Podcast #8: The impact of sport on physical and mental health – how movement affects our mood, motivation and resistance to burnout
We all know that movement is literally vital for our bodies, but most of us don’t have the time or energy. Physiotherapist Braňo Mišovič fromFitclinicwho is the guest on the next episode of our podcast Na vlne kódu, believes that the body and the mind are one. Listen to the inspiring interview that movement is not only about a healthy body, but also about a balanced mind, resistance to stress and a better mood.
The link between physical and mental health is not esoteric, but a very practical reality. When our bodies feel well, we can handle pressure, challenges, and even harder days much more easily. When we are in psychological well-being, we also perceive physical pain in a completely different way.
You may have already noticed that if you do any sport regularly, your mental health will improve. It is also true that after a good night’s sleep, you can handle a busy day with greater ease. And that’s what today is going to be about. How what we do with our bodies affects our motivation and also our resistance to burnout. And in this episode, we’re going to look at what physical habits can make us mentally stronger, how to improve our mood, what movement does to the brain and hormones, and also how to set up our day so that we feel better in the long run and most importantly, without any extremes.
If you feel that the office chair is getting to you, this is the episode for you. Together, let’s see that even small changes can make a big difference. Our host Ivka Hricová, HR manager at msg life Slovakia, talks to our guest.
Today, it’s probably no surprise that when we take care of ourselves physically, we feel better mentally. But why is that? What happens in the body when we go for a run, do some exercise or take some steps? Is it just our mood that improves or how does it all work?
It is not for nothing that it is said that movement is the engine and originator of psychological well-being. The underlying principle is the release of certain hormones – specifically endorphins and dopamine, which are key hormones that are linked to feeling good. When we move, these hormones are produced at an increased rate and create good feelings in our bodies. Endorphins induce a feeling of euphoria, reducing the perception of pain – and that’s actually what makes us feel good. This effect is often referred to as “runner’s euphoria”; runners know it. Of course, other physical activities also create and release large amounts of endorphins and make us feel very cool indeed.
“Movement is the engine and originator of psychological well-being.”
Is there any other way to support such a good mood? By eating, sleeping or something normal that we can fit into our daily routine, even if we don’t exercise?
Basically, yes. There are various other methods that can help us. For example, hardening, cold water, the Wim Hof method, a good diet. When we eat something we like, we also feel happy. And endorphins are not only released when we move. It’s with anything that makes us feel good. So basically, what makes us feel good is also healthy for our bodies.
Is there evidence that the body and the mind are much more connected than we once thought, or is this still in the realm of hypothesis?
It is also confirmed by scientific studies that a real healthy, strong physical body simply makes us feel good. We have self-confidence and when we have self-confidence, we also have a certain peace within ourselves. And when we have peace within ourselves, we also have a certain humility. So it’s such a nice little train that builds on itself. I don’t want to make it sound like only a strong person is the right person. Because I know that a lot of people, when we talk about this topic, they think of this kind of swell guy from the gym who has more muscle than brains.
Physical well-being in a healthy and strong body is not at all related to muscle size. Even if we look at calisthenic athletes, they are very strong, but they are not extremely muscular. But they will confirm that when I am physically strong and resilient, or I am in good shape, I also have a certain amount of confidence and belief in my abilities. And the psyche works for me, not against me. I’m coping better stress at work, in the family, because I have the comfort of that health in me. When a person is ill, weak, not feeling comfortable in his body, he may be wise in his own way, educated in his own way, but it will reflect on that psyche in the form of discomfort.
I also have patients who are medically disadvantaged and have to work very hard on their fitness. Since I am with them often, I see the physical amplification in them significantly in how their mood improves. Conversely, when there is a period when they go down physically, it automatically affects the psyche a lot. I experience the same thing with professional athletes and with ordinary people in practice. When we make them physically healthy people, they literally shine – in their personal and professional lives. So it’s absolutely connected.
Movement is not only about a healthy body, but also about mental resilience. What physical activities reduce stress the most? Is it better to sweat during an intense HIIT workout, or to indulge in a longer walk in the woods?
It is individual. But something completely different in the body is created by high-intensity interval training – the HIIT or tabata, which is also interval training, just with a different interval setting. HIIT created in me in a very short time a feeling of well-being, happiness, because I get sweaty, I breathe, I get pleasantly tired. In a very short period of time a large amount, even a rush of endorphins is created. So when I need to save time and I want to take the stress out of myself, I go to something like this.
