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Adapting Fitness as Life Changes a conversation with Behaviour Change Coach Shaun Thompson
9 Plays4 days ago
How does a successful professional athlete adapt his fitness routine when he becomes a retired athlete?
When successful ice-hockey professional Shaun Thompson decided that the time had come to hang-up his skates for the last time he could not predict the impact that decision to retire would have on him.
In this episode of the Abeceder health and well-being podcast Fit For My Age, Shaun explains to host Michael Millward the lessons he learnt that led to him becoming the Behaviour Change Coach.
Their conversation covers
- The difficulties of the challenges of accepting the impact normal life changes can have on us.
- How difficult it can be to find the fitness strategy that will work for you.
- The perils of following the crowd
- The importance of finding the right mental approach.
Train with Michael True Personal Training in Wetherby
Find out more about Michael Millward and Shaun Thompson at Abeceder.co.uk.
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Transcript
Introduction to Fit for My Age Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
on zencaster Hello and welcome to Fit for My Age, the health and wellbeing podcast from Abysida. I'm your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysida.
Health and Fitness as We Age with Sean Thompson
00:00:17
Speaker
Today I am talking to Sean Thompson about changing our approach to health, wellbeing and fitness as we get older. As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, fit for my age is made on Zencastr, the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms.
Benefits of Using Zencastr for Podcasts
00:00:39
Speaker
Zencastr really does make making podcasts so easy.
00:00:43
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr, all the details are in the description. Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one.
00:00:54
Speaker
One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing
Purpose of the Podcast: Provoking Thought
00:01:00
Speaker
to. Very importantly, on Fit For My Age, we don't tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think.
Introduction of Sean Thompson
00:01:08
Speaker
Today, my guest is Sean Thompson, a retired professional ice hockey player turned behavior change coach that believes skills are transferable in life and change is possible.
00:01:21
Speaker
Sean is based in Bracknell in Berkshire in the United Kingdom. I was going to tell you about my one and only visit to Bracknell, but it's probably best if I keep it to myself.
00:01:33
Speaker
If I do return to Bracknell, I will make my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where I can access trade prices on flights, hotels, and holidays, as well as all sorts of other travel-related purchases.
00:01:47
Speaker
You can as well, if you're a member. There is a link and a membership discount code in the description. Now that I've paid the rent, It is time to make this episode of Fit For My Age.
Sean's Journey from Ice Hockey to Coaching
00:01:57
Speaker
Hello, Sean. Hey, Michael. How's it going? It's going very well today. Thank you very much. you You're an ex-professional ice hockey player and you've got a very English accent, which is not what I was expecting. No, I get that lot. It does shock a lot of people and... My aunt and uncle, since before I was born, have lived in Vancouver.
00:02:14
Speaker
My parents used to go out and visit them and they would take them to ice hockey games. Obviously, it's their national sport over in Canada. When they came home, they realized there was a team in Slough. So they became big fans of the team. And actually, I was skating at two years old and I was playing ice hockey at five years old. So it's it's deeply, deeply ingrained in me, even though I did retire from the sport what would people would consider pretty early by choice a little bit time out but i've got back into it in coaching so it is nice to be back on the ice without the tie of the the nutrition and the the time keeping and the fans shouting and abusing you so it's nice to to have a little bit less pressure it's just parents abusing you now for uh you know maybe not passing to their kid properly in a drill but yeah i can take that uh but you were a protege then i suppose
00:03:04
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it it was a huge part of my life. Represented my country. In ice hockey, it's Great Britain. So traveled the world with the junior teams, made the squad for the men's once.
Transitioning from Professional to Semi-Pro Sports
00:03:15
Speaker
But at that point in my career, it was a big turning point, whether I wanted to continue playing pro or move to semi-pro.
00:03:22
Speaker
Ice hockey is quite funny over here. I could get more ice time at semi-pro. I could get paid more. And I could work at the same time so I could earn a lot more money. And I realized that, you know, at the age that I decided to to step down, I realized kind of the dream was over. I just wanted to play ice hockey. I still wanted to be at my best.
00:03:40
Speaker
I still trained like a pro and and behaved like a pro. But the schedule was a lot healthier for me at that time. And that I suppose is a a case in point for what you what you've become an expert in is is how you adapt your fitness around your life and your life life around your fitness and the various different things that you
Adapting Fitness Routines with Life Changes
00:03:58
Speaker
want to do. as priorities change, you have to review where you are and of make decisions.
