear. And bear in mind as well, I'm not saying that. I'm not like someone that's like a fitness fanatic. It's like just go exercise. Yeah, John, like your house burnt down.

Just go exercise. It's fine. It's not that simple. Okay. How do you stop yourself from making poor self-sabotaging decisions when you can't go one exercise, right? It's very simple. And you're probably going to, you're not going to like it. It's very simple. It's a very simple question, okay, but it's a great question. Okay. Take a deep breath. Okay. And I'm going to explain this. And I'm going to make this make sense. So bear with me.

I'm asking you to bear with me just for a second. I'll get to the point and it'll make sense. Okay. Why do you think exercise helps change our mood and feelings? Can I get a bit of a post check here, actually, in the chat, and even just give it one word or a couple of maybe a sentence. Give you a second. Why do you think? Exercise helps change our mood and our feelings. Distractions. Endorphins. Yeah. Release endorphins. Dopamine.

Get us out of thoughts. Yeah. Yeah. Really good. Feeling of, fuck yeah, I did it. Yeah, 100%. Absolutely.

Positive action. Yeah. Focusing on the body movement rather than the thoughts. Good. Excellent guys. Yeah. You can keep going there if there's anyone else. And so you're not fair off.

Okay. You're very much not as far off. Okay. it changes our state. So that's what exercise does. It just changes our state. So we have two different physical states, okay, that we're constantly kind of going between.

Sorry, now hopefully you guys can see that. I'm going to put you over here. We have two different physical states. We have fight or flight, and we have rest and digest. Can I just get a nod, anyone that's heard of fight or flight before? Have we maybe come across it?

Yeah, yeah, we've kind of come across that. So we have fighter flight, and we have rest or digest. These are evolutionary, biological things that happen in our body. This is science we're talking about. This isn't like, you know, some mindset, voodoo, harsh shit that I'm feeding it, right? This is science. This is backed by science.

This is stuff that we know about the human body. Okay. So we fight or flight, rest or digest. We have the fire flight response when we feel stressed, when we feel under attack, when our body feels that there is danger. But this fire or flight sense, it's not very accurate. It's not good at depicting what the stress is. Okay, so like before, thousands of years ago, it might have been a bear.

trying to eat you or lying trying to eat you. So it raises your heart rate, okay? You breathe faster, your heart pumps faster, your gut becomes that little bit inactive, and you're able to run faster, do more things. And that's what fight or flight is. Rest or digest is the other type of state that we have. It's the second state that we have.

In this state, it usually happens after we've eaten, okay, or when we've done something really relaxing. Our pupils shrink, okay, because we don't need to let in as much information because we're nice and relaxed. we have slower, deep, our breath, so more oxygen gets down to the base of our lungs. Our heart slows down, our blood pressure goes down and relaxes a small bit, and then our gut is a bit active, so we digest food better. So we just have two opposite different physical states, right?

We also have two different modes of thinking. So in general, now there's probably more to it than this, and there's more science with than this, but it's beyond the scope of this talk and beyond the scope of this presentation. But just to give you an idea, we have rational thinking and we have emotional thinking, and we have emotional. thinking. Sorry, that should be emotional thinking, not emotional behavior. So we have rational thinking and we have emotional thinking. Okay. Rational thinking is when things make sense. When we're able to think with our frontal prefrontal cortex where we have executive decision making. So for example, when you're out in a shop and you see some donuts and you're able to say, you know what, Steve, donuts aren't going to help me achieve my goals. I want those donuts, but they're not going to

help me achieve those goals. Or, for example, when you don't want to exercise and you're like oh god exercise but you know in your prefrontal cortex you know in that rational brain you're like i'll exercise because future me is going to thank me for it i'm going to feel really good afterwards and you can think further down the line you can be future based you can be goal based decision making emotional decision making or emotional thinking okay is things like going into a shop and you see the donuts and you're like but that donut is irresistible i just can't resist buying it and i can't resist eating it in one full bite it's going to be a amazing. I can't wait to have it. Or I can't go to the gym because the cat might be odd with me for

being out of the house all day. Okay. That's emotional behavior. Okay, that's emotional thinking. And there are two different things. And bear minds of well, I have this emotional thinking in red, but it's not bad. Okay. Emotional thinking is really, really important because like we would not be good human beings if we just taught like this all the time. I wouldn't have a girlfriend if I just thought like this all the time. If I was just thinking, no, I have to go to gym. I can't spend time with you because future me won't thank me for it. And we have to be, we're emotional beings. Okay. And we have emotions and feelings. And they're very, very important. Okay. Really important. I can't stress that enough. I put it in red here because I wanted to contrast it.

Not because it's bad. And, and, and more even makes any comments on it. Sometimes when I put, like, with my own clients, I put things in red and they're like, but you put it in red. That means it's bad. And it's not. Okay. It's just, I want to just draw the comparison between it. So we have two different states. We have rest and digest. We have fight or flight. And then we have two different types of thinking. we have emotional thinking and rational thinking, which leads us, okay, to this. Okay, this is a nice little table that I think is very, very insightful, okay?

So we have either high energy, fight or flight, okay? Or we have low energy, which is like rest to digest. Then we have kind of emotional thinking and logical thinking. Now, not all emotional thinking is negative, but when it comes to health and fitness, when it comes to things that we need to make sense, okay? So when it comes to things like getting the job done, we need to think like that logical is more positive.

So when it comes to exercise, when it comes to nutrition, that takes willpower. It takes discipline. It takes a bit of motivation. And generally our emotional brain is not great for those type of things. For things like expressing our love for our family members, emotional thinking is really positive for that. And that might be swapped around. So logical might be on the positive side for that.

And emotional, or sorry, emotional be on the positive side. And logical thinking might be on the negative side for those type of things. Okay. But for this, we're just going to go with it. So when you are very logical and you're in fight or flight mode, you're motivated. You're confident. You're assertive. You're connected.

You're doing things on purpose. You're intentful. You've got that big dick energy. Okay. We're on this side of it. Okay. When we're logical, but we're in rest and digest mode, we're mellow. We're tranquil.

We're relaxed. We make good decisions. We're peaceful. We're organized. We're analytical. Okay. When we are emotional, okay, around food and training, but we're in that fight or flight,

so we have a high energy, but it's on a bit of a negative skew, okay? We can be a little bit resentful and angry, anxious, fearful, defensive, a bit like if you've done a check-in and you're up two KG's, your body fat is up,

or you've had a shit week, we can feel these. And a lot of my clients can resent with this, maybe you guys can. These type of feelings when you've had a bad checking, when you've had a bad week, when you don't fit into your genes,

when you don't feel like they're making progress, okay? And even worse again, if we have that low energy, if we've had a really bad week, okay? and we're very, very emotional. We can feel that depressed, that exhausted, burnt out, just bored, hopeless, all the things

that we don't want to be feeling and all the things that don't really help us when it comes to actually making decisions and getting fit. So which side of the table, and this is rhetorical, do you think is more effective for fat loss? The logical side of things are the emotional side of things. And just, I know it's rhetorical, we know this side is it. But I just want you to think for yourself, when you're in these type of moods, when you have these type of feelings, they're not productive for losing body fat. They're not productive for your confidence.

They're not productive for making the big executive decisions on, I'm canceling my gym membership, I'm stopping my coaching program, I'm going to get Chinese four nights this week. They're not good feelings to have because they're not productive. And it's just understanding these feelings aren't bad themselves. They're just not productive. Okay. So to bring this all together, I promise I'm getting there, okay?

If you're wondering, where is this guy going with this? Okay. I promise I'm getting there and this will make sense in the end. Okay. And to show you how this can actually help you because look, I'm all about value here. And I've been on loads of these calls with other people and I hate when someone doesn't actually give you that knowget. They don't give you something that's like, ah, okay, I can take that away. So I promise there's a bit of a nugget coming. There's a bit of kind of value that you can take away from it. So imagine this scenario, right? And I like pictures. I do whole presentations on pictures if I could. I hate writing. And imagine a stressful scenario, whatever the case may be. Let's just say, you know, the dog has shot all over the kitchen floor, you come home from work after a stressful day, there's no food in the house, the shops are closed, it's super stressful and you're up to KGs on the scales and things are falling apart.

