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00:00:01
Rebecca Coales
73 Plays4 years ago
Rebecca is a record holding former Freediver turned Yoga Coach for sports people.
Rebecca has a particular interest in breathing and recovery. You may recognise Rebeccas voice from the UKRunChat Yoga sessions during lockdown.
You can connect with Rebecca on the following channels:
@sportrestyoga - Instagram
@sportrestyoga - Twitter
@sportrestyoga - Facebook
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Transcript
Introduction to Rebecca Coles
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to this episode of the UK sports chat podcast. I'm Joe Williams and today I am chatting with Rebecca Coles. Rebecca is a former free diver turned yoga coach for sports people and Rebecca has a specific focus on breathing and recovery. Some of you may recognize Rebecca from our yoga classes during the lockdown. Rebecca was our yoga teacher. Hi Rebecca.
00:00:29
Speaker
Hi Jo, how are you? Yeah, I'm good, thank you, are you? Yes, I'm very well, thanks.
Locational Connections and Past Events
00:00:36
Speaker
How's the weather today down in Bristol? It's been lovely actually, really really nice, that lovely autumnal blue skies. Lovely. And where are you Jo, are you? Shropshire, Shrewsbury. Okay, so not that far away? No, not that far away. We've been to Bristol twice, once we played football and once we came to the harbour, to the festival over there.
00:00:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's lovely. I'm not from here. You probably tell from my very slight Mancunian accent that I didn't grow up in Bristol, but I've lived here for about 10 years now, so I'm almost a local. Yeah. My accent's more West Country than yours. Yes, yeah.
Yoga During Lockdown
00:01:18
Speaker
So we first chatted at the start of lockdown, didn't we?
00:01:22
Speaker
yes yeah and we had you you came on and hosted the yoga sessions for us each friday yeah i mean goodness it seems like such a long time ago now but i think um you know at the start of lockdown there was this um boom in people wanting to try new things and also finding or looking out for
00:01:50
Speaker
activities that would help ease their stress, I guess, because it was very uncertain for all of us. So yoga tipped both of those boxes. And I think we did have quite a few people join us who'd never tried yoga before, which is amazing. That's my favorite thing.
00:02:05
Speaker
is people being able to try this in the comfort of their own home so that they don't feel the kind of nerves and self-consciousness that some people do in a
The Physical Challenges of Yoga
00:02:20
Speaker
class.
00:02:20
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, definitely. And you're right, there was a boom of it, wasn't there? Joe Wicks kind of led it. And then Yoga with Adrienne was the other one. I think the American lady who had about 40 million people do her yoga classes on YouTube. Yeah, I've got to confess that that was the first bit of yoga that I ever did was actually following along with Yoga with Adrienne. This was
00:02:47
Speaker
10 years ago maybe after I'd added an Achilles reconstruction. Oh yeah? Yeah and I followed a 30 day plan. I was shocked because prior to that I'd been quite fit and I kept myself in good shape. I was shocked at just how hard it was and I don't mean the stretchy bit. I fully expected not to be.
00:03:10
Speaker
flexible but even I think it's a warrior pose is that the one where you it's like a groin stretch with your arms out yes yeah so even that one it to me it didn't look difficult and yet when you're doing it it is hard work isn't it
00:03:26
Speaker
Yeah. And you know, that's the, I guess, sort of the hidden secrets of yoga, really, people have that perception that it's about stretching, but actually, that is such a small part of of what it can give you. And you know, when you're static in a in a position like warrior and some of the other standing positions, they are amazing for
00:03:49
Speaker
building that tolerance for our leg muscles to, you know, lactic acid. And, you know, it's almost the longer you hold it, the more it becomes an anaerobic position, actually. So that's why it feels quite hard.
Rebecca's Background and Passion
00:04:05
Speaker
Yeah. So tell us, give us an introduction to you and to your background in sport, rest, yoga. Yeah. Tell us about you.
00:04:16
Speaker
Yeah right so my name is Rebecca Coles and I have been teaching yoga for around about eight years now but I am also an environmental scientist, really keen on nature and the outdoors.
00:04:33
Speaker
and I have run almost all my life so I can remember sprinting at junior school and doing little competitions there and as I've got older the distance has got further and further so I went sort of from sprinting and long jump to sort of middle distance in my 20s and
00:04:53
Speaker
and that seems to be getting longer and longer and I have my sights on continuing that sort of the distance I guess but I haven't had the chance to do so recently because I have a little one at home and it steals all of my energy.
