Rob
Hello this is the peddle My way podcast. I’m Rob and I’m here with Mukund. How you doing Mukund?

Mukund
Hey, Rob, how are you?

Rob
Very well. Thank you. Very well. Let’s jump into what we were talking on the on the last part, we were going to talk about muscle injuries and some of the. Stresses and strains we put on our bodies by working out. I want to. Talk first about strength training in particular, because I know for a lot of people when they’re lifting weights when they’re working out with heavy equipment, they are worried mostly about injuring their back, injuring their leg muscles, putting too much stresses and strains on their body. You. You work out with a lot of heavy, heavy equipment, heavy weights, heavy sandbags. What do you do to prepare your body and how do you protect yourself, and what examples can you give of mistakes that you’ve made when you’ve been working out with heavy equipment?

Mukund
Yeah, great question, Rob, because a lot of people don’t realize there are limitations while. Working out, especially while lifting weights so I have been through that numerous injuries, pulled muscles, sprained ankles and I’m currently nursing my shoulder back to health. So to answer your question, how do I prepare myself right? The first thing is to warm up the specific. Body part that you’re trying to workout for. Example, if you are trying. To do leg workout. The majority of the legal cards involves squats, squatting, so that places a high amount of stress on the quads, the hamstrings, the knees and the ankles, and the secondary muscles in terms of the lower back and the glutes. Right. So before you start. Lifting weights, or rather, before I start lifting weights, I do warm up on a few. Spots, for example. A few leg stretches, lunges and bandit. Squats where you put the band across your knee that helps you and maintain the posture of your lower back and the knees so that you know it’s it’s pointed straight above your toes. Kind of a position and also.

Rob
Right.

Mukund
Warm up till you are comfortable enough to lift weights and also after warm up you don’t go for your highest. You slowly start warming up with the lower weights till you are kind of reaching your maximum. For the day, for example.

Rob
Do you have like particular increments you use like in terms of like, do you go by kilos or pounds? Like how do you use it in terms of what weight limits you you know to go to?

Mukund
Yeah, sure. So I mean, I know myself, my limitations and what I cannot lift, right, I need to. I think that’s kind of critical to for people to know what their limit is. Obviously, if it’s your first time doing it, you would be building up to it. You would not be listening 300 pound bar or a £300 sandbag on your first go. You kind of. Build up to it. So my CO2 is my smallest sandbags and dumbbells, you know, just to you know, I I I do squats with them, you know, like 10 reps for example, a couple of sets with 10 reps and then I move to like my 100 pound sandbag and I do like fire wraps, you know, two or two sets of five reps. Each and then I add on more weights. When I go into my working set, working set is what your. You’ll be working with that day, for example, if you want to say your maximum squat weight, for example, right, you will work up to it that weight you will test yourself at that weight. If you’re able to do it, you will go up and increments to test your maximum. If you have never done your maximum squats. If you can do, for example, if you can do 100 pounds, say 5 reps or 100 pounds pretty easily. That is not your maximum right? You can push yourself more. If you can do 100 pounds, say 2 reps, you are reaching a maximum. And you cannot do more than 100 pounds, 100 pounds. You’re stressing yourself out. That’s your maximum and giving you.

Rob
What what signs are we talking about? When you feel that stress is in straight, is there like a particular sign that people have to watch out for when they know they’re pushing themselves too much?

Mukund
So from an entry point of view the right. Posture is key. You don’t want to lift. Heavyweights with the wrong posture we are back is the first one to go out because back is crucial for any and all forms. Of workout, especially for squats and deadlifts. For Quark, since you put a huge amount of pressure on the back because on the upward movement you engage the glutes a lot more, which draws a lot of strength from the lower back and the quads. Your lower back might be injured if you go very heavy and also while in the gym if you’re doing a barbell with a squat with a barbell. People tend to bend their backs just to push the weight up. When you’re standing up.

Rob
Right.

Mukund
So you know, so. Right form is key. You can always go heavy if you. Practice with the right form, because that’s going to build your foundation much stronger than just lifting for the sake of lifting. With bad form, you cannot. You won’t be able to replicate that weight. You know, for long periods of time in a bad form, you’ll.