Things are like, oh my God, okay? We'll have negative emotions around it, okay? That's obviously going to cause negative emotions. So we're going to have those thoughts are like fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. And we're going to have those negative emotions. And we know, okay, when we're in fight or flight mode, okay, when we're really, really stressed

and it's high energy, okay? We start to breathe faster, okay? Our heart rate increases, okay? And when we breathe faster, okay? And they're shallower faster, but so when we breed faster, we have shallower breaths. When we breathe slower,

we deeper breaths, okay? And that'll make sense again a second. And when our heart rate goes faster, this is all connected to our brain via our central nervous system. So you're a spinal card. So you must remember that like the brain and the spinal cord and the body

are not all separate entities. So there's nerves here on your heart and there's nerves here on your heart, and there's nerves here on your brain. lungs, okay, that sense when you're breathing faster, that sense when your heart rate is increasing, that sense when your blood pressure is up, okay? And when these type of things start to happen, we get into that fight or flight, that emotional, like, okay, I need to be ready to fight here or to run away. And we come into this emotional type of thinking where we can be very like

a little bit scared, a little bit alert, a little bit like fearful, anxious, worried, okay, all these type of things that have like high negative energy, okay, which brings us back to these type of feelings, okay? And I can go one way or the other. Either we get into a really negative low situation where we're feeling like, oh, fuck this, I'm out, I'm going to look, I'm just going to bed. Okay, and that

kind of exhausted mode, or we get into this like where we're taking it out on other people where it might be like resentful, angry, anxious, worried, you know, concerns, frustrated, taking out other people. And this repeats itself. Okay. When we start breathing faster, okay, and we have this reaction to

stress and to those mindset challenges, okay, this cycle repeats itself. Okay? So it's very hard to get out of this when this happens. And this is a bit like it's catastrophizing and there's a lot of consequences to this. Okay. And what kind of decision making? Do you think you'd make around food and exercise when you feel like that?

Rhetorically, again, I think poor. Okay. Not great. We're not going to make great decisions when we feel like this. It's very hard for you to say, hold on, Carl. My life has fallen apart. but I'm going to go and cook my chicken and rice okay, that's not what happens. When we

feel like this, we don't make those decisions. That's not what happens. Even though we may want to, okay, that's generally not what happens, okay? Versus, okay, and sorry, just to give you some example and these are some of the things that my clients have done. These are some of the clients that I've kind of, when I look back at all my clients, when they're making decisions

like this, they're catastrophizing. The world is ending. You know, oh, Jesus, this day has gone horrible, I might as well just press the fuck it button and have a dash of wine to myself. We have these thinking the distortions where we feel like, you know, after the diet is completely ruined, even though it's only been one day

out of the last 40 days that you've had a bad day. We had this shame and blame. And they're kind of funny emotions to have. If you think about shame and blame, right? They're very strong emotions to have because your day didn't go well with food. Shame and blame should be like reserved for things like if you murdered someone,

you should feel shameful. You shouldn't feel shameful because you had a donut. And there are very strong emotions to be feeling. But when we do make a mess of our food, we do make a mess of things and things are very, very stressful. We tend to play this, you know, shame and blame game. And ultimately, a lot of people will kind of have this feeling of, this is too hard. I don't want to do this anymore.

Okay, this is, I'm out. I just can't do this. I'm just not the type of person to be fit. I'm not the type person that does this. They're just different people. They're built differently. I'm just, I'm just me. And that's the way I do things, okay?

And these are common things that happen when we are feeling like that. When we get into a stressful situation, and we get into that kind of spiral of sequence of like everything's falling apart. Okay. Again, I promise I'm getting there. So what can we do about, Steve, all right? We pause.

We take five deep breaths, okay? We assess the situation, brainstorm possible solutions to what's going on, and then we take action, or we ask for help. We ask Card for help. If you're on this program, you should be asking Card for help. So at this point, you should be asking for help. So just to repeat, the five deep breaths are really, really important.

Okay, here's why. Imagine this same situation, right? You come home, the dog shot all over the kitchen, you have no food in the house, we're going to go through all that again, okay, it's a very, very stretched of situation. We still have the negative situation, okay? We still have the negative emotions.

But before we do anything, before we look at food, before we do anything, before we help the child get up off the ground after falling in the shift, okay? We just pause, okay? Just take a second and we just pause and we take five big deep breaths. Because when we take big deep breaths, we get more action down to the basis of our lungs, okay? When we've more action to the basis of our lungs, okay? our heart rate slows down.

When our breathing is slower and our heart rate gets slower, the nerves that we have here around the lungs and the heart sends messages to the brain that everything is fine. We don't have those alarm bells going off like something's trying to eat us or the house is burning down and I need to be fearful

and run for my life. We get different messages from our heart and our lungs because the nerves are sending it straight up to the brain being like things are okay. It's fine. And we kind of switch back from that emotional thinking back to this logical thinking. So now instead of this like, oh God, I'm so frustrated,

why is this happening to me? Like, this wouldn't happen to Karen living next door. And, you know, it's all falling down. We come back to like, okay, right? This isn't ideal. Okay. But it's fine. We'll clean up the dog shit.

We'll change the trials close. We'll go to the shop. We'll see what the best options are. And we'll make do. And you come back to this logical type of thinking. Okay. Where we're a little bit more mellow. A bit more tranquil and relaxed, a little bit more maybe assertive, okay, and a bit more confident

that like, look, this isn't the end of the world. It's just a bad situation. Okay. And this cycle repeats itself. Whereas if we were to, again, if we were to just not pause and not take those deep breaths, we go back into that faster reading, faster heart rate, faster kind of like signals to their brain to be like fight or flight and like that emotional kind of negative situation. And you can see how one of those two situations is much easier for making decisions in relation to your health and fitness. Does that make sense?

Are we kind of okay with that? Does that make sense? And I know it sounds so simple, right? Sorry, Carly. I know it sounds so simple. But who actually does it? I don't actually know too many people who do because we all think, oh yeah, just take a deep breath.

But we kind of like, sometimes we kind of like push it off to like, like don't tell me to relax. Like don't tell me to take a deep breath. Like don't tell me to calm down because like it's a platter. and it's kind of like a useless platitude as if like that's going to solve anything. But actually right, the science is there. Like the science is right in front of us.

This is all, as I said, backed by science. If anyone knows me or if anyone follows me, I'm such a science dude. Like I'm such a guy. If there's no proof for it, I don't do it. I'm not a guy that's just like, oh, we'll give it a go off for the crack. Like, I'm not one of those dudes.

If it's not backed by science, I don't do it. Because if it doesn't make sense, why would you do it? If a thousand people say something stupid, it's still stupid. Okay? It has to be making,

sense and we know that this makes sense but it's just sometimes understanding like it does make sense to do it because sometimes it's hard to do it so look to wrap up okay as a result we can make calm reasonable logical goal focus decisions okay because you changed

your state okay we changed our way of thinking and we change our state just by taking big deep breaths okay just pausing and taking big deep breaths and getting that action now into the lower basis of our lungs okay and this stuff is backed by science as I said we know deep sleep or deep slow breathing

decreases heart rate slows down thinking decreases anxiety and it relaxes us okay and this isn't just like new okay people have been doing this for centuries in yoga and other practices like meditation all that kind of stuff bear in mind all this stuff is around and you see all those people that are pure zen

and relax and doing yoga there could be a few people here that are like that here tonight and that's perfectly fine of there's no hate on that okay people have been doing this for centuries but they've just been really poor explaining it okay it's just kind of like we take a deep because it's our inner child and we relax. Okay.

It's been really poorly explained. And it hasn't been explained in the way that actually makes sense for a lot of people. Like, I've never heard this explain. This is something that like I did physio and we learned a lot about the lungs and the heart and the nervous system. And it was something I was like, Jesus, that makes so much sense. This is why people, you know, anxiety, et cetera, et cetera. And as well, with yoga, with all those meditation, there can be a mixed agenda where there's more going on. There's a therapeutic thing going on.