But the question is whether it is healthy for the posture, for physical health, bones, muscles and joints. Because HIIT is an exercise that targets something precisely. If I take exercise really just to improve my psyche, HITT is a very good system in a short time. While I would induce a similar amount of endorphins when walking, for example, I would have to dedicate a lot more time to it. In order to accumulate as many endorphins while walking as I do in 30 minutes with HITT, I would need to walk three to four times longer – so at least 2 – 2.5 hours. And not a slow, shuffling walk, but a bit more brisk.
Ideal is Nordic walking, where I also engage my upper limbs, because people don’t normally engage their upper limbs when walking. And yet engaging the arms to move the legs is an absolute natural thing to do – that’s when I can even get close to HIIT. So if I were to answer your question strictly, HITT will provide a great supply of good hormones in a short period of time. Walking a bit slower and I have to dedicate more time to it.
Which kind of movement do you consider the most underrated? Or on the other hand, what is overrated and doesn’t make as much sense?
Now I’ve picked up HIIT a little bit and I’ve sort of put walking on the back burner. But when you put the question like that, I’ll answer it quite accurately. Walking is the most underrated and yet it has huge health benefits. It just needs to be dedicated to for longer periods of time. The most overrated, in turn, is HIIT exercise, because it has the benefit of quickly draining you. I’ve knocked stress off of myself, but the effect on the physique as a whole is debatable.
“Walking is the most underrated movement, yet it brings huge health benefits.”
Let’s go back to walking and to steps. Those 10,000 steps we should take every day, are they for the whole day?
10,000 steps means to tense the muscles of your body 10,000 times in some way, i.e. to activate them. It’s a number that is calculated maybe in a very general way – for somebody it’s more, for somebody it’s less. One larger study found that 10,000 steps is ideal for maintaining cardiovascular health. Careful, cardiovascular, meaning the blood vessels of the heart. That doesn’t mean that if I walk, I’ll have a healthy posture or anything like that.
In the field of cardiovascular health, the 10,000 steps are ideal for all the biomechanisms that need to work in the human body. But they need to be done purposefully. If I look at my watch in the evening and there are 20,000 steps, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Is it really 20,000 steps that I’ve done cyclically and purposefully? That I walked for two hours straight and did 20,000 steps? Or is it just 20,000 random movements, because the watch is based on the principle of gyroscopes and counts any shaking as movement?
So for me, those 10,000 steps have to be the 10,000 strict steps. I set aside time to walk, start watching the counter, and walk. Otherwise, it’s just random hand-generated movements and random steps. We need a cycle. Then the body will work in certain intentions, because I won’t do 10,000 steps in 35 minutes, I’ll do them in maybe an hour – an hour and ten minutes, and the body after 30 – 35 minutes will trigger completely different biomechanisms. Exactly the ones that we want. The ones where it starts to burn continuously, where the fluids in the body start to flow steadily, etc. These are not randomly generated movements. I’m going, I’m just going. Foot in front of foot, hand in front of hand. So that’s the way to see it. 10,000 purposeful steps. All the others are random.
I’ll also bridge to the drinking regime, because it is very important during the day. How about drinking water?
In the drinking regime, the split occurs again. Again, there are many studies, so let us agree on this one. If our body is to have something to cleanse the intestinal apparatus and for what it has to go into the blood vessels, we cannot count tea, coffee, soup, juice in there, because there are so many supplements that the stomach has to deal with. Thus, what it has is no longer going into the intestinal circulation. That purifier, that something pure, that’s just water.
So, if I have to drink 2.5 litres of fluids a day, it means 2.5 litres of pure water. Tea, coffee, soup – that’s something else. We should not put these two things together. If I’ve had 3 dcl of soup, another soup in the evening, half a litre of tea, these are things that the body has to work with again and has to put in the work to process them. And on top of that, there’s the product that goes into the gut. I need the gut and the stomach to have to work as little as possible. That’s why I need to drink that amount of plain water, so that I’m always clearing those “pipes” as best I can.
The Wim Hof method, which we have already mentioned today, is also quite popular. Cold plunges, breathing exercises, body work, perhaps sometimes to extremes. In your opinion, can it also be useful as a prevention against burnout? Isn’t it already too much of a shock to the body?
