[buzzsprout episode=’7590661′ player=’true’]
Joané & Jonathan: (00:03)
Hi, I’m Joané Hart and I’m Jonathan Hart. This is the Hart of Health. A show where we focus mainly on health and self optimization. Here, we like to talk about our experiences and knowledge when it comes to health and biohacking. Hope you enjoy the show.
Jonathan: (00:24)
Hey everyone! On today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about exercise and what exercise you should be doing to get you to your goals.
Joané: (00:46)
Yeah, it’s quite a cool topic. We like to talk about diet a lot, but I thought it’d be fun to talk about exercise for a bit.
Jonathan: (00:56)
Yeah. Even though it is lower on the priorities list compared to things like sleep and diet, exercise is still definitely a vital part of health and with complete sedentary lifestyles, it’s definitely not going to be.
Joané: (01:16)
No, like a lot of people only consider exercise when they want to lose weight or build muscle, but there are so many reasons why you should exercise and why it’s good to exercise. And also, depending on your goals, you should do different types of exercises.
Jonathan: (01:35)
Yeah. So, that’s obviously the first thing you’ve got to do then is establish what are your goals and the goals are obviously going to be more physical, but there can be many different factors that exercise can help with. So you can basically choose any goal and you can look at how exercise can help you achieve those goals.
Joané: (02:01)
Okay. So let’s start with the first goal, longevity. So if you are aiming for longevity, how should you approach exercise?
Jonathan: (02:14)
Yeah. Well, obviously the recovery becomes more of a focus in your exercise because I don’t know if you can safely say that constantly overtraining and pushing yourself really hard, is going to have a net longevity outcome. You obviously chose the hardest subject first, the hardest goals. Obviously, longevity research is very, you know, debatable because it’s very difficult to get proper studies.
Joané: (02:49)
Yes. But I do feel that there are really cool and important points that we can mention that are important. And why I mentioned longevity first is because I feel like that’s the thing that even people who don’t have any aesthetic goals that don’t really want to change the way they look ,should keep in mind. You know? So I think that longevity is the most important one to mention because it’s something that everybody should be aiming for. Like people who do exercise regularly, they have better heart health. Your exercise improves your circulation, which is good. It can help with mobility too. I love the phrase, “If you don’t use it, you lose it”. So if you’re just going to sit all the time and not use your muscles, then your body’s not gonna spend that much time preserving your muscles.
Joané: (03:44)
And you know, you get this thing called sarcopenia, which is age-related muscle loss. If you don’t want to be frail and if you want to reduce the chances of you falling and breaking a hip when you’re older and getting some injury that will make it that you end up in the hospital where you can contract some sort of infection and die. You want to be able to do as much as possible when you’re older and having enough muscle helps with that. But also if you don’t want to have your body eat the muscles in your legs and your legs aren’t that strong and you can’t walk as well when you’re older, that’s going to suck. But if you keep things like that in mind, when you’re younger and start building muscle, which is also like weight-bearing exercises which are good for bone density. So, you’re really going to reduce your chances of getting an injury when you’re older, just by doing certain exercises when you’re younger.
Jonathan: (04:57)
Yeah. So that’s obviously according to the lifestyle you can expect. Nowadays I think obviously the further back you go, the more exercise was probably related to survival, like survival of the fastest. Like literally the fittest was sort of a thing. And now in today’s society, like you said, most people actually are kind of dying from just withering away from old. You can’t even say it’s old age, but over time, the system slowly starts shutting down and then eventually, it’s the end of the line for some people, some system fails and then basically all systems collapse and then that’s how you die. So exercise is one of those ones that can prevent probably one of the more common deaths associated with old age. And that’s like you said, you fall, you break something, go to the hospital, contract pneumonia, and then you just don’t make it out of that pneumonia. So having strong legs definitely helps you in preventing that from happening sooner.
Joané: (06:12)
Oh yeah. And there are a bunch of little tests that you can do. Obviously, you can see how many pushups or pull ups or things like that you can do. But I know they say that if you can get up from the ground without using your hands, that’s also an indicator of how well you will age physically. And I can’t remember where I read this or heard this, but they said that dancing and racquet sport activities have been associated with better ageing. I think it has to do with the types of movement and hops. You’re a bit more agile, you know what I mean?