There's more to it than just a deep breathing for decision making. And that can make it. harder for some people to swallow. But overall, breathe. Pause and breathe and even just, I would even, if you wanted to take a screenshot of this, I get my clients to think about this. If you wanted to take a screenshot of that, that's a really good framework for just like when things are hit the fan and things are going tits up. Okay, sorry, Carol,

I have cursed so much on this. I'm so sorry. No, don't worry. Your loud curse. Do your loud curse. That's, it's very much. Hopefully there's no kids in the background. Apologies, guys. But if you want to take a screenshot of that, that's a framework I use at my clients all of the time okay because it just it's it's a new simple framework okay right things are going it's up this is what we're going to do plan boom all right so questions that's it yeah i i just want to jump in i think that makes uh it was that was unbelievable by the way i think it makes perfect sense it made

me uh think about even when like it's not it's not really to do let's say if if we even think about uh eating behaviors and stuff like that it's not really to do with the food itself but like you said, like your state of mind when you're indulgent in that action or that behaviour, like, you know, if you're feeling hopeless, these low energy moves, like you said, you feel hopeless, you feel frustrated because, you know, you might not be seeing the result as quick as you can or, you know, you have anger or resentment and then you opt for the Ben and Jerry's ice cream or the pizza or whatever it is out of a case of kind of essentially self-sabotaged like you spoke about rather than, okay,

I'm having the Bening Jerry's or the pizza because, you know, I'm including this into my dietary pattern because I know will help me to adhere to my diet long term. Like you're doing, you're, it's the same food, but your perception behind eating the food is completely different. I'm eating this Ben and Jerry's ice cream or this pizza

in, you know, a positive, calm and relaxed mood, you know, rational, critical thinking when I'm doing it versus more going off poor emotions I wouldn't say poor emotions but like reactive emotions because again you've just reacted to something

yeah absolutely and I actually probably similar to you guys and what Carl teaches you guys like I actually promote people like to like if you go for the Ben & Jerry's I'm like go for it tell me how you feel afterwards

because you'll feel one way or the other like you know what that was grand I'm actually fine like I'm grand it was a bit of slip up that's fine or else you'll have this like again this severe shame and guilt, which are really, really strong feelings to feel about ice cream.

And it's just about understanding and being able to sit back and be like, okay, right, well, that's how I felt when I had the ice cream. And then the next time you come to that situation, if you use that little framework of like, okay, I'm going to pause, I'm going to take deep breath and think about it.

How did I feel the last time I did do that? And you can then make a decision on it and be like, do I want to feel like that again? Or would I like to try something different? Yeah, because like you should never feel guilt around food, but people do feel guilt. around their food decision.

So then your guilt is trying to tell yourself something. So like what is it trying to tell you? It's trying to tell you that. Well, actually, I didn't actually want that food that I had. So why did I opt for it? Another thing I wanted to ask you about, like, obviously, if you're able to kind to implement the five second breeding and stuff like that, it's obviously going to be really valuable that the problem is where a lot of kind of really effective um fat loss advice is it's very

simple advice but it's not always easy to implement in terms of like like like ever because it's so simple and basic people tend to do because they don't think it's valuable even though it's the most valuable thing in the world like so if you were trying to get someone from uh that low mood that low emotional state that unproductive stay to uh a more productive state stay where they can stay on track with their goals and maybe you know stopping and pausing for a Brett is something that

they just couldn't do because maybe they continued to forget about it or something like that. Is there any other methods that you would suggest in terms of helping people to change their state going from that kind of low mood to something that's more productive?

Yeah I actually love that question Carl. I really like that question. So I I regularly attend therapy and not for any major mental health disorder or not for any major mental health problems I just attend therapy

because I think it's good for me and a really good exercise for changing state right and this is really good so if you're ever feeling just that bit maybe a bit meh okay create a five track playlist

on Spotify okay the first song should just be like a little bit of like it would tap your foot the second song should be like

a little bit like kind of like, kind of a little bit singing along, but you don't want to admit you're singing along. And the third song should be getting

that little bit high energy. By the last song, you should be roaring your lungs out in the car. Like, you should be like, you know, like,

I'm bulletproof. Like, it should be like, like, like so high energy. And it's just a clever way of like, and just put it on.

Don't worry about it. If you don't sing along, it's fine, but just put it on and let your body go through to kind of like that, like tap end of the, now don't be listening

to this playlist all the time. If you listen to this playlist you'll habituated it and you'll become like blind to it. It's a bit like you're becoming nose blind because you've habituated a smell. Use it only for those like things. But put on like I use, so my guilty pleasure is the greatest showman if anyone has ever seen that movie. And so some of those like they're so upbeat music.

And having some of those music tracks. So just that five track thing. And I get people to make those tracks first of all. And by the time and suddenly like there's nobody that can sing their, sing their lungs out without breathing. Think about it. You can't sing without breeding. And like in between.

between verses you're going to be like, which is taking a huge deep breath. Okay. And you're subconsciously taking these deep breaths and you're changing your state without actually thinking about it. So even if it's just like getting like listen to music. And then the second way is there's nobody that can laugh without breeding. Okay.

So find a comedian you find the funniest or whatever the crack is, whatever it makes you belly laugh. Put that on. So if you're having a bit of a mare, put that on because you can't belly laugh without like, and you're subconsciously taking these huge deep breaths. okay and that's what actually it's such a simple way of changing state without having to think about because like that like you said such simple advice so hard to implement but i find those type of mental tricks are kind of what work best yeah because you need you need to change your state and you need to change your emotion but like you're you're never going to go from someone who just feels like absolute crap to someone who's going to you know uh you know meal prep should have had so like being able to change your mood to then do the actions and behaviors that um you need to do in terms of getting you the result that you want that might not be as sexy.

Another thing I want to ask you, and then I'm going to let the group jump in and ask any questions that they want, if they want to, in terms of nearly being a qualified physio, just going kind of off topic for a little bit. What have you learned in the last couple of years in terms of studying physiotherapy that has made you a better personal trainer? Or even another question that I'd want to ask on top of that, is like what advice would you have for the clients in this in this group who may be starting off their gym training program training for the first time lifting weights for the first time

to get the most out of their training without um i suppose injuring themselves or doing something stupid so what what have you what have you learned that has made you a better trainer that you've been able to implement with the kind of general public and and what advice would you have for them starting off their training journey. Yeah, good question. So a bit of context. So I have a lot of friends. I'm sure Carl, you do too.

I have a lot of friends. They're all strength and conditioning coaches. They're bodybuilders. They're prep coaches. They're people that love, you know, getting on the treadmill at like six in the morning. I'd rather be punched in the troth. But I have a lot of friends that are fitness freaks.

They're fitness fanatics. And they just are so passionate about it. And they're just, they love fitness, right? And for the longest time, I was actually part of that. I was part of that culture because there are my friends because it was, I kind of fell into this, you know, I kind of fell into fitness a little bit. I was always sporty, but I just kind of fell into this fitness industry. And I promise I'm getting to the point as well.

Basically, when you're in that circle, you're actually alienated from real people. Like some of my friends, they don't get it. Like when they're, even they might be posted on social media. And I often joke. Some of my friends will post like a picture of themselves. like with no t-shirt on and they'll be like you know write a comment like it's you versus you it's like well you know what like johnny with four kids working 60 hours a week doesn't give a shit about you and your back like you know like and it's not relatable and it doesn't help

um because it doesn't solve any problems you're not helping anybody and you're just like you're in this little bubble of fitness and like that's great for you but doesn't help anybody and a lot of people need help with this stuff and so i suppose when i became a physiotherapist i have to do placement in hospital and when i go into i'm on placement at the moment in a hospital in a major regional hospital. When you see sick people and all they want to do, they're in bed and maybe they can't get out of bed. And all they want to do is like, I want to go home and cut the grass. Like, I just want to run around the garden with my kids or I just want to be able to pick up the kettle without my shoulder hurting and stuff like that. You realize like life is about

living. And sorry, very deep. That sounds very deep. But like life is about living and life is about the things that you enjoy doing. And as a physiotherapist, my job is to help you get back to what you want to do in life. Not to make you love physiotherapy. I don't. don't want to make you love fitness and all that. You don't have to love like physio or fitness. You just have to make it fit within your little bubble. You need to fit within your perfect little atmosphere. Just like that guy that wants to take off his t-shirt and write inspirational quotes and put it on Instagram. Your idea of a good time might be playing with your kids, eating good food, senior friends every couple of weeks for a coffee, but also not having high