Talking about cold in general, it has great benefits for the body. To put it in technical terms, even a computer needs cooling for the processor. Because when it overheats, it does not perform and can be destroyed. And it is the same with the human body. The human body has certain cooling processes, but it has to put some work into them. That is to say, when we cool the body, we relieve it from having to do a lot of work in warming up when it is cold outside. That is, we prepare and train it for something that it then has less work to do.
The Wim Hof method is primarily based on breathing. Fibrillated breathing, rapid intermittent breathing, etc. There are many techniques. I am absolutely not an expert on the Wim Hof method, but purely from my experience as a hardy swimmer, I know that the cold and the subsequent warming of the body after coming out of the cold water simply has to cause an influx of endorphins for one simple reason. The body needs to warm up and just like any other movement, the blood vessels will dilate. So they dilate really considerably. That vasomotion, that vasodilation, causes a lot of blood flow. And because it causes proper blood circulation and we breathe, we bring a much greater volume of oxygen into the body. This makes the body come alive.
And this is the principle. Oxygen is absolutely the most important commodity for the human body, in the sense of supplying oxygen to the tissues. And I’m going to feel significantly better. If I’m not breathing, I’m breathing shallowly, I get a headache. We say I don’t have enough oxygen, I’m out of breath. Well, then let’s do the cold plunge, because cold plunges are all about breathing. And the cold is just an aid to make the blood vessels constrict and then stretch. We use the cold to constrict the blood vessels because we can’t constrict them any other way. So water is just an aid.
For me, working out is excellent for stress relief because it actually creates a similar environment to when I run, walk or exercise. The blood vessels start to dilate and constrict, thus the body starts to get better blood flow and oxygenation. And when I give my body all this, what I don’t give it for hours and days, I automatically feel better.
“An excellent thing to relieve stress is cold plunge.”
Is it similar with the sauna, when I go from the sauna to the ice water?
Yes, the cold water is the most important part of the whole sauna experience. If people forget this, they don’t sauna as they should. There are the terms positive and negative thermotherapy. Negative thermotherapy is the cooling down, it’s actually the cold plunging. Positive thermotherapy is warming up. For example, a Finnish sauna is called a cardio sauna, there you don’t relax the muscles at all. My body can’t warm up that deeply there because the temperature is so high that the body expends enormous energy to cool itself. That’s what sweating is. That’s extreme sweating. That’s why I’m only in the Finnish sauna for a little while, 10 to 15 minutes. And that’s when my heart is practically working, because then I go into the cold water, the blood vessels contract again, they stretch, and therefore the heart is working. That vasomotion, vasodilatation – that means my blood vessels are dilating, contracting. That’s what the Finnish sauna is all about.
But when I go to an infrared sauna, where the temperature is much lower, more than half, in the range of 50, 55 to 60 degrees, the body has time to heat up more slowly. It doesn’t open up the self-cooling mechanism as profusely, so our muscles get warmed up to a much greater depth. That’s why we don’t use a Finnish sauna after sports, but an infrared sauna, because it actually relaxes our muscles to a greater depth. Or saunas with a lower temperature, where the body gradually absorbs the temperature and relaxes the muscles down to the deeper structures.
I don’t go to the cooling pool after these saunas. It’s enough if I go to the air, to the tepidarium. So yes, sauna has the same effects as cooling down, it’s just from the opposite end. After cooling off in the cold water, I go out in the air, so I usually start to warm up because I have to cover up. I should cover myself in something warm. And this one is just the opposite. I go from warming up to cooling down. So the principle is basically similar. Also, before a normal sauna, there were certain rituals when I’m supposed to warm up. Same as before cooling down. I should take a breath according to the Wim Hof method. If you look at some of our other polar bears in different shows, they’re jumping in that water because they’ve gotten used to it over the years. They’ve already practiced it. But when I start, I have to start with breathing. Even in that positive thermotherapy, that means sauna or cooling down. It’s all about breathing. That’s the first point.
But let’s go back to the movement itself. Is just 5-10 minutes of exercise a day enough to make us feel better, or do we need to work out for at least half an hour – an hour?
