For a Better Work Out, Think Like a Kid
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Summary
Daryl Edwards is the founder of the Primal Play Method, a movement that aims to get you moving like an animal and a child. Today on the show, we discuss the epidemic of sedentariness which besets both adults and children, and why technology and willpower isn t the cure.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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According to some estimates, only 5% of people in the West get the recommended amount of daily
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physical activity. Is the solution getting a fitness tracker, developing more discipline,
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or buying a piece of cardio equipment for your basement? My guess would say none of the above.
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It would have you think about kids playing at recess instead.
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Daryl Edwards is the founder of the Primal Play Method. Today on the show, we discuss the epidemic
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of sedentariness, which besets both adults and children, and why technology and willpower isn't
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the cure. Daryl then explains why a better solution to getting more movement and physical activity in
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our lives is rediscovering the intrinsically motivating pleasure of play. He offers
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suggestions on how to do that, including compiling a play history for your life, embracing primal
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movements that will get you moving like an animal and a child, and getting over the fear of looking
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goofy while doing so. We discuss the joys and health benefits of exploring your capabilities
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and environment, and how to incorporate more movement into your busy adult life by making
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even regular activities more playful. After the show's over, check out our show notes at
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aom.is slash primalplay. All right, Daryl Edwards, welcome to the show.
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So you are a former investment banker technologist turned movement coach. That's quite the change
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Yeah, it was really a switch that was fueled by a personal health scare. You can't really
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put a price on well-being. And even though I was working in a very lucrative environment,
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a meritocracy, for sure, it became evident that a sedentary lifestyle led to a direct negative
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impact on my health. So I was subject to an annual health check. And this health check told
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me I was pre-diabetic, very close to full-blown type 2 diabetes. I had significant hypertension,
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so high blood pressure, elevated blood pressure. And I was also dealing with a poor lipid profile.
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So basically, elevated triglycerides, really bad cholesterol profile, which meant I had an
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elevated risk of a heart attack or a stroke. So that led me to asking my doctor if I could
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avoid the meds, at least temporarily, whilst I investigate a lifestyle change. And that lifestyle
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change was basically starting an exercise program. I was aware that exercise could help with blood
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pressure. So I was like, let me at least try and sort out my blood pressure before I'm given this
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cocktail of medication. And so fortunately, my doctor was on board with that. He gave me one to two
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months to start a lifestyle transition. And within that time, fortunately, my blood pressure normalized,
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my lipid profile improved, my blood sugars normalized. So I was no longer in that danger zone,
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and I was no longer needing to take medication. So that was the sort of the first pivotal point of me
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questioning what I was doing with my life and the type of work that I was doing, which was very sedentary.
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Okay. So you started a regular exercise program. What got you into this idea of primal movement? How'd
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Yeah. So I became very evangelical about movement and physical activity. I joined a gym,
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you know, hefty membership, you know, had the fluffy towels, had the sauna and spa. And I was inspired by
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watching the making of the movie 300. So this was in the early, early 2000s. And I was inspired by the
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director speaking about the actors and the stunt men and women training for life. He wanted you as the
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viewer to believe that these people on screen could move in this way, could fight in this way,
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not just choreographed, but it actually had the functional capability. So once I realized that
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movement was beneficial for my health, I had a second thought around, how can I make myself
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improve functionally? How can I maintain independence as I age? How can I work on a wide repertoire of
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movement? So that's when I came across primal instinctive movement, natural movement. So I pivoted away,
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away from a sedentary job and wanting to get more physical activity into my day. I recognized there
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was a crisis of movement. We clearly are in a crisis of movement. We're becoming more sedentary
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during our days, our working days, when we're back at home on our commutes to work. And so I wanted to
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find the minimal dose of movement that was going to give me maximal health benefits.
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And we're going to talk about what primal movement looks like, natural movement looks like. Before
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we do, let's just talk about that, pick up where you're talking about, how we're more sedentary in
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the West today. What is the state of physical activity in Western countries? Like how many adults
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are getting the daily recommended amount of physical activity each day?
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I mean, it's pretty dismal. So if we look at statistics from the American Heart Association,
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they show that sedentary jobs have increased 83% since the fifties. We know when we look at the
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world around us, even within our own lifetimes, the difference between physical activity levels
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when I was a kid in comparison to now, less reliance on technology, less reliance on labor-saving
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devices. We can do a lot more in our chairs, right? Because of screens. So we've engineered an
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environment, which means we're less likely to move. We've engineered movement out of our
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environments. And so in terms of the number of adults meeting the physical activity guidelines
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So that's 150 minutes of cardiovascular, cardio aerobic activity per week, plus two sessions of
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resistance training per week. Those are the physical activity guidelines for adults. So when you look at
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the headline stats, we're looking at about 23 to 33% in various countries in the Western world who are
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meeting the guidelines, which is poor. But when you take out self-reporting, so in other words, when
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individuals are tracked to see if they meet the guidelines, then that number reduces to about 5%.
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So only 5% of adults in the UK, in the US, in other Western countries are meeting the physical
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activity guidelines. And most of that 5% is actually just meeting the aerobic component.
