Welcome to Dr. Warrick's podcast channel. Warrick is a practicing cardiologist and author with a passion for improving care by helping patients understand their heart health through education. Warrick believes educated patients get the best health care. Discover and understand the latest approaches and technology in heart care and how this might apply to you or someone you love. Hi, my name is Dr. Warrick Bishop and I'd like to welcome you to my podcast and videocast station and I'd also like to welcome Adrian Lee. Hi, Adrian. Warrick, great to be here, my man. Super excited. Look, for those who may have missed the first podcast with Adrian, this is an opportunity for me to catch up with Adrian who's been in the fitness industry for 15 years or more. He's got an online presence at Leeway Fitness and I encourage you to check it out. He's walked the walk and talks the talk because he's gone through his own health journey. And in the first podcast, we touched on the important priorities and considerations needed to undertake a healthy life change and maintain that. So thank you for sharing that, Adrian. And it turned out that we both actually, because we work in the same area, have a lot of synergy. a lot of similarities in that space so it was really that 10 minutes or 15 minutes we spoke last time went in no time at all today though i want to pick your brains about muscle strength because for those listening you would realize that muscle strength is an incredibly important component of avoiding frailty with aging so Adrian, I'm going to ask you, I'm going to open it up about muscle strength and frailty. Tell me what you'd like. Mate, it's a very narrow topic, but very broad topic. So from my experience, growing up with older parents. As an example, mum and dad, both very physically active and from a strength point of view, never really did any strength-based activities other than what they would do on a daily basis. And what I seen over time as mum and dad got older was they started to get some issues with Their shoulders, elbows, hips, knees, their flexibility was quite poor just because they weren't actually doing anything to improve their mobility and flexibility just for everyday life. So they were more prone to lower back issues, hips, knee and ankles. um the personal training side i started to support mum and dad with some basic things at home so that were like dad actually because he was a builder he created a little step for himself so he could do step ups yeah perfect same with mum we got some bands um we got some little weights like these My little ham weights. For those listening, they're about a 200-gram weight that Adrian just lifted up and showed me. Yeah, about that, about a kilo. Oh, they're a kilo, are they? Yeah, they're a kilo. And so over time, and back then, mum was, I would say mum was about, you know, early 60s. Dad was in his 70s. And that was the start of their journey to strength training. So they went from being active, playing sports and having those sort of inflammation and their joints weren't so good over that time to starting to become more flexible, not only in the body, but also the mind. So they were starting to feel like younger in the mind, but also. They were starting to manage those daily stresses of life a lot better. The Greeks were believers that a healthy mind and a healthy body went together, and they were pretty smart, actually. Reiterating what we've probably known for thousands of years, which the interconnection between mind and body is huge and your sense of general well-being is a circular re-entrant loop that just plays back and can build that confidence, that sense of well-being and you break the loop and you're in trouble. With your parents, how much time were you getting them to allocate to their training? Because some people might be listening and thinking, oh, I don't have the time to do it. Yeah, so that's a great question, by the way. So because they hadn't trained with any resistance or bands or anything like that, we took it really slow. So we started off with five minutes every day. We do some very basic exercises just to sort of loosen up the body and the muscles and sort of get some better joint movement as well, better movement in their joints. And then over time, once we had that, those daily mobility as such and flexibility they were doing, we then started to increase it to, you know, to actual strength based. workouts which were just four exercises at the time and from there they sort of built it out to three days a week and that's where they were happy so they were doing something for mobility every day to keep the body moving some stretching and stretching out the calves and you know the hip flexes and all that and the lower back and then also they were doing those strength-based workouts three days a week And to be honest with you, they were like 15 minutes. Yeah, okay. Because that's all they needed. But what over time, especially dad, because he used to lift a lot of like timber and stuff over his head and, you know, carrying tools and whatever. He noticed that he's just from like doing, for example, I would get dad to carry a kettlebell in one hand. So like just a suitcase carry. And just getting to walk with it for like 30 seconds. And then over time, we would build that up. So we'd alternate through each side to build that stability in the core as well, because he would often carry tools with one hand. So therefore, he was strengthening his core and therefore he minimized that lower back tension as well. Interesting. So would you normally look at an individual's particular background or particular habits and try and tailor an exercise regime that most suits them? Yes, spot on. So because I knew dad was active mostly, I looked at the types of movements he would do repetitively and then we would work on strengthening those muscles around that to be able to support his daily life. Excuse me. And also it depends on, For example, great question too, personalising it. Some people come to work with us as well. Maybe they're boxing or they're doing some, you know, HIIT training or it's maybe some CrossFit or something like that. And it's actually sometimes why we're getting people to do less because we're being told to do more. Whereas if you take a less is more approach but actually go for quality and form and technique, and then build that base over time, that's where the magic happens. And that's how you can live a longer life pain-free without getting injured because we're starting at the foundation like mum and dad did. I think that's really important. Talking about easing into these things in a measured way to avoid injury is incredibly important, and particularly as you're getting older because your chance to recover seems to be less. as you age i mean i can attest to that because i'm i'm approaching those sort of ages where it's harder to uh recover you or you notice recovery takes