Sometimes even a little is better than nothing at all. Just do something. In fact, in 10 minutes, I could destroy you so badly, you wouldn’t know where north is. Really, there’s an exercise called the MREP type – do as many reps as you can in the time given and I’ll have you do three exercises in a cycle. You’ll do this one twice, this one twice, this one twice. If you do as many as you can in 10 minutes, you’ll reach your limit and you’ll be done. But then again, we’re back to that high-intensity interval training.
I’ll tell you how I do it. The less time I have to train, the more intense my training is. If I have more time, I go more into endurance development. If I only have half an hour, I go almost to the edge – interval training. And if you take that person just a regular everyday, untrained person, in those 10 minutes they’ll do the exercises at a high intensity and really get a good workout.
Researchers have calculated that the equivalent of 8 hours of sedentary work is one hour of purposeful cyclical movement. One hour of walking. So, make your own judgement as to whether 10 minutes will be enough. Still better than nothing, that’s how I’ll sum it up.
“The equivalent of 8 hours of sedentary work is one hour of purposeful cyclical movement.”
Let’s go back to the office now. After every hour we should exercise. How can I exercise? Can I just walk to get a coffee, for example?
No, it’s not enough. I have to do targeted exercise. It’s not enough to go purposely for coffee, that’s an alibi approach. Because if you go for that coffee on purpose, are you really going to walk that beautiful walk? Left hand in front of the right foot, right hand in front of the left foot, right? Are you going to keep an eye on it ? You’re gonna turn on your heel and you’re gonna go.
Isn’t it more sensible to actually take those two or three minutes? I have them all to myself. I sit and breathe for a minute. Now, Ivka, if we close our eyes for a minute and we go to breathe together, in that minute you can feel that at least you are pleasantly dizzy, because you have oxygenated yourself. A little more than normal. And after that minute, we stand up and go stretch ten times right, ten times left. We’re gonna do ten lunges. Ten times we stand up from the chair, shake our head. There’s no substitute for walking for coffee. I’ll say again, it’s better than nothing, but let’s not look for escapes.
Which is better for our mood and for our head? Is it running or fast walking? For example, I’ve heard that running burns more carbs and walking burns more fat. Is that true? And what has any effect on our psyche at all?
It is said that we burn more fat when walking than when running, because if it is an ordinary untrained person, he will have a lower heart rate base when walking. And because he has a lower heart rate base, he doesn’t necessarily need to use fast sugars. That means when I take a doboche or a gel, that’s a fast sugar. The body is going perfectly fine, struggling to cover energy expenditure from what it burns from fat. Of course, something goes from the fast sugar as well, even though we have a lower heart rate base when we walk, but it has plenty of time to make the energy we need from that fat. Because it’s a little slower to make it from that and it takes longer for the body to do it.
But when running, a person who is untrained and goes out to start running has a much higher heart rate. So the body automatically needs a faster supply of fast energy. He doesn’t have time to process the fat. Because when he is running, his heart rate is 150 and I need to supply him with energy quickly. But in turn, as a well-trained endurance runner, when I run at a slow pace for me, for example 6 minutes 30 seconds per kilometer, I have a heart rate of 111. For you, that’s a borderline pace where you have a heart rate of 150. What do you think, am I burning sugar fast while doing that? I’m not.
So it’s individual. I’ll show you x number of people who have health problems and they’re 150 when they walk. Those go on fast sugar all the time. So you’ve got to adjust your walking speed as well to keep your heart rate at a level where you’re burning fat. For example, there are zones Z1 – Z6. We know that in the Z1 zone, for example, we’re only using 50% of our body’s potential. In the Z5 – Z6 zone, we use 100%. So by those zones, I know that when I’m in Z1 – Z2, I’m going quasi on fat. That I don’t need that fast sugar. But as my heart rate goes up into zone Z3, 4, 5, I need that energy more and especially fast.
Which types of exercises do you think are the best if you are mentally exhausted and no longer have the strength for big performances, but want to at least move your body a bit and turn off your head?
For me, these are such “lazy exercises” as walking, Nordic walking. There I clean my mind beautifully and the body does not work in high intensity. It goes along with the same intentions, in that cyclical way where it can tune in to everything and everything becomes in sync. Then stretching and breathing exercises, pilates. Just where I’m engaging the body in a kind of quasi isometrics, like those dynamic exercises.
