Movement with Andrew Bonsey

In this episode of the One Health Podcast Wellbeing Series, Dorian Broomhall gets to know Andrew Bonsey, Exercise Physiologist from HT Health Group.

In this episode, Andrew suggests we each think about the things we would like to be able to do when are 70, and to work backwards from them when considering how active we need to be now.

He speaks about how much better a little bit of movement is to no movement at all, and that it may even be better than a lot of movement if it is going to be more sustainable over a long period of time.

Transcript

Dorian Broomhall:

Welcome to the One Health Podcast. This episode was recorded on the land of the palawa people. I acknowledge and pay respect to all Tasmanian Aboriginal people and to their deep history of storytelling. My name's Dorian Broomhall and I'm the Manager of Culture and well-being for the Department of Health here in lutruwita/Tasmania. For this episode of the podcast we went outside the department and spoke with Andrew Bonsey, an exercise physiologist from the HT Health Group. Andrew speaks about how beneficial even a little bit of movement can be to our health, especially when compared to not moving at all. He also talks about thinking about what we'd like to be able to do when we're 70 when we're considering how active we might need to be right now. He also speaks about how increasing our level of movement has wide-ranging flow-on effects from sleeping better to massively reducing our mortality rate. So let's get into it. To begin with, just to give us a bit of context, it'd be great if you wouldn't mind just giving us a brief background of yourself and what you do.

Andrew Bonsey:

Sure. I'm an exercise physiologist. I've been an exercise physiologist for 23 years so one of the original exercise physiologists in Hobart. It's been a long and diverse career. And exercise physiology is a very diverse, actually, profession. Initially, I've done a lot of work in musculoskeletal rehabilitation. But as it's gone on, and as the field has grown, I've broadened as well and have become interested in a broad range of health and well-being aspects of our profession. So all the way from helping people to improve the quality of their lives, the quality of their health. And also, still being able to use those other skills that they have to be able to put them into pit lane for a while and get the things organised for them, and then be able to get them doing the things we really need them to do to look after their health and well-being for the long term.

Dorian Broomhall:

It strikes me from the bit of exposure I've had with you and working with you over the last couple of years that you work with a few different sort of distinct groups. You seem to work with perhaps people who need some sort of rehabilitation, they've got an injury, whether it's workplace-related, sport-related, age-related, whatever it might be. You seem to work with athletes and a group of people who really are in that high-performance space as well. And then that sort of in between people, perhaps like myself, who are a bit curious about how we take care of ourselves a little bit better over the years. Is that sort of the mix?

Andrew Bonsey:

My joke is I work with elite athletes, and 90-year-old grandmas, and everyone else in between basically. And I really enjoy that. There's a couple of things to it. One is, actually, working with elite athletes and working with people who either have chronic disease or are ... And the elderly. Actually, the skills come back together, you actually use the same skill. You might be using a force plate to measure someone's jump for an elite athlete, and you can use that same force plate to manage their ... Or measure their balance and their postural sway for someone who's a falls risk, for example. I mean, where I also really enjoy working is working with people before they've had any issues or injuries and so therefore you can try to set them up for the future and really work on the big ticket items and prevent issues for them in ... Going down the track.

Dorian Broomhall:

Over the last 23 years, you've said, as you've been doing this work, how have you learnt from what you've done? It strikes me that you've started off perhaps working in a particular space of that and then people have come, and questions have been asked, and you've continued to learn. How has it sort of changed over time?

Andrew Bonsey:

You actually learn a lot from your clients. Obviously, you're trying to provide solutions for people, and sometimes there's a mixed-in challenge. So you'd like to be able to put somebody into a particular box, for example. They might have a sore knee and they want to exercise more but they also might have diabetes or they might have another chronic disease of some kind. You're working through multiple challenges and basically guiding them through a maze to be able to get them to where they want to be.

Often someone might have some neurological disorder that no one's really heard of or is fairly rare and so you're out there researching that and understanding how that is going to impact on their overall ... On their body. And then being able to design the exercise and health programme based around those challenges. Can I get everybody going in the same direction. We've all got different kinks in our armour and sometimes you just have to spend a bit more time sorting those out before you can really push them into ... Or not push them. Encourage them into doing the things that they really should be doing to improve their health and well-being.

