A Masterclass On Movement & Mobility

Movement is inherent to our nature. It’s not a chore, a box to tick, or an obligation—we’re born to physically connect with the world around us in whatever capacity we can. The eighth in our ongoing series of deep dives, in today’s masterclass you’ll learn how to start a movement practice, the importance of mobility exercises, proper running and walking techniques, how to maintain and even improve your mobility as you age, pre and post-natal fitness, how to set and achieve your movement goals, and more. When we embrace movement, even in the smallest ways, we open the door to a world of possibilities. In my case, a walk led to a run which led to ultra-endurance racing and ultimately, to an entirely new life altogether. My hope is that this masterclass gives you the education and inspiration you need to adopt a form of movement that brings you joy, a mobility routine that nourishes your body, and that you discover something new about yourself, your purpose, and your meaning along the way. Show notes + MORE Watch on Youtube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Inside Tracker: Insidetracker.com/RichRoll Momentous: LiveMomentous.com/richroll Squarespace: Squarespace.com/RichRoll Caldera Labs: Calderalab.com Plant Power Meal Planner: https://meals.richroll.com SriMu: http://srimu.com/rrp Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Our relationship to fitness is broken.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  Don't look for perfection, look for steady gradual progress.

• 0:20Speaker 03

  Look at what you're doing within the environment and try and make small changes within it rather than add too much to your day.

• 0:27Speaker 04

  Don't do it because someone else is doing it, do it because you want to do it.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  It's something you can choose to do to really powerfully influence your mental health.

• 0:40Rich Roll?

  To move is to be human. It is something that is inherent to our nature. It's not a chore, it's not a box to tick or an obligation. Movement is what our bodies are designed to do. We're born to move, we're born to explore and to physically connect with the world around us in whatever capacity we can. From walking to swimming to dancing with friends to playing a pickup game of basketball. The options for meaningful movement are limitless and the best part about it is that it doesn't have to feel like work.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Create the joy first and everything else will follow.

• 1:20Rich Roll?

  Movement can be playful, it can be deeply enjoyable and even meditative, not to mention an endless litany of downstream benefits from improved sleep and physical stability to longevity. So today, we're going to dive into those benefits as well as the hows and the whys of all things movement in today's masterclass, the eighth in our ongoing deep dives into the RRP Canon, where you're going to learn how to start a movement practice, the importance of mobility exercises, proper running and walking techniques, how to maintain and even improve your mobility as you age, including specific mobility exercises.

• 2:04Rich Roll?

  We're going to cover pre and postnatal fitness, mental tricks to stay motivated, and how to set and achieve your movement goals. My hope is that this episode gives you both the inspiration as well as the tools to begin or improve upon a practice that feels natural to you, that brings you joy, and that ends up transforming your life as you follow that journey. Fitness does not have to be about six-pack abs, perfect pictures, weight loss, overtraining, or destroying your body for the sake of some impossible standard. Fitness can be more about listening to your body and moving in a way that's pressure-free,

• 2:49Rich Roll?

  that's positive and fun. And this is the perspective of Sadie Lincoln. Sadie is the founder and CEO of Bar3, which is a fitness company focused not on weight loss, but rather on body positivity and personal empowerment. In this first clip, you'll hear Sadie explain why she decided to redefine the word fitness and how she thinks about it now. But first, a quick word from the sponsors that make this show possible.

• 3:20Rich Roll?

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• 4:04Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 4:26Rich Roll?

  All right, let's do the show.

• 4:30Speaker 05

  My husband and I co-founded Bar Three in 2008 is when we opened. I've been in the fitness industry my entire professional career. I fell in love with it in the 80s, like, meeting Jane Fonda in my living room with my mom. It just drew me in right away for various reasons. And when we opened Bar Three, we didn't use the word "fitness" because I had it anchored to negativity and being a chore and something that I didn't identify with. And it wasn't until about eight years in that we took back that word "fitness" and we're redefining it.

• 5:07Rich Roll?

  So what is that redefinition?

• 5:09Speaker 05

  First of all, I want to point out there's nothing wrong with fitness as we all know it. It's just my relationship to fitness was broken. And so I needed to redefine it, and I noticed that a lot of other people do as well. I just wasn't happy in my own body during that era. And I was not identifying with fitness, the product that we were selling. And I had a lot of shame around it.

• 5:30Rich Roll?

  Explain that.

• 5:32Speaker 05

  I'm sitting in meetings with all these people, learning about these crazy numbers and the crazy growth of our company. I'm also learning from all these amazing consulting firms and the statistics and data that our health is on the decline. So as the industry is booming, our health is declining significantly. So that's confusing.

• 5:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 5:52Speaker 05

  I'm always like, huh.

• 5:53Rich Roll?

  Obesity, diabetes rates are going through the roof.

• 5:56Speaker 05

  Obesity, when fitness as a product and service was invented, in my mind, 1980. Obesity has doubled since 1980.

• 6:04Rich Roll?

  And yet, the health club industry has grown even more than that.

• 6:08Speaker 05

  Upper right corner, year over year. It's a $30 billion industry to this day.

• 6:12Rich Roll?

  What is not working here?

• 6:14Speaker 05

  Fitness is working. Fitness, when you study it in a lab, you've studied it in your body. I have too. It works. Fitness is not broken. Fitness is good. What I have discovered is that our relationship to fitness is broken. And there is so much shame in that relationship. How predominantly to this day, fitness is sold is that you start in the before picture. And then you do the products and services in a certain order and you become the after picture. That's how it's sold. Let's look at that for a second, the before and after. If you think about an after, that's in the future, it's imagined, it's not real. There's nothing real about the after picture. And literally, when you see a before and after picture, which still is prolific and that's what sells.

• 7:00Speaker 05

  It's someone else, how they've achieved a physical measure of success. Sometimes there's a diarrhea behind it. That's like how I feel as well, but it's often a physical manifestation. So we can't ever get to that person. And by the way, that person's not that person anymore either. There is no presence in the before and after picture. There is no presence in that. And there's a shame in that. So fitness has been sold on you are not whole yet. If you do these things, you'll be better. And

• 7:30Rich Roll?

  And every year, there's a new idea and a new fad and a new product and a new supplement.

• 7:35Speaker 05

  And on top of it, there's this extreme nature of fitness. The more extreme you go, the better results you'll get. So I always think of like, there's comfort zone where you're in the center in your comfort. Then there's brave space where you go just outside of that comfort. And that's where in the body, like you're lifting weights, let's say, and your body goes to fatigue and failure. And then it rebuilds. That's brave space. You're rebuilding your muscle. Same with our mental capacity, just going just enough so that you're rebuilding, building resilience, building strength. And we do need that sand in the oyster that make the pearl. We need that rub in our bodies physically. But the industry goes so extreme that we go into panic zone. So many people enter exercise and they go too hard. They get injured, they incur it to pain, to shame, to not looking the part.

• 8:19Speaker 05

  And then we get promised in one sweat sesh, you're gonna be skinny and beautiful and perfect and awesome. Right? So there's just so many ridiculous, when we all talk about this, we're always like, that's so ridiculous. I know better. I know better. But the world says that all the time.

• 8:36Rich Roll?

  Right. Intellectually, we know better, but emotionally, we don't, right?

• 8:39Speaker 05

  And it plays into that thing of I want to belong. If I look that way, I'll be attractive.

• 8:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 8:45Speaker 05

  I'll be successful. I'll be seen as successful.

• 8:48Rich Roll?

  Happy.

• 8:48Speaker 05

  I'll be worthy. I'll be happy. I'll belong. And would if, this is a question we all ask ourselves all the time. Would if we exercised to practice being honest in our bodies? Forget about even like feeling good in our bodies, just honest. And that everything I do in that moment is about honoring who I am in my physical self and what I need in that moment.

• 9:13Rich Roll?

  The word fitness in and of itself is strange because part of it is aspirational, but it's also this pejorative. You think of fitness and you think about a treadmill and, you know, underneath a fluorescent light.

• 9:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, and anchored in that.

• 9:28Rich Roll?

  And you think about a bunch of people walking around that look better than you and you're feeling less than. That whole industry is built upon preying on people's insecurities to get you to join and then not actually attend so they can oversubscribe.

• 9:42Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 9:42Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 9:43Speaker 05

  Spot on.

• 9:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And that's broken and not healthy, obviously.

• 9:48Speaker 05

  And it works. It makes money.

• 9:49Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 9:50Speaker 05

  And if you look at fitness as an analogy, I just, over and over again, what we teach in our room at Bar Three is such an analogy of life. There's 60 minutes of moving together as a group and aligning our body with intention, foundation, lining the body up, getting into posture with integrity. But the real work is looking inside and figuring out what do I need right now? And then honoring that and moving in a way and taking shape in your body in a way that's right for what you need. When you're in a group, the expectation is that you're looking outside yourself and you're copying what everybody else is doing. On top of these conditions that full plank on the floor is harder, so it's better and it's going to get me where I need to be, so I need to do full plank. But if you're doing full plank and you have like burning wrist pain,

• 10:34Speaker 05

  maybe plank is better at the ballet bar. And if you stand up at the ballet bar and everybody's on the floor, that's literally and figuratively a practice of standing up for yourself and honoring what your body needs. And honoring your values. Like I'm body wisdom, taking care of my body and not disassociating with it and trying to fight through it. And that's what I think the real work is, is practicing that over and over and over again.

• 10:59Rich Roll?

  I think I also read that you open the class by saying, you know, we're going to take you through this hour-long experience and I'm going to say a lot of things, or the instructor's going to say a lot of things, but the most important thing is that you listen to yourself, right? Like, you kind of set that tone that provides that, like, kernel of empowerment for the individual.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  Because we need to practice that. We all know that. We all know when we sit quietly, there's those moments you know your inner self, your inner knowing is important. You're not just exercising your muscles, joint mobility, posture, connection, endurance. You're not just exercising that. You're exercising so much more.

