The Power of Movement for your Health Part 1 with Gary Stebbing

In this episode I chat with my long time friend and colleague Gary Stebbing.  Like myself, Gary is an exercise scientist, with a particular focus on strength and conditioning as well as sports performance psychology. 

Myself and Gary always wanted to do a podcast together around the subject of exercise and general health. This is the first part of a series of conversations we will be having on this topic. 

Gary is as passionate as I am about movement and exercise  and during this episode we delve into the 30 + years of experience in the field of exercise science and the message we are really trying to get over to our listeners is the fundamental importance of 'movement' to the human body and how sedentary lifestyles and lack of basic daily movement can accelerate ageing and neurodegeneration. 

With plenty of tips and takeaways we really hope you enjoy this episode. 

Thanks for listening to our podcast and please feel free to get in touch:

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Transcript

Peter Williams  0:03  
Hey everyone, Pete here for another functional medicine bite sized. And actually, the guy I'm speaking with today is probably one of the original guys that I originally wanted to do a podcast with. And we were going to call it three pints of sports science. That was one of the names that we were looking at. And the whole idea was, is that we, we all drank a pint each and we had to get through three pints. And we talked about everything that's associated with sports science and Exercise Science, because today, we will be talking about exercise and all the research around, well, certainly some of the research around exercise, and its role with regards to cognition, neuro degeneration, Alzheimer's, etc, and just the influence and the massive influence it has. And so I'm going to introduce my colleague who mate we were just talking before, it's nearly 30 years we've been going, and I bring it back to you, and John de Norris, and our famous blue book for that no one will understand except  very old sports scientists, Mel Sif, didn't we must have been was it 95/96?

Gary Stebbing  1:18  
It might have been slightly later, but it was it was in the end of 90s window. When Mel sort of got a little bit of traction, sadly, didn't live much longer. But yeah, it was round about 90's.

Peter Williams  1:30  
And as I say, we we've been colleagues, we actually live quite close to each other. So we still catch up, don't we, after all that time and end up waxing lyrical about something with regards to exercise, prescription or sport science or exercise science. But I think more importantly, now, as we've progressed in our fields, its application to more clinical populations. And so what I think today is also based off the, you've just written two parts of a really interesting couple of papers that appeared in I'm going to call it the sort of the educated jocks Journal, which is the National Strength and Conditioning Association of America's journal. And we both hold actually don't be the, because again, we want to put a put our expertise into today. And sort of you know, I don't as you said, I don't think there's many people with our probably practical experience around him. And we both, we both now have practical experience each round about 30 years each. And obviously, the application of science into the day to day practice is something that actually obviously is really important. So, guys, I'm introducing Gary Stebbing, he's been an old mate of mine, old colleague of mine, but every time I meet with Gary, he always comes out with some pearls that I basically have to steal, because he's a really deep thinker with regards to and continues to be a deep thinker. And I think the reason why our meetings are so exciting is that we genuinely love it, don't we genuinely, we're genuinely deeply interested in exercise and the power of exercise to be this really powerful medical intervention. So mate look, why don't why don't you give us we always love to listen to your background, because you're actually a professional sports sports man as well. So why don't you give us your background and how we've got to where you are today?

Gary Stebbing  3:42  
Well, first of all, thank you for asking me to come and have a chat with you. I know many of our conversations are much more informal. And we always sort of, as you say, said we would do something more formally. So thank you for inviting me on. I just want to tap into a couple of things you said there, which is I think one of the reasons we can talk a lot about stuff to do with talk together about things is we have a natural curiosity for what we do and we would have only kind of stuck with this this world for as long as we have because we just really enjoy doing the work and really enjoy what it brings to us and sort of constantly curious about it. So that's the first thing. In terms of my background, obviously, earlier on in my sort of working life i i played pro football which was a long time ago now. And I had an advantage then where my fitness was one of my strengths and I and I got in very young in the mid 90s with with the physiotherapist that was at one of the clubs then. I got quite interested in what was a complete niche world which is bodybuilding. And we had an old set of Argus weights that we used to out on Argus bench and sort of I don't know what and so that's kind of where my fascination began. And then when I stopped playing football, it seemed like a natural thing to me to look at what then was a really young world of personal training. So I sort of set off as a personal trainer in the early 90s, mid 90s. And that journey travelled into, I guess, into strength and conditioning, the beginning of the 2000s, when again, that was a very, very small field. And then, as we've often discussed, I realised that I needed to know a lot more about psychology. Yeah, so that took me back into education. And I got interested in sport performance psychology. And that took me down into things like NLP and stuff like that. And so there's so many things that have brought me through sort of the conversations we have. But so that would be my my sort of potted history. What I do now is, is a sort of amalgamation of all the things I've learned, working with individuals trying to improve their well being and improve their life.

Peter Williams  6:13  
I think, is that in any field of this any field of looking after someone, it doesn't matter what it is, you have to be a systems thinker?

Gary Stebbing  6:23  
Yeah, you have to look, I mean, it's a term that's been used before, but I think you have to be a deep generalist as well. You have to have some something to bring from multiple different places, because there are multiple inputs into into a human being, as you say. So there are there are a system of systems as well as being if you like one system. And the success of of any intervention that i or you might offer to them is dependent on many factors.

Peter Williams  6:58  
Isn't that one of the biggest difficulties that we have, is that I think the general public both in functional medicine, I think conventional medicine in exercise medicine, or strength conditioning, I mean, they're just not going to be at that level, where they think on a systems level, like we do, because we're in it day in, day out, and we're researching it day in and day out. And, look and it's no one's fault, because you see it all across all across interventions, where they think if they do X, they're gonna get y. And then it's very difficult for them to understand. I've done X and I haven't got y. So why is that? And that's where well, because we we didn't we forgot about, you know, A, B, C, D, E, and everything else that was affecting you at the time. And this is this is why so I mean, we see that all the time, don't we?

