#24: Playing the Long Game (How to Stay Physically Active Your Whole Life)

If you want the benefits of physical activity to carry across your entire life then you're going to need to keep active throughout your entire life.

Whether you want to be physically active to achieve the physical health benefits it offers, the mental health benefits, social health benefits, or even the spiritual benefits, you'll only maintain them with consistent engagement in these physical pursuits.

It's the old "use it or lose it" phrase; the body will regress without consistent physical stimulation, and along with it, we may also find that we also lose the mental health benefits or other wellness benefits it provides.

So, in this episode, we're covering the mindset around playing the long game; the mindset of what it takes to keep the big-picture, long-term goals and objectives in mind throughout our physical pursuits. The results can lead to greater personal fulfillment, which reduces risk of burnout, along with reduced likelihood of pain and injury, allowing us to keep moving rather than be forced to sit on the proverbial sidelines.

The result is a greater ability to keep moving throughout our lifespan, allowing us to experience an overall higher quality of life—physically, mentally, and even spiritually.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

0:00 - Intro

5:45 - The problem to solve & quick takeaway

11:54 - It’s never too late!

16:29 - Running vs sprinting

30:10 - Mistakes we make when we’re healthy

40:15 - Learning about periodization

47:29 - Individualization (and why you need it)

58:48 - Mistakes we make when injured

106:56 - Re-framing: obstacles vs opportunities 

1:11:06 - Doing the stuff you don’t like

1:14:29 - The necessity of enjoying the process

1:15:58 - Key takeaways from this episode

1:18:08 - A small request

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So, we all know that a physically active lifestyle produces a multitude of positive effects for the body, the mind, and even our spirit. And to maintain these effects, we need to continually be active throughout our entire lives, not just for a portion of it. If we stop moving and challenging our bodies, we then tend to lose what we have gained. So in this episode, we're going over some simple but profoundly beneficial steps that you can take with your physical activity pursuits, along with common mistakes to avoid, so that you can stay physically active for all your days ahead. Because who doesn't want to maximize their longevity and experience a consistently higher quality of life for all their days ahead? So let's talk about it. Well, hello again, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Strang 3 Surgeons podcast. This is episode number 24, where we're talking about playing the long game and how to stay active your whole life. Really important uh concepts that we're going over here, was dwelling on this concept for a little while and felt that this would be a really one good one to go after because it pertains to pretty much anyone, whether you're just starting to get physically active and wanting to move more, or you're currently in the middle of doing so, or even if you're just thinking about becoming more physically active. Uh, since we're talking about playing the long game, you know, moving throughout your whole entire life, this is going to apply to everyone. So I figured it'd make for a great episode. So, as always, as we get going, thanks for being here. If you don't know me, my name's Jim. I'm a physical therapist, uh, strength and conditioning specialist, and just geeky dude uh who uh just loves all things pertaining to the human body and how it functions, helping it become healthier and stronger and pain-free. That's exactly why I've got this podcast going because I'm a geek about this stuff, and nothing really makes me happier than taking some of my knowledge and expertise and experiences and sharing it with anyone who can you know benefit from it, where hopefully get them pointed in the right direction in some capacity. So I appreciate you spending time with me here. Um, I love doing these podcast episodes. I'm still pretty new to this whole thing, but it's a lot of fun and it's a lot of work, but I love the topics and the content, so it's definitely a labor of love, and I'm more than okay with that. So, just for you to get to know me a bit more, as always, I start out with a quick fun little fact about myself so you can help to kind of just know that you're spending some time with a regular dude who's not a whole lot different than you are. So I figured a fun fact about me for this episode for you to keep getting to know me is that if there were one musical instrument that I could master, I think I would pick the piano. Um, I dabble with playing a lot of guitar, I dabble with drums. Not overly good at either, but certainly good enough to have a lot of fun for my own needs and desires. But there's something beautiful about piano, so expressive and dynamic. And if I could be a master at one, I would definitely pick that one. So there's your fun little fact about me. But with that being said, let's uh get right into this here. Let's talk about what we're going over in this episode. A lot of great content that will hopefully uh give you some things to mentally chew on and hopefully you can uh take and walk away with and use it in some capacity that will help you out if you feel uh it'll benefit you. So we're gonna start out here in a moment where we're gonna talk about a quick little reminder that it's never too late to get started with this whole physical activity thing. We're then gonna talk about running versus sprinting, at least in a conceptualized manner. And then another concept we're gonna talk about real quick after that is losing battles to win wars. So we'll break all that down because that's where I think the heart of this whole playing the long game comes in. And you'll see why as we kind of get uh get rocking and rolling here. Now, real quickly after that, we'll also talk about a concept of what we call periodization, which sounds like a fancy word, but it's really um simpler than what it sounds, perhaps, and uh just very important for anyone who's looking to play this whole long game with uh being physically active for all their days ahead. Then I'm gonna quickly remind everyone about a concept of what we call individualization, uh very important one as well. We'll get into that. And then we'll have a fun little discussion around the stuff you don't like, and you'll see what I mean when we get to that shortly. And then we'll wrap this all up with the reminder that all of this stuff has to be fun in some capacity. Because chances are, if you're not having fun, man, it's it's hard to play the long game when uh you're just not getting any sense of fulfillment or satisfaction out of uh a continual uh pursuit that is otherwise intended to be a lifelong one. So I'm gonna throw a fun little quote at you here, and I say it's fun because it's incredibly simple, but one of my favorite quotes, I think. I've known about it for quite some time, and really, really hits at the heart of the contents that we're gonna talk about in this episode. And so that quote is uh um one that goes way back from a Roman poet way back in the day, at least that's who it's attributed to. But the quote is that constant dripping hollows out a stone, not through force, but through persistence. So if you think about that for a moment, constant dripping will hollow out a stone, not just gentle, drop by drop, and not occurring through force, but through persistence. And if you if you hold on to that quote, I think as you take it along with you as you listen to this episode, you're gonna see exactly how that ties into some of the contents that we're gonna be unpacking here. So with that being said, I'm gonna quickly kind of phrase the whole entire problem of this episode up uh just in a nice concise sentence or two, and then I'll give you the quick takeaway and then we'll really pick it apart here. But uh for anyone who wants to be physically active and move a bit more their whole entire lives, whether it's purely for the physical benefit or the mental health benefits or the social health benefits, if you are going to play the long game, and by long game, I just simply mean, you know, do this for you know the foreseeable future, right? Not focusing short-term, but focusing big picture, long-term perspective. And if you're going to play the long game, then the problem to solve is that regular physical activity, while an essential part of maintaining optimal health throughout the human lifespan, um, while important, uh, we need to set ourselves up with success when it comes to staying consistently physically active throughout our entire lives. So the question is, how do we do that? If we have something that we know we need to continually pursue and maintain, how do we set ourselves up for making sure that we can do this for the longest extent possible? And that is where the contents of this episode are gonna get picked apart and hopefully delivered to you in a manner that will make uh sense to you or resonate with you in some capacity. Now, my question for you regarding this whole problem to solve about how do we set ourselves up for success when it comes to staying physically active, um you're gonna notice in this episode that one of the underlying themes is patience. So, my question for you in knowing that, so I'm just curious, is patience something that you struggle with when it comes to your own personal pursuits? And this doesn't have to be physical activity pursuits, it certainly can be. But maybe you're not overly physically active right now, or maybe you're just starting and you're saying, hey, I don't know if it's something I struggle