00:04:04
Speaker
That was actually a big turning point for me. That was probably one of the biggest things I realized when I came to terms with retiring is I used to love training in the off season, going from being on the ice four or five times a week, even at semi-pro to being no ice and and full gym time, like that summer program I used to love. And when I knew I was retiring, I just didn't want to do it anymore. That was a big telltale sign that it was my time to stop.
00:04:29
Speaker
I love training like that, but I don't want to train like that. It's quite intense. it was It was a lot of work. And I'm not an athlete anymore. For a long period of time, I was lost. I tried things. was like, oh, let's do the beach workouts or let's try, you know, just this. And and it was a real difficult phase. And it took me a while to to find something that did work for me and who I was now, which was a parent of two kids, a business owner, a husband.
00:04:55
Speaker
One of the biggest sayings I ever found from a book when I started my personal development journey was adapt and overcome. Routines are great. Routines are important, but they're going to be broken. And you need to be ready to adapt to that scenario and not put pressure on yourself that you can't stick to the plan. You've got to be ready to change it.
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, we start off with the best intentions and then the the world throws something at us and the straight line is no longer possible. We have to curve a little bit in order to then come back to where we want to be.
00:05:25
Speaker
We can either get a roadblock or there's a way around it. Yeah, life life is chaotic. There is something's going to come that you can be certain of that something is going to come your way, something minor that it feels bigger because the the stress that you're under at that point, or there will be a a life scenario that is unfortunate that you will have to deal with it at some point. We used to say in sport, it's about staying on your toes.
00:05:48
Speaker
Be ready. You can have the best game plan, but the other team might have a better one. You have to be ready to adapt to that because if you don't, it's a surefire way to to lose and lose morale. and And it could be a downward spiral, whether it's sport in life.
00:06:04
Speaker
And just to be ready that you' you've got a plan B, plan C, that if you need to call on it, you're ready to do so with limited thinking. That's the big part is to be able to act...
00:06:15
Speaker
almost on autopilot to make those changes. It's it's a big asset. it's It's really intriguing because Mark Foster, the swimmer, told me about what it's like to race. And he was like one of the fastest swimmers ever in the world.
00:06:29
Speaker
And he could talk me through exactly what was going to happen from the point that he got onto the blocks, how he was going to enter the water, how many strokes he'd do under the water, when he would come up for air and how many strokes he was going to take in order to reach the other end.
00:06:43
Speaker
And knew exactly. And I said to him at the end of this description, I said, but what about the other swimmers? And he said, they don't exist. All I have to do is put into action all of the things that I have trained for in order to perform at my best. And there's an awful lot of sense in that.
00:06:58
Speaker
But if you have to manage your work, your family, other people's commitments around your commitments, and then try and be the select fit for my age as well, there are going to be clashes and something's got to give.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah. and And I love that concept because he's controlling the controllable. He's focusing on what he can do. I'm sure there was a huge element of confidence within him and, and belief in his ability, which is always very confident, man. Yeah. Which is, which is an incredible asset for anybody to have.
00:07:29
Speaker
And that's similar with, with myself within ice hockey is I had to be at my best to give my team a chance, but we have to remember, especially my sport, rugby, American football,
00:07:42
Speaker
there are other people on the pitch that are out there to hurt you and that changes things. So, you know, if I stayed straight line focus within my game and completely ignored what was going on around me, I'm probably going get hurt. So it's different elements of sport. There's got to be that control within yourself, but also we're understanding that team sport like ice hockey is a little bit more like ice life.
00:08:06
Speaker
If you're not ready for it can shock you and punch you in the face. Yeah. That's the point where you need to be prepared to either avoid it or know how to handle that situation. One things that I've noticed is that we have not really talked about fitness.
Mental Readiness in Fitness
00:08:19
Speaker
The things that we're talking about are psychological, the mental side of fitness, how you get ready to engage in some sort of fitness activity and how you manage your fitness activities around the other demands in your life as well. Yeah, and that's why I do what I do now, which is that peak performance specializing in behavior change, because that's where it starts for me. I've evolved my journey through being an athlete into a personal trainer and now doing what I do now, because it's just evolved to the point where I see where the magic happens.
00:08:53
Speaker
And you say they're preparing yourself for fitness. This is it's such an open topic. A lot of people will go, i need to get into fitness. I'm going to go for a run or I'm going to go to the gym. And that's kind of that default, that autopilot that I spoke about a minute ago is we have these settings that are easy to access and they don't cause us to think.