Jonathan: (07:03)
Yeah. So this is obviously if you’re now light on your feet, your chances of falling and breaking something also get reduced. It’s not just about having strong legs. Yes, strong legs are one of the ways in which you can make sure that you don’t fall and break a hip at a younger age, younger being like maybe 70, you could break your hip where if you had stronger legs, you break your hip after a hundred, who knows, you know? Being light on your feet is very good for preventing a fall because obviously if you have very stiff, strong legs and you’re not very supple, mobile, or quick, you could still fall and your bones could still be more on the brittle side. And yeah, being able to sort of catch yourself and not fall as easily is obviously then going to improve your odds of that specific outcome, which seems to be very, very prevalent for the elderly nowadays.
Joané: (08:03)
So far for ageing and longevity, we have strength and resistance training exercises. Trying to build strong legs, something that will help you be lighter on your feet. And what’s also cool about dancing and racquet sports, is you have to use your brain and it helps with coordination. Then another thing is autophagy, which is your body’s sort of recycling process, is increased when you do aerobic exercises and when fasting. Autophagy is very important for ageing. When you are in a state of autophagy, then your body has a chance to eat all the damaged cells that cause inflammation that could maybe turn into cancer. So autophagy is definitely a very important consideration and exercise on its own can stimulate autophagy, especially if you do it in the morning. But I think they particularly looked at aerobic exercise and fostered cardio for autophagy stimulation. So you can cycle or you can ride a bike, which is also lighter on the joints. So if you’re already a bit older, riding a bike will be a way better exercise option.
Jonathan: (09:23)
And swimming is the least impactful. The lower your ability, the more you should move towards water activity because you can do that pretty safely as well.
Joané: (09:38)
Yeah. So swimming is a great option. Especially for people who have arthritis, because the water can relieve some of the pain and pressure on the joints. Also for people who are very overweight.
Jonathan: (09:50)
Yeah. So those are some really good highlights of how you can use exercise for longevity.
Joané: (09:55)
Yes. Next goal…
Jonathan: (09:58)
Yeah. There’s probably actually too many goals to cover just in this one, but probably the most common ones we’ll go with. So the next common one would probably be aesthetics.
Joané: (10:06)
Well, there are two. So you have muscle building and then fat loss.
Jonathan: (10:14)
Both are included in aesthetics.
Joané: (10:18)
Which one are we starting with?
Jonathan: (10:19)
So basically it’s not always that way, but it’s generally the guys want to build the muscle and the girls want to lose the fat
Joané: (10:28)
Nowadays more and more girls are trying to build muscle and it’s awesome. Because we’re trying to build our butts, you know?
Jonathan: (10:34)
Yeah. I think it is important for women to maintain a healthy muscle mass. I’m definitely for that. I’m just saying the general trend for people who are looking for aesthetics are guys wanting to put on more muscle mass and girls wanting to be more slender, but I’d say we should actually try and meet in the middle and we should all be balanced. You shouldn’t be a really fat muscular guy and you shouldn’t be a really skinny woman with no muscles. That’s not the right sort of goal. We should all be well-toned and well-muscled and low body fat.
Joané: (11:14)
And to build muscle, you’re going to have to do some weight-bearing exercise and resistance training exercise. Bodyweight exercise is great, but I think working with weights is better, but keeping rep count in mind is very important when it comes to building muscle.
Jonathan: (11:35)
Yeah. Your hypertrophy is anything after six and anything lower than twelve.
Speaker 2: (11:42)
So, hypertrophy is muscle building.
Jonathan: (11:44)
This is reps in a set and you should almost make it 70% of your max, your one-rep max. And not everyone knows the wonder of max, but you can say like, if I’m doing eight, then I should have been able to like, if I really pushed it, done the extra three or five reps. So, you never want to go to failure in every session. You can do specific sessions where you specifically try and stress your muscles, but then make sure you recover extra after that because your benefits are in the recovery. Like we’ve said before, that’s for muscle building. And so for anyone, if you want to increase your muscle size, you’re looking for that rep zone where you’re having that percentage, 70% or 80% of your one-rep max as your load or your difficulty and are more than six and less than twelve reps.