Gary Stebbing  7:53  
Yeah, we do. And it's partly why I try and encourage people I work with to focus much more on process. It's natural, they come with some outcome they're after, there's a problem that they want dealing with or a situation they want to change. So, so naturally, there's an outcome elements to it but it's quite difficult in it's quite difficult to guarantee outcome. Of course, from a certainly from a fitness and health perspective. But for the reasons you're describing, which are, there are factors that we just cannot know, when we begin. And also we can make we can intervene with people, and we can get completely unexpected changes. So it becomes quite fluid. And I think once one of my job's is to help them understand that the journey they're on at least with their health is going to be a lifetime journey. It's not going to be a few sessions with a trainer or a few sessions with someone looking at their nutrition. It's a it's a lifetime journey, and doesn't have to be with me or with any given individual, but it will be for them. And so they select the hopefully will understand that that's what we're on. And the ultimate vision is that we take them to the place that they want to go,

Peter Williams  9:09  
So there's no doubt we're going to do. I think quite a lot of conversations around this because it's just such I mean, as I said to you, for me, it's still one of the most important factors that I put in anyone's clinical intervention system. Is that if we could just get you a bit fitter a bit stronger, then a lot of things get better. So, I mean, today was really about as I said, you've you've actually done two papers, really that appeared in the NSCA journal. And it's really about exercise and its influence with regards to cognition, its influence with regards to mental health. So I want to just start off with I suppose some real simple questions, and I think the question is, why do we move, what's the basis of it?

Gary Stebbing  10:04  
Okay, well, let me give you some context to those articles then. So where this ties in, so they were written for a personal training audience, okay they're practitioner articles rather than academic science articles. So the NSCA publishes four journals. One is a pure research journal, so hard science journal. Then the second one is relatively hard science, but slightly more practical applications of that research. And then they have two, one aimed at their S&C coaches, one aimed at trainers that they train. So this was written for the training audience, it came from an interest that I developed in sedentary. And I wrote a couple of pieces for them on sedentariness. And when I started looking at the consequences of sedentary living, it then took me towards looking at brain health. So not just fifth, not just the physical health, so to speak. Now, when I was thinking about having written those, and I knew we were going to speak, it crossed my mind that I'd inadvertently actually separated the brain and the body really, without understanding that they're together, and they function together. So in a way, I had kind of my thinking is moved on a little since I wrote them. Now to come to your question about why we move. I think as far as we can tell, structured exercise is not something humans do. It's just not what we do. The reason we move is an evolutionary evolving of the species flourishing activity, we had to do it to survive and then to flourish. So movement is something that is built in to the species, and was part of how we developed the need to move therefore, was a natural function. We didn't think, shall we exercise today? Or what should we do, we did what we needed to do to stay alive, stay safe, and to grow, to mate to keep everything going so we can move forward and develop. That's where where evolution sort of speaks for itself, it tells us, in many ways, why we would have done that. That means that asking someone to exercise actually becomes unnatural, because they should be doing it anyway. But but the world we live in now has changed to such a degree that that by and large, in most parts of the world, most people can survive, okay? The safety element is much better. For example, with medicine, mothers no longer or very rarely die in childbirth, children, most children are born and survive and grow and live and flourish. And we live to longer ages. So there's no structured or there's no meaningful reason to move in most people's daily life. And so that would be as far as I'm aware, the reason why movement or exercise, if that is even the right word existed, they existed for us to stay alive. And for us to continue to develop the species.

Peter Williams  13:32  
And so I'm trying to put my hands around the mic, because the kids in the school have suddenly come out for dinner, and a hell of a racket. So I mean, you know, we look into this subject deeply, I read a lot, I can remember, Mark Madison work, he writes a lot about this, he did a paper on Born to Run. And, you know, what we're seeing from an evolutionary perspective is humans have this innate capacity across a lot of their biochemistry, a lot of their thermo regulation, aspects to be even more effective than any sort of animal out there. You know, and that's one of the reasons why we have this super capacity to sweat and cool. And we think we're probably the most efficient at that, because it gives us a better opportunity to hunt down bigger prey. And there's still evidence of, I think there's a couple of tribes in, in Africa that still do that they'll hunt big prey, but they'll do it over several days. And eventually the the big animal just it's just exhausted and and overheated from from the pursuit. And I think the other thing about this is that, you know, most of our genes are expecting some degree of physical movement applied to the body on a daily basis for them to work correctly. And that's what we see surely with the brain with regards to blood flow has to be there consistently. Otherwise, that brain cannot work in the way that we would like it to. And we've seen this consistently haven't been there. I mean, you do, you've done a lot on the sedentary research. But I remember a couple of papers, even showing that sitting for half an hour, really does start to have quite a negative impact on the brain. And you know, it really is quite a damaging thing to be doing to you and your health day in, day out. And you've done a lot on the sedentary research mate, I will bring it back to exercise and cognition. But what were their standouts for you with regards to sedentarism and its its big problems?

Gary Stebbing  15:49  
Well, there are a couple of things, but just on something you said there which ties in with your point about systems is that movement, it appears was fundamental to the effective functioning of most of the systems in the human body. So they're all they all do better in it when there is movement present. So when when people move regularly or moved regularly, so it's almost like we've evolved with that as a natural part of how it all works. Yeah, totally. And we've just taken something away, if you like, and so it's affecting the systems of the body.

Peter Williams  16:23  
Mate, can you before you go on, sir, can you bring up? Can you just go through? Because you've also done a lot looking at sort of the studies that were done on astronauts and the effects of gravity as well and how that's important. Can you just bring that in as well?