cholesterol, having a lower body fat percentage and stuff like that. So I think just from a physio perspective, what I've learned is just like, I've just been reintroduced to the real world. I think that's made me a bit of a better coach is just understanding that most people want to go about their lives and have fitness fit into it, not good way around. And then from a perspective of if you're just starting out in a fitness journey, just be method, like methodical, methodical, strategic, be methodical. And you don't have to be, no, I've been around 27 years and I haven't met a genius yet, right? There's just people that have learned some things that get them boy. And I think you don't need to be a genius to be methodical. within the gym. It might seem very overwhelming

at the start of like, oh my God, Jesus, I don't know what that exercise is. I'm looking at this video that Carl sent me, but I don't know. I don't really like to look at that, et cetera, et cetera. Just stick to the plant. Like, be really, really, like, just be really metatical. Like, I'm just going to stick to the plant. Like, and if Carl says, right, and something

even just to make this a bit more specific, because I hate general advice, specific advice, keep it within Monday to Sunday. Okay, so keep it within Monday to Sunday. So if you have, let's just say, a gym, gym program that's three days per week, if you only get two gym sessions done in the week, don't be trying to fit that extra third session

into the following week. Because then you have a session, then you have one week with two workouts and the following week with four workouts. And that might seem like, oh, it's all balancing out. But then you have a week to three stressful. And weeks that are really,

really stressful lead to overload and overload leads to things like injury. So keep it with it in Monday to Sunday. If you can just keep, whatever it is, just do your two workouts. If you only get two workouts in, that's fine.

Reset. Monday, let's go again. Let's try and get three. Don't be trying to over. When things like steps, that's fine. You can do steps. Steps aren't going to injury. you go in the gym. If you're lifting weights and you are training hard and there is a potential for injury

don't be trying to cram stuff. Don't be trying to overcompensate because injury in essence and you can take this to the bank, injury in essence is just basically overloading one muscle and overcompensating with another. So for example,

if I'm doing too many bicep curls, I'm overusing my biceps and I'm compensating in with something like my shoulder and then I get shoulder pain. So I would just say keep it to Monday this Sunday even if that's just advice.

Just be strategic. I have a strategy I stick from Monday to Sunday and I don't deviate from it and if you can repeat that for six months you'll be way ahead of where you would have if you just didn't okay

yeah stay I'll get you to unshare your screen there just so we can see the the group as well I think that's a really really good point even in terms of like I think a lot of the time

we can it's such a common thing isn't it like we when you know when we get sick we we just want anything to be healthy again or we just want anything to be able to do like the little small things and we take them for granted and it's the same even with our bodies like it's like

when you do feel fit and strong you kind of take it for granted and then when something happens or you do get injured or you know you're in pain or something like that and you're like I just want to be able to do the small things like be able to like I remember when I got a back injury and I literally was paralysed for about a week and I was just like I'll never

I'll never take for granted being able to walk down to the shop ever again. Like, because it's them things that are so important and being able, even if you don't love training or you don't love going to the gym, like if you can tie the reasons that you're going back to the things that you do love, whether that's, you know, being able to keep up with your kids on a hike or being able to,

you know, whatever it is that you enjoy doing, you know, going dancing, whatever it is. Like, I think that's really important that you're, you're looking after your body.

so you can improve the overall quality of your life and the overall quality of your life is outside of the gym, not inside the gym, for most people. Absolutely. Okay, right, I'm going to let a couple of people ask a few questions. Cass, do you have a question that you would like to ask, seeming that we have you back training now for your 100 kilometre walk

in Spain or Portugal or wherever you're starting? I don't have a question. It just kind of, I suppose it all makes. sense, isn't it? Like I'm, I was nodding the whole way too. Like, oh my God, yeah, yeah. And so no, it was, it was exactly what I wanted when I, why I came to Carlinus, that I want to feel fit and healthy for my lifestyle, not, don't get me wrong, those pictures look fab. It was, yeah, it was for it to fit into my life. So yeah, exactly what I'm looking for. But no, I don't have any specific question, I suppose.

Well, I have a question for you. That's steam I might be able to help you with then. So like, what do you think you're struggling with most at the moment in terms of your health and fitness journey so far since starting? So the provoking was actually my thoughts. And which equates to low mood. And then therefore, everything's wrong. And what's wrong with me?

I'm not excited to go to the gym. Like, you know, and then the confidence isn't there to make me want to go. I suppose that was my, that's my big thing, the desire. Maybe that my goal isn't, isn't, maybe the goal isn't enough. I don't know, but the mood is so low that I just can't get motivated to go. Steve, what would you say to someone who, let's say, you know, they start off because they want to they want to get fit and healthy

they want to get stronger and they want to do for everything else outside of the gym but right now the push to go and do the things that are going to get them there just isn't there for whatever reason. Yeah, good question can I ask you just a counter question there, Kast? Is that alright? Yeah.

So you say you're walking is it like 100, you're going to do 100K walk or something. Is that what you're going to do? Doing the Camino. Oh, brilliant. Excellent. Why? It was a banding time with my middle daughter. Yeah.

Why to Camino? Yeah. Just because you can go, but you can go for a slice of pizza to bond with someone. You can go for a drink to bond with someone. You can go for a coffee to bond with someone. So why do Camino? It should kind of push outside of comfort zone,

do something different, get some sunshine. You know? Um, yeah. and how how will that help your bonding with your middle daughter other than just normal bonding? I suppose because you're away

you're away from the busyness of life and you literally just got the two years. Why 100 kilometres? Because that was the minimum requirement to get the certificate that you've done it. No, no, no, I know that. But so why do you need to, Why do you want, why do you want to do the Camino though?

It's come up in conversation with a few people recently. And I was like, oh, I've never heard of it and then looked into it. Oh, that sounds interesting. Why does it sound, why does it sound interesting to you? Because it's just not your typical holiday where you're lounging. Do you know what I mean? So you're saying that you don't want the lounge? No.

Why? It's born. You're on a lounger. They've got the headfifference. on. You're so comfortable of the sun, but it's boring. Like, you can do it for three days and then it's like, Jesus, kill me. What does it sound like to you

stay? Trying to keep this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, double hand. Either of I, either of I, well, like, it sounds to be, like, you're like a group therapy actually. Well, it sounds to be like you're, you have a want to challenge yourself. Yeah, definitely, and yeah,

step outside my comfort zone, something that I wouldn't dare do. Like, I'd never travel with the kids. I don't think of traveled with the kids on my own. So yeah, there's a few outside the box things. And how will you feel if you challenge yourself and you accomplish it?

I'll be a static. Like, you know, yeah. Top of the world. So a lot of things come back to a feeling and how you feel. So there's always a before feeling and there's an after feeling. So I've obviously don't know you, Cass, I don't know your story, don't know a story.

But often there, we have story in her head. There's always a story. Okay. For me, I always wanted to be a physio. Now I'm doing physio and in the future I'll be a physio. Okay. For you, there was something that maybe you just weren't quite happy with. Okay. And that's why that maybe led you to car. there was a certain feeling that you were like, I don't really like this feeling. I'd like to be more active. I'd like to look a bit different. I'd like to be more self-confident. Yeah. So we choose challenges that we rise to. Actually, I suppose the deep thing, the deep, deeper thought of that maybe is I've always had knee injuries of my whole entire life.

life and maybe the walk is actually to challenge me that, you know, I can do it and to kind of get that out of your head. That just because of knee issues doesn't mean you can't do it. Yeah, absolutely. So to probably, sorry, for the rest of the group, the reason I, the reason I wanted to countercast his question there. Okay. When you're having a feeling we're like, oh, God, it's just fucking can't be arst, which happens to all of us. There's nobody, nobody in this room is an exception to that. Ask yourself why five times.

So the five whys. Okay. Actually, why am I doing this? Okay, right. I'm doing this because I want to get fit. But why? Because I don't fit into my jeans. I need to lose some body fat.

