Feel Good, Look Good, Age Well: Habits for Healthy Aging

You're listening to the Restoring Human Movement podcast. Thanks for joining the movement, movement. I'm Sebastian Gonzales, show curator and head clinician at Performance Play Sports Care in Southern California. This show's for active people, those who refuse to let pain and injury get in the way of their life and how they want to live it. Trails and trips, fields and courts, whatever moves you. Each episode features rotating host, expert guest, and real clinical conversations that help you move better and trust your body again. Here we go. Today's going to be a special one. I'm going to be creating a book about things that I wish that I would have known a lot earlier in my life and how to improve my overall health, physical, mental, etc.

And so this is a dry run. I'll probably make a little pamphlet or a book about it later. And if I do, I'll put it in the link description for you guys. But first off, if you're first listening to this show, this show is all about helping those people who want to get back to an active lifestyle again. We've seen many people with different types of conditions, especially the lower body, the spine, sciatica, foot problems, knee ones, etc., who have been told, I think we think really bad information and defeating information about, oh, they're going to degenerate. Things are going to get worse. And lo and behold, they actually do get a lot better.

I can attest to that myself. I've had multiple injuries over the years. And at each one, you think, well, you know what? That's the end. It's not going to get any better or easier. And then I'm 30 and actually I'm 43 right now. And 30, I think, oh, am I getting old? You know, and so there's a lot of bad information out there, which is very defeating and makes you dependent on health care and the assistance of another. And there is a way to break through this. And I'll cover this at length in the entire podcast series. And I'm going, it's a multi-part one. You'll see one, two, three, four, et cetera.

I'm not sure how many it'll be. It'll be each of the chapters I'll probably create in this pamphlet here. So over the years, I've put in our intake forms at Performance Place, what is your goal, you know, to be big, buff, and strong, et cetera. And one of the ones is, excuse me, one of the ones is feel good, live good. I'm sorry, I'm now chipping up my words here. One of them is feel good, look good, and age well. And so a lot of people actually pick that because I think what a lot of us are feeling is what I felt with my injuries in my 30s and even the one that I sustained this year is I want to look good, but I actually want to feel good, like it's more important.

And then aging well is like I don't want to be old and decrepit, having blood pressure issues, diabetes, et cetera. So what are the things that are going to get me there? It's probably not just going to be physical activity. It's not going to be nutrition alone. There's a lot of factors with it. So I'll give an example of one of my good friends. He used to work out with me. And so he'd come into my work. He'd do the workout with me. And then I selfishly wanted to work out. He wanted to work out as well, but he had problems here and there. You know, he'd have a neck thing that pop up and a back one.

And since we're, I want to help, but also I want to work out. He says, you know, can you help me with this problem right now? I said, yeah, you know, let's take a look at it real quick. You know, 10, 15 minutes later. Okay. So how do you feel? I feel better. Great. Let's just continue to work out. Because selfishly, I want to work out. It's what I wanted to do. And he had sensed move and he fell into a little bit of mental disarray where he was worried about hurting himself. And he did have some aches and pains when he had moved away. And so he had said at one point, I'm a little concerned about what to do because you're not going to be here to help me.

And at that point, I realized the difference, at least from a mental and physical aspect of like what I'm able to do with my physical state and mental state with the surrounding injuries. And so I know I'm going to get some injuries here and there, but I'm not super concerned that it'll disable me. I'll become degenerating or I'll be damaging anything. Like obviously there's ones that you can't control like trauma and car accidents and et cetera, but there's things that you can do preventatively and also understanding how to self-manage is really important. So I realized at that point that the difference between him and me is not necessarily, I mean, there's physical state, which we're very different, but actually that I know that I'll get injured a little bit or I'll have aches and pains, but I'm not worried because I'll be able to self-manage.