Gary Stebbing  16:39  
Yeah, sure. So what you see, you see, you see many things with people that are sedentary and one thing that is important to point out is that for many, many years, the research was based around another term, which was physical inactivity. And therefore anyone that didn't meet the minimum guidelines, you could look at depending who created them, but less so the ACSM created a set of guidelines. And anyone that didn't meet the minimum levels was classified as physically inactive. But actually, that's not sedentary. For some people might not meet exercise guidelines, but stand a lot, walk around a lot and they're not sedentary, sedentary is sitting. It's about long term sitting and being immobile. So so the two sorts of major consequences that appear because that literature is quite new, because this term, I think it was only about 2007/2008, where it became clear that sedentary was something different to being inactive, so that the major problems appear to be you see, quite serious, premature ageing effect. So the body starts to deteriorate as it does with ageing with someone that's inactive at at a, an accelerated rate. And then you also appear to see degeneration in line with that which you would see in space with astronauts and also people who are in hospital with bedrest. So you see all of the negative physiological changes across all of the systems of the body associated with long term exposure to bed rest. Some of the work that's been done it with space travel one, I think one of the major difficulties with space travel is and this ties in with bedrest, we appear to be evolved for a gravity based environment. And gravity is therefore fundamental to all of the functioning of our systems and our health. So when you remove gravity as happens in space, you start to see changes. When you lay someone down a lot, so you take you take away the role of gravity, they're not walking, they're not standing, there's no input of that kind through the system. You see very, very fast degeneration. Now, if one assumes that those changes are massively accelerated in environments, and that can't quite be possible for humans, because they do move a bit and we'll talk about even if you even if you were to, to, even if we're only 20% let's say of that. You've seen these marked negative changes in all of the systems, whether their sensory motor systems cognitive system, and, and this sedentary behaviour appears. I mean, you could argue for sure it's a Western phenomenon, there will be parts of the world where they don't sit very much so. So I am talking, let's say from a westernised context. This is only going to continue because the workplace is changing massively. And jobs that require significant physical movement are disappearing. And consequently, we're seeing lifestyle changes that are wholly undesirable for most humans.

Peter Williams  20:00  
You know what I think about this, Gary, you're dead, right? I'm gonna give some examples of some of the problems I have in work, particularly with the functional medicine, but number one, and honestly, you know, whether I retire or not at some stage, but when I do retire, I think I'm going to be a labourer. Right? Because it's, you know, I think about, okay, I probably won't be able to, you know, obviously, I'll be a little older. But how do I keep everything ticking over. And I think, you know, you watch some of these. And I remember as a, as a student, working as a scaffolder, just carrying the poles, mate, it was unbelievably brutal, eight to 10 hours a day, carrying those poles. And again, obviously, technique matters. But it was brutal. I mean, I couldn't be any more exhausted from from those days, because I was on my feet all day carrying. And you think about that, is that the perfect scenario for me as I as I get older, I think one of the other aspects that, again, you can butt up against people, because people come to see me from a point of view of a lot of what they've seen on social media, and a lot of this with regards to here's the anti ageing pill, whether it's, you know, your Urithilin A, whether it is spermatidene, whether it's something else, and I'm going like that mate, you can do all of those, but you're just not active enough. And the activity side far far far outweighs anything that you would ever take. And sometimes they can't get that. And they think but you know, you know, they have this interpretation that you can take a couple of things, and that's going to age you.. There's not there's not research on that. But nothing stacks up anywhere in the literature with regards to keeping yourself physically fit.

Gary Stebbing  21:50  
Yeah, there's, there's absolutely no doubt that across almost all, almost all health areas, we could consider well being areas that it would sit at, as a fundamental, it's like the trunk of the tree, everything else has to come off that without the trunk, nothing else is there. It's the trunk of the tree. So when, when a person wants to change something, it's kinda like the boring first question it's like, so it's like, if so we have to start somewhere. So let's start there. And what I find interesting, you picking up your point about retirement as well, and ageing I, when we look at anti ageing, it's interesting how I think we're going to travel a path where we start to understand better which types of exercise are anti ageing, and which types, perhaps are not quite so good for that. And we're already sort of developing that as an idea. But I'm fascinated now Pete. Well, I'm looking at the idea with me personally. So we know that, for example, the ageing process differs a little bit. Because men and women hormonally a little bit different things happen slightly different ways. Biologically, there's slight differences. But most of the things that make life difficult as we age involve loss of strength, loss of power, and inability to do things at the same rate, for example. So if I looked at something like falls, one of the one of the difficulties, one of the dangerous dangerous markers with falls, is inability to move our limbs quickly enough to step. Okay. So limb velocity

Peter Williams  23:45  
I've got my Instagram here, Gary, because that's basically what that Instagram is designed to do. It's all designed for Ageing, fall reduction, etc. And of course, as you're going to go on to explain, one of the key things that goes when we age most quickly, is our capacity to move a limb quickly.

Gary Stebbing  24:09  
So I'm interested in the idea that we should attempt if we can, and obviously we have to do with individual capability. But why can't I, as I age continue sprinting as a method of training. If I can, if I can continue to stimulate the neuromuscular pathways, and the ability to coordinate my limbs at high speed. There's a massive cognitive challenge. First of all, there's a there's a massive proprioceptive challenge, which is part of that which is about balance. Then I continue to train myself to move my limbs quickly. Now, if I can't absorb all the impacts of sprinting down You know, out and about, like I might have done when I was young, I can, I can still attempt to move my limbs quickly on the spot. So these things that involve encouraging people to actually do high speed, mostly high intensity, but certainly high speed work that forces them to move things quickly, and hang on to that ability for as long as I possibly can. So when we have conversations about fitness, as you and I do with people, invariably, they have quite strong views about what fitness is. And it might be that distance running is something they think is healthy. And that may, that might be true, cardiovascular fitness is probably a very good health marker, but whether it needs to be done by a distance running, for example, is another question. So I, I'm kind of keen, that the things that appear, we appear to lose that very difficult to get back we therefore try and hang on to. And speed training is one of those things I'm really interested in now. With, with populations with longevity and with ageing. Yeah,

Peter Williams  26:09  
totally agree. Again, that's completely what my Instagrams about. And actually, you know, it's a question of there is, you know, I think people argue about, I don't have time to exercise, but the whole point is, is that you can find 10 seconds to run hard on the spot, driving those legs out as hard as you possibly can. Can you just explain first, because I think there's also again, I appreciate that, you know, we've been in this field for 30 years, that the importance of what's going on there, because actually, it's predominantly dictated by how well your brain communicates with everything else. So can you just sort of extrapolate that a little bit more what you're actually doing, because I think this comes back to the fact that what we're talking about exercise and cognition, so it's sort of expanding how important asking someone to do something that sounds as simple as driving their arms and legs as hard and as fast as they can do for 10 seconds on the spot is super cognitively challenging for the brain. 