00:09:13
Speaker
So we choose what we think is easiest or last time I ran, I lost weight. So we see that as a winning formula. Whereas there's so much more to being fit and healthy. I am more energized and happier and healthier now as a retired athlete, father of two, 37 years old than I was when I was a professional and semi-professional athlete training seven days a week and eating salmon, rice and broccoli for breakfast. Why do you say that? Because I was heavily stressed physically, not mentally. I was physically stressed. I i pushed myself really hard training because I wanted to be ah be the best.
00:09:52
Speaker
But that came with sacrifices. That came with overeating. I wasn't hugely cu clued up in nutrition in my early years I had no support. I just ate to what my body told me to eat, which led to a lot of over-consuming, over-eating. i had a poor sleep schedule.
00:10:07
Speaker
Ice hockey is a funny sport. We play late at night. So sometimes we'd face off at 6.30 in the evening. If that's an away game, you' you're getting home possibly midnight, if not afterwards. There was a lot of things that that I was training to perform.
00:10:21
Speaker
but it wasn't keeping me healthy. People do need to understand there's two different elements to that. Yes, peak performance looks like health on the outside, but it does come with a lot of stress, especially if you don't have that support system. If you aren't able to afford a personal trainer, a dietitian, a coach, it's very difficult. Whereas now I get adequate amount of sleep every night. I have minimal physical stress because I don't push myself as as hard as I used to. I'm able now to move more every day. When I used to play, I would go to the gym really, really hard and then I'd do nothing for the rest of the day because i was so exhausted. Whereas now I wake up every day from the moment I wake up till half seven, eight o'clock when the boys go to bed, I am doing something. I'm on my toes. I'm active. It feels so much more enjoyable because I'm getting so much more out of my day than just my whole day based around sport. This is very interesting.
00:11:15
Speaker
You can, if you have no knowledge of what to do and you've not been engaged in competitive sport or any type of sport, you have one of those wake up calls. I need to get fitter. I need to lose weight. You start to do the things that you've seen other people do. The guy down the road runs and he's skinny, so I'll i'll run.
00:11:34
Speaker
Or so-and-so goes to the gym. he's He must be fitter than me. But if you engage upon any change in your life without actually researching what is the right thing to do, but also what is the right thing for you to do, you are not going to be as successful as if you did the research and got yourself into a safe mindset, I suppose, to begin with, because you've got the knowledge. The level of education you can achieve before you start on something will impact the level of success that you have, I suppose. The human brain is fantastic. Absolutely incredible what it's able to do every day. Yet ultimately, we don't understand always the basics of it.
00:12:10
Speaker
Things like we crave more of what we can't have. And ultimately, it's quite lazy. So even the most simple simple tasks we avoid, because if there's no purpose behind it, or we don't make that action point simple, it will just ignore it. So it's very common for somebody to go, right I need to get fit. And I said, I'll go to the gym, but you hate the gym. Really, if you don't enjoy it, you shouldn't do it. Yeah, sometimes we have to do things we don't like, right? That's how we got brought up. That's true.
00:12:36
Speaker
We are going to stick at something more that we love. If we really hate the gym, you're almost guaranteed at some point going fail. Now, I'm not saying please don't try it. The showing up element is going to do 100 times more for you than that one individual workout. The fact that you just walked into the gym is creating the habit that you're likely going to train.
00:12:57
Speaker
Whereas if you're focusing on the training, it's very easy to stay in bed or go straight home from work. The key element for long term success is can I turn up at the gym? Can I walk through the gym door? I want to keep the habit going. That's what a lot of people miss. The gym that I use, which is true personal training in Weatherby, when you go through the front door, there is a sign that says exactly that you've done the most important thing you've turned up. I love that. I remember one morning when the trainer was saying to me, ah you know, how are you today? I said, I'm going to be better after I've lifted that.
00:13:28
Speaker
Really was fed up with the day and it was only about 7.30. But I knew that after I'd done that deadlift, I was going to feel a lot happier with myself and with the day. I see what you're saying and I can position it in my own experience. yeah What we need to do is get into the habit of thinking, what do I enjoy? What can I do in order to make myself fitter? Physical fitness leads to more mental fitness.
00:13:53
Speaker
I see exactly what you're meaning. It's find the thing that works for you. Yeah, and we downplay the basics. what you know Walking is one of the most simplest tools that we have and one of the most effective for for our health. And remember, again, health and fitness, there is some some similarities, but again, there is some differences to it. you know A lot of people don't want to run 5Ks, do tough mudders, don't want to be an athlete. They just want to be healthy.