Dorian Broomhall:

With movement in mind then what's the point? We talk about the pillar being about movement as opposed to exercise, and I think that that's a reasonable distinction. Though, of course, I'm a big proponent of exercise and the overwhelming evidence that's saying that exercise is important. What do you think movement's important for?

Andrew Bonsey:

I'll just catch you on that point, actually. I really do like that distinction between movement and exercise. I sometimes say activity and exercise. Because everyone would say, "I don't exercise, I don't do anything like that" but they maybe do a lot of activity. Maybe they have a lot of things they do in their ... Around their house and yard at home. They're walking to and from and they walk to work and things like that so they are getting a lot of activity, and I think that's a real pillar.

This is a bit of a tangent. People who embark on exercise and they don't do any activity at all actually really are more likely to get injured because they're really going for a lower base if they're very sedentary. And then they start taking up ... Want to do a 5K run or something, their body really isn't ready for it. That little bit of activity that sits between sedentary behaviour and formal exercise is severely underrated. If you can think in your life about what you might do that you can make that activity come up first, and ... That's where you should actually start. A lot of people don't actually think about that but it's actually the thing that ... That 15, 20-minute walk you might be doing from ... To your office is actually doing you a lot of ... A power of good, it's really making a big difference. If you're able to build up that activity as the first part of your ... As your movement plan, I think that's really critical.

As to what movement's actually doing for you. I mean, it's a laundry list, a king scroll, if you like. It is so long and profound that it's ... But it's really worth talking about. On every level, on every system in your body, it is having a profound positive effect. We know the benefits of movement on your mental health, particularly. And really we can see that with people experiencing depression and anxiety. Fortunately, they, in that state, find it very challenging to want to exercise and want to move. But if they are able to set up a plan and get some consistency going with their exercise, and even with activity, the benefits are very, very, very strong. There's been numerous studies showing that the effect on movement can be as strong as the SSRI drugs they're providing that are a great help for them as well. It can be a great adjunct to any other medical help they're getting at the same time.

And then, basically, from every other level of the body ... I'll just give you a cardiovascular system for one, it's so amazing. Your body's always trying to adapt to the demands you place on it. Just from the cardiovascular system you just start from the top, basically. Your heart is getting stronger with exercise so it is able to pump more blood through the body. Your blood vessels are becoming more flexible. That means if there is any heart disease and any plaque inside your arteries, if you can make those blood vessels more flexible there's far less likelihood of an occlusion. Basically, your blood produces more red blood cells and your ability to be able to transport oxygen around your blood is improved. And that energises you, that gives you so much more energy.

And people think that our exercise is going to make me tired. But in the end, it gives you energy, it puts back because you are so much more efficient, you can do things very much more easily. You start creating collateral blood vessels as well which gives your body more choices if there are any problems with your vessels. And then even into the capillary beds, they become healthier and fresher. And then the mitochondria in your cells become fitter, and healthier, and stronger, and produce more energy, and just really give you so much more ability to do things and stay more active throughout your life. That's just on one level.

The effect on your metabolism it is just profound. Basically, your ability to be able to exercise and just be able to take a flight of stairs and not have your legs feel like lead weights is because you're actually able to give oxygen around the body and to be able to use your aerobic system more easily. That doesn't sound like anything too fancy but it opens up your horizons, basically. If the flight of stairs seems like it's going to be too much then all of a sudden that holiday you might take you just don't do that walk up the Parthenon or something. Do you know what I mean? You don't do those different travel trips. And even in the city and here in Hobart, if you have to walk up some stairs you go, "Oh no, I won't park there. Oh, that's going to be stairs" or whatever. All of a sudden your world starts to get smaller.

We're not talking about a lot of fitness here, but just going from sedentary up to a moderate level of exercise just broadens your horizons and it makes life so much more enjoyable and so much more full because there's so many more options you can do. You can do things with your kids. They want to have a bit of a run around the soccer field, you can get out there and you can kick the ball. Not to be having your hands on your hips and bending over at the waist. And this is where I think we sometimes get ourselves in a bit of a pickle in that we think we have to do everything so perfectly. It has to be this many hours of exercise and this many of this or whatever else. But the reality is if you can make it something that's just taken you from zero to 30 minutes a day ... And that's the mantra. If we can get people doing 30 minutes a day your life can really change, can be a profoundly different experience for you.