Gary Stebbing  27:15  
Well, you can look at when you when I look at cognitive training, you can look at it two ways and where it relates mainly to a physical trainers role/fitness trainers , is level of skill required to perform a movement is one way of looking at it. So learning, so much of my work term, it's not my term, but I can't remember where I ever picked it up. But anyway, I, I'm a big fan of effectively physical education for adults, PE for adults. And that involves encouraging them to do things, you know, they went out of fashion for a while, but there's something as simple as doing a squat thrust or burpee or whatever, providing as you say, but you should be able to, as a physical trainer, be able to scale those exercises

Peter Williams  28:05  
I'm going to take a step back to both of those movements. Because I think it's like everything, we're wanting the new thrill. And in fact, you cannot get more complex and more dynamic and more activation of whole muscle and brain than those two activities that you've just talked about. They are as about as effective as a one exercise movement that you could ever get. Yeah, and I think we're, we're always trying to be trendy with stuff, rather than me and you could break down both of those movements. And we could tell you why. If you just did those consistently, they would pay you back in buckets.

Gary Stebbing  28:05  
Yeah, because so you're endeavouring to address a number of issues with one exercise. So there's obviously a kind of cardiovascular component. So if you do a set of burpees,  the clients, everyone would know that your heart rate climbs and your breathing respiration climbs and but so people neglect to realise that that's primarily because there's so much muscle involved. So many joints are involved.

Peter Williams  29:16  
You're going against gravity as well.

Gary Stebbing  29:20  
Yeah. So and then that in order to do those things, well, you need to learn how to do them. So there's a skill component. So the brain has to learn how to do the skill. And then as you add in complexity, which you can do as a trainer, so you you change, you make them jump laterally instead of up in the air or you know, you you just add a level on to the exercise which you can always do. And whether it's adding just getting to stand up or explosive jumps. You can modify them in any way you want. And so you can continue the learning and the learning and then you add you put them in with other tasks and you do various things. And so anything for me that forces the brain and nervous system to coordinate its limbs in space is something that's really, really useful as we get older, we do them naturally because we probably can athletically as young people. But your point about the relevance of of these types of things, they tend to be things we do less and less as people get older. You

Peter Williams  30:28  
know what I'm just looking out onto the playground, obviously, we've got the, we've got the young kids, it's the juniors, old junior school, I can't remember what year it is. And the kids are just running around, jumping, running around, it's almost like it's, it's so automatic for them to go and do that. And of course, it's definitely not automatic once your in your 40's

Gary Stebbing  30:48  
So doing things, one of the, I remember, two or three years ago, just before, just before the pandemic, actually a client basically said to me, what, what's the best thing, but what's the best thing to do physically, to sort of as an anti ageing programme. And my response was to run fast, run slow, jump sideways, jump high, lift heavy, lift light, lift fast, basically do everything you can to keep everything going. So don't get too focused on doing too much strength work or, you know, too much cardiovascular exercise, you have to do, you have to create as much variability in the training as you can over time, obviously focusing on different things for different objectives whenever you whenever it's relevant. And if, you know, if someone wants to do something that involves some performance achievement, they want to do a 10k Fun Run or raise money, whatever, then you change the training for that period. But you have to be very careful if you spend too long not doing things. Because same way, we know you learn early on as a trainer about the ideas of hypertrophy and atrophy. So if you don't do something for a long time, this the ability to do it is atrophy. Those connections in the brain that lead to that being done well gradually disappear. That's how the body works. It's brilliant in that regard, it prioritises what it needs to. And so trying to keep all of those pathways active to some degree would seem to me the obvious way to stay functional, high functioning physically as we age and high functioning as we age.

Peter Williams  32:42  
Let's talk about again, I think all these roll into each other don't they.  Let's talk about the sort of cognition aspects, the mental health aspects of your training, and particularly the paper you're that you wrote, because you also talked about, you know, everything's on a continuum, isn't it and we have that capacity to if we translate some, some work into someone, they have the capacity to move and get better, regardless of where they are, regardless whether that is someone who is showing cognitive decline, you know, maybe it almost like Parkinsonians or Alzheimer's or vascular dementia, you can name it to people who just were talking high performance. So what would be what would be some of the practical aspects. So if you can give us a little bit of sort of a review of what we're understanding just in the basic science, although we're sort of I think we've covered a lot of that in the time. But just some of the stuff that we know, in the literature with regards to how exercises, maybe certain exercises are slightly better improving cognitive and mental health, and just some of the things that we might want to think about and implement when we're doing that.

Gary Stebbing  33:59  
Well, this the work of this could have, been work the military but Edelman's group in Australia, are doing some work with our donate, they developed something called the cognitive framework, which is built around delivering cognitive training, to, I think it's the Australian Army anyway. So the the descriptions they've given look at a continuum that travels from what they call deficit through to gifted. So obviously, at the end, you're talking about where there is a deficit, then we're likely to see dysfunction, illness, disease and the things that you pointed out and other things. Then at the other end, you see highly gifted cognition. Now, you could argue, or I could argue, I think that that could appear in sport, it could appear in music, it could appear in medicine, it could appear in any domain that requires high skill levels and high interaction between the brain and the body. Because I think that's probably key, the interaction is where the interaction is high, we are going to get the most stimulation. So they would sit at one end and gifted, most of us sit somewhere in the middle. So the purpose of training cognition is to try and move along the continuum to try and just shift along now, optimal cognition is simply whatever is required for the life we choose to live. When we get into a deficit, then our cognitive ability affects the kind of life we can live. That's, that's what happens if we go the other direction, and we can improve cognition, because that's still quite controversial in the terms of the literature, if we move into that, the idea is that we can improve our ability to function in the world. And therefore, we can give us more options in how we want to live. And how, how successful if you like, because that's the right word we are at living living our life. So there is there is no doubt in the literature, there's much debate about the effectiveness of cognitive training. And by that I'd separate it out as well, because Sports Science, Sports Psychology, have been doing what we might call psychological skills training for a long time. So that's things like anxiety management, arousal control, goal setting, visualisation, those things would all fit into cognitive training. It's not that they don't, it's just that and there is I think, reasonable literature that they that they can be effective. So many of those methods have a pretty good efficacy. The trouble with cognitive training is it's been it is obviously lucrative, and various organisations have built models that you people can buy, to play games and whatever, and sold them as a certain thing. And, and it's not clear that one of the one of the challenges, and you'd understand this from your physical training background, one of the principles of training is specificity. So we know that the changes that are made from a training perspective are specific to the inputs you give it. So if you want to make someone stronger, more powerful, more cardiovascularly, fit, you have to do certain things, and that will stimulate that process. But not any others, or very little cross kind of fertilisation into other. And so that's one of the questions is, do these cognitive exercises simply just improve one thing? Or do they generalise out to broader cognitive ability. And that's something that's kind of yet really to be clearly established.

