Welcome And Why Movement Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So you're thinking about running, but not sure how to take the first step? My name is Brian Patterson, and I'm here to help. Welcome to Brian's ROM pod. It's me, your host, Brian Patterson, here for you on the pod. Now I know this might sound a bit of a cliche, but I'm really excited about today's show. Today I'm interviewing someone who has taken it upon themselves to make movement a priority in one's life. She's the author of Move Well for Love Move Well for W for Life and is the host of her own podcast to Make Movement Better. It's none other than Wendy Wilton. Now, my wife Katie, it's a little bit backstory to this. My wife Katie is responsible for me reaching out to Wendy. As she was reading an article in The Guardian, which is a national newspaper over here in the UK. Now, what does this movement mean to us runners? As she says, and I quote, think of movement as like a language you once knew fluently and never had to guess, but that you haven't spoken fully in years. Well, I hope today you will give a different perspective on how well we can integrate that language between our training sessions. And I feel there are so many positives, so I just want to give a Brian's rom pod welcome to Wendy. I hope you like the audience in the background. Welcome, Wendy, and I'm really excited that you're um on the podcast. Thank you very much for coming

Early Experiences With Sport

SPEAKER_00 1:52

on. What I do usually with most of my guests is I usually find out as to what your experience of exercise was like at growing up at school. Were you a national athlete, natural athlete or were you very much into your books?

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Um I definitely wasn't what you would call a natural athlete. In fact, I would never call myself an athlete, even now. Um no, I I did enjoy um I I definitely enjoyed sort of playful movement, and but I really resisted the whole team sport thing. I really struggled to be a hockey player or um any other sort of team sports like that. I was much more in favour of things like badminton and I was on the squash team. I loved squash, um, but sort of definitely slightly more individual things. Um and I loved riding. I I rode horses and I absolutely loved that. I definitely think that was a real sign that I wanted to be outdoors more. Um, so I used to love spending time at the stables, I worked there originally. Um, but yeah, I wasn't, I didn't definitely really think about it from a sort of health perspective, let's say, until after uni. Um I met my husband at university at the end of my university, and he had always been a runner, he had always been really quite athletic, yeah, and um, and it rubbed off because I think these things always do, we're really affected by those around us. And so I would say then my twenties I became a a gym bunny.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Yeah, and I was doing, but I will always I favored classes and things that were sort of more dance, and um, I loved um body combat. I don't know if you remember that where you're sort of punching the air and getting your regression out. Um, but I've also always been a walker, I've always loved walking. Uh, we walked as a family, um, and walking has always been a constant thread.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

So uh do you uh have you always lived in the countryside and that kind of lends itself to you know walking and yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

I've always lived sort of on the edge of a town, yeah, near to countryside. So I've always kind of been able to get out into green spaces, and I still do. I'm very lucky. I live in Oxford now. Yeah. Um, and the part of it that I live in, I can literally cross the road, and within about five minutes, I'm into rolling fields, and that's essential for me for um my ability to sort of have that freedom for mental health purposes. Um, I j I just love it, and it's it's an ingredient in every day of my life now.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

So before we come to how you came to this kind of you know, realization about movement, um, so post

Falling In Love With Running

SPEAKER_00 4:40

uh university, you meeting your husband, that kind of thing. So I understand that you you did do some running, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 4:48

I did. I very much did. I got I would officially say that I got absolutely addicted.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Oh right, okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

I absolutely loved it. And for me, I've got three children, uh, three boys, they are 16 up to 21 now, nearly 21. Um, and when they were younger, and it was a more of a struggle to sort of fit in time around them, I loved the fact that if, you know, one was a nursery, one was in school, and so on, I could then have my stuff on ready and go for a run.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

And I loved the fact it was outdoors. Um, I was never great at it, you know. I didn't feel like it was the most seamless, amazing thing. There was always a push, but I quite liked the challenge as well.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Um yeah, I I just got really, really into it. Um, and so I started to then do competitions. I I did start with 5K Race to Life, as a lot of people do. Yeah. At Race for Life, sorry. And then I moved up to a local 10K called the Town and Gown in Oxford. Oh right. Um, which is really is fun. It's more like a steeple chase at the beginning, it's quite petrifying. You have to go near the back if you don't want to get pulled along. Yeah. Um, and then I started to set my sights on half marathon um and was training for that. Um, and I did uh the the uh the Milton Keynes half marathon in the back of my mind I was thinking full marathon, I wasn't sure.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

Alright, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Um, but it was about three months after the half marathon that

The Run That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_01 6:20

everything came to uh uh grinding hold stop.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Do you want me to tell you about that?

