 Welcome back to I'm gonna keep that in welcome back to movements gender play podcast that is there because it's been a while since we did one We took a couple of weeks off, but we are back with a relatively open and free-flowing discussion. It's a podcast short It's just me and Jaco and we're gonna talk about what happens when you redefine your impossible too much too much impossible There's a fine line between the right amount of impossible Redefining and sometimes you cross it and it can cause problems for you So that's what we're gonna talk about today because we know you're a hungry and ambitious group of people You like to get out there and get after it and you want to achieve big things But we need to make sure that sometimes it is done with a modicum of Strategy and intelligence. I haven't used modicum today or for a while. That's a good word I have no even idea what that means and I don't care. I just know it's a beautiful noise so what redefining impossible is about having a challenge and One thing that we know Everyone responds well to is having a challenge and something that we've got coming up. Thanks to new sponsor of the movement strength and play podcast is Spartan race now we've done a little bit of obstacle racing in the past But Tim you said you've been gagging to do a Spartan race for a while So this actually has come organically but comes at potentially a perfect time Well perfect time It's the perfect opportunity maybe not for the right for the perfect time in terms of my level of preparedness And it's probably fair to say I I enjoy the obstacle course races that I've done because it's something a bit different And it's a bit of a laugh But the Spartan one is one of the more let's say aggressive versions of on the obstacle course race spectrum It involves spear throwing and it's a bit more strength orientated And I've been fancying a look at doing one of these for a while I haven't really got round to do it and then there was that thing called Kobe which kind of derailed or any kind of crawling around in The mud and so now the opportunities come up I am excited for this one I am definitely gonna get it in my diary and I'm keen to do it and the opportunity is I believe Jack that the Wonderful people listen to the podcast have an opportunity to come and join us Yes, so as part of the sponsorship of the podcast is a massive thanks There's going to be we're gonna be at the Midlands Spartan race on the 16th 17th of July And there is a series of different obstacle races that you can do So there's a sprint 5k there's a super 10k and there's a beast 21k and I'm like, where's the marathon one? I'll do the man. I'll do the ultra marathon. There isn't more anyway, but there we've got 50 free Race places available for listeners of the podcast That's exciting right then. That is exciting 40 and 48 because mine's included in that and yours, right? I think but I think ours are on top So if you would like to join us there is obviously a few little bits and pieces that you need to do to just to get you free So you need to be you need to be quick for starters You might want to go on to race spartan.com to see which see the details of those different races the 17th 16 17th Of July is the Midlands one that we're doing now you need to Take a photo or video of you training for your Spartan race So something to show that you actually mean business So you're not just you're not just here for the tagline Tim ain't gonna carry around this this part of me You've got to be doing it doing it yourself. And then what you need to do is share that on your Instagram tagging Spartan so at Spartan and then also using the hashtag Spartan race and then you'll find a little thing to do is Tag us at school got there so we can see it and send that post to us in a DM we will then verify that you've passed all of those important steps and We will then send you that code that you will be able to use on the website race spot and calm You just need to be quick because those babies are gonna go fast If it goes really quick, there's gonna have to be an adjudication process So the more spotting you are in your video the better so don't play it safe people. I want to see spears scantily clad men and women in Gladiatorial type costumes. That's what I'm thinking and I'll just remind people that Some sort of like Speedo where is clearly It's like a new age Spartan thing, isn't it? So Do you think anyone's ever looked less Spartan than me do you think I think look me and you stood next to each other You look way more Spartan than I do well I think if I go hair down speedos on yeah, and when my Batman cape, I think I'm good to go They'll be like I think I'm organizing it Spot you if you the mascot and Spartans didn't have hair gel did they they should have I'm gonna try and look more Spartan. That's my objective between now and the 16th and 17th of July You got a couple of months. So just so yeah get there the details for that will be on the website as well schools got sense.com forward slash podcast But I say and the details also in the show notes So get yourself involved and we look forward to seeing your best Spartan videos pictures Training for your Spartan race. I'm looking forward to see you there Amazing, right. Let's talk about redefining your impossible too much. Well, no one's listening anymore Tim Everyone's gone off and started taking their pictures. They are listening to those and Because I got it quick. So maybe you've paused you've done your picture. You've tagged us You've tagged Spartan you've done hashtag Spartan race. You've sent us in a dm. You've got your code You've booked your spot and now