with because I'm just starting. But think about anything else in your life for that matter. It doesn't have to be physical activity. And for something that you're striving, uh striving towards, something that you want to pursue, do you struggle with patience? Um, I've learned for myself that in so many ways I certainly do. It's interesting because I think for some pursuits, I don't struggle with patience as much as with other pursuits. And I feel like I even have seasons where um I'm able to uh be more patient than other seasons, perhaps. And I don't necessarily know why that is. I sometimes feel like the things that I struggle with the most for patience are the things that uh mean the most to me or that I most eagerly want to pursue. And so maybe there's this correlation between how much we want something and how much we will struggle with patience as a result. I feel I would fit the bill for that, but um you know, as you kind of listen to this episode here, maybe hold that question in the back of your mind and uh see if any of the contents or topics we talked about can be extrapolated and applied to your own personal pursuits. Um, you know, hopefully for physical activity and physical movement, but if not, maybe for any of your other pursuits that you struggle with uh patience for as well. So the big takeaway in all of this is that, you know, whether you're an athlete or an average Joe, all of us are absolutely prone to ceasing uh being physically active for a variety of reasons. Um, and this is simply it's just a part of life. So don't fret over it, don't freak out. You're a human being, you have a life to live, things to do. Uh human beings get sick, human beings get injured. It's a big uh component of what we'll be talking about here shortly. So knowing it's inevitable, we don't we don't want to just um we don't want to just get haphazard and just say, okay, well, whatever, I accept that without doing anything to try and offset that. But in some capacity, setbacks happen. And so there's a couple of things to be aware of here as this big takeaway. So the first thing is that um for a variety of reasons in our pursuits, it can be tempting to just try and power through when things aren't going um perfectly, right? Or maybe even power through when things are going really, really good. Um, and in doing so, sometimes we'll lose sight of the bigger picture, the the lifelong picture, the uh the whole kind of uh 10,000-foot overview picture, so to speak. And so when we lose sight of this, we just try and kind of power through because maybe uh things aren't going as ideally as we should, uh, or that we would like them to go at, well, it can get us into nasty trouble. And so, really, the heart of this episode right here is that if you want to stay active your whole life, you must acknowledge the short term, but dwell and fixate on the long term. So there's a little bit of balance that needs to be struck there. And we'll get into that and we'll we'll kind of pick that apart here. But the big the big takeaway here is that the longer you want to be pursuing something, the more you need to maintain that as a thought uh as you actually do focus on the short term. So if you do that, that means I think you're playing the long game quite nicely, and you're not just playing the short game, and then you can avoid a lot of these mistakes that wind up uh causing us to fall off the horse, so to speak, and cease becoming physically active. Uh, whether that's because, hey, we just we lose motivation, we lose our desire or our love for physical activity, or maybe we become physically inactive because we didn't listen to our body and we got injured, and now we got chronic pain, or uh we have a condition that uh prevents us from partaking in those activities that we want to do. So that being said, the FYI here, just for your information, I want everyone to know is that it's never too late to start this whole physical activity uh regimen, this whole physically active lifestyle. It doesn't matter if you're, you know, uh 15 years old, it doesn't matter if you're 95 years old. I mean, it obviously it matters in the context of medical health and condition. Um, you know, anyone who wants to become physically active, I always advocate get a medical screening from your doctor, get a physical, uh, especially if you do have medical issues in your past or uh you're currently in a very unhealthy state. But when you look at uh this whole concept of, oh man, you know, it's it's too late for me, I'm not gonna get the benefits uh because I'm a bit too old and inactive. Uh that's absolutely not true. Um, it is never too late uh for the desire and the commitment to say, hey, I'm gonna move a bit more, I'm gonna find physical movement and activities that I enjoy, that I find meaning in. Uh we have decades and decades of research around this. It is not too late in terms of the gains that can be made to your quality of life, not just physically. Okay, we're not just talking becoming stronger or losing some weight and having healthier lungs and a healthier heart or uh increasing our joint health or um any other aspect of our physical health. But it's also never too late from a mental health perspective. We know that physical activity for mild to moderate depression is um one of the absolute best things you can do for mental health, and lots and lots of clear evidence on that. And um, even for social health, you can reap amazing rewards in the domain of your social health when you find people that you resonate with and connect with and partake in activities together. That's been a great one for me over the last seven or so months as I've gotten into jujitsu and I've been rolling at this amazing academy and just met the coolest people, people who care about me, who care about how I'm doing. Um, I love the physicality of it. But I think from day one, I've been on record saying I think my favorite thing is just the community of people that I have. And that's done so much for my mental health and my social health. Uh, you know, if you listen to these episodes that I've uh talked about previously in previous episodes, you will hear that I often talk about all the domains of health and wellness. We often think about that physical domain. But the physical domain is only one. There is physical health, but there's social health, emotional health, intellectual health, and spiritual health. It's kind of five main domains that are widely accepted as the fundamental domains to human health and well-being. So it's not too late. If you're 75, 65, 25, 35, that doesn't matter. That absolutely does not matter. Uh and I really I get passionate when I when I think about people who think it's too late for them, because I've met people of all decades of life. I've met people in their 90s who started moving a bit more in their 90s, uh, people in their 80s, people in their 70s and 60s. I mean, I've been involved in this stuff for over 20 years now. And it's so amazing when you see people whose quality of life across all domains improves when they choose to move a bit more and become a bit more physically active. And so it's it's heartbreaking to think some people out there might might believe that it's too late for them. And you know, I just want to hold my megaphone to the sky and tell the whole world it's not too late. So um there's a quote that I quite like, and you've probably heard this before. Um I don't know who said it, I think it's been said for a very long time by a lot of people, but it ties into exactly what we're talking about here. So the quote is that the best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago, and the second best time to plant a tree is now, and so let that sink in for a moment. And maybe you're going, okay, yeah, I wish I would have started getting physically active sooner. Okay, can't do anything about the past. There's no time like the present. So please keep that in mind if you're thinking about becoming physically active or you want to, but you got that little lying voice in the back of your head that says it's too late for you. It's not true. All right, so now we've kind of got that little uh soapbox spiel out of the way. Let's talk about starting out in this whole uh beginning process of becoming physically active and saying, hey, I'm going to um, I'm gonna become physically active. I want to move more, I want to become physically healthier. Well, when we think about the whole long game, okay, that whole start to finish mindset with the finish being, you know, in your in your you know ripe old age, uh, right up until your very last kind of day of living on this earth, we need to think of this as the proverbial marathon and not necessarily a sprint. So um it's an important thing to understand, and it probably sounds very obvious, but think about anything that maybe you get really excited about that's that you're brand new with. Maybe not physical activity, but a hobby that you got into a while ago, uh, or um, you know, any other activity. I think we can all appreciate and understand that it can be super exciting, and we can really just find ourselves in this honeymoon phase of being uh totally uh you know, totally infatuated with and totally enveloped in um that that new pursuit. And that's a wonderful thing. Uh in physical activity or any other hobby, it's a great feeling when you go, hey, I'm on to something here. I really enjoy this. I think I find a lot of meaning in this. I want this to be my jam. Well, for those times, and again, especially the physical activity for a lot of people, I would say, the first six months, the first year in these types of pursuits, man, it can be super exciting and we can find ourselves going all out. Um, I even find that in jujitsu a lot. I just want to kind of keep going and doing as many classes as I can. Um, but