S2 E7: S2 Ep 7 – The Hidden Risks of Exercise (and Why Movement Is Still Medicine)

Welcome again to the Pain Free Living podcast with Bob and myself, Claire.

This series is about exercise.

So so far we've talked about exercise and movement.

What is exercise?

What's the difference between exercise and movement?

And then we've gone on to doing and next episode was all about the different types of exercise and now we're going to talk about the risks of exercise.

So Bob, what do you see?

What you must see a lot of people coming into your practice with, you know, pulled muscles and all sorts from.

Surprisingly not that many to be honest.

I think that may well just be because they feel it's self inflicted.

And a lot of the stuff that happens in the gym, it's usually just because people pile on too much weight too soon.

Yeah, bodies can't cope so they get, they may get a muscle strain but generally speaking that resolve itself.

So no, I don't see that many.

I can occasionally see people that have sustained a back injury because they've lifted too heavy, but that doesn't actually happen that often, to be honest.

It doesn't happen that often, luckily.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, so I don't see many.

But what I am very aware of is the risks of exercise.

Now the key thing about this episode is we don't want to put people off exercise because exercise is wonderful and movement medicine.

Yes, movement medicine, sorry.

And that's okay.

Um, so exercise is movement medicine.

So the thing is we don't want to put people off.

Exercising in general is very, very, very safe.

It's, you know, as long as you have a qualified instructor or as long as you have people that know what they're doing that can help and support you, exercise is absolutely fine.

As we said, exercise is dose dependent.

The more you do, the better you are.

That is true to a point.

And then we get into the realms of what we call over training.

So I have seen people that were training for a marathon and by the time they came to see me, they could barely walk because they'd overdone it.

Luckily it was something I could help them with the right treatment.

And then building up again from where they pre injury and they were fine.

One person particular, he hobbled into the clinic.

He was about, I think we're about two months out of the London Marathon, which he'd managed to blag his way into and he couldn't do.

Only took a couple of treatments to actually resolve the problem because he had been over training but because of where he had to start, he, he wouldn't have been, it wouldn't have been marathon.

Fit in time.

So he has, he had to defer it.

But overtraining does happen and the key thing is to listen to your body.

That's from kind of my side of over training.

But I, you know, I think that in your case you see a different take on it.

So we were talking about it earlier on.

Yeah, yeah.

So I mean, in my.

If I was to see someone and they were to come in and, and that's what it turned out the issue was, what they would possibly be suffering from is things like chronic fatigue, really high, quite high stress levels, elevated cortisol levels.

Emotional exhaustion is another thing that I see.

And a lot of anxiety.

I mean, especially if this, your guy had booked in to do the marathon and then wasn't able to do it.

You know, it's a real kick in the teeth really that he's not able to do what he set out to do.

And that has all the ramifications of it.

So that is actually known as overtraining syndrome.

But the good news with that is with the proper rest and recuperation, proper treatment.

Absolutely.

People can get over that.

The danger is in my.

What I see is where it borders onto addiction.

So it's the compulsive need to exercise that is actually a bigger problem, a bigger issue for people.

And it's almost like they have to exercise despite any negative consequences.

Yeah, I think part of that is because they don't see the negative consequences consequences.

They just, and, and, and I think what feeds into that is the mentality which is thankful for you dying out, but there was always that, no pain, no gain.

So it was always about pushing yourself to the max constantly.

Forget about rest.

Rest is for wimps.

I'm going to do this, I'm going to smash these, smash my personal best, whatever it is.

So I tend not to see that.

But as somebody who's a therapy coach, I can imagine that you do see people who have taken it beyond where they should.

It becomes a much bigger thing.

And you know, I'll be honest, I'm guilty of it myself.

And it can, it can be, you know, a particular, if you like, personality type where if, if it's all or nothing for you and you seem to throw yourself at activities and do things to 110%, then you have to be really careful that you don't get addicted to whatever that activity is.

Because what happens then, and what I experienced this is when I was running was that I felt that if I didn't get out of my run in the morning, I was really moody.

I was really.

Yeah, I wasn't happy and I felt that my day just wasn't going to go well and that had ramifications for the whole of the rest of the day.

And I, I, you know, I, I got quite angry and, you know, I, I wasn't a nice person to be around.

So it's not a question of just being addicted internally and you think, oh, I didn't go to that session.