00:05:10
Speaker
And he likes to steal the limelight as well, doesn't he? Oh, he does, yes. Yes, we had a little streaker, didn't we? He was brilliant. You weren't meant to host that one live. Sorry, I'll let you continue in a second. But if anyone who saw this, one of the yoga sessions that Rebecca did on UKWAMchat,
00:05:35
Speaker
on the Friday was meant to be pre-recorded wasn't it because you contacted me and said I can't do this week's because because I've got my son yeah pre-recorded one but when you've uploaded to Facebook they're actually quite slow to upload aren't they and I know what happened you were uploading it and
00:05:52
Speaker
and you didn't want to you didn't want to be late with it did you so i think i think you just jumped on at 10 o'clock realizing the video hadn't quite updated no you've got your son and you're gonna do this and bless you you went and did the whole half an hour and he was jumping in and yeah it was quite funny wasn't it yeah yeah but that just summed up really locked down for so many people trying to
00:06:18
Speaker
keep going with work and managing children. He was very entertaining. He was. He continues to entertain like that. He's always dropping in on my Zoom sessions.
Broader Benefits of Yoga
00:06:33
Speaker
In a way, that's yoga though as well, isn't it? Because the practice
00:06:38
Speaker
People think that they need to be flexible, that they need to be able to do yoga right before they can do a class. And there isn't a right way of doing yoga. It's just sort of really been misunderstood, I think, by a lot of people in the West. And it's just an opportunity to practice dealing with life
00:06:58
Speaker
in a kind of a small setting of your mat in terms of physical, mental, breathing, all of these things and practicing dealing with uncertainty and stress and the unexpected. So it was the perfect example of yoga as well. That did strike me about your sessions that you did for us because you
00:07:26
Speaker
If I remember you did a breathe easy one, you did a yoga for healthy backs, you did balance, you did yoga for runners. My, as a non-yogi, my take on yoga is downward facing dog into the, is it the cobra type pose and you've got the warrior pose and there's like a very standard set of exercises, but you just showed that that's just not the case.
00:07:51
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, I when I first trained as a yoga teacher, it was quite a standard type of yoga, there's lots of different types of yoga, mine was quite dynamic, power yoga, as you call it, and quite a lot of movement. And that reflected that I was really into sports all of my life. And I wanted something that reflected my energy and my
00:08:18
Speaker
the speed that I was living my life and that continues and I really enjoy teaching that and practicing that kind of energetic flow it's not dissimilar from hot yoga which a lot of people have been into
00:08:32
Speaker
And it wasn't until I became an athlete, so I know we're going to touch on this in a little while, but I trained as an elite athlete in a different sport, not running.
Shift to Slow Breathing and Recovery
00:08:43
Speaker
But it was then that I realised that the fast yoga was not what I needed because I was already going fast in my life, in my training. I was going hard. I was going fast. And what I actually needed was something to slow me down.
00:08:58
Speaker
And it changed everything about the way that I practice yoga and now the way that I teach. So everything that I do now is about slow breathing, recovery, and helping people get out of the over-training trap.
00:09:15
Speaker
because these are all things that I've experienced and that's very much my focus now. And it's an example of the breadth of practice you can get within this thing that we call yoga. There's so many different ways that you can apply it, but through my own experience, I've really gone to the slow end because I think that's what people need, especially those of us who are really active.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yeah. The counterbalance to all of that, running all of the training, all the high intensity. It's finding that time to stop and just breathe.
00:09:52
Speaker
yeah that sounds good because it's all aspects of your life isn't it that's you know family work etc it's all it's all hectic and then you add on that quite intense exercise to to combat it where is the where is that slowing down
00:10:12
Speaker
I work with quite a few athletes and they're initially not drawn to the slowness. They don't like the idea of it but actually in a way that's the practice is being able to stop and deal with all the stuff that goes on in your mind.
00:10:35
Speaker
slow down the breath and just allow the body to recover because that's where the actual benefit of our training comes through and we all know this, we all know that you need to train and you need to rest but actually I would challenge most people around whether they get enough
00:10:57
Speaker
I think it's only really the elites who have all of that time. They're not necessarily needing to work. They actually have fixed times within their training schedule where they just literally sit and watch Netflix or whatever. We don't give up, you know, it's most recreational and even the sort of, you know, the lower level athletes who are semi pros, for example, who still have to work. It's really hard. And I made this mistake.