that being said, um, I'm trying to keep sight of the uh the big picture here, not just going, hey, I want to I want to focus on only the next three months or four months. I mean, you can focus on that, but we always have to be thinking about this long game. And it's wonderful to be super excited about something, but we I think we still need to kind of channel some of that excitement in one capacity or another. Excitement is very admirable, and I think it's a signal that you're on the right path, that you found something that's really cool. Um, but there are a few things to keep in mind here, especially when we talk about physical activity and uh challenging your body more and putting your body to use a bit more, uh, especially if you're a beginner. I'm gonna give you a couple of uh uh things to be mindful of here. It doesn't matter if you're a beginner who's 15 years old or a beginner who's 85 years old or 95 or anywhere in between. A couple of things we need to be mindful of here as we commit to this whole kind of moving a bit more and challenging our body a bit more, this physicality that uh we're starting to unpack and uh and reap the rewards of. So the first, naturally, uh your body is only capable of so much, and so there's absolute potential for overuse. Uh, your muscles, your bones, your ligaments, your joints, uh, if they are not used to uh the demands that you're that you're physically exposing them to, they can start to have a harder time recovering between these physical activity sessions, and then all of a sudden you find things getting sore and not healing up in between your activities, in between your workouts, in between your hikes or in between your um you know your your running sessions or whatever it's gonna be. Overuse is something that exists uh as a potential for everyone, doesn't matter your age or your gender or anything like that. And um it's one of those things where obviously uh the older or more advanced we get in life, the harder time the body can have to recover from from these uh overuse issues. But the good news here is that if we if we think about uh being mindful of the intensity and the frequency and how much activity we're doing as we're brand new within the first handful of months, perhaps, um, of these pursuits, well, if we actually kind of uh strike things up in a reasonable manner, we actually get the body to adapt to become more tolerant to a lot of these new forces and demands that the muscles and the bones and the joints are experiencing. And that's a great thing. That's an adaptation that makes the body more robust. But even then, no matter how fit you are, no matter how healthy you are, the body's only capable of so much. So excitement is great, but excitement can also, you know, make us lose sight of the fact that um we're uh we're maybe going redlining a bit too much. If you think about it like a car engine, you know, going up into the red line on the higher RPMs. And it's a tough thing. Man, I find physical activities I love and I just want to go all out. And sometimes that's burned me in the past, especially in my younger years. I think maybe that's why one of the big reasons why I want to talk about this in an episode is because I know the frustration that comes from making these mistakes of just finding something and pursuing it while kind of failing to check in on you. Know how your body's holding up as it's learning to adapt to and tolerate these physical demands. And one of those challenges, again, that we need to be mindful of here is that especially as a beginner, if you uh have never really done a lot of the new physical activities that you're now doing, beginners tend to be less in tune with their body than people have been doing those physical tasks and activities for years and years and years. So the long game, if you're someone who wants to stay active doing tennis your whole life, or playing golf your whole life, um, you know, or pickleball, or going to the gym and lifting weights, or running, or CrossFit, or any or all of these things, whatever it's going to be, you need to become an expert on your own body. And by that, I'm referring to body awareness. You need to be checking in with your body uh so many times throughout the week for days and weeks and months and years, that you just start to know all the little ins and outs and nuances of your body, all the little proclivities that you can start to pick up on and go, hey, you know, anytime that I do this movement, my knee doesn't feel very good the next day. Anytime that I run for more than X number of minutes or distances, I know that my hip starts to flare up. And what that does is you're the expert on your body and interpreting what it's telling you or what you know it's going to tell you. And it becomes easier then to avoid the pitfalls and the mistakes where all of a sudden uh you're just not picking up on something. You uh your brain doesn't know that check engine light is coming on, so to speak. And you develop this intuition as time goes on, where you're not at risk of having something go wrong or become really overused and sore and painful because you just know. You know, nope, my body doesn't like this exercise, my body doesn't like that. Um, I know if I don't do X number of minutes of stretching and cooling down after my run, man, I know I feel it the next day. And so these are things that you can obviously only learn with time and experience, but you gain that time and experience by, you know, just pursuing what you're doing on a regular basis. So you collect more data on your body, so to speak. But you can only do that if you're doing that at an appropriate level of kind of intensity and activity, so that you are not um prone to being uh, what am I trying to say here? You're not prone to becoming injured before you've learned about what your body likes to tell you, if that makes any sense. So a great example would be um, you know, I've been lifting weights for years, been physically active for such a long time. And I know that there's just certain activities, certain exercises uh my shoulder doesn't like. I mean, I can do them, but I know it just doesn't feel right. And I'll go, okay, well, if I really want to do this shoulder exercise, I know I gotta work on something with my shoulder, get my mobility back, or you know, get something tuned up a bit more so that it'll be happier to tolerate that exercise. Um I know that as I've gotten older as well, there's certain exercises now I just can't really do compared to when I was in my 20s. And just turned 40 last fall. And I just know it's a little bit of a different game now. But I only know it's a different game now because I've collected that data on my body for years and years and years, so that I can kind of look back and see and feel how those changes have occurred. So if you're a beginner, we all have to start somewhere with learning how to tune into your body. But that's just that's an um an active component of your pursuits that you need to uh strive towards doing is always being in tune with your body, because the less in tune uh with your whole body you are as a beginner, uh the easier it is for maybe things to hurt and go wrong without you necessarily seeing it on the horizon. Now, the other really important thing I would say to be mindful of here is as you're a beginner and you get into the whole a physical activity, physical pursuits, physical fitness stuff, um, there's this kind of phase where your body initially starts to make really, really fast uh in improvements if you're brand new to uh an activity. Unless you'll say going to the gym and working out, lifting some weights and becoming stronger. Um you're gonna find that the first number of weeks, uh, you can often get a surprising amount of strength benefits. Uh you know, people often call it like the newbie gains, where the first six weeks or eight weeks, you're putting on tons of strength and some really cool changes are happening in a short period of time. And a lot of that is just because your body is beginning becoming more efficient, especially with your nervous system. Um, your nervous system can better communicate uh with the muscles, and so a more efficient nervous system that can make muscles contract more uh with more force. Uh well, then all of a sudden, that increase in neuromuscular efficiency is gonna let you lift a lot more weights and become noticeably stronger. And that's really cool. But we need to be mindful of the fact that progress slows down with anything, a skill or an activity that we do, the body becomes more efficient, it becomes harder and harder to make uh you know kind of bigger, more notable gains, and gains become much more incremental. We have to work harder to get smaller and smaller gains, kind of this law of diminishing returns, in a sense. And that's totally normal. And we need to be very mindful of this because um sometimes we can go, well, what the heck was going on? I was doing so great, making all these changes to my body, and now it's becoming harder. And if if you're not, if you're not necessarily aware that that's kind of a normal thing where progress slows down, you might get discouraged. And then you might say, Well, I'm putting in all this time and effort, I'm not getting what I want out of it. So people, they fall off the horse, right? They kind of fall out of love with that activity. And it's only because a lot of times they just didn't understand that progress will keep occurring, just doesn't occur often in the stages uh after the first number of weeks, because your body is adapted to become more efficient. And it's kind of a it's a sad thing to think about for someone being on the right track, but just saying, hey, I give up because uh I've been working so hard and now I'm not getting the results I want. You know, if this