• 11:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 11:38Speaker 05

  And that is, when we do all three of those things, I think of it as physical exercise connectedness, mental exercise connectedness, and the third that's really important is social connectedness, exercising social connectedness.

• 11:52Rich Roll?

  Hence the three in bar three.

• 11:54Speaker 05

  There's so many good threes. The reason we're exercising is to acknowledge, oh, I'm doing it like everybody else. I should be doing it like myself. Instead of trying to copying skips understanding. That's one of my favorite quotes. I read that in a book, Rework. Copying skips understanding. And movement is an exercise of exercising body wisdom, of learning about your body. That's why I love it. Now I have my attachment to that versus it being a chore, shame, I'm not good enough, my injury is something I should push away instead of work with. I think I'm interpreted often as, oh, that's soft and sweet. It doesn't mean that it's not hard work.

• 12:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 12:35Speaker 05

  Like, all of what I'm talking about, I think, has a lot to do with being an endurance athlete, for example. There's nothing wrong with wanting to win.

• 12:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 12:44Speaker 05

  There's nothing wrong with the results and the pain and, like, the resilience and the grit and the pushing through and the healing, the heart, that hard work, right? I just think that every one of us can practice that in a different way. And that there's not one way to do that. But it's always brave space, that when I was talking about brave space. My favorite quote is, "The sand in the oyster that makes the pearl, the rub." And so, like, with bar three, it is challenging. You do go to fatigue. It is a struggle. And then it's learning to breathe through that struggle and look at it without judgment or shame. And then work all the way through it.

• 13:23Rich Roll?

  For a lot of people, the word "exercise" too often conjures unpleasant images of intense workouts, treadmills, stairmasters, and, as Sadie said, calorie-burning that's based on judgment and shame. And so, it's no wonder that a lot of people find it difficult to even get started, let alone maintain a sustained movement practice. But health psychologist and Stanford University lecturer Kelly McGonigal believes there's a feel-good form of movement meant for everybody. And she's here to help you find it.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  You think you don't like to move, you think you don't enjoy it. I believe that there's a form of movement meant for everyone, and no matter what body you're in, or no matter what your past experience is, there's probably a way that moving your body will give you access to something that you want, whether it's social connection, or hope, a different sense of yourself. What is the feeling that I have when I marvel about how the body is almost designed to help us find happiness and meaning through movement? What's that feeling, that sense of wonder and awe? And what does it tell us about being human? And when I had permission to think in that way, I feel like it opened me up to a different type of story as well. When I started talking to people about movement, one of the things I realized is,

• 14:42Speaker 01

  when you talk to people who have found meaning in movement, that they become this version of themselves when they're telling you their story, that is this amazing mixture of both incredible vulnerability and strength. That somehow they both emerge, and you can see like this full human, and this tremendous glory and beauty. And I felt like, I need to do that justice. I came across this paper, I think it was maybe a 2016 paper, where the scientists talk about this research, and they just sort of throw out the term "hope molecules." And I remember circling it. I think I like said to my husband, "Oh my gosh, you're not gonna believe, this term, it encapsulates so much about why movement is amazing." And I feel like nobody else is using this term.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  It was just in this one paper. I'm not even sure the scientists have used it again, but let me explain what it is. So, this is the idea that our muscles are like an endocrine organ, and that when you contract your muscles in any type of movement, they are secreting chemicals into your bloodstream. That are really good for every system of your body. I mean, they're great for your heart health and your immune function, and some of them can kill cancer cells, you know, all the stuff we know exercise is good for. But that a big part of these proteins and chemicals that are being released by your muscles, which are called myokines, they have profound effects on the brain. So you go for a walk, or a run, or you lift weights, and your muscles contract, and they secrete these proteins into your bloodstream, they travel to your brain, they cross the

• 16:11Speaker 01

  blood-brain barrier, and in your brain, they can act as an antidepressant, like Irsen can, they can make your brain more resilient to stress, they increase motivation, they help you learn from experience. And the only way you get these chemicals is by using your muscles. It's like, this is part of how we become our best selves, is we have to use our muscles. And then the scientists called them hope molecules, because in this one study, they found that exercise could protect rodents from experiencing depression and post-traumatic stress disorder if you severely traumatize them. So this idea that these molecules are giving you hope even in very difficult times.

• 16:51Rich Roll?

  Right. So it's not innately human?

• 16:53Speaker 01

  That's right, it's not innately human.

• 16:56Rich Roll?

  So extrapolating on that idea, like, what do you make of that? Like, what does that mean?

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, at a very practical level, it means when I go for a walk, or I exercise, I will literally say to myself, "You're giving yourself an intravenous dose of hope." Like, I think this is how we should frame movement, that it's something you can choose to do, to really powerfully influence your mental health and your resilience. And every time you move, you're doing that. I think to know that, to like, look at your own muscles and be able to say, "Thank you, legs, you're tired now, that was hard work." But, like, legs, you are a pharmacy of antidepressants and resilience and hope. Then, sort of thinking like, in a more philosophical way... Again, one of the things that I feel like the anthropology and the science is pointing

• 17:43Speaker 01

  to is that movement is how your brain knows you are alive and engaged in life. And when you move on a regular basis, your brain basically says, I guess we have to be the best version of ourselves because we're in this thing called life. And so, you know, you mentioned some other things too, like when you exercise, you see increased levels of neurotransmitters that tend to increase our willingness to cooperate and the pleasure we get from connecting with others that give us hope and courage. I mean, even that lactic acid, that metabolic byproduct of exercise, that lactic acid seems to have an anti-anxiety, an antidepressant effect.

• 18:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  This is like crazy stuff. It's not just an endorphin rush. It's like at every level of our biology, when we move, our brain is like, I guess we have to do this thing called life. And so, you know, for people like me who've struggled with anxiety or depression, this idea that you can convince your brain to want to fully engage with life in a brave way or in a hopeful way through movement is so phenomenal.

• 18:49Rich Roll?

  But I think there's a lot of people out there who can read the book or listen to what you're saying and they, you know, they can intellectually grasp the, all the finer points of why this is a good idea, but they lack that impetus. Like, they look at it as burdensome or intimidating or something that they just don't connect with, right?

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. So a couple of things about this. First of all, I should say, in my experience talking to people, there are a lot of late-to-life movers who just needed to find the right form of movement. And I don't think we get exposed to enough diversity of movement. Like, women-

• 19:27Rich Roll?

  Hundred percent.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  -who got in a boat to row and had their whole life thought they had the wrong body type, that they weren't athletes, but suddenly they got in a boat with other women and were rowing and they were like, yes, my body was born for this. There are so many forms of movement that change the way you feel about yourself because they just create a different narrative about who you are. I talked to so many women who discovered things like powerlifting or CrossFit or axe throwing, where suddenly they were doing these amazing things with their bodies and they felt powerful and it was a side of themselves they'd never experienced before. And if you were to only like, listen to the way that the media usually talks about exercise, it's all about burning calories.

• 20:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  It's all about what you look like. And you can get pulled into places where, instead of being told, like, this is what it feels like to stand in your own strength, you're told, now you're burning more calories so you won't look as hideous as you looked walking in today. I mean, like, that is a very different experience. And too often, people's movement experiences have been defined by this obsession with burning calories and improving your appearance and making yourself more acceptable to either yourself or the judgment of society. And it gets very confusing very quickly. And so I'm always encouraging people, like, what's a form of movement? If someone were to send you a YouTube video, what's a video you would watch and be like, wow, that's amazing? And what's the version of that that would fit into your life?

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Who's doing that in a way that's appropriate for the body you have right now or the, you know, who you want to become? That it's not about, like, getting a tracker that's going to tell you if you've done enough yet.

• 21:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  There's so much that gets in the way of finding the movement that will make you happy, that can make it feel like a chore, like a punishment.

• 21:11Rich Roll?

  We have such a limited perspective on what those options are. We just think about the gym and the Stairmaster machine and the little LED readout that tells you calories and time and while you're watching, you know, the news and it's just...

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And although, it's okay to distract yourself while you're exercising if that works for you, but there are a lot of forms of movement where the more attention you pay to what you're doing, actually, the more pleasurable it is. But often, I think the advice we get is, just get on the treadmill and watch, you know, Netflix, so that you're not really there and you can get through it. But I bet there's some form of movement where if you were really there, you would have an amazing experience, a sense of yourself or a connection with others.

• 21:54Rich Roll?

  Kelly's perspective is quite similar to advice I give all the time. For anyone struggling to stay motivated at a given exercise, the fix is always to follow your curiosity and to follow your joy. You don't want to go for a run? Fine, go play pickleball with some friends. The point is just to remain active because a sedentary lifestyle can lead to everything from poor posture, back and neck pain, limited range of motion, muscle atrophy, and even an increased risk of chronic lifestyle disease. This is why movement, especially specifically movements that focus on

• 22:34Rich Roll?

  mobility, stability, and range of motion are so important to our physical and mental health. So in this next clip, mobility wizards Kelly and Juliet Starrett teach us the basics of mobility maintenance and how to pursue the sports and exercises you love injury-free throughout your life.

• 22:59Speaker 06

  You know, mobility is really the ability to be able to move freely through your environment and do the things you want to be able to do with your body, whatever those things may be. Now, we offer a lot of tools, which we call mobilizations, which are things you can do to help improve your mobility and range of motion. But you know, to us at the highest level, it's the ability to move freely, ideally without pain, or at least minimizing pain and feel to do the things you love to do.