He's worried that he won't be able to self-manage and he'll become, have a life of pain. And so at that point, my goal at our office changed to, I mean, obviously we help people with pain, but we really want to help them look good, feel good and age well, which is what a lot of them do want. And that takes decades of work and good habits and, and so on. And one of the fastest ways to not get there is to be dropping your good habits. So in his situation, like losing his physical fitness, feeling worried or depressed and, and stressed out about his body. And so these are all things that start to wear away at people.

And I'm sure you or other people, you know, have been succumbed by this. I'm 43. Not all the people that I grew up with are in good physical health anymore. Some of them have more problems than others. And some of them have, we consider are the quote, lucky ones with good genes. But also if you look back, they are a sum of their habits. They are, their habits have defined who they are physically, mentally, and whether they had those habits when they were first growing up or installed by their parents, or they had a moment along the way is debatable, but I'm hoping this, this series can be a moment to you to help you find the version of you that you want to be in 10, 20, 30, 40 years.

Now, the parts that I would break this up into, and I'll probably change it because this is again, very dry run is there's physical and mental. And then these parts also have a lot of subcategories. Physical, I realized a long time ago that exposure to movement is important. And this is as simple as you look around and see people walking around your neighborhood, like kind of how I do, doing, swinging their arms around, doing things like Tai Chi and trying to expose your body to circles. Other people do things that are more choreographed with this. They do yoga and Pilates and Tai Chi in a class and so on, and they're exposing their body to general low-loaded movements.

Nature has this already built into it. And if you start installing a good series of habits of exposing your body to movement overall, then a lot of people fare a lot better. I didn't do this for a lot of years. And there's, I think it's Tim Anderson on YouTube that says, move every joint every day. I think it was him. Don't quote me. And it's a great way to look at building good habits. Now, the next thing is elevated heart rate. I don't like to say cardio because it puts a negative connotation to some people. Personally, I don't love cardio. And I know that when I look at myself, because I'm not the perfect example of all the good habits, I don't like cardio at all.

I don't like going on treadmills. I don't like Stairmasters. I don't like steady state cardio, but I love going and catching baseballs. I can go to a baseball practice for three to four hours and have zero problems jogging, sprinting around, having elevated heart rate. And that's something sustainable and doable for me. All of these habits have to be sustainable. That is the key because you need to do them for decades. So I know something that's more sustainable to me is doing other versions of steady state cardio that I actually enjoy. So I correct that. That's elevated heart rate. So elevated heart rate is more of, again, like keeping your heart rate above the normal resting baseline.

There's been a lot of research over the years saying you need to do zone two, et cetera. I would say for most people, just steady doing some elevated heart rate is okay. I'll dive into this more as we get into that category as well. Now for a quick pause before we keep going. Hey, everybody. It's Sebastian. If what we've been describing in the show so far sounds very familiar and you've been dealing with some ache, pain or stiffness that keeps coming back no matter what you do and no matter what you try, we're offering a free discovery call today where we brainstorm with you what has been working for you, what hasn't been working.

And we also try to unravel what is a critical part of the puzzle that you've actually been missing that's keeping you from full recovery and getting back to full activity. The link's in the description. It only takes a few minutes to fill out the form. Okay, back to the show. The third part of subcategory of physical is going to be strength. Strength training is misunderstood by a lot of the public and unfortunately not at their own fault. There's been a lot of blending of strength with various different activities like strength. Let's just say for yoga or Pilates. Can you get strong doing them?

Yes, if you're just not really strong in the first place, but you don't have extra weight in yoga in floor Pilates. There's not extra weight. You can use gravity and change your orientation. But a lot of times there's not a lot of weight. And so the definition of strength is being able to move something heavy. And that does not happen when you're only using body weight. So you can get to a certain point if you were, let's just say if you're bedridden or you have been inactive for many years. Yeah, those things can help you, but they will not build a lot of strength. Most people need a good amount of strength for their activity and their age.