stuff were easy, everyone would do it. Now, not everyone is necessarily wanting to become physically active so they can make you know gains in muscular strength or muscular size. Um, but whatever your reason for being physically active, if you do have any type of goals based around you know performance or uh strength or you know body composition or whatever, just know in the in the early stages you make some great gains, but as time goes on, those gains become a bit harder, and that's normal. So as we tie that all into the long game, very important to think about if if we if we're if we're so excited and we're getting these gains right up front, and then we become disappointed as it becomes harder to make the progress we want, it's hard to play the long game because your mindset is in thinking that everything is going to be occurring at a quick rate and it's gonna be easy and easy and easy. And then when it's no longer occurring like that, people tend to fall off. And then, well, maybe that's one year, maybe that's two years, three years, five years, but all of a sudden we haven't played the long game anymore. We've given up. And you want to be doing this, or at least I would hope you want to be doing this for as long as you possibly can. Now, when we talk about these kind of mistakes, let's talk about mistakes that we can make that prevent us from playing the long game when we're healthy, okay, when we're not injured, um, when uh when the body is otherwise kind of functioning as intended. Because there's some important stuff here that uh can prevent us from playing this long game and being physically active our whole lives, uh, even when we're healthy. And so an example of that is going to be ignoring the little quote unquote nagging issue that hasn't been going away for a handful of weeks. You know, maybe you're working on a um a running program where you're increasing how much you're running week by week, and your knee just doesn't feel great, it doesn't feel awful, but it's it's what we call NQR, not quite right. And you go, well, it's there, but uh, whatever, it's it's been there for three, four, five weeks. Yeah, that's fine. I'll just keep pushing through. Well, that might that might wind up coming back to bite us. Uh, it's not to say that if you have a little nagging issue uh for the first couple of days or whatever, that you just absolutely need to shut everything down or go get evaluated by a healthcare professional. But there comes a point where we go, you know what, this has just been going on long enough. It's clearly not gonna go away on its own. Uh, I need to make sure that I'm getting this addressed. Again, you you think of it like a check engine light. Because sometimes things will absolutely go away on their own, and that's great. But, you know, as time goes on, if it's not going away or if it's certainly getting worse, it's probably not gonna go away on its own. And when we ignore these little nagging issues, well, all of a sudden, it's like having a check engine light come on in your car and you just keep driving, anyways. And instead of taking it to the shop and having a quick little tune-up and maybe they have to replace, I don't know, a spark plug or something like that. Well, maybe instead of having a little issue that would have just taken your car out of commission for a day, maybe you've pushed through and now all of a sudden you've really just done a number on the whole entire engine, and the car has to be in the shop for weeks on end as they tear apart the whole engine and rebuild the whole engine. And that could have been prevented if you just listened to that uh little check engine light going off uh on your dashboard, or in this case, in the little back of your mind, saying, hey, something's not quite right. Now, another common mistake that you can make that's going to prevent you from being physically active for a long time when you're healthy is kind of just going for this intense training or intense physical activity that you are pursuing every single session, day after day, uh, without necessarily programming for lighter, less intense phases of that activity. And that ties into the concept of periodization. Talk about that in a moment. But again, if we think about just if all you do with your physical activities, you train hard, as maybe as hard as you can, or really intense, and you're doing that three, four, five, six times a week, you think that like um you know, the RPMs on a car engine. Well, the higher you push those RPMs, you start to go into that red zone. And you can you can rev a car engine and take it into that red zone on the RPMs, uh, but you know, it comes right back down. You you rev it up, but then it comes back down. And if you're holding the engine at that high, high level of RPMs consistently, it's not good for the engine. Just like training hard all the time is not necessarily good for the body. And so, like anything else, you red line something too long or push it into the red zone for too long without backing it off thereafter, and you got a problem. So, we'll talk about periodization just briefly in a moment. Uh, I feel like I will probably attempt to devote an entire episode to that at some point because it's very valuable stuff. But we'll talk about another common mistake here for healthy individuals who are brand new uh into their physical activity and aren't necessarily thinking long-term here is letting your ego get in the way of what your body's trying to tell you. So this is where maybe you don't have the little nagging issue, it's just a little bit more involved now, it's a little more uncomfortable. But you your ego won't let you say, hey, you know what, it's okay, man. I maybe I can't perform as well as I want today. Um, and y'all, I I gotta take some time off and reevaluate, but I'll I'll come back in a few days and I'll I'll make a better attempt at this. But there's times where you go, you know what, so-and-so can do this activity. Well, I can too, even though uh I've got a really painful shoulder right now. I'm still gonna try this really intense exercise. Or, you know what, so-and-so went for a long run the other day. Um, if they can do it, I can do it. Uh, even though my hip is killing me right now, I have to prove to them or prove to others or prove to myself that I can still do it. It's a bit of what we call ego training in that. And again, long term, if we're always in that mindset, I would just say it's it's gonna hold us back from playing the long game with being active for all our days ahead. Or it certainly could. And I'll talk about how specifically, because uh, you know, if if you get injured, uh you have to take a bit of time off, but you can come back. But what happens is if this happens enough, these injuries and issues become so chronic that it's really hard to come back from from these types of things. Um, or again, we put so much mental pressure on ourselves with our ego uh that we lose like we lose the enjoyment, we lose uh the passion for what it is that we do. And we'll talk about that at the end of the episode of how we can get around that. Another common mistake is not individualizing our workouts or our activities, not individualizing our warmups or even our cool downs after our physical activities or our workouts or our physical training, not individualizing it based on our own particular needs. So we'll talk about individualization in a moment because it's so, so important. And if we know how to individualize our activities in a way that's more optimal for our bodies, well then we avoid all sorts of uh injuries and accidents and aches and pains that can shut us uh down in our pursuits, either for the short term or for the long term. Now, another common mistake, and man, I am guilty of this, uh, especially in my younger years, and even to this day, I still struggle with it, is only doing the training styles that you like and not necessarily doing some of the other training styles that you know you need to do, but that you don't like to do. And so, grade one, for example, let's talk about or use the example of traditional, hey, I love lifting weights, I love uh resistance training, but man, I hate stretching. Okay, so if that's the case, we're not instantly setting ourselves up for failure. We can get away with that for a long period of time, uh, but it starts to rob us of our performance, and then sure enough, we do become more uh exposed to the potential of aches and pains and injuries and things going on because there is not necessarily this optimal amount of movement ability or movement mobility compared to the actual uh force or strength that the body can exert. So we won't get into all the nuances of that, but I think we can all appreciate that um there's certain things that maybe we know we should do to help with our physical wellness and health, uh, but we just don't enjoy it, and so we don't. It's pretty easy to say that I think a lot of us gravitate towards the things we like and we stray from the things we don't. So it's a mistake that all too many people, including myself, uh, are definitely uh prone to making. Now, another little common mistake is simply avoiding routine maintenance. So you think of the the body and you're pushing your body with physical activity, it's like a car. It's like a race car, that car is being pushed and challenged. Well, I'd say that's what it's meant for. I believe our bodies are meant to be physically pushed and challenged. I really do believe that. And that's good. But the more you drive that performance car, the more you push it, the more maintenance it needs on a routine basis. And um, you know, I'm guilty of it as well, too, avoiding kind of some of this routine maintenance we need to do for our bodies to keep it tuned up and you know running like a finely tuned machine. And this