Rob
Injure yourself, right? You won’t be able to do it consistently if you if you don’t have the right format to begin with, it will just be once you might be able to lift a heavy thing and then the next week you try to do. It and you may injure yourself because your form is incorrect to begin with.

Mukund
So I always look for the form. I might not be, you know. For example, I might be tired that day for, for, for whatever reason I might not hit my maximum weight. I’m fine with it. I’m not going. I’m not going for Olympic level competition here. I’m fine with it. I’d rather come back the next day and try once again, but I’d rather make. Right. Form I would rather have the right form and lift whatever weight I’m lifting because that’s going to help me get stronger in the long. Run right so.

Rob
Right, right. Like, I think people often, especially when when when we’re looking at weights and we we think like oh, I can probably lift. Like this this. This heavy weight I can go from whatever it is 50. To 100. And £50 and you don’t think about? If you think £50 is easy and then you don’t, you don’t think about how 150 pounds is 3 times as much weight as that and. The scaling of it going from small increments, 55 pounds, £60.65 pounds, 70 pounds, yeah. That process, in and of itself helps build those small muscles. Like you said, in the lower back where you’re going to put a lot of stresses and strains on your body, especially with something like sandbags, right? So sandbags, obviously. They move around more than they than other weights they put. You have to balance them in the right way and that goes back to what we were talking about with form in terms of how you lift the bag and how you keep it steady while you’re while it’s in the air. Because obviously those those small shifts with the the sand shifting within the bag can obviously put. Stresses and strains on the wrong. Part of the body, quite. Easily. You said you injured.

Mukund
Right.

Rob
Your shoulder at one point, what happened with your shoulder?

Mukund
Before I go on to that, so one other thing about starting slow incrementally increasing weights is. You are when you’re warming up, you’re trying to warm up your entire muscle, set the primary muscles and the secondary muscles. The secondary muscles come in to support the primary muscles, especially for heavier weights. If you overload the primary muscles from the get go, the secondary muscles, which is crucial for maintaining stability. Has to keep getting heavier. You need the sickly muscles help a lot. Those won’t be ready when you are at the at your heaviest, right at the heaviest load, right? So that’s also kind of critical, which a lot of people don’t realize. It’s not just the quads and the glutes, right? There are lots of hundreds of different secondary muscles around around your body that needs that works together. In concert with the primary muscles, so you need the entire that part of the body warmed up and ready for more to get more under pressure right under under stress. So I just wanted to add that one more point and the reason my shoulder injury was I’m right, I’m right-handed. So primarily what is it like 6070% of the work I do falls on my right side or at the my right hand my right leg as a result and and all those things. So I think I must have slept in the wrong angle in the bed, you know, and my posture also it has to be. Maybe I’m at the computer a long time with the, you know, with not an ideal shoulder position, you know, type my mouse. Everything is on the right side of the computer, so maybe I must have exerted a lot of stress on my right shoulder incrementally. I should have. I experienced discomfort. I didn’t go to the. Doctor immediately. You know, life life gets hold of you. You forget. You think it’s something simple. So I didn’t get attention, but I started. But I’m still doing like hand stands. I still pull up everything as normal, normal workouts. So I think over six months time the pain started. You know. Minutely, it started increasing in intensity. At one point I was like, you know, I can’t even lift. I couldn’t. Even do pull-ups.

Rob
OK.

Mukund
So at that point, I was like, I need to go. Go to the doctor. So. So I went to the physio. My physiotherapist, you know, physical. Physical what to do? I’m on, I’m on edit this out so. I went to him. He started working on this through sound therapy, through shock therapy. What? It looks like it looks like a small gun.

Rob
OK.

Mukund
It has like a fast moving metal cylinder inside so it keeps hitting it with with some frequency. So you really hear like a big like, you know repeated.

Rob
OK.

Mukund
Mission gun sound while the gun is on his shoulder, he slowly starts moving it around the shoulder where the pain is. The idea is for the sound wave generated by the moving cylinder to penetrate whatever he has. He calibrated it for into the muscles and that will increase blood flow to that region which will help when. Healing of tone, muscles or tissues and recommends inside.