00:14:15
Speaker
The best thing that I ever came across was the blues owners. Few places in the world with the highest centurion living rates. So, you know, these people live to 100
Active Lifestyle and Longevity without Gyms
00:14:25
Speaker
and beyond. But not only do they live long, they live happy.
00:14:29
Speaker
Funnily enough, they don't have any gyms. They don't have diet. But ultimately, they they live happy. They live long. a lot of it is just because they are physically active every day that could be via walking making their own food crops laborious jobs like looking after animals but we can incorporate that within our day you you often hear parents or people at home car i'm gone knackered today i've been on my feet all day moving stuff moving tables we don't give that activity enough credit hence why we then go to the gym beast ourselves even more and then we come extra hungry and we eat loads of food afterwards
00:15:05
Speaker
We do need to have a look at our days a little bit better to see, am I actually being active? And is this something I need to look at my habits instead of ignoring my habits and and pushing myself harder and kind of ignoring the root cause? That's a big thing that we don't often look at is what's causing our laziness, our overconsuming, our stress. Because once you find that, life's a lot easier.
00:15:29
Speaker
It's like you've got to find the the behaviors that you can change that will contribute to you being healthier and fitter. person who lives 300 yards away from the gym but drives there in the car and then will spend the first part of their session in the gym on a running machine, whereas they could have jogged to the gym.
00:15:50
Speaker
It's that sort of thing, isn't it It's about finding the opportunities to change our behavior in our everyday activities that will lead to an improvement in our health or our fitness. Like you're saying, the people who live a long time in certain communities, the blue zoners, think you called them, don't have a gym, but they have a lifestyle that is healthy.
00:16:12
Speaker
Their diet is healthy. Their activities are healthy. So they don't need a gym. Yeah, exactly that. And I use Build as an example. They are literally working out every day, yet they feel like they have to go to the gym because they feel like they are overweight. Well, they're overweight because their nutritional day doesn't support their activity.
00:16:29
Speaker
So it becomes a nutritional need. A lot of it is looking at ourselves as as unique as we are. We are all different. You know, they they say that we have the same 24 hours in the day. We don't. We have 24 hours in a day. We are all different. And if we try to mimic what's worked for somebody else, it could be the start of ah of a downward spiral because we won't be able to stick to it.
00:16:51
Speaker
I've moved away from PT for that reason. A lot of people go to a PT, they pay for a workout with the coaching. What I noticed is people were paying to invest, to learn about habits, routine behavior, how to take action on the most simplest tasks.
00:17:08
Speaker
Whichever way you go, it gives you a chance to to stick at it long term. Nobody starts to want to fail. Nobody. Yet the the failure rate, the quit rate is extremely high.
00:17:21
Speaker
The difference is, is you've got to break the mold.
Holistic Approach to Health and Fitness
00:17:25
Speaker
The diet industry, the fitness industry, in my opinion is is broken. It does work for people. I do. I do understand that, but for many, it doesn't give people what they actually need to make themselves successful five, 10, 20, 40 years time.
00:17:41
Speaker
And that should be the ultimate goal. I agree with you. When we talk about the health and wellbeing industry, and the health service the whole health and well-being industry should be seen as part of our health service we do this in order to improve our health but there is no point in investing in a gym membership or running shoes if after you've being for your run, you then go to the pub, have a pint of beer, smoke a cigarette.
00:18:11
Speaker
You've got to look at things more holistically than just individual activities. And and from what you're saying, I get the impression that too many people are thinking about things in isolation. So the builder that you talk about, who is actually up and down ladders, Lifting heavy weights all day is getting a workout, but isn't recognizing it as a workout. Not saying that those people shouldn't go to the gym, but it's like we don't recognize or we don't acknowledge the activities that we have in our everyday that could change in order to contribute to improving our health. Yeah, the gym has this massive power. It's this...
00:18:48
Speaker
If you go to the gym, everything's going to change. And i I was there, worked harder and harder. I said it before when I was playing ice hockey, I would train extremely hard. But actually that was just leading me to overeat. i was like, okay, well, I'm still carrying high levels of body fat. So let's do another workout.
00:19:04
Speaker
I've been there. I know it doesn't work. I know it's a very, very broken system because when I finally realized my root cause at the time, it was sleep, getting four hours of sleep a night, doing some work, having a one to two hour nap and then carrying on with my day. I mentioned before the high stress of the physical activity and and the performance.