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yes, do you do you mind? Because I know um we'll we'll we'll come on to the book, but it kind of is the basis of is kind of the Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

I mean, it's the reason I'm stood here on a podcast talking about movement, quite frankly. I it wasn't the place I was in in my life before. Um so um I had had it's fair to say lots of signals from my body where I had had to continually go um to physio and get sort of pulled prodded pote and sent off with a few exercises, but I had to keep going back. Um, and that now looking back was a really distinct signal that things weren't being solved by what was happening, what had the treatment I was getting. Um uh but there was nothing massive, it was just that they were signals and I wasn't listening. Um, and then all of a sudden I went out for a lovely 10K just training run around Oxford after drop-off one day. Um, and I it was December, so it was cold. I remember stretching well before and afterwards, sat in the car for 10 minutes afterwards, but still came home and had a stretch. But that night I woke up and I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't walk to the toilet. I was in huge amounts of pain down my back, down my legs, um, and roll the film forward. Um I didn't get a lot of support. I was told by the doctor that because I had walked in, this was a couple of weeks later out of sheer agony, uh, because I'd walked in and I was constant I wouldn't get triage, so I just got some given some strong painkillers, which I was trying to take, and then I'm told to to go away.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

And that turned into four years of chronic pain. So I'm afraid that was my last ever 10k run.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Yeah. Going back on the sort of the physio, because I know I mean I've done been I I've had a glutus medius problem, and uh we were on holiday in Italy, and you know, my wife and my kids were sort of like walking sort of like ten yards ahead, and then I was sort of hobbling along like some kind of old man. Um and it was just the thing of going to um a physio and then given various exercises. Do you think kind of in retrospect that could have helped at the beginning? Or you know, did you think that you know, maybe did you not prior to when I got injured? Yeah, prior to you when you got injured, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Well, uh oh, you mean once I once I was injured? I mean, I I could hardly move.

Why Treating One Symptom Fails

SPEAKER_01 9:05

I I went I went to I I had to go and find my own personal, I had to pay personally a lot to go and find people um that might be able to help me, but um they I had no diagnosis, so it was very difficult to treat me. Um I eventually found someone that I really trusted um who looked at my movement holistically. They didn't they knew I had back and hip lower back and hip pain, um, but they were looking at how I moved, how I was aligned, movement patterns as a whole.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

And that is what I think is crucial because we will often go to a physio, and there's some brilliant physios out there, yeah, with the presenting symptom. Say, you know, I have a you know a deep pain here. Um, how can I solve that pain? But it's really important to delve as deep as we can to find out whether that pain is a symptom of a systemic structural misalignment.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

It's quite different to then treating the thing.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Um, and I think always when we go to someone, they should look at the whole of us, the our whole history and the way we are presenting um as a whole, and look at our general movement patterns as well as how that part is perhaps um not doing what it should.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

Yeah, because the human body is a very complex m machine.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

It's also it's a chain. It's a it nothing works in isolation.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Um, and often because of the way that we spend our lives, things become dysfunctional because they are not used um as optimally as they could be, as often as they could be. And we'll go on to talk about that because that's kind of my philosophy as a whole.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

So was it a case of let's say you've gone to these various specialists um and then gradually, was it gradually that you started to get feel better? But did that sort of pique the interest and thinking, well, um maybe it's uh it's a subject area that I I would have liked to sort of like look look into a bit further because maybe I I wasn't initially getting the support that I would craved?