Peter Williams  38:01  
Do we give some examples of that, because this is the whole point about, and I wasn't gonna go into it, but I can see periodization. And the amount of conversations we've had about periodization, over the last few decades is unbelievable, because what you're saying, there, is that specificity matters. So you can get really strong. But that doesn't mean to say that that strength translates over you to be really powerful, or, or fast. So I'll give you an example of that. My 16 year old who is a rugby player, he's obsessed with getting strong in the gym. But he's slow on the pitch. And I'm trying to say to him, that's because your squat, or whatever you're doing does not necessarily translate over for you to be quicker. And so building strength is important. But then you've got to be more and more specific to the skill that you want to achieve, to be good at that skill.

Gary Stebbing  39:04  
Well, if we went back, as I know, you're a football fan, we went back effectively before Sports Science even existed. When you play football, you can do plenty of running, but then they called it match fitness, which was basically the specific demands of the game. Only really are trainable by playing the game. So you so no matter how much training you do outside the game, when you go and play your first match, it's always hard.

Peter Williams  39:31  
And so you know, I want you to come back on that. But I want to give the example of when ski season comes around Gary, everyone will think if they're getting a little bit stronger, then that's going to translate and look to be fair, you know, if you're a bit stronger in certain movements, there may be some translation over but you go on that slope for two or three hours with those forces which are generally be centric. You know, your legs, your hips are going totally paid for it because It's not skiing.

Speaker 1  40:02  
Yeah, so and so I think we kind of read perhaps didn't have the terminology, but but there was already an understanding of these things, you know that if in order to be good at certain things, we have to focus in on the requirements of those things. And we can do lots of training is the same as, you know, you can do lots of things and be generally in really, really good shape. But that doesn't mean that you can just dip into any given task and think I'm going to be good at this. If you decide you're going to do something, you know, you have to then redesign your training to focus in on those requirements. So, so we've, you know, and that's, that's this stuff's been, it's not new. It's been, it's sort of been known a long time. And so as they're developing ideas for cognitive training think this type of stuff is crossing their mind is that, you know, they look at, yes, someone gets good at a particular task via test. So you test them, and then you get them to practice the task, and they get better. Yeah, that's learning. But that doesn't necessarily cross over to the other abilities, other cognitive things that might be necessary or might might be relevant in a world.

Peter Williams  41:10  
So mate I want to start start tuning you down into a little being a bit more specific. So we're talking about exercise and cognition. We know there's an evolutionary basis to why we move, we know there's an evolutionary basis to we move fundamentally, because we're probably looking for food. And we know there's evidence that we secrete particular, if you like, brain enhancing molecules, particularly one that can think about BDNF, you know, we know we do that, because, you know, all the evidence show and again, this is Mark Madison's work, which I love, absolutely love him as a researcher. And it really is, is that, you know, if you're starving, you're going to, you know, if you've got, if you're looking for food, and you're starving, you haven't got a lot of time. So what evolutionary the brain is doing is it will secrete more and more more and more molecules that actually make your brain work more effectively. Because if you don't find a fee to compete that, you know, so what would be an example of specifics around training for you that you're starting to implement with some of your patients, that would be a good start. And I know I know with exercise in mind is that I don't get fussy with what we're doing. Because there's got to be a, there's got to be a certain amount of things or time that you've got to tick your boxes from every week. If you're not moving enough, you're in trouble. It doesn't matter what it is, there's no point as getting fancy with regards to this is for cognition, because if you're not doing enough, you're not doing enough. But what where are you that when you're trying to do some of your very specifics where you're working on that exercise cognitive mental health aspects?

Speaker 1  43:02  
Well think broadly there, there are a couple of ways that a person can go. And I don't or and you can do both together, you can do them independently, or one or the it just doesn't matter which you should. So one might say, for example, sometimes clients in busy lives have problems with focus and attention. So they need to be present for the training session. Okay, with other stuff that's happening around them in the world. So learning how to close off before they come into training, and then open up again afterwards. And putting that one hour in place to something where they are present. That in itself is a cognitive ability

Peter Williams  43:47  
Mate How do you do that? Because we've been, we've probably done 10s of 1000s of hours of training people. And within that, that happens a lot. And okay, so how do you what would be the process that you're thinking about, to try and bring them into being present and the importance of do doing that from a point of view of what you're asking them to try and achieve?

