Episode 49: Exercise

Owain I can't actually imagine you ever having done that, Mike. To be honest, I can't imagine you punching anybody. 

Mike /Owain No, I've never punched anybody. No, I have. I have, uh. 

Mike /Owain OK, do you want to tell us the story of why you punched somebody? I started karate, so I had to punch people in the face all the time. (Mike) Yeah, very good. That was part of doing karate. Made you quite good at it, I imagine. 

Owain Well actually it didn't.  But you do have to be quite good. Because because I went to do a competition once with guys who were a lower level and I had my head taken off a few times because the idea is you supposed to try to hit someone in the face, but just just touch them with you, with power, but just let you just touch them. And if you haven't got a lot of practise, then you tend to go too far. And then if you're aiming at their face, you go through it rather than just. 

Mike /Owain Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. 

Owain Yeah. Have you ever done any martial arts Mike have you? 

Mike I've never done any martial arts, no. 

Owain How about internal martial arts?

Mike Internal martial arts....Now, let me just take that in. 

Owain Taichi, for example? 

Mike Beating myself up? Oh, well, plenty of times I do that regularly. 

Owain Well, there here's the misconception that martial arts is not about violence. It's about control and. Control of the body. Yeah, and how you connect that with, I mean, internal martial arts, many, many martial arts are both internal and external, but say something like Tai Chi is very, very much an internal martial art. Like it's all about the mind and and how you focus the mind and use the mind. 

Mike Uh, I've done I've done some meditation. Yeah. 

Mike Um, I wouldn't say I was a regular practise of meditation, but I have done some and which has proved quite useful, especially in getting to sleep actually, uh, at night. Sometimes I've I've in the past used an app called Headspace guess is quite good for meditation and but I practise yoga regularly, which I find. Increasingly is the one form of exercise that that helps me become more productive during the day, really. And I feel if I don't do my yoga. Yeah, I feel. Like a sense of imbalance, like something is missing right in in my in my sort of balance to life. 

Owain OK, that is interesting. And how long have you been doing yoga for now? 

Mike Coming up to a year. 

Owain OK, and what is it like you do online or video? 

Mike Yeah, yeah. I follow a 30 minute video from a YouTube yoga instructor. And I happened to my girlfriend is is a is a quite an experienced practitioner,.  So when we do it together, she's super helpful. Yeah. 

Mike In terms of correcting my posture and really just reminding me to breathe, it's amazing how much I'm like I'm like, if you imagine just maybe like someone who's just not breathing and is going very red and looks very uncomfortable. That's me on the on the mat. I see I look like a tomato, you know, like I just forget and I'm going red and red, red, red and red and red. Yeah. 

Owain That's really funny because you're an athlete right. I mean you play tennis, you go swimming you're the most inflexible athlete I've ever met. I remember I remember the times we've been stretching or something. And you be there trying to touch your toes. I could just see the discomfort as you reached down and like, oh, like an old camel. Yeah, your muscles are so tight. (Mike) Tense, tighht. Yeah. 

Owain So is it do you feel like you, you relaxing more with the yoga? Is it, is it, is it doing its magic? 

Mike It is. It is. And if it feels like. 

Mike They I wouldn't say I would say there's an awful long way to go, but then that sort of suggests that I'm worried about it, I think just every which I am a little bit, because I still can't touch my toes.  But I think to me, it's it's just.. It reminds me that just just being able to breathe and and just do things really simply is the spirit. 

Owain Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just... just for me.  I don't do yoga, but I do kind of I have a routine that I've kind of developed, has a few different things involved. But for me it's just about being aware of your own body and actually consciously being able to relax different parts of your body in movements, connecting it to your breathing and just feeling your whole body sort of relax. For me, it's brilliant. And I it's not enough for me and it's own just to kind of do yoga like exercises and and, you know, focus my mind and and concentrate on the breathing. I need to go out and do a run first to to warm myself up. And then I come in and I feel that energy and and I yeah, I do that to the movements and I feel so much better if I've gone, gone and done something really kind of high intensity before, before that, you know. (Mike) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And but I really enjoy kind of the peace of it where you literally you, you're just focussing on what you're doing. Nothing else. And a long time ago I learnt from a book somewhere about, about realisation, about breathing, how we spend most of our lives not realising we're doing it. But when you stop and you think about it is.....the most fundamental thing about our lives, because if if you stop doing it for a few minutes, you're dead, right? And yet we take it for granted now. Of course I do some breathing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

And we don't notice. Yeah. 

Most of the time, I think that's as good a place to put in a swear word as any. Yes. Yes, yes. Breathing is fucking important. I think I've moved on from that. 

So that's the explicit ticked on the... 

I love breathing and it's it's so simple. So easy. 

Yeah. It's free.