2. Defining exercise physiology - we need to be better at this.

Let's dive into one of the major issues in our industry, explaining what Exercise Physiology is.

Follow us on socials:

IG: @remotecontrol.ep

LinkedIn: Remote Control Exercise Physiology

Connect with Courtenay:

IG: @hereducation_ and @herexercisephysiology

LinkedIn: Courtenay Polock

Connect with Nicola:

IG: @theactive.nic, @theactive.eduprogram and @theactivestudio

LinkedIn: Nicola Begley

Websites:

www.remotecontrolep.com.au

www.hereducation.com.au

www.theactiveedu.com.au

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Remote Control EP The podcast. I'm Nicola. And I am Courtney and we are here for the real and raw conversations about clinical practice, business, and what it means to actually be an EP. Because it is time that we took control of that conversation. All right, before we get started in today's episode, we would love if you could subscribe to the show, like it, share it with all your colleagues, your friends, anyone, your mum. I don't, we don't really care, but just spread the word. Um and if you're listening to this show as a student or a new grad, maybe you're someone who's been in the profession for 20 plus years, you're a business owner, doesn't matter. This show is for everyone. So it is, it is for you. Episode two, we're going to be talking about who we are as an industry, as exercise physiologists. But before we dive into that, uh just quickly a little bit about who is remote control. So Court and I have been talking about going into business together for a long time. If you listen to episode one, we don't even know how long ago we connected. Um, but we've been talking about it. It's been on the cards for a while. And uh last year we were on a hike together, and we're like, this is happening, we are doing this, the ball is rolling, we'd already cemented things, but of course, the most important part is what is our business going to be called? And Court goes, Well, well, this is the vibe. So if I I am actually not a South Park fan, but my partner is, and he was explaining to me this game called Fractured Butthole. And I didn't really get it at first until he re-explained it to me as fractured butthole. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is like one of those words that has like a double meaning, which turns out to be called a double entendra for anyone who is not an English guru here. I was like, we need a name like this, Nicola, like something that's like you read it and you're like, oh yeah, like fractured butthole, but fractured butthole, like means two different things. Which some people still might not be understanding, like fractured butthole. We obviously all firstly think of a butthole, but we're talking about like butthole, like in one piece, like it's broken, but it's in one piece. I'm still hearing butthole every time you say it. But I think it's so clear. I love it. I currently all of our listeners are thinking of a remote control. When they hear about remote control exercise physiology, they picture a physical remote control. And don't worry, so did we. Oh, but you can also see it on everyone's face. Like when you meet somebody like, oh, we're from remote control EP, they're like, remote control. I think the tagline is really helpful here. So taking control of your health remotely. Yeah. So it ties in quite well. And now I've stopped seeing a remote control. I know. We thought that everything would have a remote control in it when we first started, and nothing has so far. Yeah, yeah. But when you tell people what you actually what we the nitty-gritty of the business, people are like, oh, remote control. Yeah. It's like that light hole moment. We're not talking about a butthole here. It was the same moment to me with fractured butthole. That's actually the info for the name where it came from. Good old South But. Yeah, and uh, I guess stay tuned for a little bit about our remote control journey. That's gonna be coming up in future episodes. Um, but we're keeping those cards a little bit closer to our chest for now, uh, because we are really taking control and we can't wait to see where it's gonna go. Yeah, we're super excited. So we'll like drop some little sneaky hints along the way. Um, but we are you you're welcome to follow us on socials. We have an Instagram page, which is quite new, and a LinkedIn page. So make sure you go check us out if you'd like to connect and follow along on the journey. But I think we will also eventually share like some stories about business development and like the things we're going through. Because I think that's cool when you you're watching someone's business also grow. Like, I love that. I don't I don't know about you, but I I love watching journey. I do too, but I'm also a business owner, so you know it's Nick doesn't like watching the journeys. I've tried to get her to watch so many videos, and she's like, I don't, I'm not watching her. I don't do movies. Yeah, well, you'll be our movie when it comes out again. Yeah, that'll be a different story. It'll be a great story. It'll be how we're billionaires. No, no. Anyway, let's uh we're getting sidetracked. We are supposed to be here talking about us as EPs and what is an exercise physiologist. I think Court has a really cool story from a GP meeting that she was at recently, and how the importance of our elevator pitch and of being able to explain what an exercise physiologist does is so undervalued. 