But why? Because I was eating poorly. But why? Because I didn't feel great about something that happened and I was comfort eating. But why? Because maybe I'm not leaving the life that I want to. Like maybe there's something going on that I'm just not happy with it. And if you keep going those levels and that's something that and this is hard as

well, right? That's, that's not easy. And you can see there as well, it's very easy to get side tracks. Like, oh, I'm, I'm doing this because, you know, X, Y and Z. But you even just came out there. Like, well, maybe there's a deeper reason that I felt like I wasn't able to, you know, do it because of my knee. And there's a lot of things that come back to maybe I'm not good enough. Okay. And this feeling of not being good enough, which is, and bear with me for a second, I had a coach do this to me recently, and I was like, wow, like, I'd be a pretty confident guy, like I'd be a pretty, I'd be someone that I'd be pretty confident myself, I'd be pretty sure myself, but when we got to some of the bottom of some of the things that I do, so I'm an active overachiever. And at the very, very

base of it is, I'm afraid that I'm not good enough. And that's why I do the actions I do. And sometimes it won't come up like that for everybody, with some names, when you're just not motivated, ask yourself, why am I doing this? Okay. and actually explore that thought. And it will be hard. And you will have to write it down. I have a journal right here. Okay, I have a journal right here that I do ask these questions.

Why do I do what I do? Okay. Why do I need to post an Instagram for my business to help people? Why do I need to go to a gym? Ask yourself why a couple of times. And you'll get to the bottom of like, well, I kind of feel shit the way I am at the moment. And if I don't go to the gym, nothing's going to change.

And usually for most people, that's enough to be like, right, I'm after the gym. Yeah. And I would say that's why you're in a program as well. It's because a lot of people, people, they'll set goals, but then they'll just let them goals fall to the, they could have had a really strong why to why they initially got started. But then as time goes on, that starts to subside and it doesn't feel as strong. And then you start to forget why you actually start in the first place. And that makes it very easy to them be like, I'm not going to the gym today. It doesn't matter.

I'm fine. Whatever. But like, and that's why you're in a program to have that kind of reminder, like, because when something's not an automatic behavior or a habit, it's really difficult to continue to keep it going for the very first you know six months a year two years so like having that constant reminder of okay you know you can go to the gym or you don't have to go to gym doesn't really matter but you said that

you wanted to challenge yourself you said that you felt like you needed to achieve more that's why you're going on this 100 kilometer walk I'm not going to fucking sit in the sun for three days all right so reminding yourself that like you know me going to the gym

is actually setting me up to become that person who can challenge myself both physically, mentally, emotionally and stuff like that. Like that gives you a little bit more of a fucking pre-workout to go to the gym rather than just saying, no, I'm not going to go today. And you know what I mean? Being able to be okay with that. So yeah, I think that's a really good approach to take what it stays to like continue

to ask yourself until you actually get what. Because we all just say these kind of surface level answers don't we? I just want to lose weight. I just want to be healthier. I just, you know, I want to get stronger. Like, but when you, when you dig deep into it, like it is things like Steve said. I don't feel like I'm enough. So this is why I want to do this, you know.

So yeah, I think that's really important. Who else do I want to get to jump in and ask a question? David, you just started on the program. So I'm just going to get you to introduce yourself and maybe ask Steve a question on anything that, or essentially what you've been struggling with recently and why you're on the program and maybe any advice you want to get off, Steve. I'll have to unmute you first. Or, Steve, maybe you can unmute.

Oh, there we go. Hello. Yeah. I'm not sure. It's kind of hard to think of a question. I'll talk about it. Sorry, Dave. I'm trying you straight into the deep end.

So first and foremost, what do you want to get out of the program? Well, I want to lose weight. obviously but I want to be more confident in myself in my body and I want to be more I guess more like the person I want to be you know what I mean

yeah and what do you think what do you think you've been struggling with what's been the kind of biggest issues or barriers that have prevented you from getting there that being on the program like this is going to help you with do you think I don't I suppose I just tend to like

overindulging things I'm not really I suppose it's worth thinking about Steve do you have do you have any kind of methods or advice or guidance that you give the clients who you find that tend to overindulge or don't haven't been able to

stop this pattern from occurring that has got them to a certain place that they don't, that they're not happy. Sometimes it can be really helpful to just normalize it. So, for example, literally, David, right?

The next time you do indulge, just do it. And then get out a piece of paper, write down what happened beforehand. Like, what happened proceeding? It might be like, I came home from work.

I ate 13 Snickers bars That's okay, right? Just write that down And then write down Okay, how do I feel now? Okay, and then just try and piece together Even like before that And just walk back through your days

Obviously, how you feel now is so So as I referenced before So in the next situation that you come to like that You have a reference point And you have a reference point to make a decision often But even if it was a case where Just backtrack through your day What happened?

What led you to the point that you felt that you needed to do that? And I know as well These are hard things to think about And you actually, you just summed it up there, Deva, you were like, I guess it's, I guess it's something worth thinking about. Okay. Most people just don't think about it. It's easy to just be like, just don't worry about it. Like, I'm just going to keep continuing on. And it can be hard to do that. But I do find, um, as well, like calls like this, sometimes and I would actually, I would urge all of you to run this call. Engage with calls like this in the future. Engage with Carol on a conversation like this. I recently switched where I do more calls like this with my client. because it's very hard to escape me asking you, Cass, why do you want to do this? Like, do you know, like, why are you here? And that gets it out of you who are like,

I'm fucking here because I want to be, because I want to be a better person. And I'm not here to live a mediocre life. And that's, that's where change happens. It's not the gym program. It's not the fucking nutrition plan. Like, it's the making you think. Up here is where it happens.

So to answer your question, if you have one of those indulgences, that's okay. Don't feel guilty. Don't feel safe. Or try not to feel guilty. there, try not to feel shameful, and just try and write it down and reverse engineer, okay, why did that happen? And then try and identify, if there was a situation of like, well, I had a

fight with my misses today or my, my fellow today, my boss gave me an absolute, absolutely, art-wiping today. Try and identify, like, was there a moment that made you feel really shit about yourself? Because most times when we indulge, it's to make ourselves feel better. It's to make ourselves feel good enough. And it comes from something like that. So if you're able to to identify something with that, you can be like, okay, well, the next time something like that happens, I need to be a little bit more just on guard to like, okay, this might be a binge period. This might be a period where I overindults because of that,

et cetera, do you know? Yeah, okay. That makes sense. All right, David, I'll take you out of your misery and I'll let my other newbie come in. So, Kirsty, my German, my German cyclist, I want you to come in and introduce yourself and just tell Stee a little bit about why you joined the program,

a little bit about your background, and what you want to get out of the programme. The German cyclist. A very funny description. I take that. I put that on the shirt. Yeah. Why I'm on the program.

I did a program already in German for, yeah, one-on-one coaching for half a year and then another six months like group things. And I got down the weight. I gained a bit back. But I just kind of, yeah, felt. that I need one more push or a different direction or some more inputs to like, yeah, I was like, I'm like that with the gym especially,

I had weeks where I go three times, four times, and then there are weeks I don't go at all. And I have a shoulder injury now at the moment. So that was kind of frustrating and then, yeah, I saw one of cars reels with the, the Irish cowboy thing. So that kind of got me because I really love Island. I spend a year there in my 20s.

So that's, yeah. And yeah, I strongly believe in that, yeah, sometimes you get a sign. And I know a lot of things. And I'm a psychologist. So that's why I got you the sums up on just doing therapy and just getting help. And I think on the other program, obviously there were always new people coming on.

So I found myself on the position of like swapping my role and getting into the therapist role and listening to the problems of others and giving advice because I knew a lot of things already. So maybe and I know also that you need to or it's good to change something. You know, like what I found is when I'm sitting. sitting on the couch and it's a bad mood, then it's good to change the location. And so maybe that's what my idea was maybe if I changed the language and it's harder to like to talk or, yeah, then I then I change my focus as well. So I know. Here's a question I want to ask and then let's SD jump in. So what exactly is it now that you want to get out of being in a new coaching program after taking a little bit of time off?

I'd like to implement routines that I don't have to think about anymore. So I have a, I'm self-employed and so I don't have like a 95 job where I can obviously, so that's my time I have for the gym but it's always kind of a different and it's, that's what's, I wrote so many schedules and still didn't like I just couldn't stick to it

so that's what I hope to to find something that I really can stick to it for kind of the rest of my life soon Steve what would you say to let's say someone who just wants to make training a almost a habit or a behaviour that they don't even have to think about that doesn't need as much drive and push to do

I think, and coming for myself implied background as well, it's tough. It's tough. I find, and this might be no new to you and sometimes as well, when I'm speaking to other healthcare professionals like yourself, sometimes it's hard as well because we're so good at giving advice.