• 23:25Speaker 07

  We could also define mobility as do you have your native range of motion? And can you control that native range of motion? So are you a skilled person? And what Juliette said is all of that is important. But really, what is it you want to do in your world and environment? And how do you want to express this body? That's the most important thing. And I think that's where we Got in the weeds. You know, hip range of motion is important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if it prevents you from doing something or you're having pain and that's also conjoined with the fact that you don't have access to that range, maybe that's the reason you should care.

• 23:58Speaker 06

  Well, I'm like, let me just give you one example. Like, if you just asked anyone on the street, like, "Do you care about your hip range of motion?" They're gonna be like, "No, why would I care about that?" But as an example, we were recently talking to a friend of ours who has a four-month-old baby and has both sets of parents visiting, and his parents are like in their mid-60s. So, you know, not that much older than us. And his mother is able to get up and down off the ground and sit with the baby, but his mother-in-law can't get down onto the ground or up off of the ground, and so can't sit on the floor and play with the grandchild. And that's one of those things that you don't think about until it's like a use it or lose it kind of thing. But like, that right there is hip range of motion. So, you may not care athletically about hip range of motion because

• 24:41Speaker 06

  you're not trying to run faster, lift more weights, or, you know, whatever an athlete might need to care about hip range of motion for. But, you know, most people would say, "Man, do you want to be able to sit on the floor and play with your grandchild when you have one?" And they'd be like, "Yes, I do." And so, you know, that's one of the reasons why people should care about their hip range of motion.

• 25:00Speaker 07

  We find that a lot of people are confused about what a good foundational practice looks like. And we should be able to take those lessons and actually say, "Hey, look, we understand that you're not an elite athlete, but you're just a, you know, just a middle-aged dad who wants to stay up with his local mountain bike club. That's me. And what are the ways where I can do that in the context of my busy life, so I don't have to, you know, throw everything away?" And I think that really is an opportunity for us to make sense of all of the, you know, bright people working in this high-performance world.

• 25:32Speaker 06

  I'm sure you've heard of Chris Hinshaw's Old Man Balance Test, where you put your shoes on on one.

• 25:37Speaker 07

  Oh, this is great. Everyone, you're welcome.

• 25:39Speaker 06

  Everyone listening should do this test. You stand-

• 25:41Speaker 07

  What's it called again?

• 25:42Speaker 06

  Chris Hinshaw. And it's called the Old Man Balance Test. And he actually created it so that he would have something to compete against his kids and win. And so the idea is you put your socks and shoes on the floor and you stand on one leg and you reach down and grab your sock and you put on your sock without putting that foot down and then you reach down and grab your shoe and put your shoe on and tie it and then you switch and do it on the other side. And it's a really great two-minute balance practice. And that's how I put my shoes on every single day. You know, and that's something

• 26:11Speaker 07

  Mischief managed.

• 26:12Speaker 06

  That's just this little, you know, small behavior that we add into our day that's easy and fun and you can, you know, challenge your kids to do it. And so, you know, that's just one of those things that we've snuck in and said, hey, there are ways that you can change your environment and just slightly think about your environment differently so that these are just things you do without having to rely on willpower or motivation.

• 26:34Speaker 07

  So if you, in the evening, could sit down next to a ball, a tennis ball, a softball, roller, and ask yourself from the day, what's sore? What hurts? What's achy? And I'm going to commit 10 minutes. The first part of this show I'm watching, I'm just gonna roll around on whatever ails me. That's a really important conversation you could begin to have. And I'm talking about 10 minutes, like that's super reasonable. And the reason we started shifting that from the day in the gym to the evening was that we saw that people didn't actually do it or want to do it as a team. But in the evening, they had time and agency and nothing was happening at the end of the day. Like you're on Facebook, you're, you know, surfing Instagram. So there was this great moment where you could do some self-care.

• 27:17Speaker 07

  And 10 minutes a night usually turns into 12 to 14 minutes because you discover something. You can sit on your coffee table, put that ball right in your hamstrings, just roll around. Then the next sort of level there is we could say, hey, can you take a full breath in that position? So if you're working on something or you've got some aspect of your body that hurts and you push on it and that takes your breath away or you catch your breath, then we found an area of interest. And it doesn't mean we need to shy away from that. It's okay that that's uncomfortable to compression. So one of the first things we can do is say, am I doing harm to myself? No, not at all. If you can take a full breath in and out, you're signaling to your brain, this is safe. Nerves are king of the breath. The breath is king of the brain. That's Iyengar 101.

• 27:59Speaker 07

  And why breathing is such an important part of yoga is teaching your body to accept and be able to control those positions by breathing there. Your brain says, it's not a threat. So if you find a painful spot or a sore spot or an uncomfortable spot, you found a spot and all you need to do is take a four-second inhale there.

• 28:17Speaker 07

  Contract into the ball roller and hold that for four seconds. We call that an isometric in the parlance, right? You're just building a tension or a movement without motion in the limb. And then exhale a long time for eight seconds, long exhale. And what you'll find is if you just repeat that cycle a few times, whatever hurts in that area that you're working sometimes starts to hurt less. You're resetting some threat signals. And if you started doing that on your back, your hips, your calves, your feet, what you realize is, wow, I can make myself feel better. And because you did it before your bed, it's like getting a massage. You tend to sleep a little bit better. You're down regulating. Yeah, and we snuck in breath practice.

• 28:56Speaker 06

  And you had to get up and down off the ground.

• 28:58Speaker 07

  Oh, J-Star. You ruined it. Exactly right. That's exactly right. One of the things we know is that pain doesn't mean injury. It doesn't even mean tissue trauma or damage. It's a request for change. So part of what we're trying to say in this book is, hey, we can try to treat pain and use it just as another metric. Like if you were stiff this morning because you were a big workout yesterday, you're not thinking, you know, you've got, you know, you didn't contract rabies. You just are sore, right, from your run. And so if we can shift that narrative a little bit and then also empower people that, hey, there's a whole lot they can do. And some of that is sleep and some of that is nutrition. And some of that is down regulation. But a lot of it is, there's some inputs you can do that are really safe and really easy.

• 29:42Speaker 07

  And then we can have the next conversation because maybe you don't want to go for a walk because your knee hurts. Your range of motion doesn't have to change because you age. That's the one physical, you're going to be less powerful. You may be able to maintain your aerobic power for a long time. We know that that to be true. But your ability to express your range of motion in your joints doesn't have to degrade necessarily. You may have bony blocks and a patina of athleticism. You've got to work through the fascia and all that stuff. As we take this systems approach, you being able to get up and down off the ground or flex your knee all the way doesn't have to go away. And I think that's important to remember to consider for people.

• 30:32Rich Roll?

  As we age, we don't have to sacrifice our mobility or range of motion. There are practices we can adopt now that can secure our ability to stay fit and active well into our 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond. And few people embody this ethos more powerfully than Chef Babette, who believes that caring for our bodies is an act of self-love. Babette is a vegan superstar and the very model of fit and radiant at 72 years young. Listen carefully as she shares the importance of taking care of ourselves as we age, how to form an easy and impactful routine,

• 31:15Rich Roll?

  and the power of starting a new lifestyle with one simple movement at a time.

• 31:24Speaker 08

  Part of the whole self-loving thing is to be a part of all of this, to be able to move. You know, if I want to run a hill, I can run a hill. I don't want to have a life alert. I don't want to get in the bathtub and can't get out. So I force myself to take baths sometimes. I'm not always taking showers. Make sure you can get your butt out the tub.

• 31:50Speaker 08

  But...

• 31:51Rich Roll?

  That's the whole thing. When you get older, it's all about like if you fall down and you can't get up.

• 31:55Speaker 08

  And you can't get... That's what people need to really understand. Now, of course, sometimes we have accidents that, you know, it's not any fault of our own. But when we just sit down and just let it go, that's generally what will happen to you. You lose strength. And another thing that I think is I'm not a superficial person. I enjoy the aging process. I don't look like I looked when I was 60. You know what I mean? But however it is, however this look is going to be as I age, I embrace it. Because just think, I had lived an entire lifetime looking different. So, you know what I mean?

• 32:38Speaker 08

  It's not a bad thing to have the crow's feet. I don't care to use anything to get rid of that. I'm OK with it. I want to see what it's going to be. I saw one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen before. She had lines like in this table. She was beautiful.

• 32:56Speaker 08

  She was beautiful and if just to experience.

• 32:58Rich Roll?

  She owned it and she's comfortable with who she is and yeah.

• 33:02Speaker 08

  Oh, she was just gorgeous and that is how we should all be because it's each step of the journey that we embrace and appreciate.

• 33:11Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:12Speaker 08

  And you know, I can't wear the bushy eyelashes, I'm a little bit too old for that. That don't work on this face.

• 33:19Rich Roll?

  But you did, when you turned 70, you posted these, you did like a bathing suit shoot, right?

• 33:23Speaker 08

  Oh, remember the bathing suit shoot.

• 33:25Rich Roll?

  And that went bananas and like when everybody was sharing that and all of it, right?

• 33:28Speaker 08

  It went crazy. That one went crazy.

• 33:29Rich Roll?

  That was another like inflection point in your kind of story arc, right?

• 33:33Speaker 08

  Yeah, people really, really love that. I got a little bold the next year and did bikinis and stuff, but this year I am gonna do a beautiful photo of myself, but um, you'll see, but no more bathing suits. I'm good for that. I still have my little calendars. I wasn't able to give them all away and now it's the end of the year.

• 33:53Rich Roll?

  You made like a bathing suit calendar?

• 33:55Speaker 08

  Yes, I should have brought you one.

• 33:57Rich Roll?

