5 minutes to lengthen your life

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The hardest part of any effort is the starting.

We can all spare 5 minutes.

Combining the 2 thoughts, you can take any spare 5 minutes and use it toward lengthening your healthspan, the period of time that you are, before your inevitable demise, fit and active. You don’t even need special kit.

Not counting the cardiovascular elements (walking, running, cycling, swimming, pushing), mobility and resistance work (stretching and lifting against gravity) can be easily fitted into 5 minutes.

The best mobility routines are the ones taught to your morphology by a professional, but anything that puts the tissues under gentle tension and explores a joint’s range of motion is beneficial. Anything that moves your body against gravity also counts as resistance . Air squats, lunges, standing press (a pushup against a wall), water bottle swings, and bag shoulder presses. Use your imagination.

If you get stuck starting, take the date and do that number of exercises, for 3 exercises. 14th? do 14 lunges, 14 wall press, 14 bag press, 3 times, then finish off the 5 minutes with some stretching. 27th? 3 sets of 27 air squats, 27 wall presses, 27 water bottle swings. You get the idea.

No exuses, move to save your life.

Back in business

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Although we never went away, just had a brief pause whilst working in more immediate fields.

And now, we are open again, with new procedures, new plans and ways to help.

The new plans are simple: if you want an appointment, we will screen your needs first. Like most of the NHS, your first contact, after reception, will be a telephone consultation, where we briefly discuss your needs. Then we will be able to choose between video call, so we can see and talk about your presentation remotely, or an in person treatment.

The process should be almost as seamless as before, with some extra bits to help us both.

If we do mutually decide on an in person appointment, the clinic has new procedures, which will be explained and sent to you prior to your meeting, and appropriate PPE will be worn for the comfort and safety of all. For example, we are using the infection control standards of major high dependency departments and allowing time between each client to clean down.

So please do contact us if you need support and those lockdown niggles are beginning to bite, we can help once more.

Onwards.

What next?

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In retrospect, the clinic shut down early. The last patient cancelled and we shut the books for the foreseeable future. One day we will open again, but not yet.

Everyone followed soon after and the long wait began.

While most stay safe in their homes, supported by untold teams of drivers, shop workers and multitude other essential services, thousands of ordinary people, face down the horsemen. Death and Pestilence ride together, War and Famine await their turn in forgotten corners of the globe.

The words often ascribed to such occasions are those of conflict, of battles won and lost, of enemies and war. But as a certain Mr Turner puts it:

It’s easy enough to talk about Blitz spirit when you’re not holding the roof up and knee deep in it.

This is not a battle, it’s a tsunami, a huge wave triggered far away, yet one whose power can be mitigated by personal inaction, where sitting on the sofa can directly prevent mortality.

At some point the tide will recede, revealing a new reality. Many will have lost loved ones, more face a changing work landscape, yet more have no job at all. With such changes will come uncertainty, unrest and reflection to last years. In time, this point will become another node in history, and essays, theses and books will be written, hopefully adding to the lessons learned so that those who come after us will be wiser.

In the complementary sector, we will have to consider many new areas. We will have to change practices to protect both ourselves and our clients, we may be unable to offer certain treatments, others may require new equipment or skills.

Manual therapy will demand better personal protective equipment, with gloves, facemasks and clean tops for each client, as well as facemasks for any client with respiratory problems. Beauty therapy and more intimate procedures will require eye protection and improved health screening due to the prolonged proximity of the client and the risk of aerosol producing events.

As a business owner, assume your income will be down at least a third within three months and your industry will be on a different landscape within three years. As a practitioner, think through what you do, assess the risks and understand what you will need to change to make it safer for you and your client, what new skills you will end to learn and what equipment you will need to use.

The doors will reopen on a changed landscape. Those who don’t evolve will be left behind. Reflect, plan, act.

Resolution: do less.

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Cancel your gym membership.

Drink coffee, but perhaps not the third glass of wine.

Turn off the tv, make your phone black and white, with no notifications.

Do less. Eat less, drink less.

Most resolutions fail because they don’t have a narrative imperative. There is nothing driving you to do them.

Why sign up for a years non attendance at a gym, pretend you’ll get up half an hour earlier, or take up a new hobby you’ll stop in a few weeks when the urge leaves you.

Give something up instead, find the imperative.

It will give you more in the end, by creating space. A space that will fill itself with better things, naturally.

A walk becomes a run, mental space a new creativity, improved health the natural desire to continue to improve. Then, only then, will you want to exercise, read, learn and develop.

Give something up today, and start growing.

Do the work, let it change you.

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Because if it isn’t changing you in some way, you’re wasting time.

And that is your only finite resource. And you have no idea when the sand will run out.

You can work harder, or smarter, or both.

Or you can let it overwhelm you.

But either way, do the work.

4 simple elements for performance.

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  • Recovery / sleep
  • Nutrition
  • Responsibilities (family/work)
  • Training

If you can’t control 3, you can’t push the fourth.

Insufficient recovery? Don’t push the other ones. Poor nutrition? Careful with the training or recovery. Can’t slack on the responsibilities? Fuel well and recover before going hard on the training.

Sure, you can cut corners for a little while before it catches up on you, but it will in the end. And long term health may suffer too.

And if you can’t absolutely control the basics, then you’re not going to be able to push the boundaries to see what you’re capable of.

How much are you willing to sacrifice to get to that goal? And is it worth it?

Those who can, do.