Mindset Shifts That Aid Recovery

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Um I would love to have thought that it it felt like I was getting help and I got better. It didn't feel like that at all. The first two years I felt like I was often pedaling backwards, quite frankly. Oh, right. And obviously, the uh improvement in pain is never a linear thing, it's kind of a few, you know, improvement, and then we decline a little, improvement we decline, but it's a an upward trajectory overall when you look back, but sometimes it's not. And I became quite disillusioned with the help that I was getting about a year and a half in. And quite frankly, pain is not also just physical, it's very much mental. And the frustration and anger I was feeling towards my body, the comparison I held with the old me that was had expectations of potentially doing a marathon and certainly being very agile, 80, 90, 100-year-old was didn't feel possible. Yeah. And that created a lot more issues. And it wasn't until I started to realize that unless I surrendered some of that emotion, I wasn't going to get better. And when I went to that place of becoming a little bit more compassionate towards myself, um, and being kinder to myself and looking at what I could do rather than what I couldn't, because I still could do a lot. I just had to, I felt like I had to avoid a lot of things to avoid flare-ups. Um, and when I got myself out of continually protecting my movement based on the fear of pain, when I started to realize how impactful though that sort of mindset part of movement is, then I started to truly get that upward trajectory.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

But so it was a mindset, it was a mindset thing.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

That was that was definitely a big shifting moment, about halfway through, I would say. But that came part and parcel to answer your question, yeah, with the fact that I started to find people online who were who made me understand the human body and the way it moves differently. And that then created this thirst for knowledge because I realized that this was something I had to fix for myself. And I never use, I try to never use the word fix externally because no one can fix you apart from yourself, sadly. But it's the truth, and we need to get there ourselves. And I think by gaining as much knowledge, I took a massive deep dive.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Um, then I was sort of becoming the awareness light bulb hugely switched on. And then it was just a case of um, I need to know more and more and more about how the human body functions, but also why we get into dysfunction. And those were the things that made the biggest changes for me.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

I mean, the phrase every cloud um comes to mind, but also I mean, just going on that, is that do you think that when people get injured, maybe not in such a chronic way as yourself, that you feel that the way uh the the first step maybe is that kind of mindset to to to um even if it is a regular injury, um, it is it it does start from from you know mentally in terms of you or how you approach that?

SPEAKER_01 15:18

I think it's both. I mean, I uh it I don't think one necessarily comes before the other. And I think that to deny that the way that we see our movement, how we feel about our movement, and also the experiences we've been through affect how we move, um, means that we are missing a big jigsaw piece. Um and when that eventually slots in, it's like the body can sort of finally let go and relax a little. And one of the pivotal moments um for me, after I was, I was definitely on the sort of climb out,

When Scans Look Fine But Pain Remains

SPEAKER_01 15:57

as it were. But I finally, after three years, was allowed to have a scan. Um, having done a year and a half of um NHS physio to kind of pass the test to say, okay, yeah, she's still in pain, even though she's done all of this kind of thing. So then I got given the scan. And this sports consultant said to me, Great news. Um, there's nothing structurally a problem, you can go out and run again. And I sort of was really relieved because, of course, great, nothing, you know, nothing's breaking, tearing, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Yeah.

unknown 16:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

And then this huge crash of, but I am in so much pain, and no one can explain why I am still in pain. Now it was definitely less than it was before. But I was very frustrated by not being seen. And I think when you have chronic pain, particularly, it's very private, it's very depressing. Yeah. Uh, you can be, it can really lower your mood. And no one can tell that you are suffering like that. Um, just like any form of mental health, but it's a different one. And so to be told, kind of, yeah, off you go and run. I knew I couldn't go and run. I knew that that would not be good for me because I'd be right back to square one. And I was very fearful of this becoming a forever thing. Um, but it was an interesting point where I that's when I really realized this really just isn't about my body. This there's a lot more going on here. And chronic pain is being stuck in a pain cycle, and pain is in our mind, not as in we make it up, but it's created by the brain and the nervous system. And some people can get stuck in loops, and I I certainly was. Um, and some of that loop was created by um sort of the pressures that I was putting on myself, um, in especially in terms of, you know, achieving things, setting myself these goals that were higher and higher, the bars pushed up and up and up. And was that really right for me, good for me? I don't know. I was just kind of following the crowd. Um, and now I know that it's really important not to, it's really important to listen to your body and to know what it feels good and what you enjoy and respond when things don't.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

So when you were getting the pain, was it at certain times of day, or was it certain movements, or even it it it was it just constant?