  Hang it up over here.

• 33:58Speaker 08

  Oh man, we gotta get you one, Rich. We gotta get you one.

• 34:01Rich Roll?

  But the fitness routine, that's basically like strength training.

• 34:05Speaker 08

  That's everything.

• 34:05Rich Roll?

  You're in the gym and some hiking or stairs. You like to do the stairs and stuff like that, but it's pretty basic stuff.

• 34:13Speaker 08

  Now, I had a torn groin, so I hadn't been really doing too much of the hike because I'm a part of a docu-series in Houston, Texas and um, so I was feeling good from the ground. I didn't feel like I still had the tear and we went to the track. When we got to the track, the sister was sprinting and I was like, yeah, I feel really good. So I got up there and all the athletes were like, no chef, you haven't stretched, you haven't. I got out there and I, by the time I got to the end, I had to limp back.

• 34:45Rich Roll?

  Uh oh, yeah.

• 34:46Speaker 08

  You know how that, you know how a groin tear will do. It takes a long time.

• 34:51Rich Roll?

  A long, long time.

• 34:52Speaker 08

  A long time. So we've been very careful, my trainer and I, going forward, not to stretch that too much and I, stairs, I love stairs and you know I love running heels. I just posted a video when we were in St. Martin of me hitting a hill. I just love movement. I love knowing that I can move. I love that. I've often thought, if something ever happened and I was the only person that could get to help?

• 35:22Speaker 08

  Even at my age,

• 35:23Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:24Speaker 08

  I know I'm in shape enough to do that.

• 35:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:27Speaker 08

  That's important.

• 35:27Rich Roll?

  And maintaining that is so key, especially as you get older.

• 35:30Speaker 08

  Consistency.

• 35:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like the gym stuff becomes really important.

• 35:34Speaker 08

  I started with one push-up, and every day I would add a push-up. And if I couldn't add a push-up, I'd do the numbers that I'd done the day before. But I tell people that, I tell women that, start with one.

• 35:49Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:50Speaker 08

  Inch by inch. Life's a cinch.

• 35:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, whether it's push-ups or anything.

• 35:55Speaker 08

  Anything.

• 35:56Rich Roll?

  That's the way you do anything.

• 35:57Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 35:58Rich Roll?

  By starting with one.

• 35:59Speaker 08

  Starting with one. Like, I have to do at least 72 push-ups on my birthday. So I'm gonna do it in the restaurant. Anybody that wants to come to the restaurant and hang out and either get down there and do some push-ups with me, maybe I'll give you a taco.

• 36:16Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 36:17Speaker 08

  Especially.

• 36:17Rich Roll?

  Free tacos?

• 36:18Speaker 08

  Free taco, especially.

• 36:19Rich Roll?

  Watch the push-up competition?

• 36:20Speaker 08

  I'll give you two tacos if you can do all 72 with me.

• 36:23Rich Roll?

  This is why you can't hire somebody to help you in the restaurant. You're giving away too much stuff.

• 36:28Speaker 08

  That's my husband. You sound like my husband. But I figure like this, if somebody suggested to me, because I was doing sets of 25, and someone said, you know, I can do that many, but I do sets of 10. And then I thought, that's a lot easier, because the time between sets is only like a minute or two versus three to four minutes when I'm doing sets of 25. So I'm gonna do sets of 10. I might even get push out 100, honey.

• 36:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, if you break it down into sets of 10, then it's easier to build and improve.

• 37:01Speaker 08

  Exactly, exactly.

• 37:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 37:02Speaker 08

  Yeah, so.

• 37:03Rich Roll?

  There you go.

• 37:07Rich Roll?

  Athletes get away with not utilizing proper technique when they're younger. But as they age, the improper technique begins to cause pain and injury downstream. And I feel this is especially true for runners. Getting started with running seems as easy as lacing up shoes and running out the door. And of course, to some extent, that is easy. It is easy. But proper running technique is vital to avoiding injury later in life and staying a runner for as long as you can. Born to Run 2 authors, Chris McDougall and Eric Orton, expand on this sentiment by sharing leg stiffness drills, barefoot exercises, and the power of movement snacks,

• 37:52Rich Roll?

  bite-sized mobility and movement practices any athlete can adopt.

• 38:00Rich Roll?

  This idea, and you talk about it in Born to Run 2, like, don't teach people technique when it comes to running. Like, everyone's an N of 1, and there is no right or wrong way, and we all know how to run, so you just go out and run, and like, don't mess around with that. Which is insane when you deconstruct that. Like, you use the example of like, the basketball player. Like, you don't just throw the ball up in the air and hope for the best. Like, it's a skill, just like anything else, and there is a right way and a wrong way. And so much about our, you know, modern lifestyles, and we can get into all of that, drive us into situations where we're compelled to do it improperly, and that leads to all of these, you know, injuries and persistent problems that sideline people unnecessarily.

• 38:43Speaker 09

  You know, I tell a lot of beginning runners, don't view starting running as a workout, or as a form of fitness, or a way to lose weight. Create the joy first, and everything else will follow. And that goes into learning to be efficient, not thinking it has to be hard. And that's kind of what we really dove into with Chris, is that I worked kind of the real easy end, but also, he did a lot of hill sprints, and a lot of other higher effort training to develop that efficiency and economy that was, you know, revelatory. You know, he was, in a matter of a couple of weeks, doing so much more than he had ever done, just by changing things up.

• 39:26Rich Roll?

  Let's hone in on the form piece for a little bit. I think with Born to Run, it became a little bit reductive in the sense that everyone just thought it was about minimalism and barefoot running, and that is a piece in there, for sure, right? But that's really kind of evidence of a broader concept around form, technique, and lifestyle.

• 39:49Speaker 09

  I think the further we get away from the ground in a shoe, the more we are getting away from allowing our feet to work in a natural environment. And I think what people really need to understand is that... How we use our feet really dictate how we stabilize. You know, our first line of defense as runners is with our big toe and our arch. That's our stabilizer. And that really dictates how well we use our glutes. So how we use our feet directly relate to how we've kind of hear the important stability, strength we need to be healthy, strong, performanced, or longevity-based runners. But for me, even more so, it's what we're doing for the structural system.

• 40:34Speaker 09

  Is that a lot of what's in the book.

• 40:36Rich Roll?

  Waking up all those muscles and groupings.

• 40:38Speaker 09

  And using them in an appropriate manner, activating things. We were in Lawrence, Kansas, what, two days ago or whatever it was? And you know, kind of our MO for these events have been start out with some of our skills in the book and then go for a run. And we did some neuromuscular jumping and what we call leg stiffness. Leg stiffness is a crucial element for performance and longevity, for good health and running. And so we went through our leg stiffness exercises and then went for a trail run. And after the trail run, two gals came up to me and they said, those exercises transformed

• 41:18Speaker 09

  my running in a matter of 30 minutes because normally I would not be able to run that trail as a steady run. I felt like I could run forever.

• 41:27Rich Roll?

  Hmm. What does that mean, leg stiffness?

• 41:31Speaker 09

  Essentially, your ability to land and get off the ground as quickly as possible, helping your cadence. So I see cadence and leg stiffness go hand in hand for performance and for longevity or, you know, that real feel-good we want out of running where it takes away tightness. When we hear leg stiffness, that's a good thing. It doesn't mean lack of mobility or tightness. It's your ability to use and operate the springs and rubber bands in your body to land and snap and get off of it as quick as possible.

• 42:05Rich Roll?

  I see. Yeah, cool. Talk about, a little bit about the movement snacks. I mean, that's sort of drill oriented, but I like how you've encapsulated that and turned it into like a fun thing.

• 42:16Speaker 09

  Yeah, the movement snacks are something that you can do anytime, anywhere for a variety of reasons, but how we strategically. Use them in the book is a lot of diving into the diagnostics of the injury chapter where maybe the movement snacks are a strategic way to begin to add more mobility or give you a sense of where you're lacking in movement while you're then implementing some of the remedies for that specific injury.

• 42:49Speaker 10

  These are developed by a friend of ours, Julie Angel, who comes from a parkour background. And so Julie, Julie's actually a filmmaker who started to film parkour athletes. And as an observer, she realized, oh, they've got some really kind of cool, full natural movement skills that a lot of people could benefit from. So she extracted movement snacks from the isolated movements of parkour athletes, like precision jumping or quadrupedal movement.

• 43:13Rich Roll?

  Right, crawling around on all fours.

• 43:15Speaker 10

  Yeah, yeah. But that kind of thing too, to balance on your left foot and your right hand at the same time and move forward. And then she realized, these are fun, they are non-threatening. And that if you do a little bit of bear crawl for like 30 seconds and you stand up, everything feels loosened. And so I think it's kind of a genius move by Julie to create movement snacks because you take that group of people, I'm not a runner, I don't want to do this, I don't do that. Oh, yeah. So the parkour community will form a big circle as a way of saying hello. And then they will bear crawl to the center and everyone will high five and then they'll reverse and bear crawl backwards, back out. That's the warm up. But they've now extended their entire chain of motion, their arms, shoulders, backs are loosened and they're ready to go out and work out.

• 43:57Speaker 10

  So we basically adopted all these things from Julie's and movement snacks.

• 44:04Rich Roll?

  Cool. Well, let's end this with a couple drills, things that you can, I don't know if we can like, if it's possible to articulate it in a way where people can kind of understand, but like one or two things that people could start to practice where they can get a gauge on like, oh, this is why I feel this way because this thing is weak or what have you.

• 44:21Speaker 09

  Yeah. So maybe we can hit it from two sides. One, what we call the foot core, where we can train our feet. We've got muscles on the bottom of our feet and there's some simple but very, very potent ways to train your feet. And it's a simply, you always kind of want to work barefoot, simply taking off your shoes and socks and balancing on your forefoot on one leg.