And we'll cover that in the chapter. But overall, as a society, I think we look at hard physical activities such as HIITS training and isometric holds and things of that nature as strength, and they're not. So if we actually do good strength training, a lot of times people look good, feel good, and actually age well too. The fourth part is targeted activity. And this is based upon your own individual needs. This is what we do here at Performance Place. We also suggest strength training and some of the other suggestions as well. But a lot of times people need rehabilitation. They need to break a movement pattern, change a muscle imbalance.

They need to activate a muscle or a tissue. They need to improve range of motion in a hip or a shoulder. And so these are targeted activities to try to get back to the best you can normal status. And it makes all the other things a little bit more attainable. Strength training for some people who have not used their targeted activities sometimes doesn't feel good. And why would you do it for decades if it doesn't feel good? So sometimes people need to do this type of thing, or at least in phases of their life. I do it once a week when I show up to a baseball game. But I don't really do it the rest of the week.

When I'm actually having some pain, yeah, I do it more often. But I certainly don't show up to the gym or show up to practice in a warm-up for three hours or 45 minutes at the gym and then do just a couple things. That is a little bit in excess, and we can break those things down more when we get into that chapter. Physical also comes down to nutrition, and that is food and water. These are the things that you're going to be putting in your body, but also things that you shouldn't be putting your body in excess or stimulants or stimulus. Like, I'm on my second cup of coffee this morning. Is 10 too much?

Probably. Are you allowed to have an alcoholic beverage periodically? Probably. Should you have 10 every weekend? Probably not. So there's things that you are putting in your body which are making it easier or harder for you to attain the goals that you need. There is an immune system aspect to the gut. I don't know if everybody knows that, but you should. So if you're getting sick a lot, gut health is a big part of it. Also, if you're trying to get stronger, get more lean muscle, your intake matters. Like, you need to actually have building blocks to build from. You need some protein with that.

If you're trying to lose weight, picking which types of food you eat is a really important part. Nutrition is a bigger part of weight loss than actually physical activity is. And the last part of physical is supplementation. And supplementation is not always needed, but it can be needed. I personally use some supplements, but I use the ones that I think that I need. I don't do try to do a bunch of things. And I certainly don't go after biohacking and all these different fancy things that you hear on all these different podcasts. Sorry, I noticed the podcast. But people can go in excess with this and go a little crazy.

But there are certain things that people respond to more than others. And my belief in there's a lot of things that have more safety than others, too. And we'll cover that in the chapter. The second part of the whole shebang is mental. Mental is a huge part. And I'll give you an example of this. One of my good friends, he recently had a blood pressure scare. He's about my age. And he noticed that his blood pressure was actually taken on almost two sequential days. He went one day, and it was just through the roof. And he had a big work project that was due that day. And so they said, oh, man, this is really high.

I think you should come back and get it checked again. He went the next day after the project was complete. It was significantly less. No other lifestyle changes, no dietary changes, no medications. It was simply levels of stress. So I'm not saying stress is the only part, but there's a lot of variables, mental, that can actually contribute to how your body is physically doing. Community is a big part of it, too. I've experienced this recently. I sustained a hamstring injury, and I've been out of play, baseball play, for, I would say this is probably going on about three months or so right now, the recording of this podcast.

And not to say I haven't been showing up, but I showed up this last weekend, and I took some at-bats, and luckily they were willing to have me because I didn't really feel comfortable running just yet. I didn't play the field. So I'm taking up a batting order spot, which it's very, very nice of them to give that to me because there's only so many at-bats in a game. And it's not always fair to have someone playing the field and who isn't batting, and we did have that happen. But I felt so much better actually just being at the game the whole time, talking to people, catching up with people, because this is my community.

I've been playing with a lot of these guys for a decade. And as I told my, I call her my girlfriend, wife, because we're not really married, but we've been together a long time. She, I said, I need to do something for myself. I need to get back into my activity. We've been doing so many other things that have not been really helping me mentally. There's a lot more stressors that we have in our life this year, and I need to do something for me. And for some people, that's running or running with their friends. For some people, that's a group gym. For me, it's baseball. And so having the community is really important.