00:11:22
Speaker
myself, I thought that going to work was enough to recover and my body told me otherwise. So I interrupted you when you were doing your introduction, you were talking about middle distance running and how you were moving up. Go on, do continue.
Transition from Freediving to Ultrarunning
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah, I know that's fine. I mean, because I was so involved in the sport of freediving, which is what I was an athlete in, and it is very much sort of a mental sport of being able to endure discomfort. I have a feeling that I've got the mental
00:12:04
Speaker
sort of draw towards something longer than a marathon distance because I like kind of the slow steady running outside in beautiful landscape and
00:12:20
Speaker
And I think that I, yeah, I keep reading a lot of people's accounts of various ultras and long distance trail running and thinking, I quite fancy that. So I think that's going to be on my, that's on my radar at the moment.
00:12:37
Speaker
Yeah, we're blessed in that. I mean, there's so many to choose from as well because the UK is just stunning. There's so many of them. So if you've done the longer distance relationships yet, or is that something for the...
00:12:51
Speaker
No, so the longest I've done was the Great North Run, which was amazing for the, you know, the public and really, you know, everybody shouting you along and ending on the beach and everything. It was lovely. But I don't really like running on the road. So I would like to probably get back into sort of that distance in out in the sticks on trail and then just build it up from there, really. Yes.
Introduction to Freediving and Records
00:13:19
Speaker
yeah okay and you mentioned your freediving so so you were you were a competitive freediver and you held records is that right yes so just to clarify freediving is holding your breath underwater it's not jumping off cliffs which is what some people think it is okay which is my worst nightmare because i hate heights they're both crazy yeah
00:13:47
Speaker
Yes and it's a weird story how I got into it as well because I just like scuba diving on holiday and I'd just recently moved to Bristol and I joined a scuba club because I thought all that's a nice way to meet people in a new town and one day they said oh you know we're all going to go and try this new thing that's called freediving. I thought all right then I'll come along and then
00:14:13
Speaker
I just and it was interesting and you know I was interested in yoga at the time I think I was just thinking about becoming a teacher at that time as well so I was really into the breathing and the relaxation and then it just seemed to sort of grow this
00:14:33
Speaker
enjoyment of being under the water in this complete silence when you hold your breath. Not having all of the gear that you normally have with scuba diving. And so I just sort of carried on recreationally, built up a bit of community in Bristol of doing free diving. But it was when I met a friend up in Manchester who is a coach.
00:14:58
Speaker
And he said that he could see that I had the discipline to be an athlete. I was like, I couldn't understand it at the time. I was like, what? Because, you know, I'd always been very sporty, but I'd never really done any structured training.
00:15:15
Speaker
Were you a swimmer as well or was it scuba diving prior to that? I had competed in swimming at school as well as the sprinting. I was one of these classic kids too. I was only interested in sport really at school. I wasn't really interested in anything else.
00:15:33
Speaker
And, you know, and the only connection was that I was, when I did compete, it was mainly breaststroke swimming. And that was, that ended up being the discipline that I was best at in the pool, through the free diving as well, just swimming underwater, with no fins or anything else. But other than that, there weren't really any indicators that I won that I was,
00:16:01
Speaker
would be any special holding my breath and I actually got my lung volume checked and my spleen volume because your spleen holds red blood cells and if you have big organs in terms of your lungs and spleen they tend to suggest that you're likely to be a good diver and my tests are all normal. And so I think I just put it down to
00:16:28
Speaker
I think it was the learning to be comfortable with the discomfort of holding your breath. And it's actually not as bad as people think and I think most people listening probably at some point in their life have held their breath and tried to swim a length underwater in the pool. I think everybody's tried that.
00:16:50
Speaker
And everyone's found it difficult and the reason is because most people are quite buoyant and so what we would do is we would make our own neck weights out of lead shot. I mean these days you can buy them ready-made but you know this is sort of five six years ago it was still a sport that was you know quite grassroots and so we made our own weights so that you would get your buoyancy perfect so that you would just glide through the water
00:17:19
Speaker
And once you did that, it felt lovely. Really, really lovely. So yeah, I set five records in the UK doing this in the pool. And yeah, it kind of surprised me as well. So with the free dive, sorry, let me ask you a question about those tests. How did they test your spleen?