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Those who want to understand, teach, as the fastest way of finding out what you don’t know about a subject is to attempt to explain it from first principles to someone else.

For a new perspective on whatever it is you do, imagine attempting to explain it to another person, using whichever modality you need (visual, audio, kinaesthetic). My personal approach in clinic tends to be pictures on a white board, in conjunction with moving the patient passively through what I am attempting to get them to do, allowing their brain and body to feel directly.

Approach from first principles and help everyone to grow.

You are what you do.

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They presented with a long history of shoulder and back pain, with occasional headaches, particularly in the evening. No other significant complaints, simply a tight and painful upper back, and shoulders, with a stiff neck.

After taking a thorough history and checking pertinent red flags, I carried out a suitable examination, looking at how they used their body, how it wanted to respond passively and actively.

And the thing was, other than the presenting complaint, there wasn’t much to be found. An anteriorised head posture and slightly kyphotic thoracic spine, but nothing much more than you might expect for a modern lifestyle. They exercised frequently, were not obese and tried to optimise their working posture when at a desk.

I treated what I found, and we addressed a few issues, but I was unhappy with their progress, as the complaint didn’t feel like it was resolving along the curve I expected.

Then it clicked. Whenever I went through to reception to collect them, they were playing with their phone. Head slumped forwards on the chest, looking down at the tiny screen and typing or scrolling away.

The problem is, modern expectations are that we are constantly connected, with rewards and punishments meted out by both the device and other people if we do not respond to its electronic siren call. I am as guilty as the next person, at instinctively checking and wasting hours.

It was this small, but frequent behaviour that was causing, in this case, the shoulder pain. Looking down was loading the back of their neck, the shoulders were coming in to support the arms holding close and everything matched when I mimicked them.

However, other than taking the phone away from them, there wasn’t a direct intervention I could do, so instead we discussed possible mitigation strategies, to reduce the automatic reaction, shorten the time spent interacting and change the posture, things that have been shown to work.

Following the rules of three, I suggested:

  • Switching on greyscale. This, interestingly, makes the device far less stimulating, but still allows you to work effectively. It also helps increase battery life on some devices.
  • Clean up the home screen and put apps that distract in a folder so you don’t see them first
  • Turn off notifications for social media applications

The point was simply to create a brain pause that allowed for a moment more reflection before the action, rather than create a wholesale change that would more likely fail.

Having created this awareness and put in some simple measures, we were both very happy to see that the treatment was then far more effective and the presenting issues resolved.

After they had left, I reflected in how the simple actions we do can have profound impacts and that, as practitioners of every discipline, we need to continue to look at the whole person, not just the complaint.

Revisiting the basics

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You are what you do, focus on and the stories you tell yourself.

If you live in a fast food outlet, you are not going to have a body or mind that is working at full capability. If you don’t practice skills regularly, you are not going to be competent. If you use external validation to define yourself, then you will never meet those criteria. If you flip flop between the latest trends, you will never develop consistency.

Instead, focus on the basics:

  • Moving more, sitting less. Lift heavy things, get your heart rate up for long periods, play, walk.
  • Addressing physical and mental ills early. Don’t put off seeing a professional to address physical aches and pains, pay attention to new physiological changes, seek support if you need it.
  • Fuel as and when needed on foods that require little or no industrial processing. Find your eating pattern that supports your energy expenditure whilst maintaining optimal weight and health. Whether it is grazing throughout the day, three square meals or intermittent fasting, the body is remarkably flexible at handling what we throw in the tank, as long as it is of sufficient quality.

Pick three things, one from each zone, and make them habitual.

Simple changes can have a positive impact, and addressing one zone can reinforce changes in the others.

At the Camford Clinic, we are able to offer you support in addressing musculoskeletal aches and pains, nutritional advice and training tips, so ask us today.

A reflection on training planning

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When thinking about training planning, whether for personal development or competition, there are a number of variables we all need to consider, whether as the trainer or trainee.

Underlying it all and before we can even start planning, we need to work out where the following are:

  • Intention
  • Attention
  • Focus

Both for the immediate goal and the longer term structure. Once these have been identified, and there can be only one or two main intention points, then the next step can be assessed.

Here, we need to look at which phase of training we are in. If we are a beginner, or have been training for only a short period of time, then we are still in base development, where we are learning the mechanics and improving work capacity. As we improve, we can start working on the individual elements of our chosen discipline. These can include:

  • Skill
  • Stamina
  • Strength
  • Speed

These lead to a development of work capacity. Or, the ability to do something faster, more accurately and for longer and more efficiently.

When looking at each days training plan, it goes through 4 phases, the length of which dependent on the above goals and the physiological status.

  • Move
  • Groove
  • Load
  • Cruise

We first start to move, to explore the body’s capacity for work that day, consider recovery from the last training session or injury. We then start to groove in the movements that we will be training that day. Once warm and ready, we can finally get the load moving, whether that is under a barbell, a HIT phase or a bike ride. Once we have completed the scheduled work, we finally cruise down, checking in again to note how we went, and to feedback for the next session.

The final, often overlooked and probably as important element of training is the recovery and nutrition. However, we tend to look at the work rather than the recovery, believing that more is better, which for most people, it tends to be, given the rest of their lifestyles, but with that, the nutrition element still has to be considered, and for most people, should be one of their two main attention points. Nutrition is a huge, complex and troublesome area, can be generally be summed up succinctly as:

“Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat”

Greg Glassman

Now, forget everything, go and play.