RobRight.

Mukund
Right. So I mean it’s just more detail more than what you ask, but that’s what kind of I’m going through and I mean I’m back through almost 99%. My movement and my strength bearing on that shoulder now. So I think I’m almost back to normal.

Rob
The the sound waves have helped in the recovery.

Mukund
Yes, I started looking at it after he told me about it. So it looks like this. Is a newer. Therapy. Not a lot of people are aware of, which is kind of. I mean the the machine that he uses is from Germany. So I found relief. Personally he did that and plus a lot of manual intervention in terms of, you know, massaging that. Or doing you know? Stretching heat and cold therapy. You know those those types of stimulations as well. So those things really helped. So and and not only that, I mean to to take a question a little bit further. Even when I was lifting by not following proper form, I had pulled my back a couple of years ago and I felt it immediately. I knew I knew when it was, it was in the colder months. I was trying to do. Quick quick workout that includes rowing. Dead lift then push-ups like four or five rounds of, you know of each, like one of the authors trying to do. After the fact, I realized that I had not warmed up my back. As much as I should have, because rowing is. Also a very big. Has a very big impact on your back on your lower to mid back. And I also had stressed it out with additional dead lift and also push-ups, even though it’s an arm upper body movement, the stability part of it comes from the glutes all the way to your shoulders because your back has to be.

Rob
Right.

Mukund
Right. So thinking back, you know, I should have warmed up more, but I mean, I was out of Commission for a couple of weeks till my back was, you know back and till my back was back in action.

Rob
That that’s not bad actually, though, is a couple of weeks for a for a back injury cause a back injury, especially as we get older, can sort of. Even small stresses and strains on your back can really prevent you from doing a lot of even everyday things. Just walking around and and and.

Mukund
Right.

Rob
Sort of minor issue with your back can cause a lot of lifestyle problems for a lot of people, so that’s not too bad. A couple of weeks at least. Then you go. OK, I know what to do for next time. Now I know what causes this. I know that I should watch out for working out when it gets a. Little bit. Cooler and make sure that my back is yeah again using the right form.

Mukund
Right.

Rob
Protect your back muscles.

Mukund
Right, exactly. And. And that’s kind of so warm up is kind of one of the big. To DOS before any exercise, weightlifting or cardio, or even an everyday stretch right, a warm up is always good. I also do kind of. On non workout days you know we call it active rest days, at least in the CrossFit thing, where you don’t actually be a vegetable when you’re not working out, you’re actually trying to go for a walk or, you know, kind of do some low impact activities. Those days are more to address these. Injury bound areas give it a break and. Precautionary measures to make it help you during workout days, right, for example.

Rob
Yeah, that’s like creating the foundation for putting more stress on your body later. Like it’s sort of a recovery process, yeah.

Mukund
Exactly, exactly. So active workout factor leg there. For example, if you have a heavy squat day, the next day you know you take a break, you go for a walk, you go for a hike that will help your leg muscles, kind of the blood circulation back to the leg muscles to help it fix itself much faster the muscle growth. Nutrition into those muscles, at least from what I’ve read from what I have experienced personally, that actually has helped. Me a lot.

Rob
Except yeah, I mean, I think. A lot of the challenge is. Psychologically, you’re ready to do more quicker than your body is ready to do more, and you have to sort of especially. And that’s another thing we can get into, but. When the weather changes and the environment changes temperature change, you don’t always feel that impact on your body straight away. But when you’re working out, when it gets to freezing temperatures, as it does in the northeast and in. The states where you are. You have people that are working out in those kind of temperatures kind of have to consider what their body is going through at that time and also moderate their work out for that experience, right?