How have I adapted over the time? Well, when you come out of uni and you're still fresh and bright behind the ... Basically you want to try and get everybody 100% and exercising for an hour a day and all this amazing stuff. But you realise that if we can get the majority of people up to 30 minutes a day doing something then that is where the biggest effect is. If I'm working with an elite athlete they're already at 95% of their potential, I can only improve them five more percent. But someone who has been sitting in their armchair and not getting out, I can improve them so far they don't even know it. Over a two-year period they can go from really thinking like oh, I'm 45 years old and I guess I should get used to this to going oh my goodness, I can do this ... Ride my bike, I can swim, whatever it might be they enjoy doing and that all of a sudden it all opens up for them. These things are all interconnected.

Sometimes it's just about identifying which of the biggest barriers for people to be able to go okay, well that's where you're getting stuck and this is where we're going to move you through. I did an exercise science degree but I also did a psychology degree as well. And honestly, the psychology is just as important as the exercise science. My job is to try and, I guess, motivate people, and find their sticking points, and to be able to help them work their way through them.

Dorian Broomhall:

So much there to unpack and talk more about. Thanks for sharing all of that as a way to really kick this conversation into gear. There's something that you said that is such a wonderful metaphor and it's around the world getting smaller. The choices that you make now could be contributing to the size of your world either tomorrow or later in life. And that ability of being able to go up a flight of stairs. I know some people who won't get on a plane because it's too difficult to walk from the check-in counter to actually getting on the plane itself. And that's very, very crippling in terms of the size of your world you might have if you're lucky enough to be able to travel and do these sorts of things. So for me, I love that frame of considering it from the size of your world.

Andrew Bonsey:

Yes. The reality is, once we get to 35 years old or so, basically from there on we'll see a gradual decline in both our strength and our aerobic capacity. If you don't exercise you can basically say 1% per year, as a bit of a rough number, you'll find that it will go down over the course of your life. Whatever you have at 35 you'll be 35% less at 70. That means, of course, that if at 35 you're already starting to get a bit puffed running around the soccer field with your children, that by 70 the reality is that flight of stairs is going to be too much for you.

What I've been most interested in the last five years is going okay, well, if we're going to reverse engineer this, if we're going to go, when I'm 70 I want to go ... Take that trip to Europe. When I've retired and I want to go for a trip to Europe with my wife or my husband and have a great time then you've got to be able to go back and go well, when I'm 35 I need to be able to make sure I can do X, Y, and Z. And that gives some people some ideas. That probably still means that you could do a five-kilometre run in 25 minutes, or you could ride your bike ... You could comfortably ride your bike at 25 kilometres an hour, that type of idea. And if you hear that and you go, oh God, I'm a million miles away from that. As I said before, the reality is we can get that back.

Just because it's going to decline, that's declining off what your potential is. The reality is I can take you from where you are and move you up to your potential and then let the decline happen from there. It's not a decline all the way from now. An elite athlete, if they keep exercising for their whole life they all decline three or 4% per decade, or 0.3% per year, or something like that. It's a lot less. And you do the compounding interest component of that. 3% on 3% on 3% is a lot less than 10 on 10 on 10 so it just keeps going that way. For yourself you go okay, well what is it ... What are my life goals? What are the things I really enjoy doing? What will those things be? Then basically we can reverse-engineer it back.

The reality is, it's a six-month to a two-year process to work you, depending on where you're starting from, to get you to your potential for where you are, your age, and your health. This is the biggest challenge for me is that people will come and see me with the maximum amount of motivation, right? When they're the least fit their maximally amount ... They want to come and see me, whatever, and they go, "Okay, let's do it." Okay. But then I've got to try and keep the motivation, of course, but not let them spend it all at once.