Joané: (12:49)
And muscle building is also very important for people who want to lose fat because the more muscle you have, the more calories, the more energy you burn in a day. So, your basal metabolic rate will be higher. If you want to lose fat, especially if you want to build a nice shape, you don’t want to just lose weight because then you can break down muscle. You can get this really skinny look, skinny-fat even. But if you can build muscle, then you’re going to build a nice shape. So then when you lose the fat, then you’re going to look better. Plus it’s going to be easier for you to keep the weight off. Because like I said, the more muscle you have, the more energy you burn. If you’re building muscle throughout your fat loss journey, then you’re going to get away with eating more once you’ve lost.
Jonathan: (13:46)
Yeah, that’s what I was saying. It’s actually kind of the same goals for guys and girls. Yes, your exercise program will probably be different, but I think you should have the same goals in mind because it is very aesthetically appealing when a person is well-toned and not…okay, obviously some people feel that really skinny is attractive, but I think people are starting to move on from that. And it’s definitely becoming more of a trend to have a well-muscled man or woman with low body fat.
Joané: (14:25)
Yeah. And even people who are thin, they’re not big, they’re quite small, are trying to build muscle because they don’t want to just be skinny. Like, you know, the Victoria’s Secret models I love, but they try to build a bit of muscle, so that they have a better shape. You know, you do get like fashion models who don’t really have a lot of muscle tone and they’re skinny. Where you get the type of models, like the Victoria’s Secret Angels where they are skinny, but they have some muscle and that just looks so much healthier.
Jonathan: (14:55)
Yeah. So obviously this is all subjective, but it is a common trend.
Joané: (15:00)
So, I love the concept of the whole body recomposition thing. Where you’re not necessarily just aiming for muscle building. So like a lot of people go through like bulking and cutting phases. So they’ll bulk and they’ll just eat a lot and gain, but they’ll gain like a lot of muscle and fat. So that’s why you see a lot of bodybuilders ending up looking fat sometimes. That’s because they bulk and they gain fat and maybe do that for six months and then they diet and lose fat for six months. But with the body recomposition strategy, which is almost kind of like a lean bulk, you’re not eating way above what you’re burning. You’re kind of eating close to your maintenance. So they say you should aim for body recomposition so, you’re gonna build muscle and lose fat kind of at the same time.
Jonathan: (15:56)
Well, you have to separate them within the cycle of your day.
Joané: (16:00)
Yeah. Obviously like in your eating window. So you have your anabolic window and your catabolic window. So you have your eating window in the day. So you say you’re going to eat from eight o’clock in the morning and stop at eight o’clock at night. That’s going to be your muscle-building stage of the day. But then while you’re fasting overnight, that’s going to be like fat loss in the morning. So you have to pick a main goal. If your main goal is muscle building, then they say you should eat slightly above maintenance calories. And if your main goal is fat loss, you should eat slightly below maintenance calories, but not so much because you want to support the muscle growth. And you also don’t want to eat well above muscle build maintenance, because then you’ll probably gain more fat. So then you’ll see people who have these incredible transformations where they weigh more than they did before, but they’ve lost so much fat and they look so much better and healthier, but they weigh the same. And that’s because they did like a whole-body recomposition thing where they lost fat and both muscle. And I think that’s a cool approach, full-body recomposition.
Jonathan: (17:18)
Yeah. Obviously, I don’t know the research on that, but I’m pretty sure it sounds like it’s a more efficient way to get to an aesthetic goal. I’m not saying there’s any sort of science backing this, but I also feel like it would be a bit healthier to not have these drastic swings, like you’re really pushing up your weight then you’re really drastically reducing and then really pushing it up. Cycle your diet and go through times where you have more carbs and times where you go more keto and times where you fast less and where you fast more and change those things up. But these extreme swings that the bodybuilders go through, I think its not that great for your health in general.