Mukund
Right. You’re right. Yes, yes, especially in the cold, cold weather, I personally felt that if I don’t have at least 1520 minute warm up, like warm up. I mean it’s like you. Know light rowing. Just for the body to heat up through. You don’t realize this, but even if you’re in a warm room, your body is not warm enough because the muscles need a higher temperature for it to be the best optimal to provide optimal performance, and that takes some time, especially in colder months. In warmer months, especially now in the summer you go for a quick run, quick walk within 510 minutes, you’re fine. Mostly, I’m not saying all the time. But cash should be taken, obviously you know to what we’re trying to work on, but in the winter it takes like twice or three times as long. Especially when you’re not working in inside the house or in a garage where it’s not usually heated up or. Something like that, right? Yeah.

Rob
But if you’re in the heat and humidity is is the most difficult thing for me, especially when if you’re running long distance and humidity comes into it, muscle fatigue, what happens quite quickly at least.

Mukund
And I have.

Rob
For me, when it’s gets to 35 Celsius, 40 Celsius of humidity, your muscles are not always ready to handle that kind of stress and strain in that kind of environment. And so you kind of have to. Moderate your exercise a little bit based on the temperature and the environment that you’re doing the.

Mukund
Workout in right 40 degrees, just like more close to 900 hundred plus.

Rob
Yeah, it’s probably about 90 Fahrenheit 95 Fahrenheit. Something like that.

Mukund
Yeah, that it’s pretty hot and humid, so let me see this you. Do a lot of. Running for soccer.

Rob
Yes, running is probably my the the exercise that I do the most around the week.

Mukund
Because it. It helps you improve the game. Of choice, right? Soccer. So other than you running. For to prepare for your soccer performance. What other injuries have you seen on the field?

Rob
Yeah. So soccer obviously the the main injuries we get are are, you know twisting and turning injuries. So the the worst injuries are the joint injuries like injuries to the ankle and the knee are probably the worst injuries to get in soccer because if you’re a soccer player who’s 1718 years old and you get a.

Mukund
Right, right. Yeah.

Rob
Let’s say you get a a cruciate. Ligament injury feet where you. Me that can put you out of playing for about a year or so while you recover. So because those ligaments, they’re pretty small parts of the knee, but they’re so crucial for turning on the ball and turning quickly that any small injury or any small strain to those, those ligaments. Can make it so that they are. I mean, they’re doing amazing things in terms of fixing ligaments now and surgeries and keyhole surgeries they can do on the knee and on the ankle for those joints, but. There’s still the recovery period is a long time because you need those. As I said the the the twisting and the turning in soccer is such a crucial part of the game that any sort of injury to uh to those ligaments and to the the joints themselves can have the most impact on on your ability to recover. I’m lucky in the sense that. They haven’t had any major injuries to my my knee ligaments, but the worst one I’ve had is probably ankle injuries and hamstring hamstring injuries. Hamstring. Obviously, when you’re doing any kind of long distance running, you’re going to put a lot of stresses and strains on your calf muscles on your hamstrings, and another thing I’ve noticed playing soccer in North America is we play outside right up until the snow starts. Probably like end of October. So it the ground gets pretty hot at that point and you can get. You have to be smart about the type of surface that you’re playing on. If you play. Obviously, if you play racket sports like tennis, you might feel this too. When you’re playing on play or you’re playing on a on harder surfaces. You may also get it an indoor sports like badminton and squash and indoor racquet sports, where if you’re and basketball, if you’re playing on those harder surfaces like you’re going to impact your joints a lot more. Than you are if you’re playing on grass or. Playing on a. A softer surface, so you know those kind of things. We have to think about. And in the winter, especially when the ground gets just a little bit frozen, you don’t even notice it straight away, but you feel you can feel it in your ankles and your knees and your shin, your shins, especially in soccer. I’ve had what’s called shin splints, which is, I don’t know, the the medical. The medical process for it, but basically it. It’s where you’ve put too much stress on your shin bone and you end up with the the part of the muscles around that bone swelling, because obviously you’ve jostled the that part of your body around on a harder surface. And it’s exceptionally painful when you’re even for weeks after you finish playing. It can still be. Quite painful. And then when you try to go. Again, it immediately your body recognizes that. I guess it must be the momentum or the pressure you’re putting on the same ball on the balls of your feet that travel up to your chin. So you must. Your body recognizes that, and immediately it. It obviously can be quite painful, and you’ve got to be. It’s something you got to be wary of if you’re playing those. Like I said, those running sports like soccer or tennis or any kind of thing, it’s not just the environment like we’ve always talked about, but also the surface. And yeah, as you’ve talked about, just the general preparation that you you make and and getting in tune with how you feel before you even start playing.