In three months time that bank account of motivation would be empty and then they've still got another ... Years of work to go to get themselves to where they can get themselves to. It is a one to two-year process for most people to restore their health and get it back to what their potential is. And to be honest, it takes that amount of time to make that a behavioural change anyway. It really becomes part of you, your identity, and this is just what I do it's something you have to keep thinking about.

Dorian Broomhall:

I've got a very relevant story on that exact thing. I remember one of the first times I had a session with you, probably three years ago now I'm going to guess maybe even actually a bit longer. I've always been good at going to the gym. Again, background in the military, weights, and all that sort of stuff. Kettlebells. High-intensity stuff, that was all cool. Never had a very good relationship with cardio fitness, never saw the point of running, and those sorts of things. And I remember having that conversation with you very early on about oh, what do you do for cardio? Me saying, "Oh, I'm not much" ... "I'm going to get hurt, I'm going to hurt my knees, whatever, why would I bother doing that? I don't enjoy it, I hate it." And now three, four years later I do more running than I do anything else. And that's, for me, a really profound change. That it was that six months of needing to build it up to be able to do it at all.

Andrew Bonsey:

Yes.

Dorian Broomhall:

And now it's at a reasonable level that I can go out and ... In the way that I do it which is at a moderate pace that I can still think. I'm not interested in how fast I go I'm more interested in my heart rate. A different conversation for a different time around those sort of markers there. That change can become quite profound, it can absolutely happen. And I remember you saying, "This could take you 18 months to be able to slot where you want to here." I remember getting to that point, 18 months on, and looking at the stats and going oh wow, it actually happened. And now it continues and it becomes part of your identity and what you do.

Andrew Bonsey:

So it's a classic example, isn't it, where you saw yourself as a strong person and as someone who goes to the gym but you didn't identify yourself as someone who could run or someone who could do long distance even. It's so important when you're coming into looking at your health and particularly starting into an exercise programme is keeping an open mind because it's frustrating in a way. When you look at all the research, and whether it's for cancer or for diabetes or for cardiovascular disease, you'd like to think this is one of the strength or the cardiovascular is going to be the more important or something like that. And the reality is, almost every study that's done it's like ... The people in the group that had the mixed combination of the aerobic exercise and the strength performed better than the people who had strength alone or aerobic alone. And so it's almost always the same. Really those two areas of training are probably the most powerful overall as far as your function going forward. And also, in regards to prevention of chronic diseases and mortality.

I've mentioned this to you before, but the measure of your aerobic fitness and the measure of your strength are the two most profound measures of preventing disease and preventing death in any other ... More than your blood pressure is, more than your cholesterol. I'll just give you this quickly, hopefully it's a motivation. If you can move yourself from the bottom quartile to the top quartile for your aerobic fitness, your risk of dying goes down by 400% each year.

Dorian Broomhall:

That's insane.

Andrew Bonsey:

Right? I mean, that is amazing. That's all cause, right? And then your strength, if you can take that from the bottom quarter to the top quartile and that reduces your risk of dying by 250%. I mean, you wouldn't think that just strength training would make such a profound difference. It's for every decade along all through your life that has that profound effect. It's the thing that can have the most profound effect on somebody's health and well-being going forward.

And, obviously, if you've got your fitness into the top quartile chances are your cholesterol and your blood pressure are going to become normal. It's those things are going to be related. It doesn't go the other way. You can have good blood pressure or your cholesterol can be fine and your aerobic fitness is not anywhere near where it should be necessarily. If you think about the first-order types of things to be thinking about those are the things to be going okay, how can I improve these the most? In every job you're trying to find ways ... When you're helping people, how can we make it simpler and more understandable so that they don't get bowled over by the science of it all? And so if you just think of those two things, as far as the movement are concerned, as the places where you need to start thinking about, then that's a great place to be.

Dorian Broomhall:

So you and I have, again, spoken about an American physician, Dr. Peter Attia, who people might be familiar with, over time. If you're interested in learning more about the science then, obviously, that's a way to go. His stuff could be quite dense though. Incredibly interesting to sort of break down. He's a medical doctor who puts exercises or movement as the number one thing that anybody should do. He's very concerned and interested in lifespan and health span.

