Episode 132. The Hardest Part of Health and Fitness & Are Physios Dead?
Episode 132. The Hardest Part of Health and Fitness & Are Physios Dead?
In this episode, we delve into the hardest part of pursuing health and fitness, consistency! We discuss what it means to be consistent and how you can create consistency without relying on motivation.
We also discuss the future of physiotherapists, why you shouldn't rely solely on your physio to prevent injuries and how AI is likely to disrupt the industry.
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What is up everybody? Welcome back to the Institute Health and Fitness podcast. On this show, we give you all the habits, strategies and information you need to live a long and healthy life. On today's show, we're going to cover the hardest thing about health and fitness. What is it? Stay tuned. We'll get right into the show.
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Welcome back everybody, to another Friday show. Excited for this show. We've got a great topic to get into. But before we do that. It's Max birthday. Happy birthday, Mac. Yay. How old do you want to be? 25. You wanna be 25? OK, good. So everybody listening? Make sure you head over to Max Instagram page. It is Mac_in situ and just comment on her latest post and say Happy Birthday. Or just slide into her DMS and just give her a happy birthday. Let's her know that you're listening and that you care. That's nice. Also, before we get into the first topic, YouTube, we are on YouTube, so if you're enjoying these podcasts, but sometimes you see the headings and you're like, I'd just like to listen to that little snippet instead of the whole episode. I have been breaking them up and putting them on YouTube. So each topic is an individual video you can listen or watch or both. So if you haven't already, go over. Make sure you hit subscribe as well. And if you do watch one of the videos and you do like it just gives a thumbs up as well. Just let me know that you're enjoying it and I'll keep making them better and better and better and you'll keep enjoying and more and more and more. All right, if I was to ask you. What is the hardest thing about health and fitness? In general, what's the hardest thing to do? What's the hardest thing about it? Everybody like you, Mac and everybody home at home, listening along, what would your answer be? 100%
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consistency? Being consistent? Diane, Diane. Consistency is the hardest thing and I wanted to bring this up because we actually got to meet one of my online clients in person. We've been traveling. As we said in the last episode, we're moving from Ulladulla to Melbourne on on that travel. We got to meet one of our clients, which is pretty cool. It was so it was great meeting her and she just brought up a topic that I thought. It's it's one thing that everybody struggles with and it is the hardest thing. That with health and fitness, yeah. And it is consistency like you said so. Quick little stats there for you just to break it down even more. So this isn't exact stats, but I'm just going to make it a little bit easier just to understand. But if 100 people signed up to a fitness challenge? And it lasted six weeks. By the end, end, people are going to be left. So that's 60% drop off rate. In one year, there's only going to be 20 people left exercising out of that hundred. Wow. So 80% success rate over 12 months? So consistency obviously is harder and then it gets even worse for diets. I think it was like 4 people out of the 100 stick to a diet. Stick to a diet. Yeah, that's why I hate like the label diet. Yeah, same. And I did want to bring that up as well. Let's start with that. Let's OK diet diets. They just like the word diet literally means your way of eating, right? So it can be anything you want it to be. It doesn't have to be like Paleo or vegan or whatever else there is. It just means the way that you choose to eat, you know what I mean? So I don't know. I think the reason that people can't stick to a diet is because they adopt somebody else's way of eating, and it's foreign and it's uncomfortable
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and it's hard and it doesn't feel right. Because it's not theirs. Like our way of eating healthy might be very different to the next person's way of eating healthy, which took me also a very long time to learn with clients like. In the very beginning, I would sort of encourage clients to just eat a diet similar to ours, where now I know that that's not suitable for everybody and there's millions of different diets, quote UN diets that someone can have. Like it just depends on schedule, food preferences, timing, availability, like so many things. And I think that if everyone just dropped the idea that diet has to be a certain set menu that has a label, there would be so much more adherence because it's a lot easier and more sustainable and more enjoyable. Actually, yeah, it just sucks because the fitness industry sort of took. Diets, fad diets. I'm going to call them and realize they could make a **** load of money out of it. So that's how they got so popular. Like you said, Paleo Carnivore. Ohh like. Every single diet you can think of got popularized because somebody could make money off it. Yeah. And and look. So yes, these diets, all these diets work, but not for everybody. And that's what Mark is saying. Like everybody is so different, but if you try and force yourself into one of these molds. And do something that you is hard and you can't be consistent at, then of course you're gonna fail, yeah.