I mean, yes, HIIT will get you pumped up in a short period of time, it will quickly knock everything out of your head. But sometimes it can also make the psyche worse, because it may not go the way I want it to. After just three minutes I feel tired, I’m not in the mood for that explosiveness. So I leave the training more disgusted than when I went there. After walking, I have nothing to be more disgusted about. When I walk, I don’t stress the body as much, but at the same time I do an incredible amount for it. There are a lot of studies on that.
Walking is often underestimated because it is not as intense as other forms of exercise. Yet regular walking improves cardiovascular, muscular, mood and reduces stress. Precisely because there’s that cycling. I might put on some music or a podcast to go along with it and my thoughts will drift somewhere else entirely. Whereas with that high-intensity cardio, maybe I really can’t, I don’t feel like it, I have to listen to the coach. I’ve dealt with that, I’ve been doing those HIITs for years. It’s a lot harder to motivate that person then. So for me walking, stretching, breathing exercises.
How does sitting for long periods of time affect our body and mind? Could it be the silent thief of energy?
It’s true. Sitting is an unnatural position for the body, prolonged sitting means prolonged inactivity. Even if I have those slots in there every hour, it’s a totally unacceptable position for the human body. It’s just not moving. So yes, sitting is a silent killer in every way, and it definitely needs to be compensated for as much as possible.
Why are we more tired after a day in a chair than if we had physically worked?
Precisely because nothing happens in the body. We don’t have it sufficiently oxygenated, we have clogged, clogged blood vessels. You’re not doing anything, you’re not putting out energy. Most people who are sitting are probably working mentally. When I’m working mentally, I have to engage my brain and my brain threads. And the brain is a machine that needs a lot of sugar. So I automatically reach for something. So I’m messing up my health by not moving, plus the intake of nutritious foods that aren’t appropriate.
There is a so-called tree theory. For a tree to be healthy and resilient, it needs to grow upwards and have no obstacles. Because when it has them, it weakens it, the trunk is crooked, leaning. It is the same with the human body. It needs to stretch and move as much as possible so that the biomechanisms that need to be triggered in it are also triggered. This is myofascial movement, movement between fascia, musculature, then other structure. Everything is driven by movement.
So I must feel tired when I sit for a long time because I have an unnatural position, my muscles are in unnatural positions and tensions, or the opposite of tensions. A lot of my muscles are then weakened, other muscles are in turn shortened, so I have huge disproportions in my body. Nothing works as it should. So the fatigue just has to set in. Fluids don’t flow in the body the way they should. We’re not getting enough blood flow. We’re not vascularized enough in the acral areas. The body goes like half throttle on supplying the body with beneficial substances.
We are talking about movement. Is it just about blood circulation or is there something deeper going on there, chemically, hormonally, or mentally? How do the processes in our body actually work?
everything is connected. Let’s try to imagine it as a kind of mechanism on old trains, a “backstage” mechanism. When a wheel moves, the driven wheel through that scenery moves another wheel. That is, I’m setting the whole scenery mechanism in motion.
When I’m not moving, none of those mechanisms work. Thus, the physical tied to the mental doesn’t work for me either. The bad mood, the feeling of emptiness, of not being satisfied will come to everyone at some point. I know a lot of people who work in the IT sector, which is probably where they sit the most, and there are those who will say they are absolutely fine with it. But when I ask why you came for a massage – well if it suits you, your back doesn´t hurt or anything. And they’re already chatting. I say, so basically it doesn’t suit you.
The fact that it suits him for the psychological side, well, fine. He’ll be fine with it for a while. And there are even some people that it doesn’t do anything to their psyche. They’re perfectly OK with sitting. But they have a completely broken body. And then that starts to make them angry and suddenly their mood is spoiled again. That their body is not working, which is where the soul and the brain reside.
Either way, it’s loading up.
Ivka, it’s always related. Absolutely all mechanisms. When I don’t move, my vascular supply doesn’t work. When there’s no vascular supply, the muscles don’t have elasticity. The fibers aren’t sufficiently vascularized, nourished. When they don’t have enough blood supply and I stand up, it hinders my movement. I’m hunched over, I can’t bend over. I have pain behind my knees. I can’t do this movement, that movement. I go to play catch a little bit with the kids and I can’t do it anymore. So it then follows all the processes in the human body – from the mental to the dissatisfaction of not being able to do something.