Speaker 1  44:20  
Okay, so my feeling would be, if a client can be present for training on eight out of 10 occasion, that's great. And that would be sufficient. The point is to first of all, help them understand what they're doing there and what this is about. So it's an investment in their in their life, it's an investment in their well being. It's so they it's a matter of self respect. They if they respect themselves, they should consider how they're going about their focus for training. So I don't necessary I have to tell them because I think that the easiest way is for them to design a little routine that they can use. Human beings are wonderful for sort of habitual behaviours. So if I can create a set of habits that trigger them to be present. So for example, if, let's say, the rule is that they finished their last phone call no more than 10 minutes, no less than 10 minutes before training begin. So they finished the call, then they have a routine of where they put their phone where they turned it off, where their kit is the kit they wear. And they so create a little routine that they use. So by the time they walk into the training session, and I can use a football analogy, you've seen examples of footballers people think you know that these, put your left sock on first, your right sock on are all these weirdnesses that lie in sports people, but actually, it's part of a routine that prepares you to be in the right place to do what you want to do. And that's part of what sports psychology does, it creates these routines. If you watch sports, if you watch the golf at the weekend, watch a golfer putt, it's repetitive, they do the same thing over each putt, that's a routine they follow to bring them to a place where they're present in the right state of mind. So creating a routine and that routine doesn't matter what it is, is one way to do it. And then making that training time, let's say sacrosanct it can't always be sacrosanct. But eight out of 10 times, that allows them if they're present to get the most from the session. And so that would be if you'd like an attention, way, a simple way of dealing with attention. Another thing one could look at in that domain would be discussions during sessions with clients about things like self talk. And these, these can just be general discussions that take place. They're all about cognitive processing. How am I conversing with myself? How am I what's going on in my mind as we train. So having discussions, it's all about learning, developing, and improving the training process with them. So that that is another way I'd look at it. That's so we could then look at the specific exercises that they might do. And how one develops those to to increase the cognitive challenge. So I think one of the most important things, I think the term for it would probably be competency based training. So the first and probably most important thing is that the training is matched to the level they're at. So I have sort of come to conclusion one of the

Peter Williams  47:52  
most difficult because they're always thinking that they should be doing more than sometimes you....so I totally agree with you. I think that the the expertise from our side, is that we've got to be able to match the exercise to where that patient currently is. Even though they may not like that in many aspects. So how do you get around that? And kind of explain that a bit more. I don't know if I'll explain that very well. But literally, as soon as your client or patient walks in, we're already realising very quickly, our brains are working to say, Oh, Christ, it looks like they've had a bad day. And I'm gonna need to change this and change that. Can you take us through that actual process?

Speaker 1  48:42  
Well, you know, we've we've talked at different times before, about, for example, if one if one looks, the client walks in the room, one of the questions we might want to think we might want to find out about your mood. What's the current mood, one of the ways you can sort of a proxy for that will be their posture. So if we look at their posture, or their facial expressions, we may or may not necessarily have to ask because we can use humans use these signals, as like proxies for things. Now, you can still ask or you can or not, but so for example, my competency today will be a consequence of the training I might have done yesterday, the training I think I'm going to do tomorrow, the conversations I've had with my family this morning, the amount of sleep I had last night, my nutrition over the last  1/6/12 months and hours. So all of these things input into the position I'm in right now to do exercise. That's why some days I can do something and another day I can't just can't do it. I'm doing a balance exercise. I did it fine last week. Today I keep losing my balance. There's so many factors that play in so it's we have to make decisions as trainers a bit on the fly about where a client is today. So my view with that is, I should always have in mind where I'm trying to go with them over time. But each day or each session they do, to some degree has to be flexible. And then so that they stick their current skill level in that moment dictates what we do. If they can do something, well, we can step it up that we move them up a notch. And I think one of the one of the most underrated skills of coaches and trainers in the fitness domain is the understanding of scaling exercises. You know, how do you take an exercise and make it easier or harder?

Peter Williams  50:41  
I'm gonna jump in here, because I'm just reading my notes, because I thought we'd get on to this, because this comes down to the big discussions we've always had with regards to periodization. And whether actually periodization works? Or do we need more of a flexible framework? So can you I mean, we're already at the hour, can you just go through the scientific basis around the original ideas around periodization of training, because this applies to every single individual who is in some kind of exercise regime, not just sports, not just for athletes, and whether that is appropriate or not, and the consequences, both positive and negative of trying to follow a really structured regime where you're trying to get better and better and better over time?

Gary Stebbing  51:39  
Yeah, I mean, my my practical understanding of periodization is, we have an objective, and we have to, we have to reach the maximum level, we can reach over a period of time, we do that via planned structured progressions, we divide the training period up into blocks and phases where we focus on things. And we gradually look to increase them in almost like a step like way over time, and it means that effectively, each each training session and each training block are designed to build on the one before. So that it is progress that you make over time, the periodization is that it's simply divided up into cycles and phases. So the the I think the original models, which well, it's hard to say where where the first ideas for this came. But were built around cycles of time, and improving performance over time. So ensuring that that each that we were reaching targets and improving over time, that as a practical tool, there's pretty good evidence for it. So much of the work that's been done looking at assessing it is pretty good, I think. So it's not not that the idea isn't very solid. It's just when you're when you're working with athletes where it is all they do. That might be actually possible to do well. If you're not dealing with athletic populations, where training might be a bit more sporadic. energy levels and focus on training may be different. Where there are just other things that that play into the process. And for example, short term travel that clients might have, or things they get where they can't train for a week. So it requires I think, I mean, there is a I think it's the daily undulating periodization model, which does say there are some periodization models where there's plenty of flexibility. So it's not that it's rigid. And there are many different approaches to periodization. So it's not that it cannot be done because it can be done. It's just that practically, it's very difficult to design training that way with most normal clients.

Peter Williams  54:03  
I think what you're saying is that you can build, you can build. So if I come back to that, I think having a structure at least gives you a baseline. But the reality is, is that human beings and the way they exist is so complex, that what you wrote out on Monday, for Tuesday's client is not applicable when you see them coming in. And so, so therefore, what you're trying to do, what I believe that we are trying to do is we're trying to maximise what, maximise physical outcomes based on the way that patient or client presents themselves on that day with the assumption that at some stage, we're trying to get them better.

Gary Stebbing  54:55  
Yeah, I would agree with you, I see two primary objectives of physical activity and training. And neither of them are actually to do with physical outcomes directly. So there's a short term, objective for a training session, then a long term objective for training, the short term one would be that the training session itself has a positive impact on their mood and their sense of well being in at so at the end, they feel better than when they came in. So you have a positive impact on them that day. The second one is on

Peter Williams  55:38  
It's dependant on the quality and the experience of the person giving them the information. Because I think the risk I mean, this is what we've always talked about is that what are we trying to achieve in the session? Because you can give them the wrong type of exercise at the wrong time that just exhausts them -  it's a very negative session. And so these are the sorts of little nuances that you've always got to be thinking about.