you've pressed play again. Should we carry on? Yeah Roll that jingle Listen players You're listening to the movement strength and play podcast by the school of calisthenics here are your hosts Tim and Jack O So Tim I want to we're talking about Challenges, we're talking about redefining impossible and I want to take you on a little trip down memory lane on this one And hopefully pull out a few things that we've learned along the way That will be useful advice for the listeners whether you've been at this game of calisthenics and training for a long time Or whether you knew to it Hopefully there'll be a little bit of gold in there to help you along your way and do you want to Jack Just before you get into this I'm just thinking is it worth for the for the newbies that may have not been here since we've very heavily Talked about really finding possible. Yeah contextualizing and just giving some explanation as to what we mean by that phrase Yes, so in a nutshell when me and Tim first tried to do anything calisthenics based having watched a Frank Magano video thinking that guy looks cool I want to be a little bit like him just a small percentage of him, but maybe with more hair Also quite Spartan. He's quite Yeah, he's got a very oily and He oil is like means he's like yeah, it's like a sexy lad I was gonna say you need to qualify that because that's all you hang on a minute You're getting you're getting into tricky wars now oily in your day in your definition when you say oily to me I think like shiny as in like you like baby oil to kind of make himself look more Well, I think he probably did a little bit of that in in in some of his videos Oil would mean like a bit of a honk Okay, that's good. We got now was with For everyone like Tim is 40 40 and above It's probably a word that will mean more to you. I'm down with the kids because I'm still 30 now For long Jack-o and I know for more weeks. What day we on it is exactly two weeks 28 is that right? Yeah, your birthday. I think you can't do math 28 to me. Yeah 26 16 days 16 days 16 days anyway, so When we started we were like two old rugby players various different children reason blah blah blah blah blah blah all that jazz like everyone else come into this game with a load of baggage and Basically couldn't do anything Or anything of like to couldn't do anything impressive and whenever we tried to do something Whether it was a human flag or a planche or a muscle up or just something you'd like This just feels impossible and it was like That was the the beauty of it was Immediately by feeling that it was like yeah, but we're seeing other this other guy do it So it must be possible. So it's like it feels impossible But I know that it isn't impossible because I've seen someone else do it And I guess that just sparked something in our training that made things a little bit more interesting And exciting to go after a challenge that genuinely felt impossible But you did believe you could do it. Otherwise you wouldn't bother training towards it um and you know For for a lot of us that I know we know a lot of people that listen to the podcast do a whole host of different Training things as well. Um, you know and tim you've been doing more crossfit recently There might be a workout that would you see at the start? It's not the necessary feels impossible. You're like, I know this is gonna hurt or or whatever and I've signed up to an ultramarathon that Definitely feels like it could be impossible, but I'm trying to do it anyway and what we've learned along the way is that redefining impossible can At times be hugely motivating But other times potentially depending on our own situation and our own mindset Can put undue pressure and stress on ourselves to achieve that impossible thing particularly when often we get people like going I like I love it when people do this. It's like I'm getting married on the 20 blath off of whatever month and I want to do a human flag at my wedding and it's like that's cool And they but and by setting a time frame that's good when you talk about like goal setting It should be time orientated and blah blah blah, but it puts some pressure on if you're not making the progress You need to do and you're not gonna get you're not get there then what tends to happen is We go harder at training We spend less time recovering and we end up digging ourselves into a bit of a hole. That's typically I think the the bad the good side of it is it motivates us and can Encourage us to do things we literally Didn't think our body could do But the the double-edged sword the bad side of it is like when we push it too far and I know you'll have a lot to say about Uh a lot. Yeah, I'm gonna start talking and see where it goes. Um, let me give you so there's an example on this one and I think I'm gonna try and contextualize with a little bit of just training science When we start a journey like this depending on what our training background is like we can go I think and I and this is gonna be slightly crude for a minute. Jack. I built is the best word that I can explain or phrase I can use It's quite easy to go balls deep if I If you get what I'm saying In that I did I did that with crossfit and I was like I'm I started crossfit So I just did all of it like I was like but that was part of the experiment. I'm gonna go all in What happens is because it's a relatively new intense Training stimulus and there's a certain level of high intensity. It is very easy to break under those conditions Now with crossfit was an interesting experiment because I entered that environment With a certain level of athleticism in that I can olympic lift and I have