67. Why Dads Need To Move

You don't have to live on chicken, broccoli and rice. You don't have to eat, you know, leaves and lettuce. You don't have to go on diets. You don't have to live on shakes. It's about eating lots of food the right way for you. But all that aside, that's our last podcast episode, had a huge showing. We've had nearly 10,000 downloads, which is amazing. With our podcast, there's a lot of value in that. So you're watching this live, whether you're going to watch this live right now on Facebook or whether you're going to watch it on YouTube later or listen to it across the six platforms. Spotify, iTunes, anchor Stitcher. Jeez, what else do we have? SoundCloud, our own web hosting service that has our podcast Dive in. There's some great value in our previous episodes, especially the one latest, episode 66, talking about nutrition. But in this one here today, what I want to talk about is exercise and why you should move. This is Primal Power 2. As you'll see, that's the second one. Those who are watching, but nonetheless, welcome to another episode of Real Dad Movement Podcast. Today, we're talking about Primal Power 2. Why you need to exercise, why you must move. It's critically important that you move. Exercise, training, all of these words that create some sort of stigma in your own head around an expectation that you need to be a bodybuilder, you need to be training hours a day, you need to have the latest and greatest equipment or gear. A lot of that's bs. It doesn't have to become part of your life and in the way that you think it should, because ultimately, if it's not something that's tied in or connected to you, you'll implode, you'll fall down, you're not invested, you're not mentally invested, and it won't last. When we're talking about rdm, we talk about the long game. When we're looking at fathers and helping them, it's not about implementing a training regime that's going to have you sore for three weeks and then you fall apart or something that you just can't tie into because there are certain circumstances or situations with yourself, with your family, even with the environment. Like a lot of our Victorian dads have struggled because they haven't had the opportunity to go and join a gym. So gu find something else. Many Victorian dads, without that aid or support or the right purpose behind what they do, would have fallen to pieces because they're used to having a level of control in something that they actually don't control. And that's one of our sessions we talk about with our dads controlling the uncontrollables in yes, I can influence my external environment, but what am I doing to nourish the internal environment and how am I looking after myself in that respects? Which brings us to Primal Power 2, our last episode. Primal Power 1. Like I said, it's on itunes, it's on Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud. There's so many different platforms, including YouTube, where you can catch up with that. Where we talk about nourishing the body. This one is moving the body. Primal Power. Two things nourish the body, move the body. Why do we do it? Well, one of the universal laws, one of ours, absolutes, there's seven of them for love, leadership and legacy as a father. Got a book coming out soon with all of that. It talks about everything you're doing physically and how it affects you mentally. That's the truth. Everything you do physically affects you mentally and how you feel, brushing your teeth, having a shower, doing your hair, even engaging with your children, helping them or playing with them, setting up a play swing and pushing them. Like physical things you're engaging with, with the Mrs. With your work. It's how it affects you mentally that ultimately determines the value of that and really the awareness of both of those, what you're doing and the value that holds in your life. Which is why I want to run through these five points here and talk about why these are crucial when it comes to you as a man. Entering the second half, winning the second half, playing the long game in something that's sustainable in a way that you're going to be connected to more than ever. There's five points, five things that you need to make sure you are dialed into and in tune with and aware of when it comes to exercise. The very first one, the reason why you move your body is value. See, when it comes to exercise, it's not just physical movement and burning calories. What it really is is you valuing and prioritizing some time for you to move your body a couple of times a week. Some of our dads, they train four, five times a week. Some of our dads train two to three times a week. Some of our dads have home gyms, some of our dads have gym memberships, some of them walk. That's a great starting point. If they haven't moved for so long that they've got pre existing injuries or issues or limitations. Why would I set them up with 1000 burpees or do any of that sort of BS that doesn't make any sense. If you're either a 21 year old PT just trying to get sweat up or get some before and after photo four weeks later or someone who doesn't actually care. You're not connected, you're not in tune with fathers where they're at the second half of life, what it means to them and why moving the body is so important. So the very first thing that you must take into account and understand behind the reason of you exercising is to value yourself. Hey, this is my life too, Al. I value me. My time's important, my body's important, my physical health is