Joané: (18:09)
And the thing is if you diet like very strictly and reduce your calories a lot, then you going to lower your basal metabolic rate and you risk damaging your metabolism. So a lot of people choose to do body recomposition as a strategy, which does take longer than a more aggressive, fat loss approach. But you don’t damage your metabolism as much, which means that yes, you lose the fat, but because now you’ve taken longer to do it, you haven’t done it in such a drastic way and you built the muscle. You’ll maybe be able to eat like two and a half thousand calories once you’ve reached your goal weight and maintain your goal. Whereas if you just did an aggressive fat loss strategy, you might have to eat 1,700 calories a day to maintain. So you’re going to be much happier after you’ve reached your goal with this type of approach, because you wouldn’t have damaged your metabolism as much.
Jonathan: (19:11)
So yeah, it’s very important because you do want to try and keep your mitochondria in good working health. And often, if you keep restricting for too long, then it can do a little bit of damage that might take a bit of time to recover from. And for me, that’s a waste of time.
Joané: (19:34)
We have to talk about what exercise is best for muscle building. So like weights, but like for fat loss, you don’t want to do very, very, very long cardio sessions for fat loss and for muscle building, okay? Walking is great if it’s very light. So walking, that you can do for longer, but don’t go for a three-hour run.
Jonathan: (20:00)
Yeah. I don’t do like a hundred-mile bicycle race or any like sort of marathon kind of event. It’s not really the best for muscle, like muscle and ultras. Don’t really go well together.
Joané: (20:13)
Yeah. Because if you’ve run like 50 miles and your body needs energy, then it’s going to break down your muscle. If you look at a lot of people who are ultra marathoners, they don’t have very big muscles, often long distance athletes they’ll have like some extra belly fat but often they won’t have a lot of leg muscles or butt muscles, but then you look at sprinters and they have like really well-developed glutes. All their muscles are very well developed.
Jonathan: (20:45)
Yeah. Obviously, they’re working not necessarily to build muscle. Sprinters, their goal is speed and speed comes with power. So they’re doing more power training. That’s obviously a different goal. So we’re still talking about aesthetics. And the last thing I would think I can bring up about aesthetics, is you don’t want to do very isolated exercises and a low variety of exercises because the shape of your muscles is also important and getting a large variety of different exercises. Like you said, resistance and sprints and you know, there’s a lot of different resistance exercises you can do in different ways to do them. And I think the more, the better. And don’t forget to include range of motion, because as soon as you start losing range of motion, you get very tight looks where you almost feel like, wow, this person can’t even touch their hands behind their back because they’re so tied up. Like for me, that’s not aesthetically appealing, but the way you counteract that is by including range of motion, things like stretching and stuff into your routine and actually make it a priority.
Joané: (22:05)
Yeah. And what I can say with exercise and aesthetics is, if you do more resistance training and HIIT. So that’s why I brought up the sprinting thing is you’re going to do like these sprints. And if you do interval training where you sprint, rest, sprint, rest, and you do that for 20 minutes, that can be way better for fat loss than going for an hour-long run. So HIIT training is very effective for fat loss and you actually end up burning more energy after the workout has stopped. And that’s actually the same with resistance training overall. So if you do a weightlifting workout, even after you stop exercising, you’re going to burn more energy. If you do a 20-minute sprint session, you’re going to burn more energy after the workout is finished. And that is something to keep in mind when it comes to fat loss. And they’re also wonderful for muscle building. So it’s like a bonus.
Jonathan: (23:10)
So that’s aesthetics.
Joané: (23:12)
What other goals?
Jonathan: (23:15)
So yeah, some people might just want to get stronger.
Joané: (23:18)
Yeah, getting stronger.
Jonathan: (23:20)
Some people are just like, I want to be able to lift more weights, specifically. Some people are just like, no, I want to be able to lift a car off a loved one or whatever, if it falls on top of them for whatever reason. You can have any reason to want to be stronger. But if you want to be stronger, it kind of changes the way you do your exercises.