is especially true um for avoiding routine maintenance when you when you have the means for it. Because sometimes we're all we're all in different kinds of situations in life. Some people go, hey, uh, I got a great benefits package where I got access to uh physio, I got access to massage and to um, you know, Cairo and whatever it's gonna be. Or some people say, Hey, look, I'm not hurting for money right now. I can afford to pay out of pocket to get my massages, to go to all sorts of you know, health and wellness classes or whatever it's gonna be. Um, and not all of us do. So, and it's okay if you don't, there's still lots of ways you can perform routine maintenance on yourself. Again, not getting into those details right now in this episode, but knowing that if your body is this machine that's being challenged, it needs routine maintenance. And if you're avoiding that, that's like not changing the oil in your car, not rotating your tires. Uh it starts to slowly take away from performance and eat away at the overall longevity of that vehicle. And you can think of the body as the same way. Now, a moment ago, I talked about that word periodization, which uh you're gonna hear a lot if you get into the world of uh training that's a bit more serious, or um, you know, a lot of athletes who uh are competing and need optimal performance with their bodies and need to make sure that again their body is physically functioning as well as possible, not just from, hey, I'm feeling physically good and I don't have aches and pains. I mean, we obviously need that from an injury prevention standpoint, but we also need this whole periodization concept as well for maximal performance, whether it's for a sport or just your own physical, uh your own physical pursuits. So periodization is basically a strategic approach of how we can optimize all of our training and physical activity pursuits in a way that we maximize our performance while minimizing risks of injuries and overuse so that we get the best of both worlds. So if if I just read out the definition of periodization for you, this would basically be the definition. It is the systematic planned manipulation of training variables, such as volume and intensity and specificity, and divide it into progressive cycles, which we call macrocycles, mesocycles, and microcycles. And it aims to maximize athletic performance and optimize physical adaptations and minimize injury risk or overtraining by peeking at specific times. So I threw in a couple of words there that we'll talk about in a second, this whole macrocycle, mesocycle, and microcycle. But real quick, as I'm getting into this, please know that you don't really need to know this stuff in intense detail unless basically your livelihood depends on your sport or your livelihood depends on this kind of athletic pursuit that maybe you're chasing down. But simply being aware that this general concept of periodization is kind of often enough for the average individual. And by that, I mean if you can be aware that the best outcomes for longevity, for performance, and for injury prevention, they come from the controlled and kind of manipulated um ways of training where we're not always lifting heavy weights, we're not always sprinting as fast as we can every day. We are breaking things down into stages where we place a different emphasis on different aspects of our sport or activity while we put other ones on the back burner, try and maintain certain things while we focus on uh improving certain areas of our performance or our movement abilities or our physicality so that we cycle this through phases so we don't risk uh just kind of burning out the body, either physically or or even mentally for that matter. And just for fun, we'll talk about kind of the the 10,000-foot overview of how this all works. So, periodization is typically divided uh into an annual training plan, so like a one-year approach. Now, it doesn't have to be a one-year approach. Uh, individuals who are training in the Olympics will do like a four year uh training approach, right? Because the Olympics are every four years. But oftentimes we'll look at an annual training plan where we kind of break down all of how we plan to train or move or exercise for one particular year. And again, this is only for Just extra bonus information right now for people who maybe want to dabble in this a bit more. But if you're just going, hey man, I'm just I'm just trying to play some pickleball. Or, dude, I just like going for runs in the evening when when the when the sun's out and it's nice. Okay, don't worry about any of this. I'm just going to breeze through it. But our annual training plan, we break it down into big blocks and kind of middle sized blocks and small sized blocks. And I think I talked about this in a previous episode, but I can't remember which one. But we talk about things called macro cycles. So these um think of like the Russian nesting dolls, right? You got the big doll, you open up that one, you got the doll inside it, you open up that one, there's a smaller doll inside, and so on. That's kind of what we're doing here. So our macro cycles can be these kind of phases throughout the year of three months or four months, or you know, six months. There's no set uh kind of size of it, but typically uh, you know, you know, one to multiple months, and we go, okay, so let's say January, February, March. That's one of our macro cycles. Okay, well, we got three months, and then maybe we go, we break down a mesocycle into one month, okay? And then within each of those mesocycles, so January for mesocycle, February for mesocycle, March for a mesocycle, break that down into microcycles. And maybe a microcycle is a week by week kind of um block within that month. And we break that down further into individual training units or actual workout days or physical activity days. And I'm not gonna get into any more details, but what I'm hoping you can kind of see is that we can take you know an entire year and break it down and go, okay, what are we focusing on in this block? And what are we focusing on within this block within the block? And how are we gonna do that in the microcycle block? So maybe you go January, February, March. Uh, you know, I'm I'm trying to become a bodybuilder. So for January, February, March, I'm not gonna be worried about how much weight I can lift or anything like that, but I'm gonna focus on um how much you know muscle size I can put on, maybe what we call a hypertrophy phase. And that's the goal for the three months. And you do some training to maybe help maintain your body weight, help make sure you're staying lean, but that is not your main primary focus. Maybe you go, hey, May, June, July, and August, that'll be another uh kind of macro cycle. And maybe that macro cycle, I'm gonna really focus on body composition. I'm gonna do enough weightlifting to maintain my muscle mass. I'm not gonna try and improve it, but then those months I'm gonna really try and strip down my body fat and get really lean. That would be an example of how we start to go about this. And you can do this for any sport or activity. So if you do want to learn more about it, uh there's a book out there called Periodization. It's by uh Tudor Bampa. Fantastic book. Um, great for anyone who really wants to take their training and break it down in a way that's strategic and helps them to optimize all aspects of their physical pursuits and their training and their overall wellness. Uh I kind of feel like I should apologize. That probably went on a bit long. Um, maybe you're going, dude, I just I'm just trying to play golf. Um, you know, I'm just casual. Uh but hey, maybe tell your friends you learned a big fancy word uh listening to this podcast. Now, another word that sounds big and fancy, but maybe not as big as fancy as periodization, uh, is the word individualization. And this one I think is a lot more straightforward. Uh, individualization is kind of what it sounds like. Individualize, individualizing, making something the most appropriate possible for a given individual based on their circumstances or their abilities. So individualization in the world of physical activity. Super important if we want to play this long game, because it's going to help to make sure that we get optimal results so that training and activities stay fun. We get out, you know, we're getting what we set out to achieve, but again, staying safe and injury free uh in the process. And so with individualization, there is no one on this planet that has the exact same body in history as you do. There's a lot of people uh who have maybe a similar body, but they don't have the previous injury that you have. Or there's people who have uh the same body, but you know, you're 60 years old and that person's 20 years old. Well, same body in a capacity, but also pretty different as well, too, because you've got a few more years and miles on your chassis than the person who's 20 years old. And so this is where individualization comes in, because it's one of the main principles behind optimizing the safety and the performance of individuals who are pursuing and participating in physical activities and in sports. And the concept should be applied to all individuals, regardless of activities and goals, regardless of your level of athleticism or anything like that. So a moment ago we talked about, hey, periodization, you don't really need to get into crazy detailed uh levels of this if you're just you just want to just be casual, enjoy what it is that you're doing. Uh but with individualization, this this is pretty important because it's pretty easy to apply for just about anyone, and I'll give you some examples in a moment. But ultimately, you need to know that the more individualized one's fitness and training routines are, then the better