important. I value myself. To prioritize and take out some time for me to, to move my body a few times a week. That's what it's about. Take it from someone who was an elite athlete for 15 years between CrossFit and rugby league, both of those very demanding in the training regimes and ultimately really what I felt like I was burning out too, the body. Running through nine operations over six years which screwed with my head as well. Very tough. Learning to walk again, learning to lift my arm again. Four knee recos and two shoulder recos wasn't good. Breaking my jaw like man living through a straw for three months. Had a head clash with an islander. He just kept running. Bastard. He was killing it. But you know, it ruined me. Like getting mum to blend up hot dogs just so I could taste the taste of food one night and was this hot pink liquid just so I could have something that tasted semi real instead of metamucilin and bloody protein shakes. Talk about being backed up. I reckon that was the worst. Breaking my jaw. But there was the physical health. I couldn't train as well because I couldn't clench my jaw. There's a lot of issues there when it came to exerting force. Physical health determines your mental health. And if you really want the secret of life, the secret of life is to keep your body as young as possible and to grow and expand your mind as much as possible. You do that and man, you'll be a fucking titan. No one will come close to you when it comes to you delivering your own legacy because of what you can physically do and the mental capacity you have. Valuing yourself, taking that time out to go. You know what I value? Me. You've got a thousand minutes a day. You sleep for 7 hours and 20 minutes a night. Some might get more. I'M certainly getting less at the moment with the birth of my third child. If you get 7 hours and 20 minutes a night, that gives you 1,000 minutes a day. If you can't take 1 to 3% out for yourself, that's 10 to 30 minutes, there's something wrong. Very hard. It's not easy. I get it. Just have my third child. I've got rdm. I've got myself, my family, my wife, my other two children. I. Lots of moving parts. But you've got to take that time out for you. Because when it's all said and done, if you're in the second half or into the second half and you're born with 700,000 hours, a third of that sleep, 500,000 from day dot. Which means if you're in the second half, assuming you live to be 82, you've only got a couple hundred thousand hours left. How does that make you feel? Are you doing things that mean fuck all to you in the grand scheme of helping others and helping those that aren't even in your inner circle, just for some low level of perceived value or significance in a community or a societal standard? Because you're helping something outside of you, because you've lost that control inside of you. Which takes us to point number two. Like, when I'm looking at this, it's about realignment. What's the most important thing for you? You can only focus on one thing at a time. The reason why we exercise. Value taking time out for you two, realignment. You're realigning and reconnecting. People talk about yoga. Yoga. Yoga is an idea. Yes. There are different practices, different modes. There's commercialized fun, I guess, marketed yoga. And then there's the old school traditional yoga. There's all different moving parts where it really is symbolism for you taking time out for you and valuing yourself, sure, but realignment? You don't have to bust your ass every single time you go into the gym and crawl out of it completely exhausted. Training for me is a form of meditation. You know, I only train three to four days a week. And for me, yes, I'm valuing myself, I'm taking time out, but I'm realigning. Nothing else matters. Nothing else in the world matters. I'm just taking time out for me. This is my time. And I've had. And I have that ability to just slow the world down. Look at how chaotic it is. Here we are in the last quarter of 2020, with everything that's going on, all the chaos here is Going faster and faster and all the different hats that we wear as fathers, we feel like the mice in the spinning wheels. And all of a sudden it's like shit, we're in 2023 now. Al 2027, I'll have to get new shirts at 2031. That the shirts that I have say 2020 to 2030, the decade of dad's on the back, that's going to come around pretty quick. This is a 10 year plan and make no mistake, we'll keep rolling after that. This is a 10 year plan from which we started back in 2018 to really move forward and go, hey, this is the right tools. This is the gold standard for fathers and this is the way to do it. Not sugarcoating shit or trying to make a square fit in a circle shape because it's just what someone else has done that gives the results. That's bullshit. What we need to do is have something that helps you realign with yourself, slow the world down. I value myself, I take time out. I'm slowing the world down. I'm just having time for me and I'm going to realign, I'm going to move my body. And ultimately it takes us into our third point. You're realigning with yourself mentally and physically. Both of those are going to give you more energy. The reason why exercise is for energy. Yes, you're going to help with your thyroid health if you nourish and move the body the right way and you're going to help with your metabolic rate. But ultimately it's going to give you more energy because you're building a higher level of functioning organism you your systems to handle