• 44:44Speaker 09

  Chris is sick of me here and saying this, but you know, you're going to feel it where you need it. You're going to, the weakest link is going to show up. It might be for someone, hey, they start to feel it in the feet and the arch, or it might be the calves, or hey, they're strong down there. They bike, or they do mountain running, and so they're strong down below the knee, but they start to feel it in their glute. And that's how the feet really affect everything up through the leg. So again, simply barefoot, forefoot, balancing.

• 45:12Rich Roll?

  Right. I've noticed, and I don't know whether this is an age thing, or a weakness thing, or whatever, but my balance got really bad. Like, you know, when I stand on one leg, or I'm putting my underwear on, or whatever, I'm like, why can't I just, you know, hold myself up in a stable way?

• 45:29Speaker 09

  And I think too, in doing these simple foot core exercises, that you're going to start to see or feel a difference between right and left, and then you can start maybe making a correlation of, oh yeah, I'm kind of tighter on this side, and making a correlation of how poorly or how well you're using each foot, based on how you're feeling as an athlete.

• 45:49Speaker 10

  The genius of these exercises that Eric came up with is, I wanted everything to be something that I would personally do. And if I ain't going to do it, I'm not going to put it in the book. And things like the one foot balancing, if you're waiting for the coffee to brew, you got two minutes on your hands, you can do this. And that's what I really like about them. These are extraordinarily practical, but have a great residual effect as well.

• 46:09Speaker 09

  And that doesn't mean they're not potent. I mean,

• 46:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 46:12Speaker 09

  as you're listening right now, take off your shoes and socks and balance on your forefoot. It's not an easy thing. And you can see how challenging and difficult it is. And with that, in that position, regardless of good or bad form, we're asking ourselves to be in that position every step as we run. And you need to be stable there. And that's how we can really train the feet.

• 46:33Speaker 10

  The self correcting part of this is that Eric doesn't give you any instructions on how you, he goes, just move your arms, move your legs, however you want to get that balance. What you find is, you self correct, you realize, oh, if I just kind of tighten my core up a little bit, if I straighten my posture, I do my arms like this. And so you do it for 30 seconds, and your body will find that balance that you were struggling for, just by putting itself in that position.

• 46:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the tweak for me is embracing the fact that so much of that is about like creating those neural pathways. It's not about suffering. Like, you know, the athlete in me is like, I'm gonna do it until it hurts. Or how many of these lifts, you know, am I gonna do? Well, I'll just do it until it's burning like crazy. But it's not really about that. It's really about just developing the habit as a preset. And that's about like your mind connecting with that movement. It's not about hitting anything hard.

• 47:23Speaker 09

  It's the best warm-up you can do because now we're turning our electrical system on before we go out and run. So another one, leg stiffness, we talked about is simply, there's three types of strength. We have concentric, eccentric, and isometric. And the eccentric and isometric is very rarely talked about. And especially the isometric, where it's that when we land as a runner, there's a moment in time after our land and before we take off that is really, really crucial for injuries. That isometric hold. Lot of runners don't have that. So leg stiffness exercise would be simply standing on your right foot, barefoot, and just taking a short leap forward and sticking it like a ballerina

• 48:07Speaker 09

  without a whole lot of leg movement. You want to stick it without movement and just kind of progressively hop forward with that stick, two or three, five-second stick to create more leg stiffness, to allow you to really get off the ground.

• 48:21Rich Roll?

  Right. So that creates the ability to be resilient in that isometric position and avoid injury.

• 48:27Speaker 09

  And it's a great way for people who are training for a hilly race that might not live in that area. And now we're training that eccentric landing as well that we get from downhills that maybe they don't have.

• 48:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool.

• 48:47Rich Roll?

  So as you just heard, Eric and Chris shared the benefits of adopting exercises and drills to support running. But often, mental endurance is far more challenging than physical. So what do we do when we feel uninspired to stick to our goals? How can we? Cultivate lasting motivation. Well, the trick is to break goals down into very small actionable steps. Focus on running 10 minutes rather than five miles. This is the mindset of my friend, the very exuberant endurance superstar, Hellah Sidibe. A man who holds a 2,000-plus day running streak. He's been running every single day since May 15, 2017.

• 49:32Rich Roll?

  And in this clip, Hella shares why achieving your goals starts by making them pressure-free and attainable.

• 49:38Speaker 04

  That's when I started taking responsibility and said, go do what you can do and focus on that. Put your energy there, not the areas you can't.

• 49:48Rich Roll?

  And what was that? I mean, when faced with the prospect of your professional career not panning out, what's next?

• 49:54Speaker 04

  I literally told myself one day, I'm tired of making excuses. I gotta do something that I can hold myself accountable for. And then fitness comes to your mind, you're an athlete. And I said, Hella, whenever you tell yourself you're going to the gym for a week straight, you go two, three days, you tap out. And I said, what is something that I'm afraid of? Running hit me immediately. So playing Division One, even at the pro level, running, I was always afraid of it. At UMass Emherz, the track team used to look at us, are you guys the UMass track team? You guys run so much. Our coach was very proud of me, he rest in peace, Sam Cook, was very proud to say, you guys are going to be the fittest team in the country. So anything you do, any mistake on the line, we want to play top teams the day before. He makes us run. So I was, fitness test, I was afraid of it, I couldn't sleep the night before. I could play 90 minutes, no problem, because with soccer, you're heading, 50-50 ball, you're

• 50:38Speaker 04

  attacking, you're defending, it's not just solely focused on running. So I asked myself, what are you afraid of? And running hit me. And I said, you know what, I'm going to go face my fear of running. Let me just go 10 minutes a day for two weeks and zero pressure. It doesn't matter if 10 minutes mean you don't even get to a mile, that's okay. So I told myself that. Within the first week, I fell in love with it immediately. So I ran to Alexis Torres, my fiance. I was like, I think I can do this for the rest of my life, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. Let me do this every day for a year. So that's how the whole running streak started.

• 51:05Rich Roll?

  Right. So it was really born out of this frustration and a little bit of confusion about what the next chapter was going to look like.

• 51:11Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. Exactly. That's how it all started.

• 51:14Rich Roll?

  It's also interesting that your frame on running is through the lens of punishment. When you are on a sports team that's not run-specific, it's like, that's, you know, being told to run is what happens when you get in trouble.

• 51:25Speaker 04

  Literally.

• 51:26Rich Roll?

  You know, it's like, it's like the stick.

• 51:28Speaker 04

  If you, if you ask teammates of mine... I get so stressed the night before a fitness test. They can see it. They're like, hell, are you okay? I'm like, I just can't stop thinking about that beep test tomorrow morning. Or like the Cooper test where you gotta run two miles under 12 minutes. And if you don't make those time, you gotta be in Breakfast Club, which is extra fitness before the actual practice. And the actual practice has its own fitness in it. So it really got me all confused and scared and petrified.

• 51:52Rich Roll?

  But you're super fit, so when you started this streak, I think you said you went out and ran 10 minutes or something like that. But you're certainly capable of doing more than that.

• 52:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, way capable. And in that 10 minutes, it didn't even last. It was just the first week I ended up finding myself running even four miles. But the whole point of that idea of saying 10 minutes a day was to have zero pressure. Because I know if I were to tell myself, hell, you gotta run at least five miles a day, that's something at that point in my mentality and physical ability for running, I wasn't something I was kind of capable of maintaining. But I knew it was something attainable to do 10 minutes. So it was a mental thing. So that made me feel like, okay, you're doing this with no pressure, enjoying. Spring was in the air. It was May 15th of 2017. So it was just a perfect amount of time for me to be out there. So that's why I said 10 minutes.

• 52:37Rich Roll?

  Habit change and staying motivated. You know, what you've done is so inspirational. And I feel like you do such a good job at communicating these ideas in a relatable way. So for the people that are watching or listening, who are feeling inspired and know they need to get off the couch and do something, it doesn't necessarily have to be a run streak, but perhaps, you know, are in the process of rethinking their relationship to their body and their selves and the trajectory that they're on in life. Like, how do you speak to that person?

• 53:08Speaker 04

  I always say, do something that's pressure-free and do something that's attainable. Always, those are the biggest factors for me. And pressure-free meaning, don't do it because someone else is doing it. Do it because you want to do it and do it on your own timing. Don't feel like you gotta get it done. If it's a goal, whatever, you don't have to get it done in 10 days. If you need a month, a month is okay. So just do it pressure-free. Because because of that, I fell in love with running. I never thought there's no chance. And now I get excited to run. And I know running is tough. It has its brutal days, but like, I'm still excited to go at it. So do it.

• 53:42Rich Roll?

  You don't feel the pressure of maintaining the streak?

• 53:44Speaker 04

  Nope, zero pressure. And I always say this too, this is how I feel about it. The day that I feel like it becomes more of a pressure and I'm not liking it, I'm gonna stop. I'll stop and I don't know when that is.

• 53:55Rich Roll?

  Give yourself that permission.

• 53:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, and, and I know I'll find something else. I'll find something else. So making sure it's not, I don't have to go, I know I don't have to go run to keep a streak going. But I just do it because it feels good. I enjoy it and I want to keep sharing it. So pressure free, do it, uh, something that's attainable. And just think about even spending five minutes a day goes a long way. If it's something you love already or you're thinking about, you've been thinking about, that's all the signs to start doing it. So if that and just spend five minutes a day, it's, it's about volume. Five minutes a day for seven days a week is going to add up. But if you just do it today and you take a few days off, that's not it. If you can do 10 minutes a day, that's also 10 minutes you can at least find out of your day if it's important enough to you.