their results will be for physical improvement and overall safety and well-being. Because if we're trying to train in a way that's not the most appropriate for our body or for our condition or where we're at, it might not be as fun and it just might not feel as good. And we can only push through that for so long before we burn out from lack of enjoyment, or we get injured, and then we have to take a lot of time off. Uh, and then maybe we come back and we get injured again, and all of a sudden we've got a chronic nagging issue that doesn't go away, and it really limits us with kind of what we can do. Um, and then we start to kind of fall off the wagon. So if we're gonna individualize some things for uh each person's body, there's there's factors we have to account for. So examples would be your age. We can have two relatively healthy people, both who want to get good, uh, let's say, at sprinting, as an example. Well, you can both be physically healthy, but the person who's 60 and maybe wants to start sprinting or running quickly, it's gonna be a different story than a person who's 20. Um and age is this kind of non-modifiable factor. We can't do anything about it. But we can account for it, and if we can account for it, then we can start to make training decisions and movement-based decisions that are more optimal for each person's body. Now, in addition to age, another factor would be experience, because you can have two people who are, let's say, relatively fit, but one person who has been doing um, let's say jujitsu, because I'm on a big kick with that right now. While someone who uh has been training that activity for seven or eight years gets to train a bit differently than someone who's only been doing it for seven or eight months. Uh, a great example for me is going into it. Okay, I was pretty physically healthy. I was working out a lot, uh doing lots of conditioning, but I didn't have the knowledge, I didn't have the technique. And that all is incredibly important when it comes to rolling around on the mats and grappling with other people. The less experienced you are, the easier it is to make mistakes that can either hurt yourself or hurt your training partner for that matter. So experience is a big important thing that you have to take into account if you want to play this long game. Weightlifting is another great example. Okay, I've personal trained for years and years and years, still do it. I absolutely love it. I can have um, you know, a fit uh 25-year-old and a fit uh 25-year-old who are both physically fit, but maybe one person has never lifted weights before and one has been doing it for five or six years. Well, the person that's doing it for five or six years, I'm gonna let them do different exercises that are more technical or more advanced than the person who's inexperienced. Because there's some movements in weightlifting that are really beneficial, uh, but are technical to do. Olympic lifting, power cleans, and cleans and snatches, um, deadlifts or different types of squats. They they require more technical finesse, and it takes time and experience to make sure you're doing them in a way that's optimal and keeping you safe and helping you get the most out of them. So experience is huge. And this is where you can let your ego get in the way, right? We talked about that a minute ago. Hey, you know what? I haven't done this before, but I'm strong. I can probably just muscle this exercise and pick this weight up off the floor, even if it's heavy. Well, you might do that, uh, but you're playing with fire because maybe you find that uh your mechanics are off and you tweak your back, and now you got some nasty back pain you got to work through. Well, that limits you at best, or at worst, it shuts things down for quite a while. And you come back and you go, man, every time I try and do this movement, or I try and go for a run now, my back always bothers me. Now you can get over that if that ever happens, by the way. So don't think it's all doom and gloom. But I'm just trying to paint some examples here. So don't let your ego get in the way. Um, experience matters, and we have to take that into account as one of the factors for individualization. Another factor that we could use in an example is just your overall health. You can have two people who are super excited to become physically active. Two people who say, hey, uh, I'm really excited uh to join this running club. And you got two people who've never done a lot of running, but one person is uh 45 years old and they're pretty reasonably uh reasonable body weight. Uh they don't have a heart issue, they've never had back pain or anything like that. And you have another person who's 45 years old, but you know, they're they're 45 pounds overweight and uh they have a knee that's a bit arthritic. Uh, you know, maybe they um still experience, I don't know, like a little bit of long COVID symptoms, something like that. Uh point being is that overall health, it's different from person to person, and that needs to be taken into account because that's gonna change how we need to train based on what your body can tolerate, uh, the safest ways to train. Uh that's important stuff. Previous injuries are another great example. You can have two fit, healthy people who are saying, Hey, I'm excited to learn how to play tennis. This is gonna be really exciting. One person never really had any uh history of uh shoulder pain or back pain. And the other person uh you know has a chronically sore shoulder and has uh you know, has a back that could sore from time to time. Well, maybe that person has a sore shoulder because when they're uh younger, they they really uh tore a muscle in their shoulder and there's some scar tissue around the shoulder and it's not moving as ideally as it should. Well, if you're swinging a racket around all afternoon long, it might predispose you to uh some uh soreness or aches and pains. Uh or hey, you know, I'm I'm twisting and doing all the swinging and running around the court. Uh, but man, my my old back injury that I had, ugh, it's starting to make my back hurt as I do this. So we got to think about previous injuries and take those into account. And then we got to think about just current limitations on the on the body as well, or also just kind of even limitations in terms of time and resources. Because someone who wants to train to achieve a specific goal, but can only train two times a week or three times a week because maybe they're a busy uh busy mother or busy father. Well, that's a limitation we need to take into account rather than someone who says, hey, you know, I'm a bachelor, I can train five times a week if I want. Um, because then it's not reasonable or realistic for someone to think that um their training style um is necessarily going to uh get to be the exact same as someone else's. I mean, it might, it might not, but again, just trying to paint this big picture of how uh even limitations in terms of time or resources uh really kind of change how we need to change our plan of attack for our physical activities. And so again, uh again, available resources. Some people, um, you know, here's a here's a great example when we talk about resources, just money and costs involved with certain pursuits. Um, it drives me wild sometimes when um people try and follow the um maybe the exact same training plan as um as a super popular athlete or a super super popular um you know celebrity. Okay. Well those celebrities and those super popular athletes, they have a lot more to work with for how they can train than what the average person does. Uh there's sports athletes where you try and copy their training in terms of, yeah, I'm gonna push hard in the weight room just like them. Okay, but it's important to understand that celebrity or that sports superstar, they got someone cooking really healthy food for them all the time. And they have the ability to get a massage every day. They have unlimited um access to uh other healthcare professionals to optimize their health. They have access to saunas and spas and whatever it's gonna be. That person's body is gonna get more optimal recovery in a lot of ways. Um that that body's gonna have an easier time recovering from really, really intense workouts than the person who doesn't have access to those recovery, uh those recovery interventions. So you need to ask yourself, okay, well, if I'm gonna uh try and train like this superstar or this person or even my friend for that matter, well, do you have the same resources that can support your pursuits as maybe what that person does? So big important thing to keep in mind. Uh now, we're talking about all that from a hey, I'm healthy standpoint, but now we get to do it from um the uh the setback standpoint. And so we're gonna talk about battles versus wars. So setbacks of all types are they're gonna happen. It doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what you do, you will get sick. Okay, sometimes you'll get a cold for a couple of days, sometimes you get the flu for a couple of weeks, or just other terrible stuff that can happen. You will get injured, maybe you're training smart, but you slip and fall on the ice and maybe break your ankle. Uh, maybe you get in a little car crash and you get a really sore neck for a little bit, a little bit of whiplash. Maybe life gets crazy busy, you get a family member who's sick, or you get um, you know, some type of situation where there's a month or two where, dude, you could just you just got to put everything on hold and take care of these other bigger, uh more uh pressing things. It's gonna happen. So um when it happens, absolutely it can be frustrating because maybe you're going, dude, I got this activity I love. I'm making great progress. I've I've found something that's just as awesome. Um, which is