#20 Walk for 30 minutes and get rewarded!

On this episode I highlighted the positives of the NHS plans to reward people for going on daily 30 minute walks. I also spoke about the World Cup, tennis. Les Mills classes and the cancellation of Ironman Nice due to the heatwave.

Please LIKE, SUBSCRIBE and SHARE this podcast to anyone you think would benefit from listening.

If you would like to SPONSOR the podcast or an individual episode and promote your business then please DM me on Instagam @mskrunner.haz

If you have a question or a topic you would like me to cover then please put it in the comments below or DM me on Instagram @mskrunner.haz

Thank you for listening and hope you enjoy it!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

I had a bit of a nightmare about 30 seconds ago. I pressed record, started talking, realized that I'd left my mic on mute. So this is um take two. Uh so yeah, welcome back to the MSK Runner podcast. Um, my name's Harry Bell. Um I just chat a load of random stuff to be honest with you. And if you enjoy it, then um yeah, please like and subscribe and uh yeah, share it with your friends, spread the word. And um yeah, generally speaking, I'd kind of chat about running and also kind of like stuff that's been going on over the past week or so in the world of fitness and what have you. Um I talked about on the previous episode about the heat wave um from last week, which was just unbearable. So last weekend um there was supposed to be the Iron Man in Nice and also the Hamburg half marathon, and both of those events got cancelled uh because of the heat wave. Uh so actually Iron Man Nice got cancelled. Um the Hamburg Half Marathon got postponed and it will be rescheduled for some dates later on in the year that's yet to be announced. But like the reason that they cancelled it was basically to kind of like um if you run, if you kind of like have that kind of an event, whether it's a long distance running race or an Iron Man, especially in those kind of conditions, it's kind of inevitable that like people are gonna collapse and you know get hospitalized. Like, not everybody, but some people definitely will. Um, and I think especially in Nissan in Hamburg, they wanted to uh reduce the amount of pressure on hospitals that's already like skyrocketed through the roof. So, you know, if you've like entered either of those two events, especially the Iron Man, and you've been training like all year for it, you've put all that time and effort and dedication into it, not to mention, you know, spending at least a couple of hundred quid on your entry free fees plus you know, like hotels and you know, flights if you've come from all over Europe. Um, and obviously, you know, if your flights and accommodation, you're not gonna get your money back, but uh yeah, you'd be absolutely devastated and you'd be pissed off. Um, but yeah, looking at the bigger picture, I do think it was the uh the correct decision uh to cancel, you know, just better safe than sorry and also you've got to think as well that you know someone is like responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of people's like health and safety. If they had gone through gone ahead with the event and then something bad had happened to people, then yeah, I wouldn't want to be that person either. So yeah, I can understand it. It would be very frustrating though if you had entered it. Like I'd be I'd be annoyed if I'd entered the event and it got cancelled at the 11th hour for all the reasons I just said. But yeah, like I say, it's important to like look at the bigger picture and put people's um health, you know, first, in my opinion. Um and then we also talked about the World Cup that's been going on. So yeah, since the last episode, England played the Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday tea time, and yeah, England were not great at all, um, but they got the job done. Um, you know, in the end. I think England are not not a great team, um, but they've got players like Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham where like no matter how bad England play, either of those two players can like produce some piece of magic like in a moment. Um and they're gonna need that uh tonight. So obviously it's Sunday night, so England take on Mexico at one o'clock in the morning. Um I won't be watching it um because to cut a long story short, I've got work in the morning. I've got to drive up to uh North Allerton uh tomorrow morning, which you know I'm um it's not ideal, but it's it's something that's got to be done, you know, that's kind of like work-related and important going forwards. But yeah, um, I thought to myself here in a week, I'll actually, you know, I'll I'll book the Monday off or something and get all my classes covered, but then I realised uh, oh yeah, we've already got North Allerton in the diary, so yeah, um I won't be watching the game then. I'll wake up tomorrow morning and I'll find out the result there and then I'll watch the highlights uh before I set off. But um the game against Mexico is at the Azteca, which is like an iconic um football stadium uh with an amazing atmosphere, and you know it's had some moments as well. So, like the 1970 World Cup final, that great Brazil team won it there, and then also the infamous um Diego Maradona hand of God um against England also took place at that stadium, which I wasn't aware of until I'd um watched Gary Lineker's show earlier in the week. Um, but I think the main thing for England is the altitude because we're talking like several thousand feet above sea level, where like the air's thinner, you know, like scientifically, like I read something apparently like at that high an altitude, like your VO2 max reduces by 10%, and you know, just naturally, like you're breathing heavier, you're gasping for breath, and your heart rate goes up because you're obviously having to work harder. And uh Mexico in their history, I think they've played something like 89 games at the Azteca and they've only ever lost twice. Um so yeah, I think England will scrape a victory, probably either after extra time or on penalties. But at the same time, if Mexico win the game and England get knocked out, I won't be shocked either. And then the winner of that game will play the winners of Brazil v Norway, which kicks off tonight, but like before the England game, so that should also be good. I look