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So not necessarily the resistance training, the strength training activities. So the numbers are
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likely to be even less. And unfortunately, this isn't just an adult problem. For children, it's even worse.
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Only 20% of children globally meet the physical activity guidelines. And when we look at industrialized
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countries, like in the West, you're down to single digits. So anywhere between 5% and 8% of children
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meet the activity guidelines. So there you're talking about 60 minutes per day of moderate to vigorous
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intensity physical activity and, you know, bone building activities such as climbing, you know,
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doing piggyback rides and the like. So we really are in a epidemic of physical inactivity.
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And the numbers are getting worse. So post-COVID, we're moving even less in a post-COVID world.
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So to give an example of that, I read some research recently talking about the amount of free
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unsupervised play, outdoor play, that kids are exposed to nowadays post-COVID.
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And it's about seven minutes per week, seven minutes per week of you go outside and do whatever
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you want type of play. So supervised play, supervised sports has taken over meeting, trying to meet the
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requirements of physical activity for our kids. But unfortunately, our kids are not doing enough.
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And what have been the consequences of this increasing sedentary lifestyle?
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So we have a significant impact to our health. So it increases the risk of premature death.
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So all cause mortality, basically any cause of death you can think of, you increase the onset,
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you increase the likelihood, you increase the severity, being physically inactive or sedentary
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versus those who meet the physical activity guidelines. And there's an increase in obesity,
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there's increase in heart disease, there's increase in type 2 diabetes, there's increase in various
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cancers. And there's a significant health cost globally to our healthcare systems. So it's
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the kind of poor relation when it comes to lifestyle discussions. You know, there's lots of discussions
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about diet. People are talking about improving sleep quality, you know, improving your gut microbiome,
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improving your breathing. There are all these kind of interventions, which are openly discussed,
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and people maintain that there's a benefit in trying to achieve goals in relation to those areas. But when it
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comes to physical activity, it's often overlooked. It's certainly very difficult for us to integrate
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into our very busy lives. And so there's a health consequence, which can only be reversed by moving
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more, moving the right types of activities that will reduce the risk of chronic lifestyle disease.
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Well, in your work, you've talked about some of our responses to this increase in being sedentary.
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So to help people get moving more. And one thing humans typically do when they have a problem,
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they first, we typically turn to technology. Maybe there's some app or device that can help.
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How have we looked to technology to get us moving more? And has that worked out for us?
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Yeah. So technology, I mean, humans are driven by convenience. So we're constantly thinking of ways
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to make our lives easier, right? Everything from fire to the wheel to, you know, the horse and cart. I mean,
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you think of all the advances where it comes to making it easier for locomotion. So making it easier for
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us to move, making it easier for labor intensive work. So let's reduce the burden of work that we need
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to do by making it easier for ourselves. And now in the kind of technological revolution,
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we now have recognizing the issues around physical inactivity and more screen time, sedentary screen
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time, we have technology options available to us. So as well as being more sedentary than ever before
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in human history, we also have more technology available to us than ever before to attempt to
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solve this problem of physical inactivity, which sounds fantastic until you look at the evidence.
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So we have wearables that can track the amount of physical activity we're doing. They can prompt us
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to move more so they can tell us, Hey, Daryl, you know, you're sitting down for far too long.
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Why don't you get up and move a bit? Why don't you get up and go for a walk? Why don't you exercise as
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much as you did last week? Why don't you do your 30 minutes of, you know, outdoor run today? So we have
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these monitors, these trackables, these wearables that nudge us to hopefully inspire us to more
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activity. Unfortunately, even though they track movement, they don't inspire movement. They don't
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encourage us to do more. They attempt to do so, but there are two issues with wearable technology.
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So one is technology tends to stop us in our tracks. So technology, we find useful when we're
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having these devices that are prompting us to move more. We tend to be more interested in the,
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in the notifications than we are in taking action. So that's the first issue. Secondly,
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we have a honeymoon period with technology. So interestingly, 50% of all wearable tech purchased
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is never worn. We buy it. We're enthusiastic about it. We pop it in a drawer somewhere.
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We never look at it again. Then it becomes outdated. For those who do decide to use those devices
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immediately, there tends to be about a three month honeymoon period where we might be getting excited
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about what this device can do for us in terms of encouraging more movement. So activity monitors
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sound like a great idea, but then 50% of those who decide to use those devices for three months
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don't tend to continue using those devices. So there's a pull to buy newer devices, you know,
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better technology, less likelihood to actually make better use of those technologies. I'm sure you
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remember the Nintendo Wii, you know, sort of 15 years ago or so. Yeah.
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This games console had, you know, the Wii fit, it had this board that you could, you know,
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could track your body composition and, you know, track your weight. And you could play all these
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incredible virtual games, virtual tennis and virtual football. And I remember having fun with my
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children on this device, but there came a time when we just stopped playing it. We didn't maintain
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enthusiasm for this device. And then it's locked away, it's popped into the loft and it just gathers dust.