SPEAKER_01 18:28

It was not constant, it was underlying and it was random.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Certain things I thought would create a twinge, and so therefore I got into my head that a certain pattern of movement might do that. And certainly for me, because it was very hip and back related, sort of the the side-to-side erratic type movement I really feared. But I went through stints where I couldn't sit in a chair for very long unless I had a wedge.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Because any um posterior tilt in my pelvis um for too long would be mean I would seizon be in quite quite a lot of pain. Um, but then you know, instability. So the fear, for example, if I was to step onto something that was moving, I there's just no way I would even approach it at that point because I knew that my hips would just flare up immediately. Um, crossing a style out on a walk, I would be gripping and holding it to lift my leg over. And then the descent, I would get my I would call to my husband if he'd forgotten and get him to come back to hold me to get down. Now I jump off styles all the time.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

To celebrate the fact that I can. But who knows?

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Not leap over the line.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

No, I no, definitely not. I have sort of attempted, but it it wouldn't be very pretty. No. I started to I often climb over gates rather than going through them and so in the pursuit of moving variety. Um and yeah, celebration of what I can do because there was so much that I felt I couldn't. But half of that is the fear of doing the thing and what might happen. And half of it is physical, because there'd be moments where I would do something I would expect would create a trigger, a flare, and it wouldn't. So it was all very confusing. The thing with chronic pain, and the reason that it it perpetuates is because your brain constantly checks in with your pain. So every so often, randomly from nowhere, a bit like a thought just popping into your head that you didn't expect, a a little sense check will pop in and it'll be sort of like how's how is it how's it now? How is it? What score is it? Yeah, what level is it? All the time. And so it drags you back to focusing on the negative. And breaking that loop is really tough.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

It's also trying to break it that helps that circuit break can really help to try and be kinder to yourself and try to notice less, but it's a difficult thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

But isn't do you think that's sort of coupled with we will kind of get past this section in a minute, but the um it's all about pain. Yeah, stay with us. Is that kind of coupled with confidence, you know, self-confidence? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Totally. And the fact that you're beating yourself up.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

You can't, and you know, the the the wonderful brain wiring that loves us to focus on keeping us safe, supposedly keeping us safe, and yet it keeps us smaller.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Right. Okay. Four years, let's jump ahead. Um, four years, and now you're obviously, as I said, it's picked an interest. You're really delving into this, looking um online. After four years, you're a lot better, I take it now. And so what really I mean, I suppose a silly question is what really s made You think, well, I want to maybe think about writing a book or really make this maybe a business about movement.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Literally none of that came till later and recently. Really?

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Yeah, initially it was just about me searching for a way I could keep moving because I love moving. And I'd always been an exerciser.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

So how could I do this and not get back into problems? So running was then out for me. I decided that until I really felt very structurally strong in my body, I wasn't going to add that repetitive load through my body. And I can run. But I wouldn't run kilometers and kilometers and kilometers of choice at the moment. And who knows whether I will again in the future.