currently me, by the way, because um if you haven't listened to the last episode, I let you guys know uh I'm dealing with a broken rib right now. I was in a jiu-jitsu tournament and uh got taken to the ground, and it was just an awkward thing, but uh wound up uh fracturing one of my ribs, and so now I'm sidelined for uh a small handful of weeks here, and I'm going to class to watch, watch my friends roll around. And man, it's agonizing. And I just want to be out there doing that with them. Um but so this stuff happens, and I'd rather get banged up doing stuff I love than from something meaning, meaningless, like, oh man, I slipped on the ice on on the front step leaving for work this morning. So um stuff happens, and one of the mistakes we can make, and I've been guilty of this in the past, my younger years, is we go, oh man, but I don't want to take time off. I just I'm scared I'm gonna lose my gains or you know, whatever. And we can run the risk of trying to push through the issue rather than trying to train around it. Uh, and that becomes uh a big mistake to make because remember, in the moment when something like that goes wrong, yeah, you go, oh no, like this is awful. I can't train for six weeks. Um, you know, my my my training partners in jujitsu, you know, one of my thoughts was like they're gonna start to get so much better than me. I'm gonna have to kind of struggle to keep up with them because they they've got they got six weeks on me now before I get back on the mats. Okay. But that was me just totally looking at the short term. I want to be doing this for you know all of my days ahead, just like weightlifting and strength training and all that. And what's what's six weeks in the grand scheme of 20, 25 years, for example? So when something goes wrong and you can't do the physical activity you want, take a step back, look at the big picture. You've got the rest of your life to train and stay active. And you can adopt strategies where you go, okay, I can't do this right now, but this is now an opportunity for me to focus on something else. I'm not going to fixate on what I've lost. I'm going to focus down what I can gain through the situation. So don't freak out because fewer things, and I will tell you this firsthand, are more frustrating than taking a six-week issue and turning it into a six-month issue because you tried to push through it. I did that one summer in college with my knee. I was big into weight training. It was going great. Knee was getting really sore. Thought I could push through it. I did, and it was about six months of really just having to um take care of that knee to get it back on track rather than probably about the six weeks it would have taken if I had just been smart with it right up front. So um, with the concept of battles versus wars, let's talk about a couple of battles that uh you're gonna lose, but in doing so, it's gonna help you win the war. So, losing the war, or sorry, losing the battle, what does that look like? Well, maybe you were planning on doing your physical activity for the day. Going to the gym, going swimming in the pool, uh, going for a run with a friend, whatever it's gonna be. But you're not feeling good. So you decide, you know what? Uh, I did not sleep good last night. Um, I just my body is feeling off. I'm gonna take an extra day off today, and I'm not gonna do that activity. I I just I know my body needs a bit more recovery. Okay. Well, you just lost the battle there because yeah, you you missed an activity that you wanted to do. Okay. Uh, or maybe you go, hey, you know what? Man, I was really planning on going to the gym and lifting some heavy weights and seeing if I could hit a personal best on bench press or squat or whatever. But man, it's just um, I've been really stressed lately. My sleep has been crappy. Uh I can still go, but man, I I can't trade too hard today. I'm gonna go into the gym and I'm just gonna turn this into a recovery-based day. I'm gonna do 30 or 45 minutes of just casual, easy movement to limber up my muscles, um, do some kind of stretching and dynamic movements. And you know what? That's what I'm gonna have to do tonight instead of lifting heavy. Okay, that's losing the battle, right? Because you had to kind of make an adjustment you didn't want to make. Or maybe you go, hey, you know what? I want to stay physically active as much as I can right now, but my shoulder is really, it's something's not right. I I can't do upper body exercises right now. I can't do my push-ups, um, I can't do uh my arm training exercises or my bench press or my pull-ups. Um, and so you go, you know what? I'm just gonna have to avoid those aggravating exercises for my shoulder right now until I resolve the issue. Okay. And then maybe you just go, well, I'll train my legs a bit more, I guess, because those are still feeling fine. So again, you've had to give something up you didn't want to. That's losing the battle. But that, when you lose the battle, it's because you're focusing on winning the war. You're focusing on that long-term outcome. So you take any of those examples I just gave you. You know, you have to take uh the day off completely, or you have to turn a hard training day into a light recovery one, or you have to avoid certain exercises. Okay, well, you win the war then because you like you have less stress throughout the process of those pursuits. Oh man, I really got to push through. I really got to do this, even though I don't want to. It's less stressful throughout the process. And in the grand scheme, you've lost a couple of training days in any of those examples, but you have missed way fewer training days in the long run because you didn't take a six-week issue, try and push through it, and turn it into a six month issue. So you lost some days up front, but you gained a whole bunch of days of training down the road because you mopped up that issue way quicker. And then because you did that, you didn't let them turn into chronic injuries and chronic issues. Things that are just always Present or have been going on for months and years. Um, when you are dealing with chronic injuries and issues, training's not as fun, uh, or physical activity is not as fun, far less enjoyable, robs you of your performance, and then it's harder to do the things you want because something's always hurting, something is always getting in the way. Man, my knee, my knee can only take 20 minutes of running before it's too sore. Man, I can only do you know, I can only do 20 minutes of swimming in the pool before my shoulder is killing me. So all of these little things are gonna help uh accumulate uh in a way that helps you to win the war. Fewer missed training days, less stress throughout the process, so it's more enjoyable. You're not gonna burn out from a lack of enthusiasm. You got fewer chronic injuries and issues, so you get better performance. That's winning the war because you chose to lose the battle. So when things are going wrong, again, don't freak out. Ask yourself how you're gonna frame all of this because this is something where you can look at anything that's going wrong and you can look at it as an obstacle or you can look at it as an opportunity. And this is what I'm currently going through right now with the injury that I'm dealing with, as I'm trying to get my rib healing up so I can get back on the mats as quickly uh but as appropriately as possible. So I mentioned a moment ago, but a powerful strategy when things go wrong is to fixate your thoughts on what you can gain through a situation rather than what you will lose. Because it's easy to go, oh, I'm losing time, I'm gonna lose, um, I'm gonna lose all these um important training sessions and I'm not gonna make the progress I want. Um, you know, whatever it's gonna be. But this fear of loss can force you into rushing back too soon, which then can lead you to further injury if your body's just not fully recovered to the point that it needs to be. So reframing to focus on gain over loss can greatly reduce feelings of helplessness and frustration, and therefore prevent you from making poor choices that are going to wind up just kind of increasing your injury risk. So, you know, we talk about this whole obstacles versus opportunities. Well, let's say you get an injury, let's say you get an injured knee. An injured knee, maybe it's an opportunity to focus on another area of your body for training. You go, okay, I got an injured knee, but I still got a healthy upper body, so I can do some upper body exercises, and I can take the next six weeks or eight weeks and make some great gains in progress in training my upper body. We talked about that in a previous episode of a good friend of mine who is a high-level kickboxer and tore, ruptured his bicep tendon to clean off the bone, had to get it surgically stapled back on, and he said, Well, you know, if I got almost a year ahead of me before I can get back to throwing my punches as hard as I want, I might as well take this next year and just practice nothing but my kicks. And to this day, you know, his his coach says that um, you know, he throws kicks much harder than his uh professional fighters who are 10, 15 years younger than him. So it's an opportunity. Maybe an opportunity to focus on a different style of training or a different sport. Maybe you're going, man, I love swimming, but I've got this chronic rotator cuff issue, I got to get under control. Well, maybe it's an opportunity to find another activity from a physical movement perspective that you absolutely love. Maybe it's running, or maybe it's, hey, you know what, cycling is actually pretty enjoyable. I'll do that uh while I work to rehab my shoulder and get my shoulder feeling better. And maybe any obstacle that you're up against is that's holding you back from being physically active to the