forward to watching that later. Um, in the background, I've just got the tennis on actually, it's Sabalenko via Osaka playing at Wimbledon. And on the subject of tennis, like I'm like a casual tennis fan, I enjoy watching it. Some of the mates enjoy tennis even more than I do, some of them play it. But I remember like a few years ago, a couple of weeks before Wimbledon, we went uh to Nottingham to watch the tennis, it was like one of the pre-Wimbledon uh tournaments, and I kind of I was looking forward to it, and I thought like this is gonna be like pretty decent, but nothing spectacular. But I was absolutely blown away by it when you watch tennis on TV, like the TV just doesn't do the tennis players any justice whatsoever. You don't realise how good they actually are until you watch it live, like right in front of you. You know, the amount of ground that the players have to cover just to like get to the ball on every single shot, the amount of times that the ball is like literally millimetres above the net every single time. It's just yeah, it's really, really good to watch. I I absolutely loved it, and I was like proper raving about it afterwards. Um, not be for a few years actually, but yeah, I'd like to go again. Uh yeah, I think tennis is one of those sports, it's um it's decent to watch on TV, but I think it's like really, really good, like even better to uh to watch live. Um then going on to more fitness-related stuff. Um, a lot of you might be familiar with like doing certain types of classes at your local gym, uh, such as like body pump or body attack or light body combat. Um, you've even got like RPM on the spin bikes, so they're all like um Les Mills classes. Um, and basically Mr. Les Mills himself uh sadly died earlier in the week at the age of 91. Um, how that all started is that Les Mills himself uh was from New Zealand and he represented New Zealand at the Olympics uh many moons ago, and then after he retired, he uh decided to like open up his own gym, and then further down the line, his son decided to create um a fitness franchise um using the Les Mills name, and it like became global and became a really big success. And I think people are very like marmite towards Les Mills, people either love it, and some people, for whatever reason, like absolutely hate it. I'm kind of on the fence with Les Mills, so actually there's a lot of positives with Les Mills. Um I years ago like used to teach like bog standard uh spin classes, like I'd make my own playlist and do my own routine and what have you. And then I got put onto a Les Mills RPM course, so we're talking like eight or nine years ago, I think. And it was absolutely incredible. Um and basically like it was like a two-day course where you did your initial module training, and then afterwards, like you then had to like you you had about like two a month or two months, I think, to like record yourself teaching entire class, basically. But anyway, what I'm getting at is that doing the Les Mills course made me a much better group exercise instructor. Um, it really opened my eyes in terms of like music and choreography and things like that. So yeah, I I used to really, really enjoy doing Les Mills classes, and then kind of like when COVID first happened, so basically I'm I'm kind of going off on the tangent. So with Les Mills, like if you're a Les Mills instructor, you've got to like uh pay a quarterly license fee. So it's like 30 quid or so every every three months, and then with that you get like a new release, like with the music and the choreography, and then it's up to you to go and learn it and then deliver it in your sessions. Um and the first like two or three releases that I taught, like I thought the soundtrack was really good and I really enjoyed it, but then the last few ones that I did, I thought the music wasn't really to my taste, and I wasn't a huge fan. But then going forward to uh COVID times, obviously, like lockdown happened, all the gyms everywhere had to close. Um, and a bit like everyone else, really, I think who was like an instructor, I thought, like, why don't I teach some classes like online, like using Zoom, for example, send everybody a link and do it there and then. But um the latest Lesmills release at the time came out like either a week or two before lockdown happened, and Lesmills basically put out a post saying, like, oh yeah, um, you can't teach your classes, but we're not giving you your money back. You know, like you can't teach your classes because um because of like the music licenses, um, you know, you haven't got a music license, you know, like the the venue that you would teach your classes at will have a Les Mills music license and the license to deliver Les Mills classes, but doing it from your own home, you don't have it. So you physically cannot teach a Les Mills class from your own home, but at the same time, we're not gonna give you your money back, even though you've paid for something that we're forbidding you from delivering. So I thought that was a bit of shit, really. And yeah, I understand that like businesses need to make money, but at the same time, if you're gonna take money from us, then don't like you know deny us the opportunity to get our money's worth and make the most of it. So yeah, I thought that was I thought that was a bit of a letdown really. And anyway, from probably from like about 2021 onwards, I stopped teaching um Les Mills classes, like just because like nothing to do with Les Mills themselves, really. Uh it was like I stopped teaching classes in general just because I wanted a bit of a break from it, and I was also going through like a little bit of a career change where I was like stepping up to kind of like management roles and what have you. So it kind of like I kind of aired away from that uh from the time being. But yeah, I think um Les Mills classes on the whole are really, really good. You get like your structure, you get your choreography. A lot of the time the music's really good, but a lot of the time it's not brilliant. But um, yeah, I think like if you're a if you're like a bog standard spin instructor or you teach like circuit classes or whatever it may be, I think like enrolling onto a Les Mills course will 100% make you a better instructor. Um I would say like before I did my Les Mills RPM class, I thought like I was quite a decent instructor. Um, but definitely once I did the Les