the resistance that you'll face. If you're spending time to push through a certain level of resistance, that doesn't mean busting yourself, but a certain level of resistance above and beyond your normal. Your normal is a piece of piss. It's a walk in the park. The reason why I've been able to build RDM and do it so well is coming off the back of being an elite athlete, then cutting that. I had an unbelievable amount of mental resilience, grit and energy to perform. And that doesn't mean I'm the only dad that does 12 and 14 and 16 and sometimes 18 hour days. It's got nothing to do with that. But I had the ability to perform and do that mentally and physically because the standard of resistance I held with my exercise meant when it came to working, delivering value, mindset, organizing, strategizing, accountability, support, everything we do inside and outside of rdm, it's easy. It's just what I do. Even right here and now, whether you're watching this live on Facebook, watching the replay that I post on YouTube, or listening to this on the podcast, this is easy. It's just what I do. It's part of the back of the brain now. It's my subconscious. I don't have to think about these sorts of things. Just what we do. It's what I live and breathe. So when you've got that value for yourself, you've got that realignment, you're starting to give yourself more energy physically and mentally. You're having that outlet mentally, you're slowing the world down, you're valuing yourself, you're having that outlet physically to go, well, hey, this is working for me. Which means, guess what? When you start to see the physiological changes, when you start to have a higher operating system inside of your body, guess what that does to your mental health? It improves. People talk about, and this isn't a session about antidepressants or all that sort of stuff, but people talk about big pharma and the pharmaceutical industry, and it's like, man, some of the greatest things you can have in the world are sun, water and exercise. It truly is your environment internally and externally can truly be nourished at a large percentage. Add the tribe in and it's game over to the energy around you in the tribe, your environment, the energy from the sun, the water we put into our system, into our bodies, and then ultimately the movement that we participate in. It's part of our DNA. It's part of our makeup. You're not here to just slouch on chairs and just become a fucking lounge lizard or a couch potato. I don't watch television. Like, the only thing I've watched this year has been the Last Dance. Michael Jordan. That's a phenomenal series. And that's it. I mean, I always loved MJ anyway, but watching that was cool. Something that I wanted to go through and watch. And then from there, maybe a few movies here and there with the kids in the kids shows to engage with them and have a few laughs. And that's it. Like watching television, having things in my life that sedate and distract me, which the main ones in life are TV and alcohol. They're holding me back, they're pulling me down. My mental health is through the roof because of the ability I have to physically tap into myself by connecting the dots of that yin and yang physical and mental health in knowing it's Two sides of the same coin. So the reason why I exercise is to improve and work on my mental health. It's to value myself and it's to have that realignment every single day. I'm realigned. Doesn't mean I train every single day, but I've got that alignment. Because what you're doing when you exercise is you're banking a higher operating system inside of yourself. You're not letting it swell, you're not letting it fester, build up and manifest the little voice inside, the bullshit inside that we all have, the excuses and stories. I've got them, too. I call him Little Al. When you do that and you combine that, that's a form of creating space. Now, creating space is awesome. I've done podcast episodes on that before. You're creating space for yourself, which ultimately positions you to, again, slow the world down. Exercise can be a form of that. Walking can be creating space, getting out in nature, creating space, painting with your kids, coloring in pencils, anything creative stopping, slowing you down, having a good holistic approach with your energy and just going, hey, it's just me. All that matters right now is the present moment. That's what gives you the value of boosting and building your mental health and your clarity and focus on what's important. That's very powerful. There's only one thing you can ever focus on at one time. That's it. Priorities doesn't exist like that. That's a fast. You can't have priorities. There's lots of important things, but there'll only ever be one most important thing. Priority. Focus. And when you have that focus and you pay attention first and foremost to yourself and how you set your day up, whether you're going to organ and plan the work to train then or train in the arbo, you work that plan, you will pull through and you'll start to win. There'll be curve balls, there'll be everything coming at you. Sometimes there'll be big comets coming at you, and you just got to deflect them. That's the world, that's the environment we live in, where there's always going to be some level of adversity and challenge. Man, you've got to take that time out to move and exercise your body. Which brings us to our fifth point. The fifth point is really looking, going, well, why am I exercising? Okay, I'm getting all these