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Okay. So technology, it could be a tool, maybe, you know, help slightly, but it's not going to
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help you completely to get moving again. So what we typically turn to next is willpower.
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And we start talking to ourselves like a bootcamp instructor or a bootcamp sergeant. You know,
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we got to, you got to grit it out, man. It's, you know, pain is weakness, leaving the body,
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all that sort of stuff. And you argue it might work for a little bit, but eventually that doesn't
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work either. What's going on there? Yeah. Willpower. So if we go back to our biology,
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if we go back, what makes our cells thrive, what does our DNA respond to? So we know our cells thrive
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with regular movements. We know our DNA responds well to movement. We know our mental health responds
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to physical activity. Our mental health benefits from, from physical activity. We know, we know this,
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but what does our body, what do our minds tell us? So our mind is constantly telling us it feels good
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to be sedentary. It feels great in this couch. It feels great resting, relaxing, doing leisurely
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activities at our desk, at our phone. You know, that's what feels good because there's something
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about conserving energy, which had an evolutionary role. So back when we were, our ancestors were
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hunter-gatherers, we had to be really careful about our energy expenditure. It was vital for survival.
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So we had to make decisions, you know, right, we need to go and hunt. We need to go and gather food.
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We need to go and build shelter. We need to make sure we have enough energy reserves to perform those
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tasks, to be able to recover from those tasks, to be able to sustain ourselves until we can next
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to perform those activities. And so movement was part and parcel of day-to-day life. In the 21st century,
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movement is optional. I don't have to go out and hunt or gather my food. I don't have to build my
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shelter. I don't have to live in a nomadic way where I've got to, you know, walk 15, 20 miles to go
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from one habitat to the next to maintain my survivorship. So this is the difference between our ancestors,
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and the environment that they were in and the 21st century human who is in a sedentary environment
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with lots of comfort, with lots of convenience, but our bodies are still telling us, doesn't it feel
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good not to do anything? Doesn't it feel good to be pampered, right? Doesn't it feel good not to have
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to do this hard physical labor? So this is what our biology and our minds are constantly having to
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deal with. So when we rely on willpower, right? Imagine again, going back to our ancestors, our
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stone age ancestors, imagine if they had to wake up every day and go, do you know what? I have to try
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really hard to think about the fact that I need to go hunting today. You know, I need willpower to do
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this. It wasn't about willpower. It was about necessity, right? It was a necessity. It was essential
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to maintain survival. It wasn't optional. And so if you rely on willpower, it very easily becomes won't
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power because there were so many obstacles and barriers in the way of you achieving more movement
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minutes, right? It could be the time. I don't have enough time. It could be, I don't have the resources.
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I don't have the money. I don't know what I should be doing. I feel overwhelmed. There's thousands of
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apps on my phone, you know, give me examples of what I should be doing, but I still don't know what I'm
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doing. You know, we have more magazines, more literature available than ever before, right?
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But it doesn't help. So there's too much information. We feel overwhelmed, but most
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importantly, we are hardwired for convenience. And so we have to break ourselves out of this cycle
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and willpower is not the way to break out. Unless you're one of the very few where you can click your
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fingers and you're like, yeah, I'm going to do this and you get it done. But that doesn't work
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for the majority of individuals. Okay. So instead of using willpower or technology to help us move
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more, you recommend injecting more play into our lives. So how can play help us move more?
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Yeah. So just as we're hardwired for convenience, we're also hardwired to play. So instinctively,
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we have these ludic, playful genes that now we are very much deprived of. So most of us can reminisce
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to our childhoods. So for mine, mine, for example, was very much about active play. So the majority of
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my day as a kid was being outside playing, especially during the summer, it was get outside of your
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home, you know, commune with your friends, have fun until you had to eat something. I mean,
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all your parents said it's time to be indoors. So you are constantly driven to be as playful as
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possible. And society tells us at a certain age, you've got to stop playing. You know,
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you've got to spend your time focusing on conforming to what society says you should be doing.
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And you're now at a age where play is no longer acceptable. And if you do play as an adult,
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either it's professionally, you know, you become a comic or a creative or some description.
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But apart from that, life is serious. But if you do focus on this playful spirit,
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what we realize is that there's an intrinsic motivation through play that inspires us to
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move more. So there are lots of studies on this. For example, there's a study with two cohorts
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who are performing an afternoon walk over to adults. And the first group are told,
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we're going to exercise for 30 minutes. We're going to go for a walk, a brisk walk for 30 minutes.