Something that he talks about is considering the last 10 years of your life, knowing that you'll never know when that has started, of course ... And when you talk about all-cause mortality, of course, accidents will sadly still happen and that's the reality. That's an unknown, unknown we can't control that. But this idea of your last 10 years of your life, whenever that might be, and how would you like them to be? I think that's such a profoundly simple yet important question. If someone listening to this might be over the age of 35 and going oh, I haven't done much for a while now. They're going oh, how would I now like my last 10 years of life to be? What's your starting point? What's your suggestion?

Andrew Bonsey:

Well, first of all, actually, I'd say to them, "It's actually completely understandable if you're 35 or 40 years old and you haven't done much recently because chances are you've probably got two children at foot, or something like that. And you've got your mortgage, and your working hard, and you're in your peak work phase of your life in many respects. From 35 to 40 is where it's all happening. Chances are you've had a lot of pressures to move you away from wanting to exercise." It's not that you should be pointed at and say, "Well, why aren't you exercising?" Let me see if I can invest a bit of time into myself and spend some time improving this. Basically, I have to meet them wherever they are. Basically what I would say to people is, no matter where you are we're going to try and move you two rungs up the ladder. Two rungs from where you are right now.

And that's really, I think, a good place to start. Instead of thinking about oh, I want to be way up here, whatever like that, it's just too much at the start so we just want to try and move two rungs up the ladder. And that means, basically, just putting the foundations of an exercise programme in place and developing the habit of it. To be honest, it doesn't have to be fancy, it doesn't have to be a high-intensity exercise class or something like that. In fact, if I can motivate people to do something less than that I would do it all the time. The overarching role here is, particularly for me but for anyone, you don't want to have a dabble at exercise and then get burnt and go, "Oh, that hurt. Or that will hurt my knee. Exercise can't be for me anymore. Oh, well, it's just bad luck, I'll just walk the dog or something." That's not the result we want.

How we start with it is ... Like with an appraisal, making sure there aren't any niggles that they've got that need to be addressed and getting those addressed. It's a bit of a financial plan here. In the end, there's a lot of stuff you have to go through, and a little bit of paperwork to go through to get the show on the road. It's not really what you want to do, you just want to invest the money or you just want to invest some time on your health. But we just need to make sure we go through pit lane one time, make sure there's nothing that's going to be problematic down the track, and then go with it. But we don't just do that we would find ways around it. So if you had a dicky shoulder or something we would do a lot of exercises that weren't going to bother the shoulder while we were working on the shoulder to get it right.

The idea I guess if you are 35 years old and you're starting to get into this is to ... You really need to be able to think about all the reasons why you're doing it. When you're trying to make a behavioural change you have to make a case for it. Sitting down and going, I want to do this because of A, B, C, and D. And one of those letters will be, because when I'm 80 years old I still want to catch up with my mates and have a game of tennis or something like that. Or, I want to be able to do that trip and be able to put my bag in the overhead logger. And still go down to the beach in the summertime and have a swim or whatever. Those things that we ultimately enjoy. Basically working our way through we're looking at taking those very small steps at the start and really ... As I said, people are motivated but I will try and ... Believe it or not, try and hold them back a little bit. And just be prepared for that, a little bit of slow build.

You see the three things that as an exercise specialist I can manipulate other than which exercise you do is how often you do it, how much you do each time you exercise, and how intense it is. And everyone thinks oh, I should be intense, I should be working hard. The reality is, frequency is the most important thing. And everyone's time-poor anyway so you might not think 15 or 20 minutes was worthwhile putting your sneakers on for but it is in the end. If I can get you doing something for 15 or 20 minutes at home maybe just doing some body weight exercises or just hopping on the indoor bike or something like that ... If I can get you to do that, and you hop off and you feel good from it then I'm having a win.

So you want to have a thought process of every time I do it as ... Particularly when you're starting out, I feel better than when I started. 15, 20 minutes later I feel better. I don't feel sore. And the next morning I'm not waking up feeling really sore. It's just not going to be something you can continue within the long term you just won't keep putting your hand over the fire every time. Every time you can walk away feeling that you've actually ... Oh, yeah, that feels good. I've loosened myself up a bit. I can feel my muscles. And that little bit of euphoria you get from a little bit of aerobic exercise, that's the key. That's why I talk to all my clients about this. When you finish and you walk out of here you feel better than when you got here.