• 54:36Speaker 04

  So as long as you want to do it and just pressure free and get after it and don't think about anybody, even don't compare, even if it's running, don't compare yourself to these people who are doing hundreds of miles, these fast pace or these whatever. Everybody has their own process, their own journey. And if that's the goal, you'll get there just one day at a time. That's it.

• 54:53Rich Roll?

  I love it, man.

• 54:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, one day at a time.

• 54:59Rich Roll?

  I think Hella is really spot on when it comes to comparison. It doesn't serve you and it won't get you any closer to your goals. But when you hit plateaus, injuries, age-related physical changes, or even postpartum changes, it can be hard to not compare yourself to others or even to your old self. But Robin Arzon wants you to turn these plateaus into launching paths. A global fitness icon and vice president of fitness programming at Peloton, Robin delivers a sermon on positive self-talk, on gratitude, pre and postnatal fitness, and how to form a movement routine after giving birth.

• 55:48Rich Roll?

  Speaking strictly about fitness, like walk me through the prenatal phase and how you thought about your fitness and now postnatal, like how you've approached it, whether it's different or has changed based upon pre-strong mama Robin.

• 56:04Speaker 11

  Prenatal, okay, so I trained and I taught five days a week live throughout my entire pregnancy.

• 56:10Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And then everyone like fell in love with you because you were like, this is like, oh, she's pregnant, like they, there was an emotional bond, I think, that you created with the people that care about you.

• 56:19Speaker 11

  Well, I announced the pregnancy on the bike. So that, it was like a very major, you know, pregnancy announcement, but that felt very logical to me because I have shared parts of my life, whether it's my romantic journey or my, you know, of course, as an athlete and as a woman, as a Latina, like there are aspects of myself that I infuse into my training and my workouts. And so announcing the pregnancy felt logical, especially because I knew I was going to teach, you know, hoped to teach throughout my pregnancy and I had a great pregnancy, so that was possible. And I continued to run, strength train and cycle throughout. I got my prenatal certification, so I did prenatal classes as well for Peloton.

• 57:02Speaker 11

  And I was like, oh, I got this. Postpartum, however, that piece of the journey was daunting. It felt like putting myself back together again, I just wasn't used to slowing down to that extent and being that vulnerable and having no control. I mean, there were so many days that the fatigue was crushing, you know, I was recovering from a C-section, so major abdominal surgery. And there were, I mean, for probably the first six weeks, I was like, oh my God, am I ever going to be moved the way I'm used to moving?

• 57:37Rich Roll?

  And the pressure of being this celebrity fitness personality. And what if I can't do that again? Or be that person that I want to be or know how to be?

• 57:47Speaker 11

  I had real moments of imposter syndrome, especially when we run like a network. So I took five months of maternity leave, but when we were planning for me to come back, they're like, you know, production's like, what do you want to teach? You know, we have to put something on the live schedule for X day. And I'm like, I don't even physically know what I'm going to be able to do. You know, that felt really intense. And I developed a mantra then during that postpartum period of consistency over intensity, because I knew I couldn't go hard in the paint, which is I'm apt to do. Like, that is much more my flavor of intensity. And I thought, just do something every day. And in the beginning, it was literally breathwork,

• 58:31Speaker 11

  like literally feeding my daughter and doing 360 diaphragmatic breathing, because I knew that was, you know, going to repair my core. That was weeks of that. And then it was walks and, you know, little by little amounting to a lot. But it was frustratingly slow. And now I'm stronger than I ever have been, a year later.

• 58:47Rich Roll?

  Right. And how much of that did you share transparently in the Peloton classes? Because I feel like that, on some level, is much more relatable to the typical Peloton person than all the talk about polishing your crowns and, you know, all of that kind of stuff. You know what I mean? Like, hey, I don't feel like, you know, most of the time, I feel like I can barely do anything. And now Robin can speak my language or I can find a relatability there that perhaps even strengthened your connection with your community.

• 59:19Speaker 11

  Definitely, I was super honest, especially in those first few classes. You know, in that six-month period, my first six months back on the bike and back in strength classes, you know, I'd already been doing my own training, you know, during my maternity leave. But it was, it's different. It's different doing in front of the camera. You know, those first few sprints. Feel like, am I ever gonna get it back? But your body does remember. And I think being honest about that journey, especially as a woman in very anti-snapback culture.

• 59:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I want to talk about that because there is all this pressure like, how quickly can you get back to where you were before? And your whole thing is about letting go of what was before and let's focus on moving forward.

• 59:57Speaker 11

  Yeah. My refrain was, what if a plateau is a launching pad? What if a plateau is a launching pad? And for a really long time, like, I'm supposed to wear the new Peloton collection and I'd have to go back and be like, I actually still need this other size, you know? And I had to reframe the story around that and focus on what my body could do rather than, you know, what size the tag set.

• 1:00:21Rich Roll?

  Sure. And it's all good now, though. Feel strong.

• 1:00:24Speaker 11

  I'm stronger than ever.

• 1:00:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Speaker 11

  But it was little by little amounting to a lot. I mean, it was truly like the smallest steps. I remember runs on the West Side Highway. I ran the New York City Marathon about, I think, Athena was nine months. And when I tell you that I didn't look at a watch, I would old school, like, map the distance for my runs and not run with a single stitch of like pacing.

• 1:00:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:47Speaker 11

  Because I couldn't even take that information. You know, I couldn't be like, oh, but your pace was this and da da. No way. I showed up to the New York City Marathon actually having zero idea how long it was gonna take me. Like, I was just like, I'm gonna go.

• 1:00:58Rich Roll?

  It's liberating that way.

• 1:00:59Speaker 11

  It was so liberating and it was a refreshing back to basics. Like, it was like, I'm doing this because I love it and because I feel better doing it rather than any external gaze.

• 1:01:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I shared a little thing about this on Instagram the other day. You know, my version of that is just getting older and dealing with injuries. You know, it's a limited version of what you experienced on an extreme level. But at some point, the GPS watches and all the stuff are no longer tools, but they're vehicles to shame yourself, right? And at that point, they're counterproductive. And I've been spending more time, like, letting go of all of that stuff. And what it does, it does exactly what you said, which is it reminds you why you're doing it, which is that it brings yourself joy, you know? And that's really the most important thing. So rather than like, looking, you know, where am I at? It's impossible to look at that and not immediately measure yourself against the fittest version of yourself, which is a really unkind, unfair thing to do to yourself.

• 1:01:56Speaker 11

  I mean, I noticed myself doing that and I did do runs on the Peloton tread and it was, thank God I had it because I literally during nap time, I'd like, I don't even know how I did cross that finish line, but I cobbled together like, I'm talking like 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon and that would be my run, you know, when I was supposed to run five miles that day. Like it was not, as I would have had done it in past marathon training cycles, but the most important catalyst was not crossing that finish line. It was how I was talking to myself along the way and

• 1:02:31Rich Roll?

  Talk more about that.

• 1:02:32Speaker 11

  It was, um, okay, so I'll do, so pre-run, putting on a pair of pants that were bigger than I have ever trained in before, right? Go out, lace up, finish that 10 mile run, finish that 13 mile run, come back kinder to myself because I completed what I said I was gonna do, even if it took me however much longer than previous versions. And it actually brought me back. So I, when I started running after, after I was held hostage and I started, and was started running during law school, it was the first time I was made aware of my internal conversation of like the actual thoughts, whether it was like in first person or third person, they were going on in

• 1:03:15Speaker 11

  between my ears. And I was brought back to that in that training cycle postpartum as my ability to either use the words to cast, what kind of spell am I gonna cast with the words that are going on internally? And it was either gonna be, I had a choice. Like, are you gonna berate yourself for the size of these pants? Or are you gonna tell yourself, oh my God, like you are outside, you have, your husband's able to watch the baby, she's healthy, like you're healed enough from this post C-section to even lace up, you know, you were craving to even get outdoors, you know? So there was an element of gratitude and kindness that I had to incorporate into that training cycle and it ended up being the best four months of training of my life.

• 1:04:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a choice, right? But sometimes it's hard to make that choice. Like, is there a mental trick or tactic that you would deploy to get out of that negative headspace and inhabit that more positive gratitude oriented perspective?

• 1:04:17Speaker 11

  Yeah, I would often ask myself, what do you have right now that you used to dream about or pray for? And in the like specifics, it was like, just last week, you couldn't even go three miles. So you would have been grateful that you could even run an hour today, you know? And asking myself that question is like an internal reset. Like, I remember the beginning of the pandemic during quarantine. I was pregnant during the pandemic and it felt, the walls felt like they were closing in at some points, you know, for all of us. And I started that as a journaling practice, but I would force myself to answer, you know, what is it that you used to dream about or wish for that you have right now, but like within these four walls? And then I'd notice like, oh, there's that painting that I got at whatever trip, or

• 1:05:01Speaker 11

  there's, you know, the couch that I bought with my husband, you know, little things that I was able to kind of put that gratitude filter on, that it really helps. I mean, there were, of course, there were some days that I was like, God, this feels cheesy, but the practice of it really helped ground me and anchor me.

• 1:05:19Rich Roll?

  I really agree with Robyn when she said gratitude is integral to motivation and accepting where you're at in your movement journey. But oftentimes, seasonal changes can present obstacles when it comes to movement. Wintertime weather makes for cold runs or icy swims. Who wants to do that? So in this next clip, two-time Olympic swimmer, Ironman master, and my coach, Chris Hauth, shares off-season and cold weather routines, as well as discusses how to maximize strength and mobility work during the winter months, and how to cultivate consistency and steady, gradual, sustained progress.

• 1:06:04Rich Roll?