100%. It's one of my passion topics. So pull me back on track if I get uh off on a tangent. I'm notorious for that. Um, I think I think something that is a first problem is that most people don't realize they're not explaining what they're doing very well. And I hear this a lot inside mentorship course when I'm talking to a lot of the mentees about what they're telling people when they're trying to get referrals. And when I kind of keep questioning about like, okay, what do you mean by that? And what do you mean by that? And what do you mean by that? They don't really know how to explain it, and then they start to realize, wow, I'm not this actually doesn't, this is not really that good of an explanation about what I'm doing. And it is probably a problem because the out we are so broad. So when I talk about any of this today, I really want you to think about like your explanation might be very different, but you have to think about how it applies to whatever you do because I'm very different to how Nick works, so it might sound a bit different in terms of their explanation. But this example is very, very powerful because essentially I was invited to do a presentation alongside other allied health professionals for a GP clinic, and um, I got a good solid 20 minutes for my presentation, which I thought was very important for the people to understand like what is exercise physiology, because for the people I was speaking to, doing exercise was not really something that I don't think was on their radar based on like where their capacity is, right? Can I just add in? Everyone else got 40 to 60 minutes, and you were the last presenter after hours. Oh, yeah. So I had to be like, mate, this has got to hit the nail on the head as efficiently and quickly as possible, because I have I had to tell them what I'm doing, as well as give them some things to do and work on in 20 minutes, which is like nothing. So uh essentially I was directing my pitch of what exercise physiology is towards like the general population, and the GP was sitting there. And at the end of the top, the conversation or the actual end of the whole presentation, she actually approached me and said, Wow, I can honestly say up until today, I was very lost with what an EP actually did. So I was basically just sending anyone who needed to lose weight or work on their cardiovascular health to an EP, and I didn't really know why else to send them there. And that was pretty big alarm bells for me. And because GP was referring to an had an EP that they referred to? Yeah, they already had an EP that I referred to, and they had already had a presentation presented to the GP clinic as a whole from an EP. So they weren't new to exercise physiology and they weren't just like trying to learn themselves, they hadn't been explained properly what we actually did that wasn't weight loss or cardiovascular health or anything related to like wellness. So she was very, very much aware of like, wow, I did not know any of this about what we did. And I think this is where the importance of being able to explain what we do from like a not just to our own patients and clients, but to other health providers, because if people don't know what you do, they're not going to think to send them to you. So if you're having trouble getting referrals or you're meeting with a referral and you're like, it went so well, this is excellent. I've got a great meeting, and then you never really get a referral from them, or the referrals are coming through for things that you didn't really pitch to them in the first place, then you haven't described what you're doing well enough for them to know. So it's not about they're not referring to me, it's about you didn't do it's it's on you. You have to get better at this. Um, one thing, Nick, I'm gonna ask you how you feel about this because I I hate this thing. But like exercise is medicine. I mean I love the concept. However, the way that EPs use it is not done well. I think people just use that phrase and throw it around saying exercise is medicine. Everyone knows that exercise is good for you. Everyone knows that physical activity is good and they should do it. It's like eating five vegetables a day. Everyone knows they should do it. But just saying exercise is medicine is not enough. We are physiologists, we are prescribing a specific dosage of medicine to elicit specific cellular adaptations. We are trying to create change at a cellular physiological level. We're not just doing exercise for the sake of doing exercise because everyone should do 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity and two days a week of strength-based exercise. And I think that's where we fail in using that word or that catchphrase of exercise is medicine. We just say it and it goes alongside exercise being good for you. Exercise is medicine, just do more exercise. It's like, no, we need to be better at our prescription and at the physiological change that we're trying to achieve. Yeah, and I think it also boils down to actually just like explaining the exercise is medicine. How is it medicine? What are you doing that is making it a medicine? So when I think about how I describe it, I think it takes a it's a pretty hard to get this into a really small, quick elevator pitch. So I can really appreciate it if you're like got to go in there for like one sentence, like that's hard to develop. But I think when we think about like I'm in the women's health space, I do a lot of endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain. And so when I'm trying to explain to GPs or allied health professionals or potential referrals what I do as an exercise physiologist, that's very different