got some strength training background And my gymnastics skills are obviously well honed from my calisthenics background So you can actually enter a relatively good level from a competency perspective, but you have absolutely No right to be there mixing it up at the intensity that you think you're going to go and train at So you don't know how to paste off the You've never done those movements back to back before it's a complete like mixed modality type of training And that's a super new stimulus to respond to So it's all of a sudden you're heaping a load more fatigue Loads of new kind of things onto the system and it is really easy in that situation to get a little bit excited And overload the system to a place where you have that kind of breakdown of tissue tolerance For whatever reason and that's when injuries can set in And and this is kind of reason I'm sharing that it's it's happened before in calisthenics as well Remember when we both had golfers elbow right on the early doors start of um of calisthenics We did so much kind of pulling stuff and getting to ring muscle ups and it was just too much too soon So we were like super into kind of like we were going to take these things off and achieve these goals that we set out that felt impossible But there's the the lesson and this is from two guys who've As jacker says on the wrong side of 35 Where your body can't Tolerate that kind of abuse for whatever reason or or stimulus. Let's say without you starting to think a little bit more about strategically Preparing and recovering from sessions and managing training load That is something that we do massively in sport science and with an elite sport around just making sure that athletes are available for training And can train is to manage training load and what we don't want to do is Do these massive kind of spikes and drops of new stimulus is particularly when they're high intensity So that's probably my first point jacker. There's probably some stuff in there you want to resonate with I think Yeah, um, I think that there's there's something There's something about understanding like We've done this a lot over over the years of the podcast from various different guests And then just our own sort of musings of like how we're getting on with things where you like go Still can't really do that thing and I've left it alone They're actually come back to it after a few months. It felt a bit better and it's like you get that you've had that like That demotivation by you're sort of banging against some brick wall You don't feel like you feel like you're missing something and you're chasing for some magic bullets And we've talked a lot about how they don't exist and then then you come back to something having worked on something else And it's like it starts feeling better and you get invigorated for it again And when we when we understand like what sort of what type of person am I what what sort of Gets me going I can start to understand like Where on this line of like Going too far or not going far enough. Am I likely to be? And when you start to understand that yeah, go on. Well, just be that we're just gonna say understand that Now we've got a delay do you hear that delay then we start talking over each other I was gonna say particularly I think because you and I are the same and a lot of people that Do calisthenics with this Would probably describe themselves as Taipei people They want to go after stuff and they're like go getters and that combined with calisthenics because it's like represents that that tangible goal And you're a Taipei person that can actually be a relatively sort of spicy combination Yeah, and then if you add to the fact of like what generally happens is like You try really hard and then you try really hard and then you try really really really hard And in the early days you then oh now I can do a frog stand now. I can do a handstand now. I can do this and you like Okay, I was I'm thinking of like how old dweck's book um on I can't think of what the title of that book was called um through mindset about like, um What's the what's the term I'm looking for? Gratification no like Growth mindset growth mindset growth mindset and you've literally gone you've taught yourself like oh I just worked really hard and I kept turning up and doing doing it and then I could do that thing So then I want to now do Um a ring muscle up and you like I just do that do that do that do that Because if I keep doing it and I keep working out I'm gonna get it and it's like oh what happened now I've got golfer's elbow. That's what I've got And it's like but but you're you're going through you're following a process that works for you before But in the context of this there's a few there's there's potentially some sort of differences um within it um, and I think that one of the one of the things I've Experienced myself quite a lot is This whole notion it was one of the first things that george um, so coach george Said to me or no, don't think she said it to me I think I was we were filming some content There was the first thing she said in this video and I was stood behind the camera So I felt like she was saying it to me and it was this notion of like you need to listen to your body It says if it feels good it feels it's good and if it feels bad It's bad And I was like, whoa What do you mean? Like most is that I'm yeah, it's like Most of the stuff I'm doing right now feels bad and like yeah, I'd I'd come from a A training background of rugby where you get bashed about a lot and like stuff just generally doesn't feel good And I think I'd conditioned my physical body and my mentality to like