00:17:39
Speaker
So they do by ultrasound. So just like when you have a scan for if you're pregnant, but they do it through your back. And basically when you hold your breath, whether it's on land or in water, your body responds with this oxygen conserving mechanism. It's called the dive reflex. And a lot of mammals have them, especially the diving, the mammals in the sea.
00:18:06
Speaker
And one of these effects is that your spleen will release a whole load of red blood cells so that you've got a better carrying capacity for the oxygen that is in that breath that you are holding. And, you know, I'll touch on this later on, but this dive reflex is also something that we can apply in any sport, essentially, because it's
00:18:35
Speaker
you can almost use it as a boost of your blood oxygen carrying capacity before you go off and do a race, for example, by holding your breath beforehand. But in this case, obviously, it was for in the pool. And so you can tell the difference between a spleen before a breath hold and a spleen after, because the spleen is smaller. And so they can use that to calculate how much of these red blood cells have been released.
00:19:04
Speaker
Well, so how do you go then from starting to dive and was this all in a pool or did you do it in the sea as well?
Training Challenges in the UK
00:19:15
Speaker
I did it in the sea for recreational reasons, but actually mainly in lakes in the UK, but we don't have great depth facilities in the UK. Most of the British divers who are good at depth tend to spend a lot of the year away in places like the Red Sea and further afield. So most of my training was in the pool just because that was what I had easy access to. Yes. Okay. So how do you go from
00:19:46
Speaker
Enjoying your scuba diving, meeting your new friends. So having five, was it national records? Yes, UK records, all five of them were in the pool. Three were swimming just breaststroke underwater and two were with a big fin like a mermaid. So you would swim like an undulating mermaid. Okay, and how far and how long were you underwater for for these records?
00:20:14
Speaker
Okay, so for swimming no fins, I think the record was 150 meters. So what's that? Six lengths of a 25 meter pool and you would do it in a 25 meter pool because you'd use the wall to push off and glide which saves a lot of energy and effort because you can imagine on one breath
00:20:35
Speaker
you want to be as efficient and as streamlined as possible. So you kind of have to work on your technique to the point where, you know, everything is as good as you can get it. And with the monofin, you can go a bit further. So I did 189 meters in an Olympic size call. So that's just short of four lengths. And I think they both of those were probably around just under three minutes. Goodness.
00:21:05
Speaker
I'm like a monofin, so I'm like a big flipper. What's a monofin? So it is like one big flipper that you put both your feet in. So if you can imagine like a dolphin tail. It's like a mermaid. You're a mermaid.
00:21:24
Speaker
Yes, yeah, absolutely. Just like a mermaid. And I think it's part of the appeal is to be able to connect with that in a desire to just move freely without all of the stuff that we carry. I think there's a real metaphor in that as well.
00:21:47
Speaker
Yeah, I'm just trying to imagine what that looks like then under the water because one of the reasons why I've never really had a good go at a triathlon is my swimming. I'm terrible. My fiancé is next lifeguard, so whenever we go, she tells me, just breathe. And I'm like, it's not that simple. And I'm thrashing my arms and going as fast as I can. You must almost glide then under the water when you're doing that kind of
00:22:17
Speaker
Yeah, we do try so we wear suits that are like very thin triathlon suits that are really hydrodynamic and obviously wear the weight to make sure that your buoyancy is optimal and then there's just a lot of repetitive training to make sure that the strokes
00:22:41
Speaker
As efficient as they can be and working with the body to make it as streamlined as possible so in particular really doing a lot of work on the shoulders to And to be able to get your arms overhead in a triangle shape so that you could be you know as streamlined as possible Yeah
00:23:00
Speaker
What does the rest of the training look like for that? Were you already doing your yoga? Anaerobically, you must have been very fit. What other stuff goes into training for something like that?
00:23:16
Speaker
Yeah, so I used running in two ways actually. Firstly, just to keep me sane because a lot of the breath-hold training is quite repetitive and uncomfortable and so when I was able to, when my coach said yes, yes, you can go and do some cardio.
00:23:37
Speaker
I would just go off onto the trail and really enjoyed it. So you do need this sort of base fitness and that's how I got my base fitness, but I used hill sprinting as my high intensity training for most of the time that I was training. I did dabble a little bit with sort of high intensity boxing, sort of the Tabata type thing, but the hill sprints were painful, but they seemed to do the job.