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So with exercise and it's like. Fad diets are the same as exercise routines, like how many fad exercise routines come and go. True. Yeah, there's so many. Some are still around, obviously, but if you're trying to fit the mold of. Like if you want to. Look like the world's top level athlete in whatever sport and you're like, well, I'm going to do that sport to look like that person. That's not how it works and a lot of people get caught up in that and again, a lot of people have made money off that. People look a certain way and they're like, well, do this workout routine and you'll look the way I do. And it doesn't work like that. Everybody's different. Everybody likes different exercises, everybody has different bodies. So you have to work around injuries, movement patterns, how your body is made-up and all that sort of stuff. And again, if you force yourself into these. Certain molds, of course, you're not going to be consistent, yeah.
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So. Let's talk about like what consistency is, because. But what do you consider consistency? Consistency. I would consider consistent. Consistently something that you do on a regular basis, so not necessarily daily. It could be a certain amount of times a week, but for a long period of time. So it's it's like a part of your life. It's a part of your daily routine. You probably don't have to think about doing it as much because you do it. So consistency consistently, it's just there. So for us, or for me, I think when I feel like I've failed at being consistent is when I've skipped probably. Two plus days of doing something. So in my mind it's without doing something, without skipping more than two days. I would consider being consistent. Yeah, different for everybody. Like all of the things we've just spoken about. Exactly. And I was just about to bring that up like. Yeah, for us to skip in two days, like having two days off the gym or something like that, it feels like we're not being consistent anymore. But somebody just starting out once a week and this is where. Consistency sort of breaks down because. It's boring. And it can get very boring because if I say to you go and workout once a week, you're going to be like, well, I'm not going to get results. But if you do that over 12 months, you're doing a lot of workouts. Yeah. Compared to doing none. Yeah. Compared to doing what, 52 weeks in a year? So workouts over the year, where if you just go and smash yourself for one, where you can do 5 workouts in one week and then stop for the next 12 months. months. months, couple of months, yeah. It's not very consistent and you're not getting many workouts, so you're better off doing one a week and doing the in the year, because then over five years that's gonna be adding up as well. Over 10 years that's adding up. So you can see sometimes when it does feel boring and it died as well, like you might think just one healthy meal a day isn't going to get you anywhere. But over the week, over the month, over the years, it will get you somewhere. And I think that's what a lot of people get mixed up of.
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You need to be super consistent doing things every single day to get results where. You don't need that, no. And sometimes when you try to add a million things in to one day, you like when you're a beginner and you're trying to drink 2 liters of water, eat three healthy meals, go to the gym for an hour, walk for 20 minutes, sleep for 8 hours. It's super hard to be consistent in any one area, so it's much more likely that you're going to succeed if you just pick one thing to be consistent with and to do that one thing until it's boring and once it's boring. Or you don't have to think about it, you know that. Like, you're easily going to steak consistent with it for a longer period of time? Yeah. I also think the reason a lot of people fail at being consistent is because they rely on motivation. To like, get them to the gym or to enable them to cook healthy meals or go for a walk in the morning or whatever it is. But we've spoken about many times before that motivation is unreliable because it's just an emotion. It's just like being happy or sad or excited. It goes away and it comes. Like sometimes it comes and it's super strong and you're like, yeah, this is great. I'm motivated. This is my time to start. Like, this is my sign, or this is the right day or the right month or whatever it is. And then you might have a crap night sleep and you wake up in the morning and your motivation is completely gone. So then you lose your consistency because you were relying so heavily on being motivated. Like when we were speaking to our client that we met on the way down to Victoria. One thing that she said that stood out to both of us was. People see her and comment on how great her physique is looking and they say I wish that I could. Have the motivation or the discipline to exercise like you do, and she said you like, you don't understand how hard it is, like how much effort I have to put into it. And that's another thing people think that. Like exercising is always
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going to feel easy. Like to fit and healthy people. People look at us and think that are we exercising everyday or eating healthy everyday is super easy for us. But it's not. It's definitely not. And this is sort of like you break it down even more. The workout itself is once you get to the gym and you start working out, that's easy. It's actually getting the motivation or being consistent enough to get to the gym. Getting to the gym is the hardest part. Or food prepping, or making sure you buy the right foods and not having the foods in your house. Aiding healthy male like that is the hard part getting. Like before you actually do the app, eating the healthy meal is easy. Yeah, I love eating. It's making it and making sure I've got the ingredients to make those healthy meals is the hardest part. Yeah, and. Um, like Leanne. Sorry, I'm using your name, Leanne. But Leanne said it's ******* hard. And this lady that said that to. I wish I had. Your body doesn't realize how hard it is, but it's being consistent is the hardest thing. And I figured we could just end this bit with how to actually be consistent without motivation, because I think that is the biggest key. So being consistent and not relying on motivation. So do you want to go first? Sure. I don't even know where to start. I think for me, what works the best is just having a solid routine. So don't even think about motivation or think about going further to the gym for a second. Just think about how your day is going to play out and plan where you're going to go to the gym. Doesn't matter how you feel about going to the gym, just plan like lock in. I'm going to the gym at 8:30 AM and lock it in like it's a meeting or something that you can't change. And it's so much