push through those things And it's been a really long I mean, it's it's been nearly is it 10 years since I played rugby or close to maybe it's nine years The it's been a long period of time where I've just been like Undoing some of that messaging and signaling to go Why don't you listen to what your body's saying? um And and actually respond to that And I think that over the course of the last few years of the podcast, I'm thinking of people like Perry Nicholson From stop chasing pain. Um, we've had a number of different guests that have talked about like Injuries talked about like understanding our body and and opening up that sort of I'm thinking like dr. Cobb from z-health performance going like about how how the neurology of it's so important and he started to open up wider and The answer to the question like why can't I do this thing yet? Why aren't I redefine my impossible now to me isn't as simple as like Oh, it's this or that It could be this whole range of things and I'm trying to just Enjoy more The process of just seeing what my body wants to say to me It's one of the things and then I'll show up the one of the things Around the lock the long distance running that I've been doing um, I think that started off for me as an experiment of like Actually, rather than about running it was about improving my breathing and when you go and run You notice your breathing way more and you rely on your breathing way more than when you just sat down doing nothing You're still relying on your breathing, but it's not challenged. So it's easy and you don't like this Think like it. Yeah, I think about dynamic systems theory. We can all that's tickling my fancy go But basic so it was like going out for a run was actually like going out to practice breathing Which might sound a bit weird for some people, but when you get into it, it's quite nice. But anyway, the um As I noticed that like, you know, one of the first one of the first things that was a sign of me getting over my head injury That ended my rugby career in 2013 was like a year later. I was finally able to run And that was like an amazing it was amazing to be able to run and not get my symptoms but I was so unfit and didn't like running and You know, I remember trying to run 5k and I just couldn't do it um Like physically I probably could have just meant to I couldn't do it and then I've since like built up And set myself a challenge last year to run a marathon because I was like I'd always wanted it's one It's like a bucket list thing for me of like, yeah, I've always wanted to be able to run a marathon I don't know wet light and so I just did one Signed up for one which made me it's the same thing signed up for it challenge Did it so it's like the spartan race if you've never done anything like that before But you like having something to work towards with an end date It's like we'll sign up to with the 16 of them things July I can join us in in July bag one of those free spaces But you've then got a little challenge that's going to remind you to keep working towards something anyway, so I've I've built up and what I've found is just phenomenally interesting and I still don't even I'm still unpicking I've got no idea where it's going but Now it used to be like 10k used to feel hard And as I got over like 15k it'd be like miserable and then like certain things in my body We start like cramping up on just feeling horrendous that never normally would and like Now I can run probably 30k and it feels okay And then it starts getting a bit messy towards the back end of the marathon Which would be like 42k over and it's like my I've mentioned I think I mentioned this before but the my body Will be the things that normally potentially are a little bit creaky have a little bit of issues around my knee from an old injury Blah blah like those things tend to be fine It tends to be like at the moment It's like my left adductor just cramping and going into like a spasm if I run like a marathon and it's like What's going on there like that? I never I would never have known unless I went that distance that There's some there's obviously some sort of issue going on and then just trying to listen out rather than typically before for me I used to get stressed by The feeling of pain or the feeling of injury or the worry of getting injured Like when I played rugby didn't want to get injured because I stopped you playing Like now I don't want to get injured because I want to be able to do stuff but it would like stress me out whereas I think some of that process for me has been a case of going like It's just it's more of an experience of like what's your body saying to you and then start to Start to go and pick that and play with it and actually when I go through some certain Move lower body movements now. I can notice that left adductor that I wouldn't have previously done And it's like okay, actually Maybe there is something there that I need to just do a little bit of work on But it was going into the radar for me So yeah So let's spin this into some takeaways because there's probably a lot of people listening to this go right Okay, I'm identifying with the fact that maybe I'm a bit more retire pay kind of person I like going after these tangible goals I'm doing things which feel difficult and challenging for me. So I'm kind of I resonate with this redefining your impossible kind of idea so from our experience of Everything that we've done What are your top tips for somebody who might be trying to redefine their impossible a little bit too much? So I'll give you I'll give you two two that's a straight spring to my story One is what I've already