00:24:07
Speaker
Really brutal and I found this amazing hill in a park in Bristol which yeah you know getting ready for a session like that you did sort of want to cry in advance but they were great and then the rest of time is you do quite a lot of breath holding dry so you would just sit in a chair
00:24:26
Speaker
and hold your breath, which is where it gets really dull. And then quite a lot of technical training in the pool to get the movements as efficient as possible. What reminded me that you and I need to talk on here was
00:24:46
Speaker
Have you heard of the Joe Rogan podcast? Yes, I have. Yeah, so he had David Blaine on last month. Oh, of course, yes. Did you see his crazy latest stunt where he floated off into the air? I haven't actually seen... I know that he... Has he done it now? Because I know that he was planning it with his balloon. Yeah, off he went up into the air but went...
00:25:08
Speaker
when he was listening to it, sorry, when I was listening to it, he was talking about his breath training because he's done other stunts in ice and things like that, and underwater where he's had to hold his breath. But he was talking about
00:25:23
Speaker
how he was having well he was he was on an oxygen he had an oxygen device on him as he went up he was talking about how he was training his breath and that was actually what reminded me you know i still needed to talk on here but he was saying that there's there's techniques and and he could he could he quite quickly got up to um
00:25:43
Speaker
When he started practicing these things, he quite quickly got up to between three and four minutes of holding his breath. Did you do it longer when you were sat there because you were dry sat and just concentrating on holding your breath or would you go further underwater? What was the difference?
00:26:03
Speaker
Yeah, so dry, I held my breath. I think the furthest I got was about six and a half minutes actually. But under the water, there is one of the disciplines that you can do in freediving is where you literally just lie face down in the water. And the most I managed was five and a half minutes, which I'm really, really proud of because it is so difficult.
00:26:32
Speaker
The mental challenge that you have to go through to just lie there with very little distraction is something else and I know David Blaine's done quite a lot of breath holding where he has used oxygen which does change matters
00:26:53
Speaker
and considerably and there are you know if people are wanting to play around with sort of breath holding you can if you breathe quite heavily beforehand what we call hyperventilation then actually it can help you hold your breath for a little bit longer
00:27:14
Speaker
but that wouldn't be something we would do in water because that method sort of risks a blackout but if you're just sort of sitting dry in a chair you could do that and you know I'm sure some of the listeners might have heard of a technique called the Wim Hof breathing method which is probably one of the most well-known
00:27:34
Speaker
breathing methods, that's what he does, he takes you through this process of breathing quite heavily and then you hold your breath and you can hold your breath for a couple of minutes even if you've never really done it before. It's an interesting experience but it's always worth doing it with an instructor because your breath is quite a powerful tool and it's not something to be messed around with. Did you have a blackout?
00:27:59
Speaker
Yes, I had a couple of blackouts near the end of my career, because I'm not 100% sure whether it's over yet, but I semi-retired, and I had a couple of blackouts close to the end of that, which indicated that there was something not right.
00:28:17
Speaker
and I was diagnosed with a thyroid problem and I think that was sort of part and parcel of kind of a wider issue where I'd just gone really hard and fast at the training and had got into this I guess what we call over training syndrome and was just so fatigued always catching every bug that was going and then I had this underlying anemia and
00:28:45
Speaker
thyroid issue and it was then that I started blacking out and it nobody we couldn't work out what was going on because it was at distances I've done before and so we knew something was up but prior to that I'd always had a an attitude of just increasing a little bit at time because I wanted to keep it positive I didn't want to be in a situation where
00:29:11
Speaker
I was regularly blacking out and pushing my body beyond its limit because I don't think that's good for us. It's not good for you mentally or physically. So it was only really when things started to go wrong that I had a few blackouts and rather than keep pushing, I just decided to take a bit of a break and do something different and then the little one came along.
00:29:37
Speaker
So is that when sport rest yoga began then, is it? Or would that already started by then? It had already started. So I'd started in 2012, I think it was.