00:19:20
Speaker
Once I fixed those, some those were actually by accident. One changed when I retired. The second one changed with lockdown. I realized all my overeating habits just disappeared overnight. Obviously, I had some deeply ingrained stuff that I had to work with on that because obviously that that habit was very, very strong. But you realize that the gym is is a tool.
00:19:41
Speaker
All of these things are tools. There's no thing that is is on a pedestal. If you use it as an asset rather than the solution, then it can become more effective. It's just part of what you need to do. But we kind of have this that, all right, I've got to go to the gym because I need to lose weight.
00:19:57
Speaker
Now, it's been proven over and over again, most people will end up quitting. The figures that get thrown around a lot is the people who start in January, 90% have quit before March.
00:20:07
Speaker
That's really high amount. So something has to change. The narrative has to change. And a lot of it is perception. which If it's it's just the wording we use in link with the gym or how we think about the gym and think about our nutrition, it puts a lot less pressure on going. Like I said, I use the word asset. It's great to go. If you love going to the gym, if It's great for you, muscle, mind, confidence, but it shouldn't be used for weight loss.
00:20:31
Speaker
Weight loss, fat loss, I prefer fat loss. i don't I think we should use that term more. That comes in a calorie deficit. You can go to the gym, but if you're over-consuming, physically, you won't see a huge amount change.
00:20:43
Speaker
Yes, you've got a better chance than if you don't go to the gym, but there has to be that balance. And and then use the the terminology, the the holistic approach. You can't out exercise bad diet.
00:20:55
Speaker
If you're eating the wrong foods, no matter how much exercise you do, you are still going to end up adding fat to your body. You need to be in that situation where you don't so much to treat food as fuel, but you understand the consequences of your food decisions and what that will mean in terms of your immediate and your long-term health. And that's what I love working with.
00:21:19
Speaker
And I get what you're saying is like each one of these individual things is great. But what we need to do is to think about them holistically and how they are going to combine to help us manage our own health, wellbeing, fitness as as a holistic part of life rather than individual separate activities.
Challenging Fitness Misconceptions
00:21:41
Speaker
And i think that is a very powerful lesson that people more people should take on board. Yeah, and it's it's the same. I've been there. you know I've been there with the diets and pushing myself hard in the gym. I get why people will be in that that phase. and And I've had to ah unlearn a lot. we I unlearn a lot by learning.
00:22:02
Speaker
And it all started through personal development and then you know habits and sleep. And you kind of kind of went on this journey to to where I am now with human behavior. And it it can be unlearned.
00:22:13
Speaker
um I have a kind of a saying is, you know, watch what the majority do and do the opposite, because that's where success happens, because we have less people doing successful things. than, you know, the other end end of the spectrum. And when people are doing the same things like the running, just go into the gym and and it often fails, maybe, you know, it looks good short term, right? People post on Facebook, look how great I'm doing. That's brilliant. I'm really proud of you for starting. Can you show me in five, 10 years time that you're still on track? Because if you have, that's when I'm going to be super, you know, extremely proud of you.
00:22:47
Speaker
I don't want my clients to get a quick one, two month turnaround. I want them to, in 10 years time for us to have a conversation and say, God, everything you've done, you taught me, I'm still doing now. That's where I'm winning. It's hard to, it's hard to measure because it's a long, long way away, but,
00:23:04
Speaker
we want life change, people don't want to start to fail. I said that earlier, they don't want to start to quit. It's changing the narrative around this industry. And, you know, breaking down those old beliefs, which are deeply ingrained in us, I do understand it's very hard to do. But it is possible. I've seen it with myself, I've seen it with my clients, it is possible to change if there is a desire to change if the purpose to changes is large enough.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yes, it seems that regardless of what age you are at at the moment, making these decisions to get healthier, to get fitter, to improve your diet, your sleep, your exercise, one of things we have to perhaps accept is that we're in this situation now because of decisions that we made in our younger years and also decisions that were made for us by well-meaning parents and grandparents who It gave us an expectation, for example, of what exercise was. Our education system that perhaps could be better at engaging young people with sport and fitness. When you have that wake-up call and you think, I need to get fitter, I need to get healthier, I need to take my health more seriously and look at it in a holistic way.
00:24:15
Speaker
One of the things that I think you've got to overcome is all of those years of doing the wrong things. It's not just, oh, I will stop eating chocolate. It's getting it inside your head that you don't want that bar of chocolate.
00:24:30
Speaker
It's talking to yourself about the right course of action to take. i won't have that bar of chocolate. I will have something else instead. Or perhaps I'm feeling hungry because I'm actually dehydrated and what I really need is a glass of water.