Joané: (23:44)
Yeah. Well obviously if you want to be stronger, you’re going to focus on how much weight you can lift. If you are trying to do callisthenics and you can’t do a pull-up, you may want to get stronger so that you can not only do a pull-up but do like 50 pull-ups or do all those crazy tricks that people do with that kind of activity.
Jonathan: (24:11)
Yeah. So obviously strength is a very broad subject. That’s why I said there are many things. You have to ask yourself, okay, what do I want to be strong for? Then, you’ve got to basically do progressive overload in whatever that thing is. So like you said, pull-ups. So you can’t even do one pull-up, but you want to be the next greatest callisthenics person. You’re going to have to, you know, basically, start from scratch by trying to get to one pull up. So then you want to try and structure your reps to be less than six. So you want to try and like, let’s say you can’t do a pull-up you want to try and find a way to make that pull up just easy enough to do five or six or less than that, even. So even if you can just find a way to make it easier for you to do one, it’s fine. And if you can find a way for you to do six, it’s also fine and anywhere in between. Because that’s where you’re developing more, the strength of that exercise and not the hypertrophy or muscle building or endurance because that’s after twelve reps.
Joané: (25:22)
Yes. As you said, it depends on what you’re training for. So if lifting very heavy things is your goal, then obviously you’re going to do more weight stuff and callisthenics as you go. You’re going to do more of that stuff. If you want to be good with like obstacle course training or you want to join the army and want to be able to do the training, well, then you’re going to do more pull-ups and push-ups and doing things that you know, will give you an advantage in those things, like rope climbs and rock climbing.
Jonathan: (26:00)
So the thing with strength is that it’s not only as important for being strong. It actually translates also to endurance because it’s the same with speed, like speed training for long-distance runners is still important because the faster they can run, the faster they can run at a slower pace. So by increasing their top speed, they increase their cruising speed at the same time. So you’re doing a lower percentage of your maximum. So you’re able to sustain a faster pace for a longer duration. And that’s why I think strength is important for even the endurance guys to pay attention to because you know, you’d rather be doing 60% of your max effort, so you’re not running a 60%. You can go for 30 minutes if you’re still a beginner. How long do you think you can go for at a hundred percent? Like one minute? So by getting your a hundred percent faster, it automatically lifts your 60% with it. So for any endurance sports, it actually also becomes important to be strong. So just before you think, Oh yeah, I’m not a strength athlete. Strength is important for you guys too.
Joané: (27:26)
Yeah. For me, I’d love to be stronger. Well, I get excited when I feel that I am stronger than I was before, because it makes me feel more independent because you know, like obviously, you’re way stronger than I am. And if I want to lift something very heavy, sometimes I have to rely on you. However, over time, I’ve been able to carry some of the heavier boxes. Say if we’ve been moving or things like that. And I feel like it’s kind of empowering. It’s very empowering to build strength and I could help out more. It’s not like I don’t want to ask you for help, but it’s just not always necessary anymore. And that’s quite nice.
Jonathan: (28:12)
Yeah. That’s another example of ways that being strong is beneficial. I do feel like being weak and frail is in no way an advantage. And I don’t think anyone…Okay, there’s always someone who enjoys being frail and treated like an old person, but in general, the majority of the population are not interested. Like you can see like, Oh, I don’t want to get old and frail, like that’s definitely an emerging sentiment.
Joané: (28:42)
I want to reduce the chances that I’ll have to depend on other people or limit how much I will have to depend on other people just by being as strong as possible.
Jonathan: (28:53)
Yeah and if you get yourself in a sticky situation, like you slip in the bath or whatever happens, if you’re unable to get yourself out of that situation, it obviously makes it a much more dangerous situation. You can get stuck somewhere and if you’re isolated or anything, you can be stuck there for a very long time and that could be problematic.