00:29:53
Speaker
mainly teaching colleagues at work and in local studios in Bristol not really having a particular focus or a theme but a few years after that I trained with a group of people who were really keen on working specifically with athletes
00:30:16
Speaker
And so I did sort of a next level of qualification where we basically spent a lot of time focusing on how you could slot yoga into an existing training program when you're working with athletes. And I use athletes to encompass everybody who is
00:30:39
Speaker
into sports and training for something doesn't necessarily need to be anything you know professional but if somebody's got a training plan in mind then you know it's being able to find a way to slot it into their program to deliver
00:30:59
Speaker
what can be for some people huge gains but as you go higher up the ladder you know it's potentially you're talking about marginal gains of you know a few percent here or there but that's what can really make the difference to to these elite athletes yes but so if you're thinking about so on our channels for example there's there's people who've just started out running and people who are you know serious ultra runners so what kind of
00:31:29
Speaker
What kind of benefits would they get out of doing these things? And what kind of things should they be doing, first of all, really? What are your tips and tricks for everyone?
Nose Breathing for Endurance
00:31:40
Speaker
Yeah, so my three top tips I would say is the first one is breathing. So we don't talk about breathing enough in any sport, but particularly in running. And there's a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about how is best to run.
00:31:57
Speaker
Sorry, how is best to breathe when you're running? And I know that this is quite a controversial subject as well, but my advice is for anyone who is doing long, slow runs, which is normally about 80% of anybody's training, really, most of what we do is that aerobic base of running, that you can do that running with your mouth closed and just breathe through your nose.
00:32:25
Speaker
And there'll be a whole load of people go, shock horror. It is terrible. It just feels uncomfortable to begin with because most people have quite a sensitivity to the rise of carbon dioxide that happens when you do that.
00:32:43
Speaker
So when you're breathing in and out through the mouth you get rid of quite a lot of carbon dioxide and you know it feels easier because it's a big hole but actually for a lot of people that can trigger tightness and irritation in the lungs and that's where you get conditions like exercise to induced asthma
00:33:03
Speaker
um which isn't really um you know it's not a disease or a disorder it's actually just the lungs going hey you know you're inhaling loads of cold dry air could you stop please um so you know my first suggestion would be to close your mouth breathe through the nose and pace yourself based on what you can do and for some people that would mean slowing down to begin with but trust me i've done it you will build that speed back up as the body adapts
00:33:33
Speaker
So that's my first tip. It's actually, it's also, you use less effort breathing through the nose and what they've found is where people are breathing more through the mouth, that extra effort that it takes to breathe is actually stealing oxygen away from the legs. So there is this, you know, the scientists have shown that there's this link between how you breathe and how easily your legs fatigue.
00:34:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, so it's a really interesting one. So nose breathing, nose breathing, nose breathing is my first... Slow down a bit and nose breathe. Yeah. And you know, it keeps your heart rate low as well, so it means for relaxed running. But you know, for the extra 10-20% where you are going harder, then of course the breathing needs to get bigger.
00:34:26
Speaker
And if the mouth needs to open to deal with that, then fine. But, you know, if we can really tackle that, you know, the vast proportion of people's training program, you know, the recovery is easier when you've nosed breathe through running as well. Here's your heart rate's been lower and you felt more relaxed and so it's a bit easier to recover from. And I guess that's kind of then my second point is don't forget the rest.
00:34:55
Speaker
So I think there is this sort of misunderstanding that you should stretch after running and that is recovery. And it's not until people understand more about what's required in recovery that maybe they start thinking about nutrition and massage and various other techniques. But actually stretching is, I think most people have shown it's not actually particularly useful. It's controversial as well.
00:35:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's certainly not recommended before. I'll talk about what I would recommend before, but it's not sort of long held stretching. But even long held stretching after running, it makes you feel nice. So I wouldn't say don't do it. But there isn't a lot of evidence to show that actually it's giving you the benefit that you think you might.
00:35:52
Speaker
I think the benefit is in resting and by stretching the muscles you are helping yourself to relax. But the benefit is in resting and letting go of worries and really letting yourself have that downtime.
00:36:09
Speaker
and I think that's where a lot of people go wrong because they they do what I did which was okay my rest I can do my rest at work because I'm sitting down but actually wasn't you know everybody knows you know most people's jobs are quite stressful even if they're sat down all day um and I found that I wasn't I wasn't allowing myself to rest enough yeah and even with um
00:36:35
Speaker
I mean, people's down time now, they've usually got an iPad or a phone, or they're on social media, so even that kind of ties into the same example you're giving them.