Mukund
So for to. To to add on to what you. Just said for. The knee injuries and ankle injuries. Do you do anything to strengthen? Those parts of the body.

Rob
Other than my long distance right long distance running is always is always good for building up joint muscles and and things like that it. Can help. It’s it like over over time it can be damaging to your knee depending on your warm ups. That keeping a steady pace and UM, making sure that you are warming down and warming up and then going on your long distance run can help. I’ve I’ve told, can help keep those sort of smaller. Sort of potentially weaker parts of the knee and the ankle that can be injured quite easily can keep those a little bit stronger, a little bit looser when you’re twisting and turning, so you’re not if if it’s if you go straight into a turn and you haven’t warmed that part up, that’s when a ligament can just go and then you know you’ve lost momentum in your knee and you can’t twist and turn it. And once that goes, you probably need surgery and all those kind of things.

Mukund
So do you do any specific drills? I mean you meaning like you as a team or?

Rob
Your team? No, we we just sort of. A lot of the drills involve. Just sort of stretching the the leg muscles and sort of like making sure the like I said, the muscles and the the hamstring and the calves are loose before you start playing you go for a bit of a jog beforehand. You you sort of like make sure that you’re nice and limber before you start. Going because. Like it’s any any kind of tightness in those muscles. But when you start playing can it will more than likely lead to injury especially as you get older. If you have any muscle tightness basically that’s muscle tightness for me at least is my body’s saying it’s probably not probably not ideal day to to go full tilt because you know that’s it puts you at a much higher. Expensive. Pulling a muscle, straining your muscle, just being out for another month or so, preventing you from playing again in the next few weeks. So yeah, in terms of particular exercises, I do not anything in particular. Like I said, it’s more just warming up those muscles and making sure that you’re aware. Of how you feel or how how things are when you first start playing and you know pulling back a little bit if you feel anything that’s out of out of whack and this doesn’t doesn’t feel right.

Mukund
It makes sense just going on a. Tangent for a bit. I’ve I never asked you this. Do you? Do you did have you? Seen the show, Ted Lasso do you like? You like it, OK.

Rob
Yeah. Yeah, we, we. I guess it was during COVID it came out. Right and uh, my wife and I started watching it probably two years ago, two or three years ago. We’re a bit behind on it, I think right now. But the problem the problem I have right now is this kind of thing. Someone will say, do you watch this show? And it’s like I did watch it, but I feel like it was like, so long ago. I know that. There’s too much to watch. First of all, I’ve probably watched like 15 billion other things and I love Ted Lasso. I love the idea behind it. It was a nice show. Everyone was nice to each other and I think we need more of that in our lives in general. Just be good to each other and have you know, some TV. That’s not reality TV, where it’s as good looking people. Walking around so I like the idea behind that last. So it’s just there’s so much to watch. I think I’ve watched like. So many different theories. I don’t even remember most of the stuff that happening anymore, but that’s true of anything my short. Term memory is. Also going so that’s not great.

Mukund
Yeah, I mean we I think it’s only three, three seasons we’ve watched it. I mean, I mean, since I watched, I won’t tell you, but the final season is kind of sad because.

Rob
OK.