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And then group two are told, we're just going to go and have some fun this afternoon. We're
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going to have a walk around, you know, and we're going to explore the environment 30 minutes,
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same duration. And what the researchers found was that the second group, the ones who were
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inspired by and motivated by fun, where fun was part and parcel of the activity,
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even though it was the same activity, they walked at a higher intensity, you know,
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they burnt more calories. There was a brisker walk. There was more conversation,
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a greater community spirit, but most importantly, their feel good markers. So endorphins and serotonin
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and dopamine, oxytocin, all of those were elevated above the control group who were just
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doing exercise for 30 minutes. So just having a playful state enhances creativity, inspires you to
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want to do more. It reduces stress. It improves social interactions. And it also, through this
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creativity, inspires you to want to find ways to move more. So again, just to conceptualize this,
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think about people when they're, they're at a wedding, right? They're at a wedding, the music
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comes on, they've had a drink and a song they hear that they may have heard in their youth,
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right? Or they may have heard when they had a crush or something like that. They're on a dance
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floor and they're, they're moving. Like they probably haven't moved for years. They're not
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thinking about, Oh my goodness, I'm just doing five minutes of cardio. They want to continue,
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you know, what's the next song? Who else can I get to join me? Right? It's a completely different
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state of, of, of our physiology. So that's one of the reasons why play is really beneficial
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and why I believe playing out is a better substitute than working out.
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We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. Yeah. So play can help you move more, but also there's these added
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benefits. You're just going to feel good and boost your creativity and that can carry over to other
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parts of your life. So how can we incorporate more playful movement in our daily lives as a
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adult? Yeah. So this is a really difficult question because we almost have to reverse engineer
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our mindsets as adults. You know, there are a few strategies that I use with my clients.
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And one of them is to compile a play history to get my client to roll back along their kind of life
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timeline back to when they were a kid and moments in between where, where were you the most playful?
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What brought you the most joy when it came to physical activity? And once you kind of look back
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with nostalgia at those activities, what were the most fun? What did you want to continue to play?
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What did you least complain about when it came to muscle soreness? Right? Or how, how awful that felt?
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What were those activities? And so most individuals have an idea of what that is. And even though we
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start with childhood, we can still find some of those activities, even when we get into adulthood
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and it's enhancing those and making sure they become more prominent in our lives. So from, for me,
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when I went back in time thinking about why do I hate exercise? You know, like, why am I struggling
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to go back to gym on Monday, even though I've had a really good week of exercise? You know,
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why am I really struggling? Why am I procrastinating? I had to ask myself, when did you last really enjoy
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movement? So as an adult, you know, it was a decade before where I used to go out clubbing and I could
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dance for hours, you know, pretty much, you know, energy just came from somewhere. I could just keep
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dancing as long as the music was good. I had a great time with my friends. I could dance all night.
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Right. I was like, okay, that was fun. I wanted to keep doing it. What else has been fun in my adult
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life in terms of movement, playing sports, but not in a competitive way, you know, having a kickabout
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with my friends. That's lots of fun. But when I, as soon as I joined a league or it became competitive
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or running like, you know, endurance events at work, it wasn't fun. And I literally just ticked
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off the things that were fun going right back to my childhood. And one of the things I found as a
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child was chasing games were great. So playing tag, climbing trees. And I was like, I need to try and
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do those things as an adult. It's as simple as that. I need to climb trees. I need to find people who
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are happy to play and willing to play tag with me, which I did. And then my movement diet
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my repertoire of playful movement increased, you know? So that's what I would suggest as a starting
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point. Find out what within your play history is something that you would like to repeat now,
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something which isn't going to give you too much anxiety, right? Too much concern about what are
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people going to think if I do this? Kids, you know, are a great proxy. So if you've got children,
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they're a great way for you to access your inner child and kind of, they can get the blame, right?
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Oh, I'm only doing this as an adult because my kids want me to do this, right? So you can ask your
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kids what they would like to do. And hopefully they provide suggestions that you want to take part in.
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So yeah, those are probably a couple of starting points of how you can start looking back retrospectively,
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right back to your inner child, and think about how you can model some of those behaviors,
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not in a childish way, but in a childlike way. So, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen,
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there's an episode of Friends with Phoebe and Rachel who are running in Central Park. And Rachel is
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really serious. You know, she's running like an athlete. She's got a grimace on her face. She looks
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very robotic in her movement patterns. And then Phoebe is running like a five-year-old.
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Rachel's looking down her nose, you know, going, what the heck are you doing? People are looking
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at you. You know, you don't, you look silly, you know? And Phoebe's like, actually, you're the one
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who looks silly. You're not enjoying yourself. You're not having any fun. And many of us are
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never going to access our inner Phoebe, right? But we can certainly think about activities in the
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physical activity space that's going to bring us joy. Yeah, I love thinking about what gave you joy
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as a child, because it'll probably still give you joy as an adult. And I also like the idea of
00:27:42.040
bringing kids in. So if you're a dad, start playing with your kids, because this is not only going to
00:27:46.560
help you start moving more, but it's going to help your kids move more. Because as we talked about
00:27:51.040
earlier, kids aren't moving. Yeah, kids aren't moving. And as guardians, as parents, as teachers,
00:27:57.860
we model for them, you know, they look to us, they decide what adult life is like based on what we
00:28:05.360
do, right? So if we're very sedentary, that's what they're going to be trying to emulate. You know,
00:28:11.540
they mimic the world around them. So the more we model physical activity as part of our day,
00:28:18.160
the less we complain about movement, you know, like, oh my goodness, I had such a hard workout. I now
00:28:24.120
can't take the stairs. I can't move. I'm in pain. You know, the less we model movement in that way
00:28:32.060
and focus much more on the fun. Wasn't that fun? Wasn't that great? I want to do this again.