to a physio or a personal trainer because that's where I get bracketed in between those two people. Like, what do you actually do? And I think about like what cellular changes have been affected by their condition and what cellular changes can we make from specific types of exercise, specific dosages, specific rest intervals. So I'm trying to explain it to them from like a cellular response adaptation perspective because they understand how the nervous system has changed and pain pathways have changed and how inflammation pathways are heightened. They understand how exercise does things, but now we have to bridge the gap between like how does exercise actually change those cellular pathways or responses that are happening from the condition. And that's what the exercise as medicine is. We're working we're making it act on receptors or we're trying to change pathways or signaling properties or how things have developed in the body. That is what is the part that is medicine, and people don't people just think like, oh, we're just saying it's medicine because it's like it's healthy and it's the natural way to do things. And it's like, no, no, no, no. We're actually eliciting changes within the body at very specific cellular levels to change how a person's body is now impacted by that health condition or whatever it is that they're saying for. I think a like really practical example that a lot of EPs can relate to is if we talk about like bone loading, osteoporosis, everyone knows that like we need weight-bearing exercise and they're good at providing the resistance training and getting the outcomes. But when we're looking at it, it's like we're actually looking from a cellular level. So we're looking at our like osteoclasts and our osteoblasts. And when we have load mechanical strain on the bone, we create more of these osteoblasts, our bone-forming cells. Some of those osteoblasts eventually become embedded into the bone and become osteocytes, and they're our mechanosensors of bone. So that's the way that we actually our exercise prescription actually changes the physiology from a cellular level. But so often we just go, oh, resistance exercise, weight-bearing exercise. And that's what we need to do. We actually need to understand the physiology from a cellular level and the adaptation. Yeah, 100%. I think that's a great example of how I think that's one that's very obvious too. So if you're currently thinking, oh wow, I'm just using exercise as medicine and I help people with exercise, great, let's just refine that a little bit more. But think about I kind of think about it as like two definitions for me. One is like exercise physiology as a whole. So like what we do in a sense of cellular adaptation for per like purposeful exercise for this prescription. That's that's what we're talking about as a whole industry. And then the other side is like now we're looking at it from more like condition-specific stuff. So, like if you're going to a GP and you're wanting specific referrals for a particular health condition, then now start to talk about the cellular changes that are happening in that condition and the cellular responses we're eliciting from specific types of exercise. Like, people don't understand that some dosages are actually bad for particular health conditions. So, like that, that's a medicine, that's a medicine. But you can damage someone with certain exercise types for certain populations. So try and start thinking about both of those. Like, how do you explain in general? And then how do you explain in regard to all the different types of health conditions you see that you might want referrals for? Yeah. And I think generally people understand that like fundamental concept of like we're prescribing exercise and there's a dose too much and it can have side effects, too little, and it can have side effects, but like really nutting down, I think I think that the physiology part of our title is where we fall apart. Yeah, I think people just go exercise, and then they get confused with like physio. Like, I think you we need to, I think we almost need to just be like exercise, physiologist. Yeah, that's a lot more. That's the loud capital letters bolded part, and the exercise is just the tiny little font next to it. Yeah, I mean, like, how many times do we see people where we don't even use exercise straight away? Like again, right? Like, yeah, absolutely.

unknown 15:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

So that's what today's topic is all about is understanding more about how to explain the depth of what we do really clearly, so that people go, Oh wow, you guys really do know stuff about the body and how exercise really can help someone and not just exercise is good for you, right? Yeah. And at the end of every episode, we give you one thing to take control of this week: something a real, something doable. And uh, you can probably guess what that is gonna be. Court. This week you're going to make up your elevator pitch or refine your elevator pitch. You want to make it a bloody good one, you want to have it. Keep keep working on this too. This is just week one of starting to do that, but don't ever give up on, I guess, stopping it because you can always get better at explaining it. So, this is that's that's your take control task for the week. Come up with your elevator pitch, make sure it's excellent, make sure it's really, really clear so that people actually know what you do. Thanks, Court. That's a wrap on this week's episode. Thank you so much for listening and don't forget to take control. Bye.