What's that, what's that fallacy where you're so good at giving advice, but you can't take it? You've said this, Carl, before. I can't even remember it, but I used to always, I used to always talk about it and then I forgot about it. I'll come back. But I suppose what I would say is

definitely like in a situation like that there has to be just reframed expectations. You have to reframe your expectations around the exercise you want to do, the results that you can expect. Because if it is a case where you've tried routines and you're, and if you have tried them and you're just like,

I cannot stick to them for love nor money, if I cannot stick to them, then you have to change your expectations. Like because it can't be kind of like it's an impasse. It's a, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no move maneuver there. So it's either you need to change your expectations around like say your own self-employment or you need to change your expectations around like the outcome. And that might be that your exercise sessions like for me at the moment, exercise sessions are half an hour, really intense.

Like no more than half an hour. Have to be half an hour. And that's not ideal. Okay. It's, it's not ideal, but it's practical. It's pragmatic. And it's a case that like it might take me another three months on top of what I. I thought it was going to take me to actually get there.

And I have to be willing to endure that on a daily basis and what that looks like on a daily basis. And I'll give you for example, I'm someone that wants it all as well. I want to be shredded and I want to be doing a master's and I want to run a business. And I don't want to be a billionaire. But sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and I'm like, geez, I was like, I could be in better shape. But I also have to remind myself that I'm self-employed and doing a master's. So I think reframing your expectations is really, really important just from a just from an exercise point of view of like, okay, like, where am I know? where do I want to be, even my circumstance, how long can I actually expect to be there?

Because I think that's the big thing for that. If you can stick to a schedule, if you've tried it and you've done it, you have to reframe your expectations because there's something that's not realistic there. There's some sort of expectation that's not realistic. And that's why maybe the last program worker or maybe you're in a situation where you are right now, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, it does. Yeah.

I think that's what we talked about as well, called you to find that point. I think if you're on the program and you lose weight and you're making progress and then that's the goal you know and then you I mean I had the weight then and I had the gym sessions in and then and now what so it's it's I think it's really hard to find that new goal it's I found it really hard to to like that just maintenance is the new goal now I kind of that's something I never had and it's something that I know I had I have to have to to go back on to, like you need to do more, way less and, yeah, be better. Something that, yeah, something that I find is really good for that as well.

And something that I've struggled at myself is sometimes as a business owner and someone in that situation, it's called your emotional juice. It's absolutely made up. And it was another coach that said it to me. I don't know, I don't know what it is. But it's called your emotional juice. Sometimes we just, we're just running low on emotional juice. And if you're a business owner and you feel like, yeah, I'm just a bit meh.

Like, I'm not really, you know, I'm just. a bit meh and I just want to maintain and with respect respectfully. Nobody wants to maintain. Everybody wants something. Everybody wants something. It's so funny though. It's so funny though because like so many people want to lose weight and then when they lose weight and then weight loss isn't the goal anymore so they don't see results as quickly

because the goal is something else. And then they're like, oh, well, this isn't as sexier. This is something that's exciting. Yeah. So something that another guy said to me was you need to. to find something that gets your emotional juice back. Like, find something that excites you. Like, whether that's, it could be like, for me,

it was like, he was like, where do you want your business to be in another six months? Like, ideally, what type of money do you want to be making? What type of client do you want to coach? How many hours a week do you want to work? And when you start to maybe think, like, forecast into like a dream future. So stop being realistic for a second. Write down on paper what your dream is, what you'd love to be doing, like, ideally, like, what would be a perfect future?

And that's kind of that more like that, that anticipatory. Tori kind of like, this is exciting. And then when you had that bit more of emotional juice, suddenly you have more enthusiasm for that, like, I can go to gym, I can make that work. And you start to look for opportunities of like, I can do this, not that I couldn't stick to it in the past and putting limitations on yourself.

Because I know I've been there as well. And that's not a scientific thing. That is something that someone just did for me and it worked. So I've yet to prove it. But something like that, maybe it might be worth even in your own career, be like where, you know, maybe something has gone stagnant. maybe you need to make things more exciting and you need to push yourself and maybe push yourself outside your comfort zone because as you mentioned there, Carl, I think sometimes when we've lost weight

and we're afraid to do anything to mess it up so we just want to maintain. We don't want to go any farther. We've done just fine and we don't want to go too far because what if we mess it up? But you'll get to a point where that's not, that's not entertaining. And when you look back in your deathbed and this is a bit deep, nobody wants to be like, well, at least I maintained. Nobody, nobody wants to live a life like that. You want to live life where you're happy and you do things and you you accomplish it and you live life with a bit of purpose but yeah that'll be my two cents. Do you think

that's where like performance based goals will come be in handy for for Kirstie? Yes, I think so and I think like that maybe I would think outside the box, obviously physical goals but I also think like how do you expect to like for example let's just say

out of the box if you want it on a certain amount of money let's take a million quid to make it a little bit of extravagant. How do you expect to make a million quid being self-employed okay, if you're not exercising, if you're not eating the proper food and if you're not getting enough sleep, how do you expect to turn up

and run a business like that if you're not doing those things? Because you are the vehicle that makes that money or even not money, let's take away from money. If you want to achieve big things as a psychologist,

how do you expect to do that if the vehicle that you're traveling in isn't working properly? And then sometimes that's enough to just be like, okay, I'd get my shit together. Well, like you said, you cycle, don't you?

Yeah. So that could even be something that we attach to like maybe like a ridiculous goal that you may not feel you're able to achieve but you know you need to be in it. The hill is right around the corner that I can't manage at the

moment so it's right in front of my nose yeah you could think even bigger than that you have to do it 100 times but what I'm doing is like okay so like you have a goal like like Cass had or 100 kilometre walk you have a goal that really excites you and actually scares you a little bit

And like you channeling that that's, you know, excitement slash nervous energy into getting you excited to go to the gym again to make sure that, you know, all your joints are feeling nice and strong and you're feeling strong. And you're preparing for this, you know, big challenge that you're going to do six months, nine months down blind. Because like you said to me, like what you were lacking at the moment is like you didn't have that drive or enthusiasm or momentum to get back training again. so that's what we need to find. Yeah. Steve, can I just ask you another question on the back of that just so, and I think this will relate to the rest of the group as well. So she also has a shoulder injury.

Like, what advice do you have just in general for people who are carrying little niggles and injuries but still want to continue their training? Do you have any advice that you can give in terms of that? Yes, absolutely. So a couple things that are really, really important. If it's less than a four out of ten pain, continue on. Okay? If it's less than four or ten,

if it's more than a four out of ten, you need to go and see somebody, right? That's kind of a little, a nice little indicator of like if it's four or five, it's okay, like shoulders a little bit niggly, but once it warrants up, it's fine, that's okay.

If it's like, ah, Jesus, my shoulder's pretty painful now. Like, I'm a six or seven out of ten. I can't really raise my arm. You need to go see somebody. You need to consult somebody. That's something that's probably not going to go away just with time.