00:28:38.800
And I think as kids, they won't do the same things again if it doesn't bring any joy, right? So they're
00:28:47.220
constantly on this mission of let's explore the world around us. Let me try doing something I
00:28:53.300
haven't done before, right? So it's as simple as that being more playful, right? It doesn't have
00:28:58.660
to be obvious playful activities. It can be changing your mindset and your attitude to make
00:29:04.700
the activities you perform more playful, if that makes sense. So I have a quote, a mantra that I use
00:29:11.160
all the time, which is that play is not the activity. It's the attitude. So I can go for a walk
00:29:19.760
or go for a run and make those activities much more playful than my former adult, very serious
00:29:26.580
self. I can pay more attention to my surroundings. I can pay more attention to looking at the world
00:29:33.220
around me, like my playground, like my gym. So initially I was thinking, oh, I need to find
00:29:39.360
playful activities, right? I need to be playing tag all the time. That's the only thing that's going to
00:29:44.420
work for me. That's the only thing that's playful. Whereas actual fact, you can just modify those
00:29:50.420
activities, even the ones that you're like, oh, I don't really want to do this. But if you can convert
00:29:54.620
those, if you can gamify those in an analog way, not using tech, but you can find ways of gamifying
00:30:01.220
your environment. Another example is once my partner and I were walking down the high street
00:30:06.500
and I suggest, hey, you know what? Let's race the other people in the street, right? Walking.
00:30:13.340
And then it was like, you know, let's, let's, let's gamify this. Let's give ourselves some points.
00:30:17.600
Every time we overtake, we'll give ourselves a couple of points. You know, every time somebody
00:30:22.280
overtakes us, we'll take away five points. If somebody's standing still, we'll only get at
00:30:26.720
ourselves a point if we overtake them, you know, and we literally walked about three or four miles
00:30:32.340
at quite a brisk pace, not realizing we'd walk that distance until the end, you know, because we
00:30:38.820
were so in the moment and so concerned about stacking up the points and being really competitive.
00:30:45.260
And so this, this afternoon walk of like, oh, let's just do this because we need to go for a walk
00:30:51.440
became, isn't this a lot of fun? Right. And every now and again, we'll play the same game.
00:30:57.200
You know, it's not prescriptive, but changing that activity from something that is not that
00:31:02.740
exciting inherently into one that's more playful. And then you get all of these feel good benefits.
00:31:08.820
You get these dopamine hits, which are natural, you know, you get that natural endorphin rush,
00:31:13.460
which makes you feel good. It helps to relieve pain, which that's one of the benefits of endorphins.
00:31:17.760
They're a pain reliever, not just physically, but also mentally. So once you realize you can
00:31:23.760
achieve the benefits of movement immediately, do you know what I mean? Like a, like a, um,
00:31:29.680
instant gratification. It isn't just the reward that you get after, you know, weeks, months,
00:31:36.060
years of physical activity, you can actually get some of this joy now. Right. So, you know,
00:31:40.420
again, think about kids, you say to your kids, oh yeah, do this. And you know, you'll get the
00:31:47.600
benefits at some point in the future. Isn't always that compelling to them. Right. They're kind of like,
00:31:53.420
now, now, now, you know what I mean? Now, now, now, I want to feel good now. I want it now.
00:31:59.580
And we need to feel the same way I feel about physical activity. Let me do something now that's
00:32:05.020
going to make me feel great now, but I'm still going to be building these benefits and stacking
00:32:09.780
these benefits for the future. So it's a complete win-win. Yeah. I love the idea that play can start
00:32:15.020
helping you and your kids move more, but I like the idea too, of helping your kids see that
00:32:20.520
the environment can be interacted with in ways that aren't typical. Right. Because I think we
00:32:27.120
see the environment and say, well, here's a wall. We have to walk around the wall or walk through the
00:32:32.580
door of a wall, but maybe you can go over the wall. Why not go over the wall? Yeah. Or like,
00:32:38.680
yeah. Or if there's stairs, you can say, well, you're supposed to just take one stair at a time.
00:32:43.220
We can be like, well, let's see who can do two stairs at a time.