We already know why we move. Now let’s figure out how to do it. Let’s give some simple tips on what we can do every day, even when we have a busy calendar. Can we try some breathing exercises?
100% yes. Breathing exercises are a very popular exercise that many physiotherapists include, as it is quasi-physically demanding unless the body is used to the movement. It has a beneficial effect on the whole body just by getting it properly blooded and oxygenated. In this way I will finally bring oxygen to the most remote areas of the body, it will finally start to live and function there. And most importantly, through breathing exercises, one will slowly work up to the essentially physical exercise as well.
I would definitely put breathing exercises on the very first step when I want to start doing something for my body. To try, those tutorials are relatively many. The simplest one is to try to breathe in as long as possible, breathe out as long as possible. There are a lot of apps where I can set a time and meditate in peace. Work with the breath. Learning to breathe into the shoulders. Learning to breathe into the diaphragm. For diaphragmatic breathing, it’s better to have someone teach you, because you can hardly test yourself if you’re really breathing into your diaphragm. But in any case, breathing is such a first step.
“Breathing exercises have a beneficial effect on the whole organism just by making it properly supplied with blood and oxygen.”
What simple physical exercise can anyone really do? Whether at work or at home, without having to spread out a mattress between chairs?
Every healthy person should be able to do one key, one squat, do a deep squat, hold it.
What if someone has problems with their knees, spine, etc.?
Then I just go into as deep a squat as my knees will allow. Quite normally I engage common sense. I don’t have to give up the squat. Because that squat, that movement in my knees, gives me health in those knees. Because when my knees don’t move, it creates changes in the cartilage that then cause problems. I still have to work with that knee to get the articular surfaces in there to ride out the way they’re supposed to be. So that various osteophytes and stiffening of the knee don’t develop there. And especially when I move, my knee also naturally lubricates with synovial fluid, which seeps in when the knee moves.
And this applies to every joint. When I’m not moving, I’m just not. And at home, I can do whatever my body allows me to do. I can move my arms, my legs, I can stretch them, bend them. I can squat, I can bend over, I can lie on my back. I can move my limbs calmly and chaotically. Just to do something.
And if you want specific exercises, different types of squatting exercises, exercises where I’m extending my limbs in a seated position, forefoot straddling and straddling in a seated position, straddling in a standing position, forefoot straddling in a standing position, straddling in a seated position, straddling in a supine position, lifting both lower limbs in a supine position, we have abdominal exercises. There is a huge amount of exercises. When someone asks me which three exercises I would single out, it’s the squat, the kneeling squat and the sit-lie. Or rather, not the sit-lie, but the shortcut. I mean, some sort of core exercise. Just the simplest.
Don’t complicate things unnecessarily.
For what? Everybody says that sit-ups are not a thing anymore. Yes, they do what’s called shortening, where I go for that upper abdominal muscle and I just do that chest lift. When I want to strengthen that lower part, I put my hands under my butt while lying on my back and lift my extended lower limbs, or legs off the ground in a perpendicular direction. So I can really do any exercises that are very simple.
How do we set up our daily routine so that we don’t feel like a jigsaw puzzle? To keep our mental and physical in balance?
It is necessary to set aside time during the day just for yourself. This time, these 10, 15, 20 minutes, is just for me. And this is the balance to what I have behind me after a full day of work.
I have a workout habits at work. In the morning before work, I have a warm-up. In the evening, I do a little stretching, which prepares me for a restful night’s sleep. And if I have a consistent system of doing 5 Tibetans in the morning, doing something else during the day, then after work I take 10, 20, 30 minutes and go walk, go work out, go on the treadmill, go bike, I’ve practically done the best I can and I can’t feel like I’m a jigsaw puzzle afterwards. Because I’ve got a system in place. If a breathing exercise makes me feel better for the evening, some mantra I’m reading while I do it, complete relaxation, some yoga exercise, I do that. If I’m a more dynamic type of person than that and a routine of those 100 push-ups and 200 abdominal exercises does me good in the evening, I do that and I look forward to it. I’m perfectly happy to have a 10 o’clock time and go work out. And then I’m even more happy because I kept it. So I really have to set aside time. There’s probably no other way to do it, Ivka, there just isn’t.