Number two, when it comes to pain, when it comes to niggles and injury, pain doesn't like speed and it doesn't like aggression okay so if i've got knee pain you jumping around is not helping the situation whereas you for example doing let's just say if you are doing walking lunges in your gym program or squats doing something really gentle something really slow just as a warm up is going to just like get those tendons get those ligaments get those joints kind of warmed up to the point where they can probably tolerate and it should always be a step sequence so it shouldn't be ever a case of like you go into the gym and you throw two 20s on the barbell and we start doing

back squat. That's very intense. It's very fast and it's very aggressive way of doing things. So I have painful knees at the moment. So I would do wall sits. So I might do like three by 30 second waltzits because it's a situation. It doesn't require a massive amount of movement. It doesn't require a massive amount of speed. And it's not very aggressive. It's just something that you're sitting there with. And it's relatively comfortable. So pain doesn't like speed and it doesn't like aggression. So if you have a painful area, like if you have a painful shoulder, don't be tackling people. Like, don't be punching people. Like, you know, that's, that's, that's pain, that's fast and it's aggressive. Like, do things nice and slowly, nice and gently. And you'll

often find, like, even with, like, a shoulder, if you were to be very gentle about it, you could actually probably, like, put your hand in the air, you can lift things. Your body is very robust and very, like, it can tolerate a lot of stress. Like, your body's really strong. It's built from tough stuff. And trust me, I've seen people. But just remember that. If it doesn't like pain, and it doesn't like aggression, and as long as it's less than a four out of ten, continue what do and just go slow whatever ease yourself into it all right um does anyone else have any final questions before we bounce off annelis do you want to ask a question i don't think i have a question per se um i guess i can um i've had a lot of injuries since i started the program so i can highly

attest to seeking help from a physiotherapist because um like and and to keep moving to be honest is my recommendation, but yeah, I don't really have much to add to that. Just, yeah, I think I pay my physiotherapist's, like, salary because I see him so often, but I highly recommend it because I find getting older. They, like, especially if you've had previous injuries, they definitely tend to flare up. So, yeah, but I don't really have a question per se. Annalise, you're not making me look very good in terms of program, and if you're sure that at times. maybe she think about taking me on

the injuries were not your fault let's just say thanks for that little plug Steve you have I will all ask one more question on the back of that and then we'll bounce off because I know we're taking more time than we expected on yet but in terms of so let's say somebody is getting injured a lot in when they're training what do you think are some of the

teams that you should be looking out for in terms of that a very simple kind of framework that I find is really, really good. Bear with me on this one, okay? What gets measured, gets managed, okay? It's the same with inton. It's a bit like calories. It's a bit like your bank account.

If it's measured, it gets managed. When you're not measuring it and you're not managing, you don't know what's going on and you've no idea where to start. And the same as with our beliefs and our thoughts, there's a story to everything. There is a story. Like, if you're someone that's constantly getting injured,

there's something going on. There's a story there. So a very simple way of doing. it. And if you just can you bear with me there for two seconds, right? And I'm just going to share my screen again and I'm going to I'm going to just because this will

this won't make sense if I just talk it out but if I draw it out it'll make a lot of sense for people. Do you have one? No, I'm just going to do it in Google Docs. I'm just going to do it really simple. I do. I do have one of those. I do have an iPad and an Apple

pencil but it's dead. I haven't used in a long time. Not very good use of it. And so, right, I'm going to share my screen there, Carl if that's all right. Yeah. Can you see that? Yeah, I'll see that. Okay.

Right. Really simple framework, okay, to measure, like, how much you're doing. So this is called your exercise management or the amount of exercise that you're doing, you're managing the amount of exercise. So this is really, really practical. So let's just say you train on a Monday, Tuesday, and then a Thursday and a Thursday. So we have Monday, okay? We have Tuesday.

We have Thursday. Sorry. Thursday and then we have Saturday. This is really testing my improvisation skills. There's only a certain amount of exercise we can tolerate within the week. So we want to put a number on that. And I'm a big, I'm a big facts and figures, guys.

So I like objective things. So that aren't subjective that like, oh, that was okay. I like a number. So often when someone's doing a workout, I'm like, on a scale of 1 to 10, how difficult was that workout? How difficult did you find that? How hard did you work in that workout? 10 being I worked so hard they had to defibrillate me.

zero being like I was walking on the treadmill and I probably could have been asleep wasn't really interest was checking in my phone most time during the set so if you got a number for it okay and we're starting to measure it now we're starting to get a real time measure of it so let's just say on a scale of 1 to 10 you were to rate your actual sessions okay we were also so just a feeling okay so rate of kind of like difficulty and it is so it makes sense this is quite simple I'm typing this out and it looks a bit blah right now, but it makes sense. How in your sessions?

So in minutes. So let's just say, for example, I was in the gym for 60 minutes. Okay. Now we have two different kind of numbers that we can use. And we'll just multiply one by the other. So if I had a gym session on a Monday, right, I did a gym session. It doesn't matter what I did. Could be upper body, lower body, full body, cardio, whatever crack is.

It has to be exercise. Don't rate walking. Walking is just physical activity. Do not rate that as exercise. That's physical activity. Okay. I'll let you explain that if you need to have afterwards but

physical activity and exercise are different exercise is like going to the gym running like things that really make your heart rate go up and really exert yourself okay if on Monday you did a gym session or you did something and it was a 7 out of 10 okay well multiply it by the amount of time it took you to do

in minutes so 7 by 60 is 420 okay quick maths all right so 420 are we all with me so far can you just give me a nod we're all okay with me so far. You're understanding where I got those numbers? Okay.

So that's 420. Let's just say units. Okay, we're just going to call them units. There's only a certain amount of these units that we can tolerate in the week before our body starts to break down before our body is not able to like keep up with the load or the exercise that we're putting on to it. So generally, right, a good number is 2,000 units.

Okay, so we can tolerate roughly about 2,000 units per week. An average person that may different for some people. Some people like 1,500 or maybe like 2,000, like, like, 1,000. 500 might be for other people. It depends. But 2000 is a nice little kind of an area. So we just need to make sure that we're roughly in around the 2000 mark, okay? Plus or minus 10%.

So let's just say if we got 420 today and let's just say here we did, you know, it was a 6 by 60 minutes. Okay. By 60 minutes, right? And that was, you know, whatever, that was 360. Okay. And let's just say it was 360 and 360 just for the simple sake. Okay. Apologies.

360. Sorry, it's all over place. But if you had 420, so about 400, 350, 350, 350,

so that's 700 and 400 and 1100. Another 300 is about 400 or maybe like 1450, 1550. 1550. Okay. As long as you stay kind of within that on a weekly basis. So let's just say one week you had 1,500. Okay.

As long as the following week, we're not doing 4,000. You're not probably going to get injured, okay? Right? Because you're not, jumping from one huge number to another number because to get 4,000, you'd have to have a session where it was a 10 out of 10 and you were doing, you know, 130 minutes of work. Okay. So what I would say is just try and keep it within 10% of what you're currently doing on a weekly base. So if you do

1,500 this week and you can do this for yourself, literally just go and think about your sessions this week, rate them out of 10 difficulty. How many minutes were you in the gym? How many minutes did you actually exercise for? So just the gym session go on from rate them, add them up. You'll get a number like 1,500, okay? And just to plus or minus 10%. As long as you say plus or minus 10%, so what I mean by that is as long as you're, if last, if this week was 1500, as long as you're roughly between 1300 and maybe like 1,700, okay, in terms of the units, that should keep you from getting injury because we're not increasing the amount of exercise we're doing all of a sudden, because remember injury is just overusing something and then something else compensating as a result. And the overuse part

is when we go like too far above and beyond it. So a nice, easy framework. And that's, that looks, that looks a bit me. Okay. I'm here. But even if you just said, right, my Monday session, you know, just get a number for it and add it up at the end of the week and be like, okay, where am I? And next week when you're going to exercise, just remember if you do a really hard session, like a 10 out of 10,

and it's like, you know, like two hours long, you need to account for that. So you need to account for that in the sessions that you do that it needs to be a little bit easier to balance it out and just make sure that we're not spending, you know, 4,000 units one week and then like 1,500 units the following week and then 10,000 units to follow on week

because that's going to lead to injury because it's really up and down, okay? Yeah, I wish I had their cloud on the call there. I literally just had the conversation with her about over training. Like if you're having like a 10 out of 10 or a 9 out of 10 session, like you're not, you're not going to have like five or six of them in a week because you're just going to destroy your body essentially.

So like would you say that if like dependent on where you're at on your training journey, let's say we have people who are just starting off the training journey so they don't really know what their intensity is. They don't know how hard they can actually push themselves. it's it's probably better to have them do more frequent workouts throughout the week because their intensity might be like a six out of ten or a five out of ten so they can handle training like four or five days a week whereas if someone's going to go like balls to the walls in the gym

and do like 10 out of ten sessions they might only do two or three max uh a week yes yeah correct so it would literally just be a case of and and this is hard because training hard means different things to different people so all all you guys here there are listening tonight. Training hard means different things, different people. But if you just try and make it, try and standardize it for yourself that, like, just assume that when you're a beginner, you're training really, really hard, that's a perception. And as you get stronger and more experience, like right now, you might be able to squat your body weight. Like, say, might be just doing air squats. But in a year from now, you might be able

to squat your body weight and 60 kilos. So you must remember, like what you think is hard now probably won't be that hard in another year. So if you're very new to this, just training quite frequently and just getting it done and even if you don't know if it's very, very hard, just getting it done and sometimes just going through the motions, that's enough because you will eventually get to the point where you're experienced. It's a bit like driving. You wouldn't be doing, you know, handbrake turns when you've just learned to drive.