Joané: (29:19)
Yeah. So I definitely associate strength with independence. So another exercise goal, and one of my main ones is mental health. So how should you exercise for mental health? Well, I’ll start because I’m the one with anxiety. So exercising at the time when you are the most anxious is beneficial. I think most people are more anxious in the mornings because cortisol levels are generally higher in the mornings and exercise helps a lot. So this is not necessarily about the type of exercise, but when you exercise. Sometimes in the middle of the day, if I’m feeling stressed out with work, then I’ll take a break and do some exercise. And that has been the most effective thing that I have found for anxiety and my mental health. When you exercise, you do release all these feel-good chemicals and things, which help.
Joané: (30:28)
But one way that exercise helps with your mental health is it gives you something to be proud of. So if you are feeling low and you’re struggling to get out of bed and you’re not really doing much, if you just do one, 10-minute workout session, you’re going to feel so much better about yourself and feel like you’re doing something to improve your circumstances. One thing that’s very important to keep in mind is if you are say, anxious and you are in the fight or flight mode in nature, if you are faced with a lion or somebody who’s trying to attack you and you’re in a stressful situation, you release a lot of cortisol and adrenaline and it’s called fight or flight because you’re supposed to fight or take flight. And you know, so many times we’re stressed and anxious and we just stay seated behind our computers and we feel anxious.
Joané: (31:26)
And now we have this adrenaline and cortisol, but we’re not releasing it. Movement and breathing is so important when you feel anxious and stressed. If your mental health is taking strain move and move your body in any way, because here, all exercise is beneficial. It helps if there is a little bit more effort behind it, you know, because that will get you released quicker. So a slow walk is nice, but a short HIIT training session will give me that release and anxiety relief much quicker. And weight training is the quickest. Well dancing, but like dancing is my happy place as well, but I will keep a kettlebell next to me when I’m working and sometimes I’ll just get up and do a few kettlebell swings or squats. And I feel better after just one set.
Jonathan: (32:28)
Yeah. So obviously when you wake up in the morning, it’s often that the wake-up session of your morning is part of the cortisol spike for the day. So you often do have a lot of the stress hormones circulating in your body during the morning. I wouldn’t say that mass muscle exercises are as effective in the morning. I’ve seen studies to suggest that you get better benefits from muscle building in the afternoon, but you know, it’s not important if mental health is more important because if you prioritize the mental health above the muscle-building effects, then you use the exercise when it’s actually the most relevant to your current goal. So, this is why you’ve got to actually think about these things and prioritize like, Oh, am I exercising just to look good? Or am I exercising for my mental health? Or, you know, name it, strength, speed, or endurance. You’ve got to keep that in mind. You can’t just blindly go and just do any kind of exercise program and hope that Oh yeah, I’m doing something. So like the more specific you make your workout program to your goals, the better the results will be because they’ll be more effective, obviously being in line with the right thing.
Joané: (33:52)
I mean, you’ll have to experiment to see what will work best for you in terms of mental health. I think I heard once that if you’re doing some sort of a cardio exercise for your mental health, it might take a few days or weeks for you to really feel the benefits of it, where with resistance training, so weight type training, the benefits you get a lot quicker. But I mean, if you’ve been running for two weeks and now you’ve gotten those benefits, every time you go for a run now, you’re going to get that anxiety or depression relieving benefits. So you just might have to be a bit more patient before you really start to feel the benefits of cardio and aerobic type exercises, where with resistance, you feel it sooner. I think a combination of that is great. HIIT you’ll feel sooner, but I think a combination is good.
Joané: (34:47)
If dancing makes you really happy and you feel anxious in the morning and you don’t have a lot of time to work out, just play a song and dance around for one song and you’ll also feel better if you enjoy dancing. I mean, that applies to anything. If you don’t have time for three, four, or five minutes in the morning, do some squats or do some pushups, just do a little bit while you’re waiting for the coffee, do some pushups against the counter, you know? A lot of people do that. They wake up and then they don’t schedule in a lot of time in the day to exercise, but while they’re brushing their teeth, they’re doing squats and you know, like I joke the pushups against the counter. So they’ll just do like five minutes of exercise in the morning to help them get that cortisol release.