00:32:46.560
Yeah. Exactly. And I think we've all done that. I know I've done that as a kid and I still do it
00:32:50.560
every now and then as an adult, when you're walking in a big building, like an airport and
00:32:55.000
there's tile on the floor. And then sometimes you just, you turn that tile into a game where you're
00:33:00.080
like, well, can I step without stepping on a crack? Or then it turns into, well, can I not step on a
00:33:06.660
crack, but get three big tiles in one big bound? Can I do that? And like, you can do that with your
00:33:13.080
kids. You're going to look silly maybe, but you're going to get your kids moving and get yourself
00:33:17.840
moving and it's fun. Yeah. And do you know what? I think this looking silly is, is mostly envy
00:33:25.000
actually from others of others thinking, I wish I could be as free spirited as that. I wish I could
00:33:33.400
have just as much fun with my kids as he's doing. So I noticed this when I started going outside,
00:33:41.440
I left my gym, I started going to my local park and playing in my park. You know, I was balancing
00:33:48.560
on ratings. I was climbing trees. I was bear crawling. I was performing all these kinds of
00:33:53.420
primal movements in my park. And what was interesting was the amount of people who would
00:33:58.520
stop and stare, but not in the, you know, Oh, maybe we need to call, uh, you know, mental health
00:34:04.780
services or, or, or we're really concerned about him. It was, it was an interest and the
00:34:11.260
amount of children who would stop when they were the parents and say, kind of like, look
00:34:15.600
at the parents go, Hey parents, why aren't you doing, why are you doing what he's doing?
00:34:20.320
He's like a big kid. Why are you not behaving in this way? You know, why aren't you inspiring
00:34:25.940
me in the same way? And interestingly, that's where I started getting more and more clients.
00:34:32.200
So, you know, I was struggling initially to get clients doing regular personal training.
00:34:37.760
And as soon as people started seeing me playing in the park, people would say, well, why are you
00:34:41.400
doing this? I'd say, Hey, because it's fun. Okay. Is do you, do you teach others this? Yes. Okay. Oh my
00:34:47.080
gosh, I want to, I want to do this. I need permission. And so I gave people permission in my local
00:34:53.860
park to join me and have fun. And then you realize there's kind of wisdom. There's wisdom in the
00:34:59.500
crowd, right? There's wisdom socially, and there's more than one of you doing this together. And so
00:35:04.880
it's really interesting observing, observing other people. And, and I think they realize they're
00:35:10.440
missing, they're missing out. Um, so I, I now kind of push the thoughts of others to one side,
00:35:17.120
um, not in a kind of egotistical way. I just feel as if I'm so in the moment and enjoying myself,
00:35:23.240
I don't really have time to be wondering what other people think. And a kind of a metaphor
00:35:29.600
analogy that I use is imagine you take, you know, your dog could speak to you, right?
00:35:35.440
You take your dog for a walk, you go to your local park and your dog goes, Hey, can I just
00:35:40.360
sit here for a moment? Oh, why is that dog? Because I can see some dogs over there playing.
00:35:45.300
They're chasing after each other. You know, they're chasing balls, you know, running after
00:35:48.560
sticks. And, um, I just want to spectate, right? I just want to sit here and watch.
00:35:55.180
Of course that wouldn't happen. If the dog could speak to you, the dog would be saying,
00:35:59.060
can you let me off my leash? Can you let me go and join in and play with those other dogs?
00:36:06.080
You know, there may be a bit of play fighting, you know, hopefully nothing worse than that,
00:36:09.300
but they want to participate. They want to join in and children have that spirit for a while
00:36:14.440
until we dampen that down, you know, and then they become less enthusiastic.
00:36:20.060
They feel as if they're not talented enough, right? If they're not sporty, oh, I don't want
00:36:23.980
to do that anymore because I'm not sporty enough. I'm not going to be picked for the team.
00:36:27.220
I'm not naturally talented or gifted. And we kind of engineer that desire out of many of our children,
00:36:33.820
I feel, but it's easy for us to stoke and encourage that back, that enthusiasm, natural
00:36:41.300
enthusiasm and instinct back. And that's what I do now. That's what I try to impart now with my work.
00:36:47.980
Okay. So play is primal. Animals play. We don't think the animals play, but they do. They roughhouse
00:36:54.880
and whatever. It serves a purpose. It bonds the animals together. And also it's a way for
00:36:59.600
the small animals to learn important skills, right? Like how to protect themselves and whatnot.
00:37:05.940
So besides play, you're a big advocate of what you call primal movement. And you mentioned some of
00:37:10.960
them like a bear crawl. What are some other examples of primal movements and what are the
00:37:16.160
benefits of moving primally? So, I mean, primal movements are really any universal movement pattern
00:37:22.920
that we evolved to do. So when you think about our basic movement patterns, pushing, pulling,
00:37:30.320
crawling, climbing, walking, running, sprinting, jumping, all of these movement patterns,
00:37:35.900
things like humans evolved to do. And so because of that, if we refrain from taking part in those
00:37:43.400
activities, we start to atrophy. We lose the ability to perform those activities. And in doing so,
00:37:50.940
we're physically less capable, less functional, less healthy as a result. So for me, primal movement
00:37:58.300
is human movement is moving like the animals we are, is moving in all types of directions. So not just
00:38:10.580
forward, but forwards and back, left to right with rotation in three dimensions is navigating obstacles.