just said. They're like listen to your body during that training process Is it saying to you this is good and you're making progress? Is this saying to you like this is too much for me and the way that it'll say there's too much for you It's shouting at you Ah, and it's gonna hurt and we're not talking like pain from like training And you're creating some like doms and some muscles on us. We're talking about like this doesn't feel right For the people at the back Jacko What happens if you do ignore that and you just keep going because I see this all the time Oh, yeah, I've only been painful about two years. What happens? It doesn't go away. It just gets worse and then actually not only that It like then starts. I mean, I'm maybe technically not going to get this right But it's sort of getting embedded in your in your nervous system in a way It's getting better than your movement pounds and how you break like so It might be injured any more Yeah, yeah, and that's that's a really good point So if people particularly with the shoulder if they get an injury what they'll do is they'll gonna guard it So you start avoiding the position which hurts and you don't necessarily do it as much with the lower body Because you've kind of not got as many movement options But you'll find that people will be like They won't reach in the same way or I don't know There might be a position where the toilet handle is and they'll press it differently Even though the injury is healed, but their mind has gone. Well, that's a pain thing So if you see keep training through those painful patterns, you've got to then go and undo All of that kind of like compensates your movement that you're doing Which is taking you further away from like optimal efficiency and to your example is running If you just go and run like a complete lemon like you're gonna and you don't do anything about it Your efficiency goes down which puts stress on other structures Which means that you end up in this kind of cumulative injury cycle Yeah, so some pain is okay It's a signal that you need to do something about it But just don't ignore the pain because it's It doesn't magically go away if you keep doing the same thing that you're doing Which caused the pain in the first place Yeah, and my my other one then is You can't and don't try to Do too many impossibles So it's like there's a It's just there's just there's just a volume of work that you can do and It can't all be at that the thing with trying to do something you've never done before is it's a personal best It's a pb is never your body is never experienced before your nervous system has never experienced it before It's like a huge new like thing for the body to do and so that's a lot of stress on the system and it's like we just need to I guess I'm This is for me as much as saying out loud. We need to respect. We just need to respect that and respect our body It's knowing the time to shut the session down I think if you're going after so say for example, you're working on bar muscle So I'm doing some what my bar my bar muscle up was COVID was not kind to my bar muscle up jacko Because for two years now I know where to do any So I'm now back in the gym and I'm kind of working on building it back up again And it's starting to get there, but it's slow because what it feels like is the rest of the training that I'm doing I'm generally carrying a certain level of fatigue. So I've not got that kind of like snappiness that I had before But there's points now where I'm kind of like going do two reps do two more do more and there's there comes a point We're like that's enough Like even though I feel like psychological I'm like, oh, it's not quite as good as I want it to be in this session If I get two three decent repetitions on a bounce and the next set doesn't feel great or I'm get the bottom of bar going I don't know if this is gonna be that good The chances are it's going to be an ugly rep at that point Shut it down and as you say you've gone and done something which is high neurological demand So are you now going to go and do human flag training as well in that same session? Probably not a great idea in that session you go horizontal push and pull awesome lower body stuff Like you go and do some stuff which is a lower neurological cost Because you've already gone and absolutely rifle the system to a maximum level that day. So give it time Yeah, I've got one of the one of the woo woo one Of course naturally I was hoping it was going to surprise you to start with this one. Come on then You know what it is. You're like it's just like Just ask us like ask yourself the why question like why and I think the thing is going like We're on board of it like we're we're doing it. I'm not trying to dismiss it at all but like it's You need to be happy whilst you can't do it Then you can be happy when you can do it as well rather than thinking it's gonna Oh when I can do a muscle up, I'm gonna be well and you will be stoked when you do it Like everyone's gonna be like super pumped for it But at that point you go over there. You tell your partner or whatever Okay, cool Why am I doing this I'm trying to I don't know but like it is it is I'm just getting more I don't know some stuff going on in my brain. It's like just Trying to explore like what is it? It's like what is it? I just think it's interesting to actually try and answer some of those questions like what is it? It's like what is it that's exploring you or what is it? Do you think you're trying to Do whatever like I'm not saying I've got the answers like why do I want to do that ultramarathon around leading whales? I don't know but I'm