I, I should have done.

I should, I should, I should.

But actually the ramifications are on the wider family.

It wasn't great.

Yeah.

Family, friends and colleagues, you know, it's.

Yeah, yeah.

And this is the thing.

So, yeah, as we say, exercise is a good thing, but there can be issues with.

Over training is a good example.

Another example of that.

I don't, again, don't say quite so much, but it's where, where a lot of professional athletes have injury issues, particularly football.

This is what I'm thinking.

I don't know much about rugby, but we do know that there's a lot of high profile footballers who tend to be very prone to injuries.

And I think a lot of that is because a, there is so much money in professional sport.

You know, they don't like to leave people benched.

So they will, you know, if you work in professional sport, you'll be under pressure from the club to get that player back out on the pitch.

Now, I think part of the problem with the injury rates of professionals now is the fact that we tend to select sports at a much younger age.

So I saw a seven year old who was playing for a football academy and he had an injured hamstring.

Luckily it wasn't anything major, so I just gave him the tape and he was fine for.

And he had a work.

He had a trial game on the weekend, but luckily, like I said, it wasn't a major issue.

So we could get him back out and play.

But the problem with making children select their sport at seven or eight or five, you know, if they show a bit of talent in something, then it's all, all out.

We must get, you know, Johnny is going to be a professional footballer.

He's going to play for Man United, whatever it is, and they are specializing in football and that's all they do, which is great in terms of if, which is great in terms of developing skills for football.

The downside of it is that they don't build any resilience, so they may be able to dribble a ball like ronaldo when they're 10, they may be, you know, maybe run down a pitch for forever.

That's great, but.

But unfortunately it doesn't build resilience, so it makes them more prone to injury.

Because back in the day we used to play football, we used to play hockey, we used to play volleyball, we used to swim.

All signs of different sports, which builds our muscles and bodies in different ways.

So by the time we get to 14, 15, if we've got talent in a particular sport, specializing at that sort of stage is fine.

Again, there's a risk of overtraining and all that, and that's a whole different issue.

But yeah, one of the reasons that they are more prone to injury now is because they have only done football.

Clubs are becoming more wise to it and if you look at some of the training regimes that they do, they will incorporate lots of different aspects of training.

They won't just train them in football.

But it's still, you know, it's still an issue that needs to be addressed that probably isn't being addressed quite as well as it should do.

I do hear that, and I do hear that children are being children.

People are being selected at younger and younger ages for the elite sport.

So that was very different, totally different training regime in those days.

So I.

But he, he played all sorts of sports.

Yeah, which is what we did back then because there was no, there wasn't as much tied into it as the kids that are under pressure to perform now.

We never had that.

So, yeah, so over training, that's.

That's one that needs to be watched out for.

Youngsters being too sports specific, too young.

I think that's, that's another one to watch out for.

Another one that I was going to bring up was out of date exercises, you know, so sports science constantly evolves and exercises that were done 20 years ago, if your coach has kept up, kept pace with changes, they should be.

They're potentially doing.

They should potentially be doing different things now.

So I think sit ups is a really good example.

Sit ups.

I have nothing against sit ups at all.

Done correctly, they are, they are a good exercise.

A little bit too specific for my taste because they tend to work rectus abdominis, which is a six pack.

And while it is a useful muscle, there are a whole range of other things you should also be working on.

So I'm, I'm more of a fan of dynamic, dynamic exercise.

Like something like planks, for example, or something like side planks, which is even better.

And side planks with rotation, which is even better, still takes the same amount of time as doing a sit up, but actually it's better because it involves a lot more.

Exactly.

It's better because it involves a lot more muscles.

You know, another thing that, that's changed over time, you still, you still might see it on your Sunday football league or something like that is stretching.

So back in the old days, you always used to see the players out on the pitch doing the hamstring stretches and doing calf stretches and those kind of things.

What they have found over the years is actually stretching doesn't reduce injury, doesn't reduce the rate of injury by much, if at all.

Wow, that's.

There you go.

Yeah, so stretching on its own doesn't.

And that's why if you watch any professional sport now, you will not see them doing kind of like the whole, the hamstring stretch or the lunges and those sorts of things.

What they found is that doing as a warmup, whatever sport you're doing, you do that at a lower pace.