Joané: (35:41)
And you don’t have to do it for like half an hour, but just doing some movement in the morning will help a lot. It doesn’t have to be full workout. So for me, a lot of days, I don’t do my full workout session in the morning that I’ve planned for that day. If I know, okay, I have to get going with work, I’m going to do this workout session later. I’ll just do five minutes of something. So a little five minute HIIT training session or Divido or whatever. And then I’ve gotten some release, I feel better and then I can start work.
Jonathan: (36:19)
Yeah and that’s your specific recipe that you find works well for you. I think that’s a good idea for anyone who’s got anxiety to give that a shot.
Joané: (36:29)
And experiment with different types of exercises.
Jonathan: (36:31)
Yeah. And then obviously, mental health is a very complex issue, but even just the act of getting your blood pumping is really going to help your brain’s health. So the actual direct health of your brain, and then like you said, the de-stressing aspects. There are so many ways in which your brain will be affected by exercise. That’s why it’s one of the important pillars, because it’s super important. I mean, you get these scientists who are so intellectual and have these sort of superpower computer brains that everyone goes like, Oh my word, you’re so smart. But sometimes you get the situation where they have zero physical sort of anything they do. Like maybe the most they do is walk or something, you know, like at max and it’s not that much. They spend the majority of their day seated, not getting out in the sun or nothing, you know? So I don’t think that unlocks the full potential of your brain. And I think if those people were to try and actually bring some balance like exercise and actually have some resistance training in their life, they actually might get a better brain from doing those things.
Joané: (37:54)
Doesn’t lactic acid help you with concentration and focus and a healthier brain?
Jonathan: (38:02)
I don’t know that for sure.
Joané: (38:04)
Okay, don’t quote me on this, but I heard on a YouTube video that they said that if you make more lactic acid, that helps you concentrate better afterwards. I don’t know if that’s exactly true, but I do know that if I work out, it helps me focus better with work. So sometimes I’ve been working for a few hours, I’m struggling to concentrate, then I’ll do like a 20 minute, 30-minute workout. And then my focus is so much better afterwards and then I always remember that and then wonder if that’s the reason why. So it’s like your performance with work could be even better if you do more exercise. And also what a lot of people do is… If you go for a walk, if you go to the gym, you’re stepping away from work, you’re kind of creating like white space and giving yourself time. So now you’re stepping away from the project, you’re giving your subconscious time to work on it. Maybe during the workout, you’re thinking about this problem and working on it and it could help you solve a few problems with work.
Jonathan: (39:15)
Yeah. Often it’s no use just grinding away at something until you eventually grind out the completion of the task or whatever you have going. I do think it’s good to sometimes just step away. And obviously, like you said, having a workout, it’s obviously going to help take your mind off the current task. Then that kind of gives you a break that might just spark a new insight or a bit more focus when returning to that task.
Joané: (39:47)
And I like balancing the mental work with doing something a little more physical. So if I do take a break from work, I try to move my body in some way. I feel like that makes me feel like I’m being so much more productive in my day because I’m adding more of that physical exercise in between the mental stuff.
Jonathan: (40:13)
Yeah. Which is very balanced, which I think is important for optimal performance in every regard. I don’t know what other goals we can mention, so we can pretty much leave. That was probably one of the more common goals people would have, and maybe some of them, you didn’t expect exercise to have a role in like mental health and the other ones were very obvious, but hopefully, you still learn something about those. If you want us to talk about a specific goal that you have, and you want to know how exercise can be involved in that process, you can let us know, reach out to us and comment. We will look at adding that to our podcast in the future. We are always keen to get input from our audience and hear what you guys think. We are enjoying doing this. It’s been great fun. And yeah, we haven’t scratched the surface. These issues can get really deep. The rabbit hole goes very far, so don’t be afraid to ask crazy questions.
Joané: (41:34)
There are so many questions about health that we have not answered or spoken about on this podcast, but that’s the nice thing, you know, every week we could talk about something else.
Jonathan: (41:44)
Yeah, and it’s always good to know what people are interested to hear.
Joané & Jonathan: (41:50)
Cool. Until next week, bye for now.