open to I'm open to exploring it Podcast for another day that one jack. Let's go down that rabbit hole I'm gonna offer one because then we've got three three and a woo-woo just to kind of wrap it up and then I'll get my last one My my one advice on this one is just play the long game So we often it guys it links in a little bit with you why jacko about going what what difference it make if you do it in Six months or six weeks zero Like really for most people we take far too short-term approach of going I've set out this on his goal now I've got to achieve this thing as quickly as possible. So I'm gonna throw the kitchen sink at it Like we've done that and I know what happens like you don't really get you don't get the results that you're hoping for especially if you're doing other things And where people in our audience and having this conversation a lot with people is your I'm gonna speak direct to the audience now jacko. This is not to you You don't respect the rest of the stuff that you've got going on in your life So lots of people that listen to this podcast have got Type A jobs like they've got pressures at work. They've got pressures at home They've got they don't necessarily sleep optimally like there's all this stuff going on So when you are then going to go and load yourself up with a a Sort of pretty high intensity training session You can't have all of these things on at the same time and expect the body just to kind of go Yes, we can respond like you're 18. Well, I promise you you didn't have the stresses in your life that you do 35 or 40 years old that you did when you're 18. I guarantee you that you're not sleeping as well Um, so take the long take a longer term approach. Take it steady like Whether you do it in a year or two years like it's the the point of this thing is and the why I've been why you're doing it Well, it's largely going to be about fulfillment because you enjoy the process It's not to do with the muscle up or the handstand or whatever else you're doing Why are you going to go and do a sparta race? Well, I actually want to go to just kind of have a bit of fun It's a bit different. It's an experience And I think training is an experience and it's not one that we're going to tick off and go I've completed that now. Don't need to train anymore. It's going to be Something that you can learn along the way. So Just chip away at this sort of stuff and just like just relax with it a little bit I think we can put far too much pressure on ourselves Just take it easy It'll happen in its own time if you consistently turn up and do the work And give yourself time to recover I think people will get much better results if they realize the power of actually Realizing that recovery is a thing And if you do it consistently you can actually do more which means In the short term you might not feel like you're doing as much or getting as far But over the longer period of time you'll find actually you're going to move much quicker Yeah No, love it. I think that that's you said it what you said you weren't speaking to me as speaking to the audience, but I was receiving it and letting that wash over it Um, this is these are like therapy. We just talk about what our own minds are doing while we're training We share it with other people. Yeah, exactly Um, so let's bring in that bring in that home then with uh with those With those take home messages one thing that I just think would be useful if you'd share because Um, let's be honest when we're talking about redefining impossible We're talking about mainly hard upper body things. We talked about handstands human flags muscle ups and that The biggest area of injury that people are going to get is the shoulders and You're doing some great work in helping people with that If just do you want to just give an opportunity to just let people know what they can potentially do or what they should look at for that Uh, yeah, for sure. So with color sense, obviously we are doing a huge amount of load through the upper body And oftentimes people are finding that they're getting these niggly kind of annoying problems. It's largely let's say that Um, it's not completely derailed your training so that you are Physio getting fixed up because you're in a massive amount of pain Um, oftentimes people will have sort of these like grumbling complaints Which just don't really go away. Um, so the easiest thing you can do if you want to find out about that Is you can have a look at dynamicshoulders.com and you can book in a free call And you can come and have a chat with me and find out and because it's very difficult show is complicated So I'm not going to give like spot on advice and this one I go. This definitely needs to do but there's a number of different solutions Many of which could be back in direct to if you want to come and have a quick chat So we can jump on a call have a phone call and um, we can explore what's going on with your shoulders and effectively Implements upgrades for you so you can do the things you want to do Cool. All right, we'll put a link in the show notes for dynamicshoulders.com as well. Thank you and uh Yeah, that's all we've got time for this or all the way we need to cover in this session Deep good unscripted raw liked it like spartan Like the spartan will see you at the spartan race for 50 of what obviously if you can also just buy your ticket You don't have to have a free one, but um, there's 50 of those free spaces Remember so make sure you do bag one of those babies Yeah, I'm excited for that one. Right guys keep exploring your physical potential with movement strength and play and until next week Class dismiss