Mukund
That’s the that’s the final season. Anyways, so you also talked about tightened muscles. One thing I forgot to mention was my other passion is cycling. Back is the most crucial muscle group part of the body for cycling. Just because that’s the one that provides you support. Through the throughout the ride. Back end core. And upper body strength and lower body strength obviously so. But the back ties them all together. I’ve had, I’ve experienced a lower leg pain and knee pain just because I have not warmed up. Well enough before I arrive. So I come back home after ride. During the ride I start getting pain in my back, my lower back the the reason being when you pedal your leg and your back has to be in the most subtle form possible just because of the repetition motion and the tendency for the muscles to kind of stop working if something goes wrong. But when? You get the tightness. You pull a muscle. Vacillation cycling because of the repetition of the patient. So that’s also crucial, because what I’ve learned from lifting weights is proper warm out it warm up irrespective of the activity you’re trying to do. Right, similar to what you’re trying to do for soccer, which you, you know, running is what you do in the sport and also to prepare for the sport. For cycling since, because the complicated you are in an unnatural position over the bars, right? The peddling, it’s very technical from a sports point of view from how you play the sport point of view. So you need to prep the body for that unnatural position for you to enjoy the sport. Right. So for if somebody who has not done cycling before, they always tell you to kind of stretch before you get on the bike because yeah, they think it’s simple enough to pedal it, which is which it’s which is true. But to get the most out of it, you need to be at the most efficient position and. All those things, right?

Rob
Right. And when you say get the most from it, do you mean like in terms of? Speed in terms of like, OK.

Mukund
Yes. So if you’re on a road bike, I try to go as fast as possible. You know, that’s enjoyment out of it. You don’t want to be a slow poke for lack of a better word on the road. You you won’t get fun out of it, right? Right. So, and even when you’re mountain biking, you want to hit the trails without getting off the bike, pushing a bike up hill is a pain, right? So you want to go uphill and especially mountain biking when you are over when you’re riding over roots, rocks, loose dirt, bike slipping all over the place. Your body has to be in a state where it can withstand these impacts on you on the bike at the same time. Have fun. You know, rolling down a hill and and going back up without you will be forced to get down because you know of other technicalities. You know that you can’t really physically overcome, but in general you should be able to go up and down the hills without much difficulty. It takes practice for a mountain bike castle, but you know your body in the right shape goes. A long way. And you did. Having fun out of this?

Rob
Right. Yeah, it was there something that you did? When you were alert like so, obviously you you know you learn to ride, you’re learning to, to go at that speed on a mountain bike. Was there something that you did when when you were learning mountain bike riding? To travel effectively over those different surfaces? Was it something where you sort of adapted overtime or was it? Something that you practiced?

Mukund
So I mean I I can’t get cycling out of me because I mean it’s I I think it’s it’s part of my me as of. Now so. By cycling repeatedly and you know so frequently, I started building lower body strength by practice. Right? I didn’t like weights before. I I think I mentioned you. I never lifted weights till after college, but I started cycling throughout College in terms of you know. On my free time and just hitting the trails next to me, I just started building the lower body strength from it. I was much younger like 20 years ago so I was I was much younger then. So I mean it just added on to it. And then I did feel some pain in terms of not stretching. I didn’t know about it. I mean I was a novice, you know, no professional guidance or or anything. So I and my body kind of you know caught up with it. I mean it nothing happened. It healed by itself. I was out the next day. You know nothing really happened, but once I started lifting weights. So when I connected the specific training, I need to do and that has helped me a lot in cycling. What? What I went through might not be the same. What my son might be going through or my neighbor. Or anybody else. It’s all specific to what you want to do and how you want to do it, but I mean, like you, if you want to get good at something, you need to like running, right? And if you want to get good at cycling, you need to like cycling and you know you need to keep doing it for it to understand the nuances of it. What I just mentioned to you in terms of being able to go up and down the hill is not. It’s that’s not cycling in terms of you know what you need to learn. It’s much more nuanced than that in terms of breaking, you know, the speed. The changing gears, you know, those only come with practice. I’m saying from an overall fitness point of view, cardio is the most important thing I have been out of breath just because I have because I’ve been lazy and not done enough of cardio and I didn’t have fun. I was out of breath. I was like ****. You know what? I need to improve cardio, right? It happens. It happens to everybody. But for you to be able to do it, you certainly be in a decent shape, or at least try to be in a decent shape to get the fun out of it. I’m I’m looking at it from a fun point of view and what helped me so right.