People in our field feel like ... Particularly if someone's paying to see them they should give them a bit of a special workout, something they wouldn't do for themselves. But the reality is we need to make sure, particularly for the new people starting out, that we keep it really simple. They're going to walk away feeling they've used their muscles and they feel like they've got their heart rate up and a bit of a sweat up but they're not going to feel terrible the next day. In fact, I want you to be able to feel like you could do something the next day again. Those are just general thoughts of how I'd talk to people when they're starting out in the first place.

Dorian Broomhall:

Something you said, meeting people where they're at, and acknowledging their context, and what's going on for them in their lives. Again, personal anecdote here. As a new dad last year really struggling to find the time to get the exercise in when he was too small that I could get him out in the pram for a run, which is something that we do now and that's great, I walked away from a session with you with a one-pager on callisthenics with Ted. And you came up with a bunch of exercises for me to ... I could do holding the six-month-old at the time. There's some squats and some overhead presses. And again, it's that idea of going oh, that doesn't seem like it's exercise. That's not worthwhile why would I bother doing that? But those small gains. And as much as anything else, keeping the habit. Keeping the fact that I go, no, that's something that I'm going to do and prioritise.

Andrew Bonsey:

Keeping the habit and keeping the identity. When you're a young parent you don't have the energy. You're up all night and early mornings and things. Basically, you don't have the energy to train like you did beforehand so we have to be able to tailor that. Meeting people where they are, basically, means ... If you don't have a lot of energy how long are you going to be able to keep going for? If I write you this amazing programme it's going to be something that's the best-looking programme that you can't do. Yeah, if I can convince, like yourself, someone to do 10 minutes of exercise it's powerful. That is a powerful thing. And if you go from zero to 10 minutes it is the most powerful of all the exercise. From three hours to four hours is great but from zero to 10 is amazing. Getting people to realise that those small little bits done regularly is ... It's just like anything in life, isn't it? A small bit of money saved in the bank is powerful, a little bit of study done every day is powerful. The benefits of small is very profound.

Dorian Broomhall:

It's something I also saw just in the last couple of days on social media which I think's really profound and important to remember too in the context of what we're talking about. Someone who was in their mid-40s, something like this, never really exercised, very sedentary, had a bunch of health problems and a few scares come up and made a decision to do something differently, got on their bike. Fast-forward about 40 years and now they're a world champion cyclist. And their stats resemble someone in their 30s.

Andrew Bonsey:

It is really amazing. How your body feels right now is not how it has to feel. The body's extremely regenerative. People think of us like oh, we're like a machine or something but we're not like a machine because a car can't regenerate itself but our human body can regenerate itself. It can be a build muscle, it can make the ligaments and tendons stronger, the bones stronger. You can improve the cardiovascular system like we talked about. Its ability to adapt is extraordinary. Give it enough time and enough consistency and it will adapt for you. There's been stories of people who even had been smokers into their 30s and 40s and had changed their ways. In their 70s and 80s are now competitive masters athletes and things like that. Your body can change. It's just that it doesn't change quickly ... As quickly as we want it to change but it will change. I say one or two years though.

I mean, if you think about it, if you haven't been exercising for a decade, say ... A lot of people go from high school, from 17, 18 years old, to 37 years old and not exercise very much, and then they start. So to think their body can adapt in two years from 20 years of sedentary behaviour I think's extraordinary. In the world of instant gratification, it just doesn't happen straight away.

The biggest message I can get out ... I'm going to make this a project, and it's a one or two-year project, to really turn it around. It just like a diet. It's a medicine that only works if you take it. If you're going to do lots of exercise upfront and it's not something you're going to be able to maintain in the future ... If you're going to do a lot of exercise that could risk you getting injured as well then you have to ask yourself, why am I actually doing this? It is going to be a little thing and you'll have little ... If you don't get injured that's great, but if you stop because it wasn't sustainable for you it's just going to go back down again.