Gary Stebbing  56:05  
Yeah, I think, yes, you're managing it's a constant management process, as you're going along. There's a lot going on here. And the experience thing, where the experience thing comes in, it is a boring analogy, in a way, but it's like learning to drive a car. And I remember, you might remember, someone we used to know who's not around anymore, Chris Young. Yeah, Chris used to go every year to the Arnold Classic in Columbus, Ohio. And Chris was, I loved his powerlifting. I remember him telling me a story, he was sitting there watching the lifting going on. And there was someone behind him, he didn't know who it was. And they were discussing the lift and the lifter failed a lift. Okay, so Chris is watching it, and he thinks he's quite, he understands his stuff. And then he listened to person to the person behind and this person was seeing things that Chris hadn't even seen. So their ability to just look and absorb information about what's going on with the individual was just at a level beyond him. And, and yet, he was very experienced guys, you know, and it struck me as an example, when someone tells me things like that there's the, you know, the, there's quite a lot goes on where, actually, you don't even know what you see, but you see it, and you decide which things you're going to pay attention to. But there could be another 100 Things that have, you know, the way the brain works, the subconscious decides what's what's relevant, get them on. So there's that side to it, trying to get the session to be positive, no matter where it begins. And one of the things you know, as you've if if something happens and a session begins late, and there's a session coming straight after it, someone else. So there's no window to extend here. So the session has to be modified, but the same goal still has to be present. Now say the longer term goal for me is, is that clients flourish. And it's like the training and the intervention, it's like, it's like watering a flower. You know, over time, that flower strengthens and grows and flourishes and blooms and. And so so that's the long term goal. And so that's how I kind of view it. So where periodization fits in is, it's absolutely a methodology that we need to understand. We then sort of have to also how to understand how to how to know when to stick with it quite rigidly and when we need to be flexible with it.

Peter Williams  59:00  
Of course that's dependent on patient personality types and all that sort of stuff. I mean, some people love the rigidity of structured routines.

Gary Stebbing  59:09  
Well, there's another thing Pete as well, if I don't know much about if, if I work in an environment, where there are ten of us, for example, we worked for a while in an environment where there were three of us, okay. At some point, my, my spreadsheet tells me I've got to do X, and I can't do it. The someone else is doing it. And there's only one of x. Okay, so, so the decision is do I do do I wait and or not do it or do I find an alternative that similar to x? So therefore, it's not in my programme, but we still got to get something done, so the environment in which we work can make a coaching and training environment, a training outcome difficult, but also the environment, and the culture that's present radically changes the nature of the training. So if the if the, if the environment doesn't match the client, it can be problematic. If you've got clinical clients and you take them in a hardcore s&c facility, where they're doing sled pushes, and sled pulls, and, you know, snatching and stuff, and there's weights banging around, you have to be really aware of that stuff. I mean, one of the interesting things is, I think, because there's been a real growth in certain types of training, which means a lot of facilities now being designed in a very similar way, with very similar things. And they're very, very strength and conditioning orientated. And yet, most of most of the people that a trainer or wellness coach, whatever he's likely to encounter are not athletic in that way. That doesn't mean you can't develop that. But it's so so that I think plays in as well, there's a whole range of things that you you touched on to begin with, he just made me think of that.

Peter Williams  1:01:19  
Well, I think that's not really our population group, is it? I think there's a risk that I always like to say great research wrongly applied. And I think that just comes down to experiences is that, you know, most of the population groups that we deal with, are 50 Plus, and, you know, they can, you know, to try, and I suppose there's a risk benefit outcome that we've always got to think about with regards to sure, you know, a clean impresses, probably, biomechanically and physiologically, probably one of the best exercises that you could ever do, from a point of view of neurological and biochemical etc. But the risk of doing it, because it's got to be taught really, really well outweighs that, for most of my for most of my patients, that doesn't mean to say we can't do it, or we can do variations of it. But, you know, the long we're thinking about short term, short term, sort of interventions for for sometimes long term problems. So

Gary Stebbing  1:02:35  
well, in the in the, within the, to give you a practical elements of that within the second piece, I wrote, weightlifting technique would I would classify as intermediate and intermediate activity in terms of cognitive overload. So if, if so then wouldn't be a place most times you would go if you're starting out with developing skill with someone, but it will, it may well be somewhere you'd like to go in time. Yeah. So I'd never I always think it's that comes back to this idea of competency, what are they capable of doing. So I have to match the exercise selection to their capabilities, while at the same time stretching them just a bit, and nudging them on just a bit. And maybe in six months time, we're doing, you know, a clean and press with a broomstick, or clean and press with some, I don't know, kettlebells, dumbbells, but we've got there because they've been challenged over time. It's just it's just skill acquisition.

Peter Williams  1:03:38  
Again, I think even if you're looking at even if you look at picking something off the floor, so like a deadlift, classic deadlift, for someone in their 50 pluses, there's a lot that we probably think about to be able to do that number one safely first, number one, are you flexible enough to be able to pick a bar off the floor in what we would consider the right position that might take me months to get an individual to that point where I'm happy enough that they've got a neutral spine, they're thoracically extended, and it's not a struggle for them to pick a bar up from, well weighted bar from the floor. But that could take us months to get to that position. And again, I think if you're developing that kind, that competency, that flexibility, that neuromuscular involvement to get to that stage, which comes back to this whole point about how exercise becomes this incredible skill that you're consistently doing, and your brain has to consistently get better at. Which brings us back to that, you know, exercise for me is still one of these modalities, which is one of the most key aspects from a point of view of sort of making sure that you have good brain health as you age because they're not separate.