Rob
100% No, you’re absolutely right. Like if if you’re not enjoying it, like if you’re not, you’re not going to motivate yourself to do it the next time you’re not going to, you know, like we’re talk. About it gets cold where we are like it’s to motivate yourself to go and the cold to play soccer, to go on your bike, you have to on some level, enjoy what you’re doing and enjoy that feeling of being on your bike or playing soccer, playing a sport, running whatever it is. For me, a lot of it is not only enjoying the. Experience of the sport, but also the challenge of what I’m trying to achieve, whether it’s a 5K, a 10K, whatever I’m doing at that time, it’s also the feeling of oh, look. You know whether it was 510 years ago, I might not been able. To run 2. 2K and then all of a sudden you can run 5K and these kind of things. I know there’s the couch to 5K program now where people get together and you know, they’re probably just guys that or or girls that you know. Haven’t worked out before. You know they. Might have a. Desk job when you know and they get to their 30s and they’re like holy ****, like I’m. I’m not feeling great. I’m in my 30s now, headed to my 40s. I need to figure out what my body can. Do and you slowly realise? Oh, I enjoy this activity that I never I saw it. I saw people doing it. I never realized this was a possible thing for me. It just was a foreign thing. And so are other people doing it. So yeah, it’s it’s interesting how. Whether our brains get Stockholm syndrome, we just tell our brains we enjoy it and then overtime it adapts and says you enjoy this now or whether we actually enjoy it because the adrenaline or the so the, you know, the the feelings that we’re getting from the chemicals, the dopamine in our body from an achievement, whatever it is, there is something beneficial.

Mukund
Right.

Rob
Overall for that.

Mukund
Isn’t there right here? Definitely, as long as you. Even in the last episode, when we talked about, you know, being fit enough to do what you want to do with less injuries, realizing. Picking up a bicycle is is appropriate for all ages. There’s no age limit to that, so for most of the sports right? So as long as you’re able to do it with as less side effects. As possible other than happiness. So right is what I’m trying to kind of help people with. You know people will come to me, be like they’ll help. They’ll come to me to help them choose bike right to help them with, you know, Michael, I’m not. Able to, you know, stretch. I have some back pains. You know. How do you handle it? Do you? Have you felt back pain kind of thing? And and I tell them what I essentially tell you, you know, stretch every day, you know, first day you might not be able to bend over and. Touch your toes. Maybe you’re only going to up to touch your knees. Up your ankles, right? But you need to keep doing it. In your comfortable. In the pace that you’re comfortable with for you to achieve your goal right, and and that goes a long way for any activity, you need to start doing it for you to start. Doing it. And only when you started fully know how much you can push your push yourself without injuries.

Rob
And that’s that’s, that’s the key thing is, is the individual right like it’s, you know, I I might not enjoy mountain biking like like you do and you might not enjoy playing soccer. Like I do. But you get something from your activity. I get something from soccer and you can we can sort of like we understand that feeling of that, that adrenaline thing of we’re doing this thing our. Brains are into it, and then we we get the the physical benefit from it later. I think a lot of the time until people like hear. People, guys, just regular guys like us that have just started working out and just just enjoy like, physical exercise. People don’t really know. That this kind of thing is possible for them. They don’t think of it like ohh I’m. I’m an active guy or an active woman. I they don’t think of themselves like that. They think of themselves differently. And I think it’s interesting that the more people that can. Hear about that and hear about. Overcoming obstacles, whether it’s injury or it’s like trepidation about getting into the thing to begin with, right. The better it will be for for the long run or. For for people in general.

Mukund
Of course, yeah, definitely. Uh one thing. For injuries and those things, right? What what? We started the topic with. For injury prevention and after the onset of injury. I do not. I’m not a fan of chemicals and medicines as much as possible. I take like tanol or ibuprofen for headaches and those types of common ailments. I’m not a fan of long term.

Rob
OK.

Mukund
Medical intervention for pain and those types of things. I don’t do it. The maximum I’ve gone is maybe 2 days of a leave, which is another painkiller for muscle strain or those types of things. The reason I’m. Mentioning it is people some people depend on that for them to push themselves and prone to injuries, right without them realize. At the back of my mind, they’re like, well, if I if I pull something, I’m just going. To take some medicine. Right, right. I don’t think that’s a safe way to do it because you are dependent on something else whose efficacy will come down overtime. You know, if you take one pill today, for example, if you keep doing it every you know every day or every couple of days, you might need like you know, 5 pills at the end of the end of. Workload years for to get the same same benefit of it, right? Again, I don’t know how much this is relevant to this, but I’ve seen people at my gym and everybody talk about taking painkillers as an. Solution for any onset of pain that. And they forced themselves to lift heavier with this as a safeguard, right? I don’t know if that if that makes sense. You know, I don’t know if you have come across this.