Obviously, we want to try and get people into that three to four hours a week at least of exercise of one type or another. Basically, going from zero to one is powerful. But also, if we can think about whatever it is you can see yourself sustaining that's going to be the most important thing. On the weekends I can do a couple of things, and a couple nights during the week I go, "Yeah, well, that's going to be something you can keep rolling out year in year out then that's what's going to work in the long term, that's going to make the biggest difference."

Dorian Broomhall:

Last question I've got for you then. So we talk about these six pillars of well-being through the work that we do and, obviously, movement is a very, very big and important one like they all are. If you sort of broaden what we're thinking about away from movement and to include some of these other factors, what have you noticed as an exercise physiologist? If someone chooses to go to the movement as their lever, what have you noticed about their whole of life?

Andrew Bonsey:

So really movement. I say that movement is the glue that holds the rest of the health programme together. So when you exercise you feel like eating healthier, you feel like drinking more water, you're outside in the light. It makes your health programme make sense. You think better, it happens, so then you make better decisions, and then other parts of your life improve as well. It's a chicken and egg situation. Do I start looking at my diet and looking at my mental health or do I start with exercise? You can't take one too far ahead of the other. If you just exercise, and ate poorly, and didn't sleep enough, and didn't look after yourself, and didn't get the downtime, and then you'll eventually burn out. People don't seem to last. People will go, "Oh, yeah, I eat really healthily and I go to bed on time or whatever else," but if they're not exercising the candle burns out on that one as well. It really is the glue that holds your whole health programme together.

And it facilitates a lot of other stuff. Just your sleep alone. How much better you sleep after you've exercised is ... People often go home feeling mentally fatigued from a hard day at work. But if that physical fatigue hasn't matched it then they don't end up sleeping well anyway. And so if you can get the physical fatigue to match the mental fatigue a little bit more then people sleep a lot better. As I said, when you've exercised all of a sudden that glass of water seems a lot more attractive you don't feel like you need something else. You've done some good exercise and it just goes well, I've done all that good work why am I going to go throw a bit of fast food in there? If I eat some nice healthy stuff I'll recover much better and feel like doing it again tomorrow.

The movement really is the critical piece. I mean, I'm probably biassed, right? It is the critical piece. As exercise physiologists, we do talk about all the pillars, in your programme as well. Because basically, as I said, we can't just do one and not consider the other. Really, the movement part of it really is what will help you sustain your whole health programme into the future.

Dorian Broomhall:

Andrew, thanks so much for joining us.

Andrew Bonsey:

Thanks for having me.

Dorian Broomhall:

Thanks so much to Andrew Bonsey for taking the time to speak with us and sharing some of his thoughts about movement over exercise. And for me that's one of the key takeaways. As someone who, even I pointed out there, is very biassed towards the benefits of exercise. His reframe on movement or even activity, and the importance of that as being the first point is so, so true and so helpful. I've got plenty of people in my life who have gone on some sort of exercise kick and hurt themselves really fast because the gap between where they're at right now and full-blown exercise is actually too great. So thinking about some sort of activity, those interim things, whether it's a short walk. For so many in our organisation, you get so much movement throughout the day anyway. But for those that don't, just to think about what those first steps of activity might be.

I also love his idea around exercise being sustainable. And the idea that you should be able to keep turning up day in day out and just to do a little bit. And he uses this metaphor of not putting your hand into the fire repeatedly. If it hurts maybe it's not quite the right thing to do. And, of course, for the real exercise fanatics out there they'll probably tell us that the burn is good, and at times it may well be. But we need to find a balance there too and make sure that it is something that is sustainable and you're not just turning up and hurting yourself day in day out. I also love that he talks about movement as the glue that holds all of the well-being together. All the other pillars of well-being that we talk about can absolutely follow. And having movement as that sort of first lever that you focus in on and pull can be such a helpful starting point rather than thinking about anything else.

Him reflecting on what he's observed over 23 years of working in this space to see people actually make those changes I think's a really good message for us all. So I hope you found something in that conversation that you can take away and apply into your own work and life, I certainly did. I'm going to keep up the movement as best I possibly can. Join me again for our next episode when I speak with Emily Stride from our talent acquisition team here at People and Culture and our conversation about boundaries.