So if you're running, you do a light jog.

If you're playing football, if you're a footballer, you'll kick the ball around.

If you are a swimmer, you'll swim, but you'll put your.

Yeah, so you'll get.

So you basically you put your body in a state to do the sport you're going to do.

So the actual static stretches and stuff like that, they, they don't do it because there's no, there was minimal benefit and you'd be better off doing a scaled down version of the sport you're actually going to do.

And like I said, if you watch professional sports, people, whatever the sport is, they, they will always do, you know, whatever the sport is at a lower, lower pace, but they will still do that.

There you go.

I've learned something.

You're welcome, Claire.

So, you know, but that's the thing.

Sports science, science is constantly evolving.

Things are constantly changing.

But unfortunately it can take a while for, particularly at the grassroots level, the more professional levels.

Yes, they have the funding, they have the people that will, it's to their benefit to keep up to date with all the change that are going on.

But you know, at the grassroots level, in the Sunday league, football, that sort of thing, then they don't know or they don't do that research.

And in reality, actually they should, you know, they should keep up to date with what is, what is changing in the sports world.

So, you know.

Yeah.

Wow.

There you go.

That makes so much sense.

Does, doesn't it?

And, you know, I'm thinking back to my competition ballroom days where people used to stretch and do the splits and all sorts.

Didn't need to do that, did they?

No, no, because all you're doing is you're warming up the muscles.

So the stretching, the theory is that you're lengthening the muscles and you're making them more resilient, but actually you're not lengthening the muscles at all.

It takes a lot of work to lengthen a muscle.

So gymnasts can do the splits and all of those sorts of wonderful things, which are amazing.

But actually they are training three, four, five hours a day to stretch.

So if you or I were to stretch, we may be able to, you know, when you start, your hands are on your knees and by the time you finish your stretching, you may be able to get your hands on the floor, but actually you're not lengthening the muscle.

What you're doing is you're changing the neuro.

You're changing the sensitivity of your nervous system.

So when it gets to the end of range, it goes, you know, if you practice that stretch, when it gets to what is perceived as the end of range, because you've been working on.

It's working on the nervous system, the nervous.

It just makes it more tolerant to more stretch.

But you're not actually changing the length, you're changing the sensitivity of the nervous system to the new length.

So it's not a hostile danger.

Exactly.

So if you breathe out as you try, as you stretch, you'll find that you can stretch a little bit further because you're changing the nervous system stimulation rather than changing the length of the muscle.

There you go.

To acknowledge something like that.

Something like that.

And then the last thing I was going to talk about was bodybuilding and all that stuff.

We kind of alluded to it in the previous episode.

But bodybuilding aesthetic, aesthetics, like getting that Love island body.

95% of people do not want a Love island body.

They're not really interested in getting the bulging biceps and all those, you know, those sort of attributes to six pack.

I'm not against all of that.

If that's what you want to do, I have no issue with that at all.

It's actually really hard work.

And although you've got all your influencers and your Instagrammers who look amazing, what they don't tell you and don't show you is the amount of work that goes in.

To have a body like that and the.

And the cutting out fats and the dehydration and all of those other things.

Um, you know, it's well known in the body, bodybuilding circles that to main you cannot maintain that look.

You what, you exercise up to it, you then cut fat, you cut, you dehydrate, you do lots of things to get show ready.

But they're weakest kittens there, there is no strength there because they have push their bodies to the limit to look like that.

It's not a healthy state to be in and you cannot physically maintain that.

The other issue with getting that look is the fact that a lot of the athletes, well, it's well known that if you are in WWF or you are a wrestler of the old school, I don't know about these days, but of the old school they're on, a lot of them are on performance, in housing, performance enhancing drugs.

Because it was all about size, it was all about muscle mass.

The downside of that is it affects your heart, it affects your liver, it affects your kidneys, and again it's not maintainable.

And the mortality rate for high profile wrestlers like Hulk Hogan is pretty poor.

You know, they hit their 50s, 60, 70s and the enlarged heart just cannot cope and they die early, much earlier than they should, you know, so that, and that is another, that is unfortunately that's a price that some people think is worth paying to look the way they do.

I would say I'd rather live longer to be honest.

But so, but again I'm not against bodybuilding in the right way, with the right attitude.

Being aware of the dangers.