00:36:45
Speaker
you're not completely switching off. The brain is still going and you know, a lot of, you know, even watching programs can trigger so much emotional and physiological response that your body's not really getting that chance to completely relax. So, you know, finding what works for you. So for some people that is yoga and sort of guided relaxation and meditations,
00:37:12
Speaker
But it might be a really slow walk or a swim or something that just allows you to switch off and just really slow down. Sounds great.
00:37:27
Speaker
And then the third tip would be mobility. So I'm really, really hot on mobility, which is the ability of each of your major joints in the body to move in a
00:37:45
Speaker
a sort of effective range of movement. It's not necessarily flexibility in the sense of, oh, you can do the splits, so you must be really flexible. Well, actually as runners, we don't need that flexibility. What we need is to be able to move our bodies
00:38:04
Speaker
in the most optimal way so exactly what I was doing with the free diving was to try and move as efficiently as possible so you're not wasting energy or movements that you don't need to do and to work with the brain because a lot of mobility actually the source of our flexibility and our mobility is actually in the brain because most of us have got
00:38:29
Speaker
situation where perhaps we haven't used a joint through its full range of motion or we've had an injury and it's caused us to be fearful of moving it in its full range of motion and through that lack of use that whole adage of you know if you don't use it you lose it kicks in
00:38:51
Speaker
And so it's the sort of mobility work that I do with clients is to help retrain the body that it's safe to use those joints in their full range of motion. Yes. And I think for runners the big one is the hips. I think there's a lot of hip mobility that we've
00:39:12
Speaker
We've lost because of the amount of time that we spend sitting. Yes. Yeah. And then, you know, we expect our bodies to just react how we want them to when we get up from sitting after five, six hours and go out for a run and, you know, bless our bodies. They do their best.
00:39:34
Speaker
but you need to give them a helping hand and that's why I do a lot of hip mobility work and you know one of my top tips which is you don't need anybody to teach you this but it's just to spend more time on the floor to actually work on the floor if you can.
00:39:49
Speaker
watch tv sitting on the floor and keep adjusting your position because every time you need to shuffle around and you know it'll be uncomfortable to begin with but every time you move you're bringing your hip joint into a different position and when the body feels safe it will allow you to do that more and more and eventually you'll regain a lot of that range of motion that you need for your running and for other practices so um so yeah start watching tv sitting on the floor
00:40:19
Speaker
Yeah, I do that quite a lot. And my daughter does, I do, and my daughter does. And people comment on why you sat on the floor. So I'm pleased with that. There you go. I mean, there's a lot about modern life that actually is not serving us.
00:40:36
Speaker
as sports people, you know, sitting, chairs and don't get me started on shoes because these big puffed up spongy shoe things that we call trainers aren't great either for our bodies. Sort of cutting us off from the needing to sense the ground that we're actually running on.
00:41:01
Speaker
yeah so yeah i can i love the podcast that one yeah exactly another controversial one um okay so but before we wrap it up then what what um give us two give us two tips with regards to how often should somebody who hasn't been doing yoga before them perhaps who runs or um cycles
00:41:27
Speaker
How much should they potentially introduce and how often? And have you got, I remember you doing a lovely breathing technique at the one at the end of the yoga sessions. Is there something that you could help our listeners with regards to that relaxation bit that is, you know, away from the sport? Is there any kind of breathing techniques you could recommend just for helping to switch off? Yeah.
Relaxation and Sleep Techniques
00:41:52
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So I would say in terms of introducing some kind of relaxation practice, try a couple of times a week to begin with. But ideally, it depends at what point in the day you need it. But for a lot of people, it's just before they go to sleep to help them sleep well, because obviously that is a huge part of recovery.
00:42:15
Speaker
So doing some kind of movement practice that involves slow breathing makes you feel lovely and relaxed before you go to bed, ticks a lot of boxes, and I think is doable for a lot of people. Maybe you just need to swap out half an hour of the time that you would spend watching TV or something, but otherwise, it's a time of the day that I think a lot of people can slot it in.
00:42:42
Speaker
The other time is first thing in the morning. So, you know, if you've got a family while everybody's still in bed, you could get up and do some mobility work. So, you know, there are essentially if you can just move in a circular motion, all of your joints, that is a really great way to start the day. And I'm sure somewhere in the sessions that we did, and I've got some on my YouTube site as well, there are examples of what you might do if anybody needs to see that.