You shouldn't be anyway, right? You shouldn't be drifting around in place when you're just learning to drive. Learn to drive first. You'll get there eventually, but just turning up and driving the car is good enough right now to get you to pass your test. And then stay just off that question as well. So that's so that's in terms of people who are just starting off their training

experience in their training journey in the gym. We also have a couple who might be, you know, for non-intermediate and maybe advanced trainers in terms of a couple of years in the belt of training in the gym. Do you think that for them people that a big mistake that they can make is trying

to train too hard all the time and learning and how to can I reduce that a little bit. Yes. Yeah, I think, I wouldn't even say that they're training too hard, but in today's culture, right? And some of you guys might hear this

in the words, like, you know, you have to train until failure. You know, like, you have to train until you can't do anymore. Like, you know, it should be really, really hard. But, like, there's lots of aspects to that. Like, so there's three different things that happen when it comes to muscle building and fat loss. okay so you have metabolic stress okay yeah mechanical tension and you have progressive overload

so progressive overload is adding more weight to the bar adding more reps metabolic stress is doing the exercise okay until you feel the burn like until like it might be doing 12 15 reps so you're feeling that burn in that target area and mechanical tension is doing exercises really really slowly okay so there's there's three parts to that build building muscle equation but people kind of tend to just like oh but i got a train to failure. I got a lift as heavy as I can for as long as I can for as many reps as I can. But that's only one part of the equation. Okay. Like if you're making, if you're making lasagna, you wouldn't leave out the pasta. It wouldn't make any sense, you know, like if you were making spaghetti balanais, you wouldn't leave out the pasta, then it'd be just

fucking mince. Like, you know, it's really important. Like, there's more to it than just like, like, like training to failure. And even when you're advanced at training, that's actually probably why it's important to have a coach. I would actually say more advanced people need a coach, like really need a coach, because a lot of people, you might, you might get by, like as a beginner, you might get by, you might get lucky and it might get by and you might get really good results. And that's brilliant. That works here. It's much faster having a coach. And not that me and carol or bias, it is much faster when you have a coach. But when you are advanced, that's when you need a coach. What are the signs of someone who is over training and is pushing

themselves too hard, too frequently in the gym and that's on the negative impact on their results on a positive one? Low energy. Distaste for their work. out. Yeah, not feeling about it. Yeah, just kind of like don't feel a bit

like, even if you've gotten a new program four weeks of year just be like, no, I'm just like, the idea,

the idea of showing up and doing it is just like, yeah, because I think like, so there's low energy, a bit of distaste for your, for your,

for your gym program or for wanting to go to the gym. Um, and I think an overall feeling of, like, no again no disrespect to anybody but that feeling of wanting to maintain right that that the feeling of wanting to maintain that's a cop out that's kind of like uh you know there's there's there's there's other things going on the background there but if you're like i'm quite happy where i am again

like think about it guys there's no one in life going through life being like i just want to maintain like you know like i'm i'm just want to be i don't want to be lax everybody wants something and it might be different like say for example it might not be a case that that like, you know, you've lost amount of body fat. But everyone wants to achieve something because achieving things feels good. So it might be just a case you need to switch and change to maybe something different. But if you are feeling that maintaining feeling, like, I just want to maintain because anybody, anyone that I've ever had like that that has maintained, if I'm going to be completely honest,

and it's not to put anyone off, right? There's nothing wrong with being happy. And there's nothing wrong with keeping the goalposts static just for a second to be like, like, geez, I achieve this. This is fantastic. And not moving goalpost. But anyone that I've had that's were like, look, I just wanted to maintain. they went backwards because we always

overestimate and kind of like ourselves first of all so we always overestimate ourselves and we always overestimate kind of I suppose the effect of things or we underestimate so for example when you're saying right I want to

if you're like I want to maintain we take the foot off the gas that was actually probably keeping us at maintenance and suddenly we slip into regression so what you think is actually maintenance is actually probably slipping into regression. It's a bit like when you're counting calories, you should always err on the side of caution because calories aren't actually all that accurate.

Like Joe, there might be more calories than instead. So we always kind of, we're not very accurate with some of those things and especially with maintaining. What does maintaining look like? How do you maintain like objectively? So just as I make sense this. I've been rambling. I'm going to make sense of this.

If you were to maintain, you have to set goals, which you have to strive towards to maintain. You actually can't maintain. There's no such thing because to maintain what you want right now, you still have to strive to meet goals to keep where you are right now, which means you're actually progressing. Does that make sense? That probably makes more sense. If I want to be this lean at this body weight, I still have to hit a certain amount of steps. I still have to hit a certain amount of gym sessions. I still have to hit a calorie target and I still have to have some performance goals because otherwise I'm either going to drop weight or gain weight. So to maintain, you actually still have to progress. And I think it's just that the idea of maintenance is that often better in your head than

it actually is in reality because a lot of people end up going backwards or back to where they used to be, which is not where they wanted to be. And that's why they run the program in the first place. In terms of, let's say, all right, so nuns. So, like, obviously we know you're not going to be making progress if you're in this phase of over time and feeling sluggish and feeling like your feet are like cement blocks of not feeling out and trying to detesting your program. So we know that if that's the case, we probably need to reduce the amount of training we're doing or reduce our training volume

and reduce the intensity that we're training that or just improve our overall recovery. So how can someone, let's say their goal is to get to 100 kilo back squat, right? And they've been stuck on 60 kilos or 70 kilos for the last couple of months. So they are maintained. So they are actually regression. regression they're not they're not making the progress they want what are some what are some key things that we can implement to push past that sign of training and pack out right I'm

I would actually sometimes I would actually take I would take emphasis off training and sometimes we can get too we can actually our our health and exercise sometimes can slip up the priority list and we maybe have a lack of somewhere else in our life and I often find the best training sometimes comes when I've when I'm super busy and because I'm not thinking about training and just going in and doing it and it's just like I got to get this done blah blah blah I was like oh great I hit a PB didn't think about it back to what I was doing and so like even in the last two years I've actually been the strongest I've ever been in the last two years even though I'm doing a master's the full time master so it's roughly around 40 hours a week and I'm running my own business which is about 40 hours a

week. So sometimes it's very overwhelming. But on average, I've worked probably 60 to 80 hours a week for the last 24 months. And they've been some of the, and that's not a brag that do not do that. I'm not condoning that. That's not a good idea. But they're some of the strongest months of my life. And I've actually been in some of the best shape and fittest of my life because I've had other things going on in my life. So in short, I would actually plan something fun. You need to plan more things that are social. I would say plan things that are fun in the week that pull you through the week, that you're like, like,

can't wait to get to Friday because I'm, you know, I'm going bowling with my friends. I can't wait to go Friday because we're going on holidays, whatever the case. And suddenly fitness and training

becomes part of your life and not all your life. It's a bit like, when you're watching the clock, it goes slowly. When you're, you know, like when you want that clock to,

when you, when you want something to happen faster, it just won't and you're thinking too much about it. Distract yourself. Put more fun into your week. Let that slip down the priority of just a couple of steps and just do it as you're going. Yeah,

it's so funny that when we, when we stop obsessing about the thing and then we end up getting the results so it's like if you're in the gym five or six times a week because you want the result but if you decide that actually I'm going to do something else instead

and a byproduct of that is you actually rest so then you come back stronger you actually get the results quicker by not obsessing about it and allow them to take its course and to further taking that plot and if you use the framework

of pausing taking five deep breaths it's assessing your options and in asking for help. Like, you can see how that very nicely ties into that same situation. And sometimes, and it's not always about like a shit situation that's always really overwhelming. It could be that. It could be that. And it's important to understand that as well.

That sometimes not focusing on it is the way to go. Thanks for watching. If you like that episode and you want to see more content like this, make sure you're subscribed. And I'll see you on the next one.