extent that you want. Maybe that's an ops uh or an opportunity to focus on further injury prevention. Hey, you know what? Ah, my lower back's been pretty sore. Um, but you know what? If I can't do some of these activities I want, maybe it's a good time to just work on general uh stretching and kind of other movement-based training perspectives that can help decrease my risk of knee injuries or decrease my risk of tearing my Achilles tendon or whatever it's gonna be, right? Maybe it's an opportunity to focus on mental training strategies. You go, okay, well, I can't do what I want to do right now, but I know that I need to focus on um some of the mental concepts around developing mental toughness, mental resilience. Maybe I need to focus on visualizing that task or that sport to help again get that kind of mind-body connection going. Um, great opportunity there. And oftentimes there's a great opportunity to focus on your diet and your nutritional strategies if you can't be kind of as engaged in your physical pursuits as you want to. So that's just a whole bunch of examples I'm quickly rifling through. But as we move along, let's quickly talk about the stuff that you don't like. Because I alluded to this at the start of the episode, something that we're all guilty of, myself included. Throughout our physical pursuits, you know, most of us will fall into a trap to some extent of focusing on what we like to train and what we like to pursue while neglecting what we don't. And not necessarily as an all or nothing. I mean, a lot of people do that, but even, hey, you know what? I know I need to do this, I'll do it a little bit. But this, this, this sport, this activity, this is more fun than that boring stretching stuff. Or I just I love running. Uh, I'm gonna do that. I don't want to do any of this boring resistance training stuff. I'm just only gonna run. And so the challenge with a lot of that is if you want to play the long game, your body needs a balance of muscular strength. Your body needs the balance of muscular endurance, it needs adequate mobility, it needs optimal cardiovascular fitness. So you can have the strongest body in the world, lift you know, lift tons of weight. Um, um, but if you have a really crappy heart uh and lungs because there's not a lot of aerobic fitness there, um, you know, and and assuming you want to play this long game, maybe maybe you do need to focus a bit on uh uh your heart and lungs, right? And maybe maybe that comes in your later years after you've achieved optimal strength of what you want. But point being again, is this for anyone who wants to kind of really maximize longevity, these are important concepts to be aware of. I deal with a lot of runners in the clinic where they come in and there's a nagging consistent uh knee pain that they have, and it's due to a lack of health and you know, their knee tendon, patellar tendon, you know, quad tendon, whatever it's gonna be. And um say, look, we can mop this up, but you got to do a bit of resistance training and loading your tendon appropriately to make that happen. And uh they'll say, Yeah, but I run, that should be good enough. And you go, No, that's a what your tendon needs, that's that's a different stimulus. We got to do something a little bit different. And I tell them, it's we're not saying you have to go to the gym for an hour a day. Not trying to turn you into bodybuilder, but to optimize the health of your knee tendon, if you want to have longevity and do this for long term, we got to get rid of this knee issue, and that needs to take place um, not necessarily through rest, if it's a chronic tendinopathy, which a lot of uh runners and people have. We have to get rid of it through appropriate strength training, putting mechanical stress onto that knee tendon. Or you get a lot of people who are fit and healthy, um, but their mobility is lousy, and lousy mobility, depending on context, can lead to a host of increased risk of injury. And so a lot of times, you know, my standing joke is I go, okay, well, you know, strength is adequate and uh, you know, my conditioning is doing okay, but uh my body is moving like a piece of braided steel cable, right? I don't want that. I mean, we need stiffness and rigidity in the body, but in the context of what I'm talking about, um lacking optimal mobility based on context can really uh predispose us to certain types of injuries and problems, and then that shuts us down from playing that long game. And hey, of course, we gotta talk about the fact that for this whole process that you're going through of a lifelong activity that you want to be engaged in, you have to enjoy it, enjoy it in some capacity because you won't last if you don't enjoy it. And so ultimately, you know, playing the long game, this requires some form of satisfaction and enjoyment if you're gonna stay consistent for years and years on end. You can go through seasons of pushing through it without any enjoyment, but that season might be a couple of months, it might be a couple of years, but I doubt it's gonna be for the long game if there's not some type of fulfillment that's deeply meaningful to you or enjoyable in some capacity. And so it's not to say that every day needs to be or will be enjoyable, depending on how um how you're approaching your pursuits, whether it's from you know just pure social enjoyment to trying to make the national team, whatever it's gonna be, but the long-term success requires enjoying the overall process. And so a good rule to follow, I would say, is that if you're having a higher number of good days or enjoyable days when you're training or being physically active, if you're having a higher number of those good days than compared to the number of bad days, you're probably moving in the right direction. But if you're having more bad days than good days, especially for a long uh long duration of time, uh maybe something's gotta change. I don't know what that would look like, but I'd say something has to change. So the key takeaway here, or key takeaways as we just kind of start to land the plane here, is number one, you can reap rewards at any age. Talked about at the start. Physical activity and exercise provides rewards at any age, physical rewards, social, emotional, intellectual, even spiritual rewards. It is never too late to start moving. Your second takeaway here is that you need to learn how to manipulate your training or your physical activity. Um, so the the very basics of periodizing your training or physical activity pursuits can help to improve your performance while keeping you safe. And if nothing else, just know that means, hey, I just can't I can't push um and go full out all the time. I have to know that there's lighter ways and lighter intensities I need to train at um in order to make sure I'm maximizing the longevity of my body. Takeaway number three, setbacks, they're gonna happen. So don't freak out. Again, I'm currently in the middle of one right now, so um I can tell you this. Um, this is a game I play every now and then as I get banged up as well. Um, we can be vulnerable to trying to push through these injuries and uh and make emotional-based decisions. But if you do that, you run the risk of uh further injuries and things going wrong. So think about the long game. A couple of weeks or even a couple of months off in the long game, you're gonna be just fine, okay? Makes it a lot easier to think about that long game. Uh number four, work on your weak points. A chain is only as strong as its weakest point. And so you have to do the stuff you don't like to keep that weak link strong. Because once that weak link breaks, um, that's where things are going wrong, and we can't stay physically active in the ways that we want to. And of course, your last one, the long game needs enjoyment. Because if you're not having some sort of fun, not getting some sort of fulfillment or satisfaction out of your pursuits, like how can you possibly uh you know consistently keep this up throughout all your years ahead? Um, I just don't think that's the right way to do it. But what I do think uh is right to do is to thank you for staying to the end of this episode. Uh before you go, please, real quick, if you got something helpful out of this uh episode, uh please consider leaving a review. Uh that would mean the world to me. Uh, not because I'm trying to get famous, I'm just trying to spread the word about how uh others can start to enjoy life a bit more and get rid of aches and pains by sharing some information with them that uh hopefully can help them out. And um, you know, if you feel others could benefit from this episode, certainly feel free uh to share it with them or any of these other episodes on this little podcast for that matter. If you do want a bit more information about me or see any more of the content that I've generated, uh, aside from the podcast, I'm on YouTube, I'm on Instagram, uh, my handle is Strength Resurgence for each one of those. I got a website, strengthresurgence.com, a few hundred blogs that I've typed up over the years if you want to read up on some uh health and wellness stuff there. And you know, if you do want to support any of this whole strength resurgence stuff that I'm doing, um, if you want to support the project, you can head over to my Buy Me a Coffee page, which is buymeacoffee.com slash resurgents and uh and buy me a coffee. I use any of the funds that I generate there just to offset the cost of these pursuits. So hey, that'd mean the world to me. Um, but don't worry if that's something that you don't feel like uh doing. But uh what I do want to do here is uh wrap this up like I always do. Uh so I want to tell you to keep looking after yourselves, keep looking after one another, and to keep making great things happen. And then I will see you in the next episode.