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easier to stick to that consistently because it's locked in, it's on your calendar, you might have your exercise gear and everything out already. You don't have to worry about being motivated, you're just going to go. And I also think, like you said, the hardest part is getting to the gym. I also think. Like for us, driving to a physical gym is a lot easier for me to work out than, say, working out at home. Working out at home seems very trendy at the minute, but I think that that also adds to the consistency statistics because you don't have many people around you and it's much less resistant. Like there's much less distance between you deciding to work out and going into your shed to work out, say. Whereas if you're like, OK, I'm just going to drive into town now and you just drive. The gym and you already there like OK, might as well work out. Whereas when it was when we were training in our shared, I was like ohh man, it's just out there, you know, like it's so easy and convenient, but that almost makes it harder to stick to because you can change it so easily so. Back to my original point, just like locking it, don't make it. It's not negotiable. This is when I do it. That's just how it is. Yeah, definitely. And I was going to say that as well, but just. Make it as easy as possible. So have a routine of like literally I wake up at 6:00 o'clock, I have my glass of water, I have a shower by I'm out the door for a walk. Yeah, if the walks. The easiest possible thing that you can do to add into the routine again, even if it's every second day or you're just starting to walk once a day. Like set your routine for a Monday. My Monday routine is I wake up at 6 by I'm out the door for my walk every other day, whatever. But Mondays, that's where it starts. And then you can build on that. Like I said, don't make it too hard. People. Too many people make it too hard and too complicated. And I'm going to have my smoothie. I've got to have all the ingredients there. Then I'll go from a walk, then I come back. I'd stretch, and it's
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all these things added up into this one routine. And I'm even stressing out trying to think about trying to get that done. So make it as simple as possible so you don't have to rely on routines. Yeah, sorry. Or motivation. Motivation. And one more thing to I think almost give yourself a false sense of motivation is keep track like a habit. Tracker is so like habits are very overrated. But I think I have a tracker at the minute is very underrated physically. Seeing the amount of days that you go to the gym can either give you motivation to keep going because you've been going for three weeks now why would you stop or. It can give you motivation to get back into it because you haven't crossed off on your habit tracker that you've been to the gym for the last 12 days and you're like, oh man, what am I doing? And that's sometimes just seeing it visually makes just gives you that. Like aha moment almost. And it gives you a little bit of accountability, like if you don't have someone to be there that. Is keeping you accountable just writing it down and then you can physically see how much effort you're actually putting in? Yeah, well, you can't improve what you don't track. Yeah. So by tracking your habits and. You're tracking your motivation as well. You can improve on it, so make sure you track it.
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We're going to rip on physios a little bit, but I'm not saying I'm not attacking any certain people or anything like that. I just want to bring aware certain trends and things are happening within the Physio realm that people might not be aware of and there's some people actually rely on and relying on a certain habit or person or way of working out. If that disappears then are you going to continue doing it so? Relying on one certain thing is very dangerous for your health and Wellness, because if that one thing goes away, are you gonna stop? And I want to talk about physios because it's sort of come up in a couple of conversations I've had over the last couple of weeks. I guess this could be what grinds my gears as well. That segment that lasted one episode, what really grinds my gears is. Yes, physios are great at giving good exercises to improve injuries. Imbalances, niggles, all that sort of stuff, but. A good exercise is useless without nutrition. So when you if you have an injury or a niggle or something going on or you coming back from a serious. Accident or something like that and you go to a physio. What they're trying to do is build up certain muscles, get build strength in certain muscles to combat instabilities or. Movement. Movement patterns. So if you've got a shoulder injury and your shoulder is made-up of 100, not hundreds, but a lot of little muscles, there's little muscles in there that you need to be firing and building strength in to. For you to be able to actually move your shoulder properly. So that's what a physio's job is, but the issue is a great exercise to improve those