  What do you think is the biggest mistake that most masters or amateur athletes make around this time of year?

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  Well, it's the thinking that you have to keep this perfect string of workouts going, right? If you get eighty percent of your week done, if you get three, four days together, strung together, done well, and you miss a day, that's fine, right? We're all not going to be a hundred percent on any of this. I'm never a hundred percent on any of this, let alone most of my athletes. Life gets in the way, right? We all went pro in something other than this master's sports. And so not judging ourselves, not worrying too much about missing a day, because the next day, you're going to come back more motivated, more focused, as well as fresher and more recovered and feel better doing it. So don't look for perfection, look for steady, gradual progress.

• 1:06:56Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Consistency.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, because especially as masters athletes, as I like to call us, especially as swimmers, we remember how we used to be, right? And we have this image when we take on an event, whether it's an Ironman, whether it's a swimming race, whether it's a running race, how we used to be and how when we had a lot of time and no kids and not a career that demands a lot of us and so forth, oh, that's what it felt like. That's how I felt and that's how the rhythm of the training went. Well, that was twenty years ago, buddy, right? Like you forget and you have to adjust those expectations. And that's why I always say we can take on any endurance event, we just have to adjust the expectations.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  However you want to achieve it, we can achieve it, but let's work around what the expectations are.

• 1:07:45Rich Roll?

  For the endurance athlete out there, how important is the strength work, like time in the gym this time of year?

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  Well, besides that, I will always say it's individual to the person. Strength work is quite important. The beauty of strength work that fits really well in with the seasons of endurance training and endurance athletics is that this is a great time of year when the rain is here, the snow is here, the cold temperatures to work on those things. It's again, taking advantage of the environment we're in. Spending the next 12 weeks, 16 weeks on strength and mobility, especially mobility more than strength. And mobility ties in stability work, what I call chassis integrity, you know, core, stability, things like that. So that then come the spring, we can put a bigger load on the body when it's time.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  But yeah, I'm a big believer in strength work, not for everybody, because what's are the best use of our limited time, right? So some people, we do just need to run, right? We just need to get them moving and running, or walking in some cases. Others, we're better off spending that strength time if they're in the more temperate climate on the bike, right? We can do hill repeats on the bike at a low cadence and really work those leg muscles, very similar to squats, but you're doing it very sport specific.

• 1:09:06Rich Roll?

  Do you have a specific mobility slash strength slash core workout that you recommend people?

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I sort of fudge them all together from a variety of different people that I've worked with, things that I've liked, plans that I've applied, and see how they work. That's the fun part, right? For me, even now, at this time of year, I'm going through some different strength work and versions of strength work that I will then in two, three weeks, hand on to my athletes.

• 1:09:34Rich Roll?

  Like some of that kettleball stuff?

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, kettleball, a lot of that.

• 1:09:38Rich Roll?

  Kettlebell, I did it again. I had a Mike Moller in here.

• 1:09:42Speaker 02

  And I said it.

• 1:09:43Rich Roll?

  I got like crucified because I had Mike Moller in here, who's like an expert in kettlebells, and I was, I was calling him kettleballs.

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  Yes. Kettlebells, medicine balls, dumbbells, I like all that because, again, we want to manage the load, and kettlebells, because they're so versatile, allow you to do a lot of that work. And guess what? For 30 bucks on Amazon, for 50 bucks on Amazon, you can get a pretty good set and do most of this stuff in the comfort of your home, 30 minutes, and you are getting huge benefits from that strength work. Single leg lunges and squats and explosive jumps and so forth from a leg standpoint, core work, and all kinds of crossover work that you can do with kettlebells that works really, really well, yeah.

• 1:10:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. All right, well, we got to close this episode of Coach's Corner Down, but like, I want you to just imagine it's late January, it's dark, it's cold, it's wet.

• 1:10:45Rich Roll?

  You set that goal at the end of December, but your enthusiasm is starting to wane. What are the key, most important things that people can kind of latch on to, hang their hat on to carry them into the spring months?

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  Well, you've heard this from me many times before, but there's some more tricks to it in the meantime. And that is just doing something, a little something every day, right? Consistency. And don't beat yourself up if it's only 30 minutes. That's plenty to get the heart rate going. But let's say you're on a treadmill, right? Or on a trainer, bike trainer, where you put your bike on a resistance trainer. Like, things that I say to my athletes is, you know what? Let's say you have the TV on. Every time there's a commercial, that's when you run harder. You run it two miles an hour faster. And then when your show comes back on, back to easy, right? Use everything in your environment to your advantage to keep you motivated, to keep it fun. Save that TV show that you want to watch on Netflix

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  for being on the trainer. Or save that song, or that music, or that podcast, or your podcast, for when you're on the treadmill, right? And you're stuck in the dark times or in a gym with a billion people and you don't really want to interact right now. You just want to exhale. You've had a long day. Save that for then to listen to that music or that new CD, or CD.

• 1:12:07Rich Roll?

  CD, yeah. How old are you?

• 1:12:09Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:12:13Speaker 02

  Or a podcast, right? And so, again, use those things to your advantage to get you out there every day. The other thing that I use, and my athletes know this, is I put out an index card when I go through hard times every night and I put it right by my coffee in the morning. So that that index card has my workouts for the day on it. And just seeing that index card there with a few intentions. I mean, it's not big, you know? It's those small little index cards. Lying there and seeing it first thing in the morning when I'm tired and sleepy and walk and turn on the water. You know, already, okay, well, that I can do. Right? It's just that index card. I have to put that in a box at the end of the day. At some point today, I want to get that done.

• 1:12:56Rich Roll?

  I like that. Another little trick that I use is to prepare for the following day's workout the evening before by doing simple things like, okay, it's a run, so I'll pull out the shorts and the socks and like kind of get everything ready and organized to make it as easy as possible to begin that workout the next day. And I think just the simple act of organizing that creates an emotional investment that makes it harder for you the next day to not do it.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  Or have it with you, like you have it in your car with you at all times. But I also like to do the, the podcasts are really intriguing, right? Because you see what the topics are and you load them the night before and you look forward to hearing.

• 1:13:36Rich Roll?

  You create your playlist.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  Exactly. And you look forward, oh, I'm curious as to what this guy has to say or what she is contributing.

• 1:13:42Rich Roll?

  Right. This one's only 30 minutes though, so I gotta make sure I have, I know what's gonna follow that, so I don't have to stop.

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, but we all also know, once that initial momentum happens, you're out the door, you're going, right?

• 1:13:55Rich Roll?

  No, I mean, not that, but like, I don't want to have to stop my workout to hit play on the next thing. Like, I want it all queued, so it'll just flow, right?

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  For sure. Yeah, get in a little something every day. Don't try to string together too many days perfectly in a row. Just look at yourself, big picture. A lot of the times I also say, where do you want to be on January 31st? Nothing crazy, not something for June yet. How do I want to feel January 31st? How do I want to feel February 28th or whatever it'll be this year? So give yourself short-term outcomes that you say, okay, that I can achieve. I just need to be a little bit better at the end of January than I was at the end of December, right? And then you're making progress so that you can set the marker for next month out there of this is what I want to achieve, right? You can chart it. You can,

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  there's a lot of ways to keep you excited about the next week, but if you have short-term goals that you feel good about achieving, it'll just create momentum once again.

• 1:14:58Rich Roll?

  If you can master just a little bit of movement every single day, it can really have a dramatic difference in not just your physical health, but also your mental health. But tying in more natural movements throughout your day, that's even better. So, closing out our movement masterclass is natural lifestyle coach and barefoot ultra-running phenom, Tony Riddle, who is going to distill down everything we've covered today to the basics by sharing how to turn daily mobility exercises into habits, as well as talking about how to nourish flexibility and mobility, and why we all might actually need to relearn how to walk.

• 1:15:48Rich Roll?

  So, if you were going to pull out a prescription pad and write a prescription for me, short of getting rid of all the chairs in my house, and knowing me as a runner and a multi-sport athlete, what is the prescription around squatting or other things that I could be doing, or somebody who is like me could be doing?

• 1:16:08Speaker 03

  And there's many people like you. I get to see a lot of people like you. I wouldn't go as extreme as taking your furniture away. It would be too much.

• 1:16:14Rich Roll?

  Don't worry, it's not gonna happen.

• 1:16:15Speaker 03

  Your family wouldn't handle it. It'd be too much of an emotional crash.

• 1:16:18Rich Roll?

  Julie might be into it, I don't know.

• 1:16:19Speaker 03

  I think, again, you have to take it back to say, right, after a certain amount of time, like after this, immediately after, I'd be taking things to the ground again, just because of the length of time you're sat here.

• 1:16:28Rich Roll?

  I feel bad that we're not sitting on the ground during this podcast.

• 1:16:31Speaker 03

  Again, we can squat after. That's the beauty of it. Like, I was on a flight for 11 and a half hours, right? And I'd get up, I'd get up regularly, go to the back of the plane, do the mobility sequence, open my hips up, do some shoulder mobility, squat, you know?

• 1:16:48Rich Roll?

  I saw that on Instagram. I hope you had an aisle seat.

• 1:16:51Speaker 03

  And then I'd go back to the seat. No, I managed to get extra legroom and I had a window seat.

• 1:16:55Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did? So, did you have to climb over somebody every time you wanted to get up, every 20 minutes?