longer look i'm just thinking as i'm listening to you that some of these exercises people could easily do in front of the telly at night while they're watching the news you know it might be that watching the news every night is a habit for them but this could almost be part of that habit without really intruding much at all. Do you get, do you set people up for that sort of intervention? Yeah. So for example, one of our, one of our clients, he has three kids and he works full time and he was doing his workouts late at night. So like at eight 30 before bed. So he'd, he'd work out at eight 30 and then until nine o'clock and then he'd go to bed. have a shower and then unwind, but he slept quite well. And he was what? He was almost 50, 50 years old, but he was training four days a week at night. And then he would be active throughout the day. And what he noticed was before he was finding it a real challenge to keep up with the kids. But not only that is to actually play with the kids, get down into those positions to be able to pick his kids up. without, you know, injuring himself. But, yeah, so we sort of, like you said before, I think you raised a great point around, and I'd love for you to share your resistance band, your banded mobility and strength based. So love to hear about that. Look, I don't know too much about resistance bands. I have heard a bit about them and they really reflect. a way to try and trigger muscles in the different zones that they work and this is probably not the place to get into that muscle physiology but what I have done with people who have been really challenged with getting anything done is to try and look for small wins and I've gone as far as to say to people look if all you can do is five squats when you're brushing your teeth in the first week and six squats when you're brushing your teeth in the next week and seven. And I've looked to try and find maybe a bit like you, any incremental benefit to improve strength and mobility. And I think there's no question, as you've already alluded to with your parents, if you're not using those joints, if you're not keeping strength around those joints, they just don't work properly. Yeah, spot on. Those flexors at the hips, those muscles used to get out of chairs and climb stairs, I think are incredibly important, but so are the back muscles to avoid back injury, as you say. Are there any sort of simple things you recommend for people to do just to care for their thighs? around their hips and their back? Or do you really focus on specific exercises for that? Yeah, so a couple of my favourite exercises that are gentle on the spine and you can do them in the morning. So there's a couple of exercises that I do every day. One of them is a cat-cow. Oh, yeah. Really love that stretch. Also, a hip hinge or like a glute bridge or, you know, hip bridge or whatever you want to call it. Great exercise to build the glutes. What I see with a lot of people is they don't know how to activate their glutes. Once you activate your glutes, then you activate your core as well because instead of being your top abs, you want to think if your top abs coming down like that. so that you can really activate the core. And that's what helps with the cat-cow. The cat-cow exercise helps you to engage your core. And then on the opposite side of that, you've got your glutes where you're able to activate them. And that will support you in everything that you do. So for those who can't visualize that or are listening to this, Without any video, what Adrian is talking about is the almost ring around the pelvis, which represents the muscles that give us stability, stability between our back and our legs. And we call that the core. And some of the activation of that core requires almost a frontward tilt to make those muscles work as well as possible. So a bit hard to visualize, but imagine your pelvis. a ring around it and a little bit of a tilt forward. And what Adrian is talking about is how we encourage and use that core strength for our own stability. And it reduces injury as well. If you've got that core activated, the chance of you hurting your back, if you're picking something up is markedly reduced. It's a fascinating space. I think muscular strength, flexibility is key to good health and healthy aging actually. Yeah. I'd also love to add another exercise that is super basic and that we do every day and it's walking. So as an example, I love either walking up a hill and walking down the hill or sprinting up the hill and walking down the hill. So when you walk up the hill, you're building strength. And you're able to do it in your own way and you can, you know, do what you can actually handle for your fitness level. But it's a great way to build muscular strength in the lower body, in the core. And then, you know, you're working both sides of, you know, the front of the leg and the back of the leg to keep it very simple. And the lower body as well, carbs and, you know, improving mobility in your ankles and whatnot. But it's just such a simple way you just find a hill, walk up the hill, walk down the hill, gets your heart rate up as well so you're getting some conditioning and you're adding resistance as well over time. I'm listening to you there, Adrian, thinking there might be some people who live in, oh. a flat part of the country, maybe Central Australia. And I'm guessing that even stairs in a multi-storey building could do just the same. And really what you're talking about is gravity resistance. Exactly. It's magnificent. Just using your own body weight. Beautiful. Look, I'm going to wrap it up on that. I think so that the tip there, the take home tip, I think is use the stairs, not the elevator. And if you can find a hill, scroll up and down it, enjoy it and take, take advantage of gravity. It's free. Adrian, thanks so much for sharing for those listening. I'm pretty sure that there'd be videos and guidance around cat cow and various other exercises on Adrian's website. That's Adrian, Adrian way, sorry, Lee way fitness. It's. Adrian Lee I've been talking to, but it's leewayfitness.com.au. Check it out and have a look. Adrian, thanks so much for your time. Thanks for joining us. Warrick, thanks again. Really appreciate it. And thank you to your audience as well. Hope you got some value. Look, for those listening, I hope you found that dip into strength and maintenance of strength and flexibility valuable. And I hope it raises some questions and gives you... the information you need to prioritise good health in your own life. From the Healthy Heart Network, wishing you live as well as possible for as long as possible. Till next time, please take care. If you've got any queries or questions, drop us a note. Bye for now. You have been listening to another podcast from Dr. Warrick. Visit his website at drWarrickbishop.com for the latest news on heart disease. If you love this podcast, feel free to leave us a review.