I understand, basically everyone has to find their own thing.
Exactly, your system. But it should be sustainable in the long term. That is, not to set unrealistic goals. If I can’t do more than 10 reps of that exercise, I’m not going to give myself an unrealistic goal like I’m not going to go to sleep until I’ve done 10 reps of the whole thing. I’m fine going with what I’ve got. I’m packing some motivation and strength and gradually increasing that.
Definitely need to start. That’s where it all starts. An awful lot has already been said, there is an incredible amount of motivation and guidance on the internet, and I guess I’m just repeating some of it now too. But you need to have, or you need to try to build that routine within yourself. It’s hard, it takes time.
“You need to set aside that time during the day for yourself and only yourself. Sometimes even ten minutes is enough.”
If you had to pick some kind of exercise to relieve pain, what would it be? My neck hurts at work, what should I choose?
I really like pilates, so I would probably go in that direction. I would definitely go to a Pilates class, possibly a physiotherapist who does Pilates and there is a wide variety of exercises I can learn. He can be a huge help to me with a lot of postural problems. Stiff neck, lower back, weakened abdomen, etc.
What if my hand hurts, for example, because of working with a mouse?
The hand mostly hurts people who work a lot on the computer or even seamstresses. Mostly it is carpal tunnelwhich arises precisely from the inactivity of the variety of movement of the palm and finger parts. So I try to stretch my forearm, stretch my fingers in all possible directions, use simple strengthening exercises, for example, squishing a rubber ball or a strengthening ring, opening my fingers to the absolute largest possible opening, spreading my fingers, clenching my fists and especially stretching my forearm.
It is there that the movement binds, it stiffens there, so expressly stretching the whole forearm is paramount. I push my fingers backwards, also the whole palm part, then in the opposite direction, that is to the bottom, I move left, right with the whole wrist, circular movements in the wrist. This I would say is general yet very effective for everyone.
What would you recommend to everyone who wants to start moving a little bit? Maybe even ten minutes in the morning is enough? Or some stretching in the evening with Netflix, or did we mention like those Tibetans, yoga?
100% yes. Whatever movement they are going to do, let them do it in the sense of some cyclical movement. So feel free to start with five Tibetans, feel free to start with a 10-minute warm-up in the morning, add to that some other exercise for 10 minutes in the evening.
I don’t see the problem in how much time to devote to it, but mainly to get started. Stretching, those Tibetans, is totally awesome for the morning, but cool for the evening too. After a full, sedentary day, too. Stretching rather than that intense exercise. If we’re talking about people who sit a lot. And who are just starting out. In the evening, I’d also opt for stretching exercises.
If you came to me as a client and asked me what to do in the morning, I’d tell you to do this stretching exercise in the morning, you’re going to do lunges. You lean your butt against the wall and you slowly lean forward, you rub your palms up your thighs to where your back lets go. You repeat ten times. If you don’t have a problem with that, keep going. You’re back against the wall, arms outstretched, you rest your palms facing forward against the wall and do half-arches. You stretch your arms above your head, doing circles. There’s a lot of exercises. I’m moving my shoulders, my shins, my whole body. Those are the deep squats. I can grab the table, the door, the radiator, if I can’t get into that deep squat. Or I just go within where my knees will let me so I don’t fall. But I’m trying to get all my joints moving.
How to stand properly at the sliding table?
We are not standing on one leg. I always stand nicely on both legs and with my tummy tucked in. The moment I retract my belly, my pelvis sits up slightly. So from antiversion to retroversion, that’s where we should have it.
If you had to give one main message to everyone who wants to improve their life through healthier movement, what would it be?
Move. To find the time, the space, the routine to just do a few of those simple exercises every day. And let’s say what they can start doing today is during their busy day, try to take those two, three minutes every hour to exercise. And to not pay attention to the fact that somebody’s giving me some weird look. After all, it’s my health, not his.
Braňo, thank you for going into complete depth with us today, from what’s going on in our bodies to how it affects our mood, motivation and overall well-being. It was not only enlightening, but most importantly practical. And that’s exactly what we’re all about in the podcast Na vlne kódu.
We may not have time to make big changes every day, but even small steps can make a big difference. Give your body movement, breathe consciously, set up your day so that there is room in it for you. Not just for emails and deadlines.
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