Natural Movement In A Modern World

SPEAKER_01 22:58

But when I was um researching, what I was looking at was okay, so I've ticked all the exercise boxes. I exercise frequently. I did a variety of different types of exercise through my week. And I was trying to work out what on earth was I doing wrong then? What was wrong with me? If I look back, what was I going to change? And what I found online was this modality, if you'd like to call it that way, but it's really not, um, called natural movement, where suddenly I started realizing how divorced our movement throughout the day has become from the way that our bodies were uh on this planet for most of our existence. And we have hardly changed in the last few seconds of our time on this planet. If you put it into a year, the last few seconds uh, you know, count for the last, you know, um 30,000 years or whatever. That's what I mean in that context of a few seconds. But modernization of the world has hugely taken movement from us. And that's why we exercise, because we say, okay, because we're not getting the inputs that we used to get, then now we have to add in blocks of exercise. That absolutely makes sense for heart health, brain health, for bone health, for everything to keep us going. And running is fantastic for that.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Agreed, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

The problem comes when we compare back to how we used our bodies, when we look at exercise and sports and so on, they're incredibly specialized. And when I I like to think to talk about the hips quite a lot because it's relevant to me, but I think people understand it. When we walk, our hips are hip width and we are moving in a linear forward-moving pattern. When we run, we extend slightly more. We're still in the same pattern. Our legs are still hip width. When we sit on a seat, our legs are hip width. When we drive a car, you can see where I'm going. The amount of time spent in the day, when we are in one or slight variation of one body shape is huge as a result of this modern world we're in.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

When we were surviving without these modern conveniences, we would be in a deep squat down, you know, cooking on the floor, moving around in that deep squat. Um, we would be rotating a lot more. We would be throwing the men predominantly be throwing spears. Women would be gathering and twisting and would be low down. They would be lifting and carrying. We would be making variety of shapes, all the variety of shapes the human body can make all day long. That's not to say we were exercising all day long. We were we would have lots of rest periods as well. But during those rest periods, we would be moving. We would never be sedentary in the way we are in a chair. And I it occurred to me, I'd been sitting for long periods. I had had most of my 20s in a desk job. Um, I had been sitting a lot at school because we all have to. Um, and then when I'd been raising my children, when I wasn't busy with them, I would be collapsing in a chair, uh, reclining as much as I could. None of that's wrong. The problem comes when we hold any position for too long, or we are in that position too regularly.

unknown 26:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

So I realized that if I could work around this modern world, because I'm not going to get rid of all my chairs, um, I'm not gonna go and live in a shelter somewhere, and I don't expect most people will, then the important thing then comes how can I adapt my movement to get the most benefit I can throughout my daily life and exercise. And then when I do exercise, how many different forms of exercise can I bring in so that my body is still, when under load and impact, is moving in a whole variety of ways. And that is the foundation of what I started to put out online.

Training As A Movement Generalist

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Um, I I found this, as I said, natural movement. I trained through a company called MoveNet that's quite big in America. Right. Um, I certified through them twice, two times in a row. I did that initially to prove to myself that my body was capable again. It was more of a if I can move be this generalist rather than a specialist. So I learned to hang, learned to crawl, um, I learned to do a whole variety of really beneficial movements. Um, I was even vaulting, so I had to run to vault. Um, but I found that all quite extreme because when I started talking in this way to friends, to family, whatever, they were like, Wendy, stop blowing on your, you know, what is the thing? What are you talking about? And it's sort of functional movement, it's quite practical. It's blah, blah, blah. I could never sort of boil it down. Um, and I think that's because it's not a yoga, it's not a pilot, it's not a runner. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Yes, correct.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

Just how we were meant to or built to move.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Um, and so in helping people, I thought, right, no one knows about this. It's really serving me. I've certified in it. Maybe I could actually coach people. And so I did start coaching friends and family, but then it was lockdown.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

Uh no.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

So then I went online, and actually, it was kind of the perfect time.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

Everyone was so much more sedentary. Um, and so I started posting online, and I had been quite anti-social media before, but then this was different. I had something I wanted to say, and it gained traction because I Yeah, you are very successful on social media. I brought moments of what I was doing online and said to people, it's possible to change, but we don't need to be the big shifts. Everything's always about the big shifts.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

And actually, it's not, it's the small stuff that we're missing.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Yeah. I mean, a couple of things there is um I remember reading book about Steve Jobs. Now he famously

Small Daily Changes That Stick

SPEAKER_00 29:40

had no furniture in his um in I think but he I think he was very much into yoga, and I think that was his demeanor, very holistic, that kind of thing.