00:38:17.800
So I like to climb. I like to jump. I like to lift. I like to carry. So all of these very functional
00:38:24.620
movements, and it's really modeling what we would have to have done in terms of our evolution,
00:38:31.940
our ancestry, right? What our ancestors had to do just to survive. How can I model that today
00:38:37.420
in the 21st century, right? What can I do that can mimic me lifting something and carrying it,
00:38:44.120
right? So fortunately there, there's a sub section of the exercise community who are gravitating to these
00:38:51.700
primal movements, who are gravitating to these functional movements. So we have exercises like
00:38:56.200
the farmers carry, right? So we're mimicking somebody carrying a couple of bales of hay,
00:39:01.480
but we were carrying kettlebells, you know, or heavy sandbags. And we're repeating these movement
00:39:07.080
patterns because we want to build this functional strength. So these compound movements, much research
00:39:13.900
tells us it's more effective than doing isolated movements for overall strength, for overall
00:39:21.240
conditioning and changing intensities. So being very slow up to the most powerful and explosive
00:39:27.740
movements gives us this movement repertoire, improves our mobility and our flexibility,
00:39:33.000
and just gives us the ability to be more functionally capable. So we can age independently.
00:39:39.380
We can maintain our balance. We can maintain our bone health and strength. We can minimize
00:39:45.400
bone mineral density loss. We can minimize the amount of muscle loss as we age
00:39:49.660
by continuing to perform these movement patterns.
00:39:53.340
Okay. So, so things like crawling could be one to do a bear crawl. Crab crawl is another one. You
00:39:59.420
probably did that when you were a kid, but you can still do that when you're 40 years old. Nothing
00:40:03.920
Yeah, exactly. Nothing stopping you from doing those. And the fantastic thing about exercise science
00:40:08.400
or exercise physiology is we now have, you know, like 20 years ago, if you spoke about doing bear
00:40:15.160
crawls, people would just say, it's just a quite a difficult exercise, you know, difficult coordination.
00:40:20.920
You know, it can take quite a bit out of your heart and lungs. It's all muscle group exercise.
00:40:25.480
That would be it. Now the science tells us it's a quadrupedal movement, which means we're walking
00:40:31.720
using all four limbs. There's a significant coordination challenge, which means our brains
00:40:36.840
are cognitively challenged. So this coordination actually improves our brain health significantly.
00:40:43.420
It reduces the risk of cognitive decline, which means it reduces the risk of Alzheimer's and
00:40:48.300
dementia. So we have these brain factors, these growth factors like BDNF, brain derived neurotropic
00:40:56.160
factor, which means we're actually growing new brain cells when we take part in these activities
00:41:01.040
that we haven't done for either ever or for a good while. So since childhood. So the first
00:41:06.460
time I tried a bear crawl, it was like the most awkward thing ever. Not having done it for
00:41:12.420
like probably 30 years or so. But as soon as you start beginning kind of fluent in that movement
00:41:18.760
ability and your brain adapts and this kind of plasticity of the brain changes the brain to be able
00:41:25.480
to adapt the body and the mind to this movement pattern, you, you, you try other things, right?
00:41:32.780
So you don't just stay doing the one thing and get better and better and better. You expand your
00:41:37.980
repertoire to maintain this challenge, which isn't just a physical challenge, but also a cognitive one.
00:41:44.320
And most importantly, it means by increasing the amount of activities you can participate in,
00:41:49.820
that also adds to the sustainability of moving more because there's always something else to do.
00:41:56.760
And if you can bear crawl on the ground, then you're going to start thinking, okay,
00:42:00.120
can I do this up the stairs? Which again, kids would do. Can I do this up the stairs? Can I do
00:42:05.080
this backwards? Can I do this carrying my kids? You know what I mean? So there's ways to kind of
00:42:11.460
stack layers upon layers of more playful activity onto these primal movement patterns.
00:42:18.160
Right. So like another primal movement is balance. So you can find things you could
00:42:21.580
walk across like a balancing beam. But then as you said, you can layer that. It's like,
00:42:25.780
well, can I bear crawl across this balance beam-like thing in my environment? Or can I bear crawl
00:42:31.700
backwards? And again, what you're doing is you're adding that play element. It's going to make it
00:42:36.380
fun. And you can turn just movement into a fun activity. And people might be listening to this
00:42:42.300
and thinking, well, you know, just is bear crawling a little bit every day? Is that going to do
00:42:47.380
anything for your physical health? And the research says, yeah, it is going to do. I think there's
00:42:52.340
this idea that exercise or movement has to be hard and super strenuous all the time. And you
00:42:58.120
got to get really hot and sweaty all the time. There's a benefit to getting into that level of
00:43:02.520
intensity. But on a day-to-day basis, just this little simple movement, you're going to get some
00:43:08.240
benefits. It's going to help increase insulin sensitivity, which can help with prediabetes or
00:43:12.600
diabetes. It's going to help with strength and coordination. So don't discount this stuff,
00:43:18.800
even though it doesn't seem very hard. Yeah. One of the most interesting things about
00:43:24.080
an activity like a bear crawl, the amount of people who will say, they will look, they will
00:43:29.420
spectate and they'll go, oh, that's really easy. It's easy until you try it. And I would say for
00:43:37.080
anyone listening, if you think bear crawls are easy, you just go for a bear crawl for 50 meters.
00:43:43.220
You know, you do a hundred yard bear crawl and then you tell me how easy that activity is.