benefits Al spoke about, but what are my specific goals? What are my tangibles? What are the things I want to achieve? Because for me, it's not about. And I've got nothing against people, if they want to tag themselves as a life coach and tongue in cheek, bag that term out sometimes. But I'm not here just to make you feel better. It's not what this is about. That's a very small movement. Otherwise you can just go find lots of motivational videos on YouTube and they eventually wear out, don't they? They run their course and then they're done. You can't have that. It's got to be something that, yes, we can elevate our state motivation, but what can maintain a high level of state optimism and purpose. With optimism, you'll continue to be resourceful and find the solution with all the adversities you face and with purpose. It's going to pull you through on the days where you feel like shit and you don't feel like doing it for yourself, do it for yourself through doing it for your children. Do it for yourself through doing it for the tribe. Get out of your own way and take that opportunity to go, what is it I want to achieve and does this align with this? For me at the moment, with my third born. Okay, cool. I've got a little bit of a home gym setup. Not much. One barbell, I've only got one set of dumbbells. They're 32 kilos. One set of dumbbells, that's all I have. Okay, cool. I've got one set of dumbbells, I've got a barbell, I've got some mats. Awesome. But at the moment, for me, prioritizing, taking time out for myself and my body is something that comes down to going, well, what's the point and purpose of our right now? I've got three kids. Do I need to become Mr. Olympia? I'm strong, I'm physically fit, I'm healthy. Awesome. It's more a mental thing for me at the moment. I don't have to go to a gym, I've got a gym membership, but don't have to go there every single day. It's making sure it's got the right purpose for where you're at at your period of time in life. For you, that's it. Like that. That is super important. It has to be, otherwise you're pissing in the wind. Why are you training and doing CrossFit five days a week? What are your goals? Do you really want that? Why are you doing bodybuilding? Why are you doing powerlifting? Why are you just walking? Do you need more than that? Okay, you've just walked for the first three months. Awesome. Cool. Doesn't matter if you're 120 kilos. What can we do? Can we do some holds on our knees, push ups on our knees? How can we adjust the variability to go, all right, what do we need to do to continually move forward, to just get out of that comfort zone a little bit, to get that little bit of resistance, but keep moving forward the right way because this is going to move me towards my goals. Five things that's important. Like, even with nourish the body, the episode I did before, we're looking at making sure there's a point in purpose that's specific and personalized for you. Because guess what? When you're something that you value yourself with your realigning, it's building a higher level of energy. Life is energy. It's helping with your mental health. When you've got your mental health covered and you're building that, when there's a point of purpose and a specific goal towards what is you want to achieve, you will win. Because guess what, you're going to be more mentally invested. And when you're more mentally invested, you know you can do it. It's achievable and sustainable for the long haul. And when you're mentally invested, you're physically going to have a higher success rate because you've got something that's built around you. You mentally understand you're physically competent. It's not building you something that's taking you out of your comfort zone. And guess what, it's moving you forward the right way that's going to give the greatest results. And when you have that, guess what, it becomes sustainable and enjoyable. And that's the key thing when it comes down to physical exercise and primal power, too. Hopefully you've enjoyed this episode. It's run through nice and smooth and you truly understand the value of going, hey, what's something that's going to give me sustainability? I'm going to enjoy it. It's going to give me more mental investment because it's built out for me. I value myself. It's a form of realignment. I only have to move a few days a week. It's got to have a goal. And when I do that, my mental health, my physical health, everything will come together the right way. Instead of someone pushing you and telling you what to do, you're getting shown what's going to work for you and your goals on a personal level, that's how you win. That's primal power. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Take care. Comment below. On your shares and takeaways. Any anything that you want or need, please let us know alexdadmovement.com and also make sure you take me up on that offer. Like that primalpower one book that's a phenomenal resource. Like share, tag comment, Anything you want to do, hit me up with a private message. Whatever you need, I'll send that out to you right away. You can start moving your life forward with Primal Power 1. And in November, we might release Primal Power 2 for you as a freebie and a giveaway to help you start to chart the course that you need to really win in 2021. Take care guys. Have an amazing day, night weekend. If you're listening to us, a later stage. Those who caught it live on the Facebook, take care. Much love. Fuck yeah the dads and keep winning. Cheers gu.