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muscles. Is not going to do anything unless you've got the nutrition behind it. So those muscles can actually build strength. And be healthy and not only the nutrition, but I think also. What physios and I guess dietitians that work in like the traditional sense like the clinical sense lack is? Offering accountability because that like also leads to you losing. Your consistency. If there's no accountability, then who's going to keep you consistent with doing the exercises, eating, trying to eat better foods and all of that stuff? I guess you're right. Like if you go to a physio and they give you all the information you need, it's like, alright, I'll see you in a month. A month passes, you probably not going to do exercises and you're probably not gonna eat the food they given you all told you to eat to improve because muscle strength, there's nobody there keeping you accountable. Yeah. And I just thought that was and that's another great. Like sort of side tangent. You almost need to go to physio and a nutritionist just to get what you need to improve that injury. Yes, because let's just clarify why. Because if you are working on an injury, whether it's. Muscular ligament. Whatever it is, your body needs adequate fuel and more importantly, adequate protein to help you recover and to help you build the muscles to prevent you from getting the injury again or to help you to bounce back from the injury and. Like people just overlook the importance of that. Like you can do all the exercises in the world, but if you aren't eating enough food, your body is going to really struggle to help you recover from an injury. Yeah, especially a broken bone or something like that. That is very, very serious injury. Your body has to have a lot of fuel energy to send the repair signals and to actually repair, but then it also needs all the nutrients, all the
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macro nutrients, macro nutrients to actually repair that bone as well. So. It's not, and that's what I'm sort of saying. Like it's not just go to physio, they give you a couple exercises and you'll be fixed. It's a whole big thing your body is. uh A unit together, like even we can talk about stress, sleep, all that sort of stuff comes into it as well, but it's just being overall healthy is going to help you get. Better results from a physio. We we have a physio friend and a years ago I remember him saying to us we don't get taught a single thing about nutrition and. I remember us talking about this exact topic, like how much energy your body requires to recover from something, and he said we just don't get taught. Like there's so much to learn about body mechanics and everything alone. Like imagine how long the degree would be if you added that. And then like, Jack and I before the podcast were talking about how if you were a physio and you wanted to add the nutrition aspect to it. You have to almost pay double at university and do like a double degree in dietetics and physio to get that. Yeah, it's not a part of the course and that would be so hard to do because. How is the human mind meant to remember all this? Like, just remember, physios do a great job at just remembering. OK? So if you squat and there's an instability, or your knee shakes or your knees cave in. There is a muscle somewhere that is lacking that is causing your knees to cave in when you squat. And physios do a great job at identifying what muscle it is and what needs to be strengthened. And they can do it, but you add in. All right, so that's done. Now let's go over nutrition. And as we've just spoken about in the last topic, nutrition is different for everybody. So you can't just go eat these foods because they're going to be. I don't like those, those at least maybe one food and also if someone
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is going to a physio. I think a lot of the time, not always, but a lot of the time it's likely they don't exercise regularly anyway. So then the physio gives them all of these exercises to go and do by themselves and it's very overwhelming. And then also adding something like worrying about their nutrition, hydration, sleep, and then just sending them off. That's it's highly likely that it's going to drop everything. And that's exactly what we just said about consistency in the last topic. Like don't overwhelm yourself. What's the simplest thing you can be doing? To get results and I don't have the answer for physios or anything like that, but it's just. Yeah, I've just, we've just had a couple of people in the last couple of weeks, just I'm injured, I'm going with the physio and that's all I'm doing to get fixed. Yeah. And that's not how you should be looking at it. You should be looking at against sleep, hydration and nutrition. And then go into the physio. And I think that a physio should be like a, like a like a supplemental national thing to a program, to a gym program and stuff, right? Because if you're going to the physio, they're just giving you exercises to fix your shoulder. And like, we bang on all the time about how important resistance training is. But it should be the physio exercises should be something that you add to your resistance training or training program. This brings up another topic. I, I and Physio so I if you are starting. If you're. Starting Uni now, you're four to six years off actually being qualified in physiotherapy. I would be very worried because AI is going to take over physiotherapy quite a lot. What do you mean you can just put in what your injury is and? It'll give you a program I yes and no. So this is my prediction. So the software is already out there that can look at how you move. So