00:43:47.540
You tell me if your entire, every nerve fiber of your being is telling you, oh my goodness,
00:43:56.420
what a challenge this is. So we have this rate of perceived exertion. So you, you have the ability
00:44:04.300
to decide what is difficult at any point in time. So you can do a nice, slow, one, two meter bear
00:44:12.580
crawl, right? I want to focus on my mobility. I want to feel as if all of my body's moving and I'm
00:44:18.400
nice and relaxed. I can focus on my breath, but you can also speed it up, right? You can do a really
00:44:24.460
fast bear crawl for 10 seconds, for 15 seconds. You can go up the stairs and go down the stairs. So
00:44:29.480
you have the dial that you control. And even that in itself is quite playful because kids, when they
00:44:36.180
play, they're not always playing tag at full speed. There's going to be some kids who are taking a
00:44:42.480
breath. There are going to be some kids who are happy that they're not the person chasing, right?
00:44:47.240
There are going to be some people who are going to stay out of the action because they,
00:44:50.080
they have this inbuilt interval kind of training mentality, right? They know they can operate at
00:44:57.340
nine, 10 out of 10 for a little while. Then they'll dial it down. Then they'll say, Hey,
00:45:01.860
let's have a little rest. Then they go back at it again. And this is the rhythm and cycle of life
00:45:07.220
when it comes to movement. And as you mentioned, people get very preoccupied with, I just got to do
00:45:12.700
all, you know, max intensity or I've got to do everything chilled and, and meditative and flow
00:45:19.740
based. But actually we want to do everything. We want to do a bit of everything and adapt it to your
00:45:25.300
capability at that time. So even when I age, right, I'm not thinking, Oh, when I was
00:45:31.720
20, when I was 30, I could do it better. What I'm thinking is I can do this now, you know,
00:45:38.400
and I can push to a hundred percent efforts, whatever stage I am in my health and fitness
00:45:44.560
journey. So my a hundred percent is my a hundred percent and my a hundred percent today may be
00:45:49.300
different in 10 years time, but it will still be a hundred percent. You know what I mean? So,
00:45:55.160
so I think that there was a lesson to be learned from finding this more playful, creative way,
00:46:01.840
because you'll realize then that everything is going to be good about your movement practice.
00:46:07.460
If you explore, if you're creative, if you involve others, if you're constantly chasing,
00:46:13.820
what's going to make me want to maintain this and sustain this, there you go. That's the answer.
00:46:20.160
That's the secret, right? If you notice that you just want to prefer to stay in your armchair,
00:46:27.100
right? I don't really want to do this. I feel as if I have to do this. Then, you know,
00:46:32.440
that's not the solution. That's not the answer. So if you feel good doing it and feeling good,
00:46:37.580
doesn't mean it's always easy, right? Again, even with kids, child's play, they're doing activities
00:46:43.780
sometimes that are outside of their comfort zone. They're not always picking the easiest option.
00:46:49.240
They want to climb a bit higher. They want to balance on that railing for a little bit longer.
00:46:54.780
They want to run a bit faster. You know, they want to be chased. They want to play hide and seek,
00:46:59.320
and they want to risk assess. They want to conquer their fears. There were all these different aspects
00:47:05.280
of their emotional maturity and development that is embraced through play. And we have a lot to learn
00:47:13.440
from our childhood experiences and ensuring that our kids today have some of that because many of our
00:47:18.340
kids today, unfortunately, are suffering because of play deprivation.
00:47:23.060
Well, Daryl, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work?
00:47:27.640
Yeah, best place is primalplay.com. That's my website. You can find out more about what I do.
00:47:34.980
You can find out about all the research in relation to play psychology. You can find out about the
00:47:39.260
primal play method, which is my program for primal, playful, and practical movement. I also host
00:47:48.080
workshops, and you can follow me on social media for the latest evidence-based insights on movement
00:47:54.760
and health. I suppose, finally, if you'd like to read, I have two of my latest books. One is called
00:48:00.940
Animal Moves, which is for adults. It's a 28-day movement program, which takes you through this
00:48:08.020
kind of repertoire of movement, this kind of movement diet, taking you through all of the
00:48:13.600
things that we should do by modeling the animal kingdom and like the animals we are. And I also
00:48:19.300
have a children's picture book, which encourages young children to focus less on screen time and being
00:48:26.940
sedentary and focusing more on exploring the joys of movement.
00:48:32.580
Fantastic. Well, Daryl Edwards, thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:48:35.340
Thanks very much, Brett. It's been wonderful. Thank you.
00:48:38.380
My guest name is Daryl Edwards. He's the founder of Primal Play. You can find more information about
00:48:41.720
his work at his website, primalplay.com. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash primalplay,
00:48:46.840
where you can find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic.
00:48:49.260
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at
00:49:00.540
artofmanliness.com, where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that
00:49:04.280
we've written over the years about pretty much anything you can think of. And if you haven't
00:49:07.320
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00:49:17.480
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00:49:19.920
reminding you to not listen to AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.