There are a lot of people that do take performance enhancing drugs, but it can be done safely.

There is a higher risk, but it can be done safely.

So as long as you are aware of the risks and the dangers of doing that then I won't say that I approve.

But you know, being aware is most of the battle.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

I see if we scale that back a little bit, quite a lot.

I've dealt with clients where they've had very low self esteem issues and that's because of the comparison on what social media gives you.

And it's about working out what is real and what is perfection and actually being enough is it is enough.

And sometimes it's just unrealistic to even attempt to try and be like some of the influence on social media.

So I think social media has a massive part to play in people's mental health and that's one of the aspects of it.

And the other aspect that I see is in the possibility of Eating disorders because again, that is a way where people try and control how they look.

Body dysmorphia.

And that is a huge problem, particularly it's not just for young women because there are men that suffer from eating disorders as well, more and more.

But it is a real problem for young women and there is a high mortality rate with it.

And unfortunately there isn't the support really in the country to deal with it.

There is support until the age of 18 but then it just absolutely falls off the cliff and you're very much left to your own devices.

But it affects, you know, it does affect how you live your life.

It affects your relationships, it affects your fertility, affects everything.

So.

And a lot of it is promoted on social media.

This is the look that you should have and that's the big worry in terms of mental health.

Yeah, but it's not just social media, it's also on the tv.

It's like you were alluding earlier on, it's like Love island and a lot of programs like that where people have what looks like the ideal physique.

But actually it may look great if you, if that, that's what you have been led to believe is a great physique.

But actually it's not healthy.

No, I think, I think what is good though is I see a lot more brands now using normal size sized models which is, that's, that is really, really good because unless you see it, you can't believe it.

You can't believe in it really.

So I think it's, it's good to have a diversity of model and make it look like real life.

Yeah.

These real people.

Yes, yes, yes, that's real people.

That's a novel too, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

But that would be my biggest thing that I see is body image issues, body dysmorphia and then at the sort of addiction and then eating disorders which are very, they're really, they're really cruel.

Can be.

Yeah, yeah.

Maybe we could do.

Or maybe we.

I say maybe we, maybe you could do something on body dysmorphia and cover some of the issue, some of the more mental health related aspects of some of the topics that we've covered.

So I think that I think people would be quite interested to understand.

Well, okay, where am I?

Is this healthy?

Is this not?

If it isn't healthy, what can I do?

So what we can do is we've covered a few of the things that are not great about exercise, movement, medicine.

So we will put some links in the show.

Notes to if you feel that you are having a problem, these are references that you can go to to find more information.

So we can do that.

And having done all of that now, why don't we talk about, give some people some ideas about where they can go if they want to get a bit fitter and a bit healthier.

Because we've just talked about all the things, all the, all the things that they don't want to be doing.

So, yeah, I mean, I know you dance and I know you go to the gym.

So what we can do is we can drop some links in the show, notes about the gym that you go to.

If people are interested in going to a dance class or two, we can make some recommendations for that.

I'm happy to put some references in about martial arts stuff if you're interested in doing martial arts.

I can also put some stuff in about personal trainers.

So personal trainers are always good.

If you want to start and you're not confident enough to go to the gym but you want to start doing some exercise, there's some personal trainers I can recommend for that.

There's a couple of links to YouTube fitness professionals who are really, really, really good and I'm happy to recommend.

But yeah, so we can put some stuff in the show, notes about people and, and things that we would recommend.

I can also put a link in.

If you're not sure what exercise that you.

For people.

If people aren't sure about the exercise that they're best suited for, there's a little quiz that you put in your height, weight, what sort you know, whether you're, whether, whether you prefer a solo activity or group activity.

And at the end of it it can make some recommendations about different types of exercises that you can do.

So we can do that as well.

Yeah, that sounds fantastic.

Actually, I might try that myself.

Might come up with archery or something.

I might, yeah, my came up with, which is fair enough, but I think it might come up with archery.

I can't remember.

But anyway, yeah, so we have gone through three whole episodes of the podcast on, on Exercise Do's Don'ts and what not to do and, and made some recommendations about what you can do.

So that is it for now.

We will be back in.

We will have another episode and I don't even know what we're going to talk about in that one.

No, it'll be a surprise.

It'll be a surprise for you and us.

So it's goodbye from Bob and me.

Clara, pass it out.