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you can get an app on your phone, set your phone up and then do a squat in front of this app and it can track all the points in your body and see how you're moving and break it down well, so that already exists. All that app needs is. So imagine you did say 5 different exercises in front of this app every single week. It's going to be over 12 months. You've done 52 times that app is going to know how you move exactly and if you've got an injury. So if you've been squatting in front of this app for the last couple of weeks and you've got an injury. And you go and squat in front of it, it can go well, OK, that squats, not exactly the same as what it has been for the last couple of weeks. Do it a couple more times and then it's going to be able to pinpoint what muscle is lacking and then give you exercises to strengthen up that muscle well. So that's just that's not quite there yet, but it is very close. And within the next five years that technology is going to be there and I don't see the point of physios after that, but not saying again, this is an attack against any certain person. It's just. The physiotherapy world. It's very risky at the moment. And yeah, yeah, well, there's a lot of industries like that that are very risky. And I think all that all that they need to add to, I guess, prolong their life span is some sort of accountability, coaching, human aspect to it. Like anyone listening could probably think, well, Mac and Jack, if AI can do that, then I can take your jobs. It literally takes like a I can already write a program, AI can already write a diet. Give a person calories, but that's not the hot like we've said this whole over. That's not the hardest part about this whole fitness journey. The hardest part is being consistent, which requires some form of accountability. And if AI is the accountability, which I'm sure it can be as well, it's super easy just to ghost the AI,
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you know what I mean? Like you people could ghost us as well, but it's less likely because we're humans and we have a human connection with our clients and they are our friends, you know what I mean? And I think that that is. Like, if you're an OG listener, you'll know that we went from one-on-one coaching to trying to sell programs only and using an app and then back to one-on-one coaching. Because what humans need is human connection that comes with accountability. And that's like, there's a lot of good physios out there. That's just the bad ones that just are like a human chop shop where somebody comes in. Yep. Do these exercises next. Yep, do these exercises next. Those sort of people are going to get forced out and they're going to have jobs anymore. The good physios that actually create accountability and understand ship with their client, they're going to be killing it. They will, in the end, they'll be able to charge more than what they're charging now and. People go physios are already super expensive, but because they can get results, they're going to be able to charge whatever they want. So just again, just something to keep an eye on, especially if you are a physio. I'm not sure if there's too many listening to this, but those people going to see physios, just bear in mind that. They're not going to be there forever, so don't rely on physios themselves. For your health and Wellness and injury prevention. Alright, so I have one listener question this week. Really one. Only one. Have you got any? I didn't even. I haven't been on socials this week. Really. Alright, it's your birthday so we'll let you off. Thanks. So the question was, do saunas burn fat? Well, that's a weird question. Yeah, well, one of our clients is at their gym. They've just put infrared saunas in cool. And I'm gonna incorporate saunas into her programs because saunas. Can be considered cardio and it is considered a stress on your body. This is what a lot of people
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don't realize they're like. I'll go in the sauna, I'll relax. And it can actually be a stress on your body. And I'll say it can be because everybody's different. Everybody absorbs stress different, everybody adapts to stress different. But it is, don't get me wrong, it is a stress on your body. So you have to be careful. You can't just be doing. All this work and then add in this extra stress and then expect better results. Because.
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What was he going to say? Saunas can increase your cardiovascular capacity because it can be considered cardio work to a certain extent. Your body sort of treats it as cardio, like I said in previous episodes. Your heart is just pumping. It doesn't actually realize whether it's doing burpees on a bike. Rower, jumping jacks, cardio, cardio, cardio. So there's no the best cart form of cardio. Your heart is just pumping. You're just going to get better at whatever you do the most of. So the question comes back to does. Do saunas burn fat? And the answer is yes and no. Because of what I just said. So it's gonna be different for everybody. As long as you're not adding it in and completely stressing out your body, it is going to aid in. Fat body fat reduction. It doesn't necessarily. Again, burn fat phase is. So what kind of car is it would? I suppose it depends where the person is on their fitness journey, but is it considered zone 2 cardio or it depends on how hot the sauna is? OK yeah, so again, the hotter the sauna is, the hotter you can stand, the more intense that. Someone to session cardio session is going to be, yeah, and This is why you got added in slowly and work up to it like any other cardio, if you jump into the hottest possible sauna straight away. And yes, there's some people out there that could stand that and understand their body would adapt, adapt to it quite easily,
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but a lot of people wouldn't. So you're going to have a very bad experience with that sauna session. And you're going to do it again, or it's gonna **** you up pretty bad. Yeah, so. Um, saunas are a great tool. And there's other there's so many more health benefits other than fat burning. Yeah, I was gonna say that. Then they're worth adding in 100%. So yes and no. To burning fat, but. Saunas are just a great tool to have in your pocket for longevity. Yeah, I can carry on about, that's probably just a whole nother topic, but. Do someone's burn fat? I wouldn't rely on saunas again. You wouldn't rely on one single thing to burn fat, and this quite definitely isn't. It was just a topic coming up, like in general conversation. Just thought it was good to talk about. Yeah, interesting. All right, we'll leave it there. We'll get gotta get on on with the day. Open some presents. Open some presents again. Thank you all for listening. Make sure you like, subscribe. subscribe. 5 star rating wherever you listen to this podcast. And head over to Instagram and give Mac a happy birthday. Yay. All right. See you all in the next episode. Bye.