• 1:16:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, and as I was explaining earlier, the lady next to me was really demonstrating the behavior that was encouraging me even more. I was like, oh, wow, she's... So, um, yeah, I would, again, just, I'd look at what you're doing within the environment and try and make small changes within it, rather than add too much to your day. And I think that's where a lot of things fall down, is we think, oh, where am I going to find the time to do that? So it's very simple to be able to slide a chair away, hold the edge of the desk, do a few squats lifting your chest up, and use the desk as an anterior support. A lot of the people I see don't, just don't have the ankle function, ankle mobility, to perform a squat, so allow the heel to come up and just keep the shape and just drop onto your haunches, so it's almost like a straight body. Your butt will be resting on your heel and your knees will be forward.

• 1:17:44Speaker 03

  You just do a few rhythm little bounces in that position, then stand again, and then you're ready to walk. Hmm. Other disciplines that we're gonna, we will cover, just go through a few kneeling positions that you can do on the ground, and a little mobility sequence that you can play with within that. And again, they're just rest positions, like long sits or straddle sits and things like that. The other thing for the upper body is, I recommend for everyone to do is put a bar up to hang off, so hanging is even more ancient, if you think, than running, right? So it goes back into what would be our primate foundation. So if we go right down, climb down that phylogenetic tree, we get to the brachiating apes, to how to restore and open up the rib cage and open up the lungs would be to basically just hang, simple hanging system. Ah. So you go through different hanging positions, and we have in the wrists, the elbow,

• 1:18:29Speaker 03

  the shoulder, and your scapula, your shoulder blade, we have all the same brachiating abilities as all the other apes. And I find people just, some people have trouble changing light bulbs now, so it's really important to just keep nourishing that. Eighty percent of shoulder injuries, I'd say, is through the lack of brachiation. Hmm. And then we try and do things like dips in the gym, but the scapula is internally rotated and raised, then again, it's just blowing up the shoulder. So hanging will help reset, or straight arm strength, forget about bent arm strength, forget about pulling patterns, just get used to being completely straight in the arm, then your posture hang from it. Again, that will help mobilize the shoulder, but it will also open up the tendons, the ligaments, everything, and even the arteries through that pathway. Um, you'll lift your rib cage, which will then make your breathing clearer.

• 1:19:13Speaker 03

  And then you can play once you're in that position. You can start to go through active hangs. So trying to keep your arms straight whilst lifting your chest up into your hands. So there's no bend in the elbow. And that starts to strengthen the lower trapezius, which is in the mid back. A lot of the disciplines that we see are about mobilization and flexibility. And you can do all the flexibility training you like. You can do amazing work for the mid back. But if you don't have the strength to hold it there through the lower trapezius, gravity's going to take over.

• 1:19:41Rich Roll?

  What about doing pull ups and chin ups? And I mean, those are pulling.

• 1:19:45Speaker 03

  But great, but on a straight arm strength to begin with. So there's Ido Portail, you know, Ido Portail's work. So he has like a hanging tutorial thing. And I would, I would suggest that you basically set a timer. So you can have a timer. I work with clients to start with 10 seconds hanging. And then they're off the bar. And then I give them 30 seconds rest, then they go back up. And then that will turn to 20 seconds, 30 seconds and a minute. And the way this then starts to unravel is you start to build a relationship. It becomes a new habit. So I'll give you an example of someone who I coach who's 78. He's a old guy, called Yehudi. He rocked up at my gym door when he was 72, so six years ago. And he was completely stooped, scrunched up, old posture. He brought natural birthing into the UK, wrote a book called Birth and Beyond,

• 1:20:30Speaker 03

  a real manual for childbirth. Amazing guy. But gravity and age were taking over. And so I really want to learn how to walk. And I was like, okay, so it's a good place. Let's get you up on the treadmill. And so at the age of 72, you want to learn how to walk. So I interested him, right? So I went on the treadmill, just recorded him, showed him his posture. Oh my God, I can't believe I look like that.

• 1:20:52Rich Roll?

  Like all bent over.

• 1:20:53Speaker 03

  And these are these boxes that I was introduced by a coach called Lee. And basically you have like the, it's the conscious competency model. So I've recorded them up until that point, they're unconsciously incompetent.

• 1:21:05Speaker 03

  And then I showed them the video and now they're consciously incompetent. And then I go through the drills they need and then they become consciously competent. And then over time, doing the same drills and the same method, which we're going, what you're wanting me to break down, what would I do? That then becomes unconsciously competent. And that's how you learn the skill. But remembering the next time you get recorded, you'll still be unconsciously incompetent. So you keep feeding that. So he basically just wanted to learn how to walk. We'd go through walking, go through that model with him. And I prescribe footwork for rewilding the feet, how to get the feet in the foot shape rather than a shoe shape. So his feet were compromised by 72 years of inappropriate footwear that were compromising the shape of the foot. Get that back. Then ground rest positions.

• 1:21:50Speaker 03

  So we then went through the various different ground positions, what I would prescribe for him. And then hanging and that was it. And then he had a hanging bar in his home. So this guy now, since then, has climbed Everest Base Camp, Bhutan, Mount Kenya, Atlas Mountains. And basically this is his morning routine. So he wakes up now in an air purified room, trots downstairs, gets to the office on the second floor, hangs on the bar, goes into the office, gets on the map, does his mobility sequence, has a standing desk, answers his emails, go downstairs, preps his smoothie, pre-biotics, probiotics, symbiotics, puts his Vivos on, walks down to the tube, gets to the tube, doors open, he gets on. People usually say, because he's 78, would you like a seat?

• 1:22:33Speaker 03

  He's like, nah, I'm okay. And up he goes. He hangs on the bars. He hangs on the bars while the tube's moving, feet off the floor. Tube stops, doors open, right, next one, next time the door's closed, then he squats and then he squats. And then he does breath work. So he does between breath work, hanging, squatting and a bit of surfing. So surfing, you don't hold on to anything. You just try and get your support on the train. And that's at the age of 78. He's just made small changes all the way along and he's.

• 1:22:57Rich Roll?

  Using his commute.

• 1:22:58Speaker 03

  He's in incredible shape now, you know?

• 1:23:01Rich Roll?

  And his spine straightened out?

• 1:23:03Speaker 03

  Straighter now. It's completely upright.

• 1:23:04Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:23:05Speaker 03

  But looks like, the difference is it's how he looks now. So he doesn't look like the 72 year old. He looks, you know, he looks great. He looks in amazing shape and newfound confidence within it.

• 1:23:16Rich Roll?

  It's kind of a beautiful act of humility to walk into your gym and say, teach me how to walk too. That takes courage. Most people wouldn't do that. And it's interesting to think about walking as something that we might have to learn or relearn. Like we were talking about this in the context of running, like. Born to run. We're all born runners. We don't think that we need any instruction. It's all instinctual and intuitive, and I suppose on some level it is. But through the means by which we live our lives in this Western industrialized society, we've reshaped our bodies that have now created a situation in which we probably do need to formally learn how to run.

• 1:23:59Rich Roll?

  And you just pointed it out to me when we were out on the trail, like all these things that I'm not doing correctly, but I could be doing better because I'm unconsciously incompetent in certain aspects of what I do, even though I've been doing it for a long time and I've done it at a decent level.

• 1:24:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, a really decent level.

• 1:24:20Rich Roll?

  But there's still so much to learn, you know? And I know that I'm not working at my capacity because I've never had anybody formally instruct me in anything.

• 1:24:29Speaker 03

  Okay, so if you're in an office and your HR department won't allow you to have a standing desk, again, you slide your chair away, you do some squats. I have a whole squat tutorial that we can send out to the listeners as well.

• 1:24:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's great. I'll put a link in the show notes.

• 1:24:44Speaker 03

  So we can do that, and then that gives you some tips as well with what you can be doing behind the desk. 10,000 steps, everyone loves banging on about 10,000 steps. But for me, if you have 10,000 poor steps that might lead you to an injury, it's probably not the best model. If you're wearing compromised footwear with a dodgy heel and a pointed toe box, it's not the best model. So I would go.

• 1:25:05Rich Roll?

  Most people are wearing those kind of shoes.

• 1:25:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would cut back and just say, right, okay, what's the more natural environment for a foot? It's nature, it's creating a foot-shaped shoe, so go to minimal footwear. There's some amazing brands out there, Vivo's one, but there's others. There's some primal office wear that's come through, and it's trying to basically even get into the feeling that it's not about running in those shoes, it's about living in those shoes. And that will give you an amazing foundation. So if you're into all your disciplines, it could be Pilates, yoga, it could be running, we're talking about. It will only enhance that. Those disciplines will just get better because you'll be moving in the appropriate systems and creating the right muscle action, tendon actions for them, which means the next day you can get up and do the same thing without the tension.

• 1:26:01Rich Roll?

  Alright, everybody, that's it. We did it. This masterclass was packed with just an absolute battery of resources to spark, to sustain, and to fully adopt movement and mobility practices that are useful, and, most importantly, meaningful to you. But the biggest lesson I took away from compiling this very special episode is that physically embodying a dream, a vision, a belief, or a purpose through movement is really the only way that you can and will ever make a change. Because, as I say relentlessly on this show, mood follows action. You cannot think your way into anything. You can only do something about it.

• 1:26:44Rich Roll?

  I truly believe movement isn't just a physical practice that benefits the body. It's actually a means of evolution. Because when we embrace movement, even in the smallest ways, we open the door to a world of possibilities. In my case, a walk led to a run, which led to ultra-endurance racing, and ultimately, to this entirely new life altogether. So, my hope is that this masterclass gives you the education, and the inspiration, and the tools that you need to adopt a form of movement that brings you joy, a mobility routine that nourishes your body, and that you discover something new about yourself,

• 1:27:26Rich Roll?

  your purpose, and your meaning along the way. Quick reminder that links to the full episodes for each of the individuals excerpted today can be found in the show notes at richroll.com. And, in closing, keep moving. More exploring, more joy, and of course, always, more plants. Peace, love, namaste.