And I've even had friends who have gone out of the state, and they've lived in a state which they believe it's just going to make them happier. And they realized when they left, they don't have any friends there. And so that doesn't make them happy either. So it's really stressful, and their health has taken a little bit of a turn. So community is a big part. We'll cover that in the chapter. Then there's spiritual. Spiritual can take in many forms. A lot of people do feel better after they go to their place of worship, whether it be a church or a destination. And everybody has different outlooks on this, but there's a big part of community goes along with this a lot of times, which is an important variable.

But being spiritually fulfilled can help out with stress management. It can help out with many different parts of life and should not be overlooked. Stress management, I covered earlier in regards to my friends, but there's going to always be stressors in your life. And running away from stress is not going to solve any problems. But being able to manage stress and being more robust can really, really help. And so this can take many different forms. But the more robust you can make yourself, the more you can throw it yourself, too. And the last part is going to be financial. Financial can obviously create a lot of stress for people.

It can be a forethought for them, for a lot of people stressing them out, but also like taking a lot of their mental space. So I've been on the venture over the last few years to learn more about financial independence, what they call FI on a lot of the podcasts. I think it's very enlightening. It's very empowering to see that there are things that you can do and actually have a plan of attack for your future. Obviously, it's easier when you're in your younger years, but it's also kind of harder in certain ways. So planning your financial success, I think, is really important and realizing that it's not just saving things, but it's also decreasing the amount of expenses that you have.

So all these things combined, the physical and mental part, are a big part of how you're going to fare over the next 10 to 40 to 50 years. Managing things that actually are in your control, I think, is going to be an important thing. And I know that my girlfriend and wife, she has a good saying. She says that we should probably focus on the things that are in our control and manageable. And I always call it a productive worrying. So only really worry if there's something you can do about it. If there's nothing you can do about it, just let it go. But for all the things that we may end up worrying about, like microplastics, let's just say, for example, is there something that you can do in your household or in your own personal space that can minimize that for you?

Possibly water filters, etc. Like there's things that you could do. Now, is there anything you can do about smog in your area? Possibly you can put air filters in your house. But when you go outside, it's not really in your control. But it is in your control to move if you want to. So ideally what we want in the long term is good habits that are sustainable, but also making sure that we're spending our mental space and attention on things that are in our control. Ideally, over the next decades, you will age well, look good, and feel good. And you'll look back thinking, I'm glad I made those easy changes.

I know this was a different type of podcast today, but I hope that you guys understand that this does blend in with all of our things like sciatica and low back pain and knee conditions and so on. It's just a different spin at it. Over the years, we've had a lot of people come in again because they're in pain. We have telehealth sessions that we see people in pain and they wonder, well, how long will it take to get out of pain? Really not that long, but really the game plan here, if they're into it, if you're into it, is to make a sustainable, healthy being. We need to leave you better than what we found you.

And reducing pain temporarily, because all pain management is fairly temporary, unless you find the root cause and change the person's habits, it will come back. And it will come back sooner than it will if you change some of the habits. So ideally, we want to make people into versions of ourself. I know it sounds funny, but not that we're the apex of health, but I think we have learned things over the years here at Performance Place that can be of service to you guys and help you live a healthier lifestyle. So subscribe to the podcast to get the other ones to come. I'll do my best to organize them ahead of time versus just babbling and rambling.

And then when it does come out, we'll put a book link out. If anything in today's episode resonated with you, visit the link in your podcast player. There you'll find any free resource that we mentioned in the show, any guest links, and a link for a free discovery call with us. We're licensed to work with our outdoor active people via telehealth across many states in the U.S. at this point. In fact, we cover almost half of the population in the U.S., and we add more states every year. Thanks for listening. Subscribe to the show, and we'll see you in the next one.