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah, great. Okay. Is there a breathing technique you can recommend?
Breathing Techniques for Relaxation
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, so in terms of, you know, a lot of people I think know that if you exhale for longer, then you inhale that it helps you to relax and it actually triggers the rest and digest function part of our nervous system known as the parasympathetic
00:43:40
Speaker
nervous system. And so if you were to breathe in for a count of three, for example, and breathe out for a count of six, that would, if you just continue to do that, that would generally help your heart rate to slow down and help you feel more relaxed. That's, you know, a very sort of basic breathing technique that most people would be shown in a yoga class, for example.
00:44:09
Speaker
But what's really interesting is if you do a ratio that is something like four in six out, which would mean that you would be breathing six breaths per minute, that's actually been shown to trigger a physiological change in the body that basically synchronizes your heart rate, your breathing rate, and your blood pressure. And it's known as heart coherence.
00:44:38
Speaker
And it's basically our optimal state of well-being. It is the state the body wants to be in because it means it can use energy for other processes and the breathing or the heart rate and blood pressure isn't sort of taking up any of that energy. So it's a state that we really want to get into as much as possible when we're at rest.
00:45:08
Speaker
So we could do that together now if you want to. You can just do a few rounds of four and six out. So I'll count through if those of you who are listening, if you're just sitting upright with a bit of support for your back. So whether it's a chair or just back against the wall. Okay. Yeah. And close your mouth. So we're breathing in and out through the nose. Okay.
00:45:35
Speaker
and then when you're ready just breathe out breathe out through the nose and then we're going to breathe in two three four and then breathe out two three
00:45:50
Speaker
4 5 6 Breathe in 2 3 4 And breathe out 2 3 4 5 6 Breathe in 2 3 4 And breathe out 2
00:46:20
Speaker
three four five six breathe in two three four and breathe out two three four five six one more breathe in two three
00:46:47
Speaker
four, and breathe out, two, three, four, five, six, and then just allow your breathing to come back to its normal rhythm. And notice how that feels because for some people that's really slow, and for other people it's perfectly doable.
00:47:15
Speaker
I was very relaxed there, thank you. Yeah, that's fine. I've been told that my voice sends people to sleep. You're quite hypnotic when you're doing that. So I actually, as I was breathing out then, six seconds, I found that a long time to breathe out and I'm literally, every bit of air is out of me. Yes.
00:47:37
Speaker
So a lot of people, we don't often use the full capacity of our lungs actually. And a lot of the focus when we do, so for example with running, you're mainly focused on the in-breath, but you need to exhale fully to be able to breathe in fully. And that's why people with asthma and things like exercise-induced asthma have so much problem because they struggle to exhale.
00:48:03
Speaker
So if you can't get the breath out, then you can't get everyone to breath in and so they very quickly become breathless.
00:48:12
Speaker
Wow, that's it. Thank you very much. I've got a hot coherence down here that I'm going to go have and read about. Some fantastic tips throughout our chat for everybody really to apply to their running both during, well before during and after, so thank you. If anyone wants to
00:48:34
Speaker
have a look at your content or get in touch with you just give us your social and your website and all that kind of stuff. Yeah so my website is it's sportrestoreoga. So it's www.sportrestoreoga.co.uk
00:48:55
Speaker
and via there i've got some more tips on like a little you can sign up for a little mini course it's primarily designed for runners but for sort of any sports really and then on social media all of my handles are sport rest yoga and i yeah i i'm a real breath nerd as i'm sure you've um
00:49:21
Speaker
I love talking about breath, but I'm also really passionate about the mobility, about the recovery. And the one thing I probably haven't mentioned is actually balancing, which again, I think is a lost art, a lost skill that many of us don't have that can be really fundamental to our ability to run well. So yeah, so those are kind of my passions that I talk about a lot on social media.
00:49:47
Speaker
Yeah, and you mentioned that in the first lesson that you did with the session, and they're all still on our Facebook, and like you said, all on your YouTube as well. You've got lots. Yeah, there should be plenty of questions to get started with if anyone is starting yoga. Will you do another session for us?
00:50:08
Speaker
I can do, yes. I'm still at home. We should probably not wait for the next lockdown and actually come back and do another session. That'd be great. That'd be great. Well, thank you for coming on, Rebecca. It's been really lovely chatting. No, thank you very much for inviting me. Thanks, Jo.