00:24:45
Speaker
Yes, creating that pause and self-awareness. And I said with my clients, I never say don't have the chocolate bar. I'll always say, well, what's the reason you want it? And I will say, look, you can have it.
00:24:57
Speaker
Let's just answer a couple of questions first. i I have a self-awareness journal that I give to my clients. If they're struggling with a habit, I just try and bring that automated response into the forefront of their mind. So they just answer a couple of questions. You know, how am I feeling?
00:25:12
Speaker
What's the reason I want it What time is it? And i said, once you've answered those, if you still want the chocolate bar, go and have it because we've now gathered information that we didn't have before.
Self-awareness and Overeating
00:25:21
Speaker
Because even if you don't know the answer to what you've wrote on that self-awareness journal, I can help you now because I can see that you're stressed at the same time every week.
00:25:31
Speaker
And now we can implement a strategy to take you away because it's often what's the reason for overconsuming? One chocolate bar is not a problem. One chocolate bar isn't causing your your weight gain because if you only ate one chocolate bar a day, you're not going to gain weight.
00:25:46
Speaker
It's impossible. You need to be in you know in a calorie excess. I want to find out what's the reason you're over consuming because there is a reason behind that. Dehydration, sleep, stress, poor nourishment. There is a reason. Once you find that, then you don't need to beast yourself in the in the gym and go on chronic diets.
00:26:05
Speaker
You can actually get to the root cause and fix it, which actually is a lot simpler. than beasting yourself and spending hours and hours in the gym. And then you can actually start enjoying the gym more because you're not trying to do it to burn calories and, and to lose weight, you're doing it for your well being, for your strength, for your confidence. And the gym then becomes a lot more enjoyable because your perception gets to change.
00:26:26
Speaker
Yes. of One the things I think you've made me think about is really what the mindset approach, isn't it? you Becoming physically fitter requires you to also have the right attitude, the right mindset as you as you embark upon that
Accessibility of Fitness at Any Age
00:26:43
Speaker
journey. Yeah. And fitness is for everybody. A lot of people overwhelm the start of it. So whatever, one of my first ever clients was a recovering alcoholic in her sixties and she'd never trained in the gym in her life. She turned exercise into, in a way, her new addiction. She was doing multiple sets of pushups and reps of pushups, you know, like full range because she just turned this into her her way of being. so you you
00:27:09
Speaker
get involved at any age. It's just finding the easiest access point. You know, if you feel like you've got to get fitter and the gym intimidates you and you know you're going to hate it, you can start with walking. You know, if you are walking, you can, you know, maybe try swimming or cycling or maybe if you really fancy it a jog.
00:27:27
Speaker
We don't always meet ourselves where we need to be met right now. we take too many leaps forward, we try and take giactic gigantic steps. When we take the smaller steps, they require less energy, they require less effort.
00:27:41
Speaker
But they compound over time, like Lego pieces, just one little Lego block at a time, eventually, you've made this beautiful piece of, of Lego that you could probably sell for hundreds and hundreds of pounds. But you start with one Lego piece. Yes. But we often don't we try and create something out of you know, hardly any pieces and we try and stretch them out. No, just just lay that one brick today that starts the flow, the momentum to something bigger. One step at a time sounds like a very good
Conclusion and Farewell
00:28:10
Speaker
strategy. You know, Sean, it has been very interesting. I really do appreciate your time today. I'm going to take away a lot from this and I'm sure other people will as well. For the moment, thank you very much. It's been a very interesting episode of Fit For My Age. Thank you. Thank you for having me. appreciate it. right
00:28:27
Speaker
I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abucida. And in this episode of Fit for My Age, I have been having a conversation with Sean Thompson. There is a link in the description to abucida.co.uk where you'll find more information about both of us.
00:28:41
Speaker
At Fit for My Age, our aim is positive, proactive aging. Knowing the risks early is an important part of maintaining good health. That is why we recommend the annual health test from York Test.
00:28:53
Speaker
York tests provide an assessment of 39 different health markers, including cholesterol, diabetes, vitamin D, vitamin B12, liver function, iron deficiency, the list goes on.
00:29:06
Speaker
The annual health test is conducted by an experienced phlebotomist who will complete a full blood draw at your home or workplace. Hospital standard tests are carried out in a UK AS accredited and CQC compliant laboratory.
00:29:22
Speaker
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00:29:34
Speaker
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00:29:45
Speaker
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Avicida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of Fit For My Age, thank you for listening and goodbye.