Rob
Yeah. My concern with that is.

Mukund
In soccer as well, but that’s something I’ve seen in.

Rob
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, 100% my concern with any kind of taking any kind of pain relief and then trying to work out is that what what are you masking? What symptoms are you masking? What is your body trying to tell you that you are? You’re basically a lot of these, the pain relievers now they cut off the receptors to to to a lot of.

Mukund
Right.

Rob
Pain areas in your body and they say they send the signal to your brain that everything is fine. My concern is that your body is telling you you’re in pain for a reason, like you have an injury of some sort. You have a strain, you have a a pulled muscle and you need to recover. So the problem is taking these annual G6 or whatever you’re taking for pain relief. It’s not going to be beneficial long term because you are the the the symptoms themselves are trying to signal something to your body and. Yeah, maybe if you you need pain relief after you’ve worked out and you’re going to take a break from working out, maybe it’s beneficial then to, you know, to you gotta go to work or you’ve gotta take care of your family. That makes sense. But take take a pain relief medication and then try to work out while you’re on the pain relief medication. Me is not I’m I’m not medically qualified obviously. But I would say that I don’t do it for myself just because I I know that if my body is sending the signal that I’m in pain or. Of some sort of stress or strain on my body that I need to recover or need to rest for that period of time and do a different exercise. You can still work out. You might work out a different part of your body, but I wouldn’t take a pain relief.

Mukund
Right.

Rob
Medication just just to work out or just to do any? Kind of exercise.

Mukund
Yes, I mean, I’ve taken it. I’m not saying that, you know, I am against it. I’ve taken it. I’m just saying the dependence on it for you to push yourself more without without understanding.

Rob
Right.

Mukund
Why you’re doing it and how to improve it naturally, I’m just coming from that angle and I agree with what you’re saying. You might be missing something where your body is saying don’t do it, but you’re forcing yourself to do it, which might lead to more disastrous results down the line, right?

Rob
Yeah. And you can you can exacerbate an existing injury. You can, you know, a strain can become a torn muscle or something like that. And it just becomes, you know, you need more medication than to deal with the pain of that. So. It becomes. Worse, over time and and you know it’s just a dark road to go down when you’re trying to get into your best. Kind of shape. The the the topic obviously gets into. People really are motivated to play these sports, to go biking, to work out in their own way, and another topic that I thought about when we were discussing this is team sports versus individual sports. Like next week. I think it might be we’re probably running low on time today, but next week. I think it would be great to look at. What motivates you differently and it team sport versus an individual sport and then we can look at because a lot of the time injuries themselves are caught are caused from. I can’t let my team down so I have to maybe go go too hard. You go too. You go too quick. Go too fast for the. Wall and you know you cause yourself injury because of that internal dialogue that you have with yourself where you’re saying I’m going to let my team down if I don’t go for this ball, even though my hamstrings hurts, even though I’m in pain. So. Next week, I. Think maybe might. Be a good topic of discussion because I know I do mainly team sports, soccer and. And that kind of thing. And you do individual sports like weightlifting and biking. So yeah, I’d love to get into that next. Week if you if you’re into it.

Mukund
Of course. Of course, rob. Yeah, we can talk about that. I can share my experience at least. And I’ve worked in a group setting, but still an individual sport. And obviously cycling is a solo sport, even though it’s a team kind of a thing, as you see in Tour de France. And we can get into the details and you know our experiences are.

Rob
Fantastic. I’m looking forward to it. Man, it was great seeing you as always.

Mukund
Thanks, rob. Thanks so much and looking forward to the next conversation.

Rob
Sounds good. I’ll see you next. Week bye for now.