Mills course, I became so much better. So it's definitely worth doing, um, in my opinion. Now, moving on to the main topic of today, um, what's kind of dominated um the news this week in the context of fitness is the NHS are going to reward people for walking 30 minutes a day. Um, now this is something we don't have a terrible lot of information on it at the moment, but basically the NHS or NHS England, should I say, um are backing this initiative. So they're going to reward people who walk 30 minutes a day by including incentives and discounts on like gift on vouchers and things like that. Now, what these incentives are and what these discounts are for, your guess is as good as mine. We've got no idea. Is it going to be like discounts off buying a Garmin watch, for example, or will it be discount off a pair of trainers, or is it going to be like um, you know, McDonald's gift vouchers, which is a bit counter uh productive? Yeah, we don't know yet, but basically they're gonna use like positive reinforcement to get people moving more. Um this has been backed by NHS singler, but also the organizers of the Great North Run. Now, in our country, we do have a a bit of an underlying issue where too many people are sedentary. So, you know, 25% of adults do less than half an hour of physical activity per week, uh, which is yeah, really bad because if you if you're like sat on your backside and you're not moving, you're going to develop a lot of health issues. You might develop musculoskeletal conditions such as like lower back pain, or you might develop um like cardiac problems or obesity, uh diabetes, things like that, just through being like physically inactive. What we don't know about this yet is actually where the funding is going to come from. Uh because the NHS, as we know, are pretty much running on a shoestring budget. Um, so whether they get like other partners, whether it's some company like Vitality, for example, who get on board with it, yeah. I don't know yet. They've not really released much information, but um some people have been quite critical of this uh for various reasons. I don't really know why. Um I I don't think it addresses like the underlying cause of why people are physically inactive, but I do think it's a good thing that they're they've come up with an idea to try and get more people moving. Now, walking for half an hour a day, in my opinion, is a very achievable and realistic goal because half an hour is just one percent of your day. You know, there's 24 hours in a day. Are you telling me that for 23 and a half hours you don't have time to go for a walk? So, yeah, it's I know people have like busy lives and what have you, but like I've banged on about this multiple times on this podcast. Like the number one most important thing in your life is your personal health above everything else. Because if your health isn't up to scratch, then it's going to affect everything else in your life in a negative way. You know, getting get going up, going out, and going for a walk, you know, gets you more active, it makes you feel better about yourself both physically and mentally, and you're less likely uh to develop hypokinetic diseases and conditions. Um, and then on the back of that, it also then reduces the pressure on an already overstretched NHS. So I think it's like a win-win situation. Now, one of the things that this initiative is allegedly going to have um is like um something called streaks. Now, if you're like me and you've got an app on your phone called Duolingo, where you learn a foreign language, um basically every day that you do a lesson on Duolingo, you increase your streak, which is like the number of consecutive days that you've um done a Duolingo lesson, for example. Um, I think they did something similar with like Pokemon Go quite a few years ago. Like I've got like zero interest in Pokemon, but at least it got people outdoors and got people moving. Um but yeah, I do think it's a bit odd that people have to be have to be incentivized in order to go for a walk or do something to improve their health and fitness, because for me, like everybody should be prioritizing that anyway, you shouldn't need to be rewarded for it. But that's the world we live in, it's the culture we live in. A lot of people are physically inactive, and if people um say, for example, they download whatever app this may be, they go for a walk for half an hour, and then they get like um I can't even say it said that and they get like a streak for it, then building up those streaks and those consecutive days of physical activity, it gives that person like kind of like a sense of achievement and a bit of like motivation to maintain the streak and keep it going. Um, and that short-term behavior change, um, you know, the motivation initially comes from the incentives and the discounts that people are going to be rewarded with and the positive reinforcement. That's what's going to get people started, but then hopefully over time that becomes a habit, and the habit is what will keep people going, keep people moving, and like I say, everybody lives like healthier lifestyles. So, yeah, I think that can only be a good thing, in my opinion. I'll be intrigued and curious to see like how this actually gets executed and who funds it and what have you. But I do think like any kind of initiative that is designed to get people moving and get and especially get people outside as well. For me, that it can only be a positive thing. Um, if people out there on LinkedIn are kind of like slagging it off and criticizing it, then feel free to come up with a better idea yourself, is all I have to say to that. Um, that is kind of it really. It's uh Sunday, the 5th of July today. Um, hopefully in the next week or two, I'll have an update about next year's London marathon, whether I get in it or not. But um, yeah, fingers crossed for that one. And um, yeah, by the time you listen to this tomorrow, um England are through to the quarterfinals of the World Cup. They've beaten Mexico on penalty, so you heard it here first. Thanks for listening, guys. Hope you enjoyed it. Please like, subscribe, share it with your friends. If you've got any questions, put it on the comments below. Also, if there's anyone you want me to get on the podcast, uh like as a guest, then I'm open to all suggestions as long as it's not Jerry Adams. Okay, thanks for listening. Take care, bye bye.