Gary Stebbing  1:04:59  
Know if you're I mean, if, if I conceptualise it as the brain is actually a physical organ, sits within the skeleton, it's a physical organ, therefore it responds to physical stimuli. So it's so it can be trained. On that basis, I could consider it could be trained just as a muscle can be trained, it just I have to identify one of the things that may, that is probably a bit elusive right now, but interests me is over time, we probably will be able to identify the more effective doses of exercise. And the things where it's, you know, the types of exercise that are most beneficial, the frequencies all the things that the sort of acute variables that are form part of designing a sort of standard training, programme sets, reps, frequency of training, all of that stuff. I mean, I imagine we'll get there, but it certainly isn't possible right now, we don't have the information, at least with regards to, you know, brain training or cognitive training. 

Peter Williams  1:06:10  
Listen mate, we're already an hour and a quarter in because this is classic me and you sat at the cafe with too many coffees going through this, which goes on hours and hours and hours. So it's obvious, I'm gonna have to bring you back in. Can we can we just do some summarise? Because as I said to you, there's so many areas that we go in, we'll be here for hours. Can you just give us some kind of summarising, from a point of view what's the practicalities that if someone is starting to use exercise from a modality to help their brain help their mental functioning, helping their cognition going forward? What would you tell them to do, just on a simple basis to start with,

Gary Stebbing  1:06:51  
as an individual, or as a practitioner,

Peter Williams  1:06:54  
I think as an individual.

Gary Stebbing  1:06:55  
As an individual. okay, but I would include a couple of things. So we need we need to start or they need to start in a place that matches where they are. So depending on their level of fitness, we might start, it could be as simple as floor based work. So getting them to learn, checking how well they coordinate their limbs. So getting them to do simple things on the floor or seated standing. That's why I'm always fascinated with things like single leg balancing and stuff like that. So anything, so I like things that challenge, proprioception, so balanced those that, and I like things that involve coordination. So instead of I'd be inclined instead of, for example, instead of squatting or dead lifting, I might just step up with them, because that involves single limb. So there's a shift in centre of mass. So the brain is having to control the body, if you like the nervous system having to control the movement of the skeleton. And so I would want to include in the training, some of those things, I wouldn't exclude, you know, they have in their mind, as you touched upon earlier, an expectation about what training is going to look like, or what it might include, and I'm absolutely in line with fulfilling those expectations to some degree, if they're if they're reasonable, what I would do someone is, I think one of the things we can do as practitioners, we have, we have to make sure that there's a that, that there's a clear link between the expectation of the of the individual and the reality of what's possible. So we do have to be clear with them about where they're at some in some way. So that's where I would potentially begin. And then if they're more capable than that, then you can take any of the standard exercises that they could find on any app that they might link to. And my job would be, so they want to do so they want to deadlift, let's say. So my job would be to find a version of the deadlift that matches with their current ability, their anatomical limitations, the presentation they come with, because they may have had something go on that makes deadlifting quite tricky. You know, whether it be an injury, some surgical intervention or a health problem, whatever. And that becomes my that's my job. That's my that's what I'm there for. I'm not there to count reps. I'm there to provide safe and effective exercise that moves them forward over time.

Peter Williams  1:09:49  
What about just on a bit, is that are you saying that there would be some there are some proven exercises that may stimulate brain health better? Or is it bringing us back to the component of it doesn't matter? Well, I think you're trying to say that sort of bilateral as, as opposed to unilateral may create more of a challenge. So being on one leg is more challenging than being on two, of course, it means the brains working to cordinate and balance things a bit better. But would you suggest that the science is starting to show that maybe there are certain exercises that we could choose that are more beneficial on God? And here's me, sort of sort of trying to cue you in and see if you can, you know, is there anything that you would suggest is the science has shown is more productive for brain health? Or is it everything works? As long as you're trying to move to regardless of what you do? There isn't a progression in that exercise skill, or movement? Or or whatever you choose? I don't know if I explained that very well.

Gary Stebbing  1:11:09  
Yeah. Well, if we go back to the idea that we're trying to move along the continuum in a positive way, I don't think there therefore is necessarily a better or worse exercise. There is just an exercise that is wise with the individual. If we look at, if we look at the individualization of medicine, or of exercise prescription, whenever we would select like, so I don't in answer to your question, I'm not aware that there is any super exercise that appears to achieve more than others. The point is, is simply that we need to move and move a lot. That that's it now the exact because if I if I, if one goes back to evolution, the best exercise will be the one that gets the keeps us alive. Yeah, gets us food allows us to mate, doesn't take up too much energy, because that's another thing because the other thing that humans are brilliant at is energy conservation. So so I can't, it wouldn't necessarily make sense to me that there would have to be one sort of magic thing that gives us that I think, I think it'd be quite a big bandwidth of possibilities with that. 

Peter Williams  1:12:45  
So I think that will lead us into another podcast, which is really about just talking about exercise, talking about exercise frequency, exercise selection, variables in some of some of the principles of, of exercise with regards to strength, cardiovascular flexibility, mobility, all of those sort of principles of exercise, I think, is probably the next conversation, but it really just comes down to as I say, it's the same thing. I think what we're doing in, in medicine, and particularly my field, which you know, and I think some people when they come to see us, you know, you get reasonably well neck recognised as someone who might know what they're talking about, or have had a lot of experience. And it comes back to that you don't just do the basics well, you know, and we can, you know, we can wax lyrical about it again, I see this all the anti ageing stuff going, and it's like, you're just not fit enough and strong enough. And, you know, you can, it's up to you, it's no problem you spending 1000s of pounds on these on these new found molecules that may have a little bit of an impact, but nothing like getting yourself physically fit on a daily basis has across all aspects, strength, and cardiovascular aspects. And it's like, it's your, it's your umbrella. And, you know, I think that's why we're so passionate about it, mate. So I'm going to thank you for your valuable time. I would love to consistently bring you on because maybe this is the podcast that we said we're going to do and never did (Three pints of Sport's Science) Yeah three pints  of sports science. You know what I'm like after three pints, Gary, there wouldn't be anything sensible coming out from that whereas I think the last you remember last time we had a drink locally. I came back the kids, and I basically threw up all over the place. Yeah, good. I'm not gonna say that was good times. Mate really appreciate your time pub. Pleasure.

Gary Stebbing  1:14:48  
Pete. Thank you very much.

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