John Campbell 0:05
Hello, and welcome to another edition of inspired and active podcast. This is the podcast, where we look to motivate and inspire us to be more connected and active in the outdoors, really enjoying what’s available and sharing it with others. My name is John Campbell. I’m a coach, the founder of my director, and a father of four very active children. Each week, we’ll look at hints and tips and some advice interviews, and offer different apps and downloads just to help you be engaged and motivated. Let’s get into today’s discussion.

John Campbell 0:44
Hello, again, it’s John Campbell here and today. Today, I want to talk to you about something that is really important to me in in my coaching, and one of my real areas I focus on is fitness in general. Now I’m not talking about fitness, just being at a physical level, I want to introduce the concept of a full system fitness. No, by that I mean is looking at the whole body, the body and mind. And everything around us. Some system thinking is looking at the interconnection of everything that makes us a better person from a physical, mental and a well being point of view. And I really want to look at that to do that. There are many elements, but the ones I want to really look at in this concept of full system fitness is we look at physical and that’s that’s one we recognise most and, and how we can measure that and what we should be considering as we go forward, especially with our young people, and our children. And then but the other aspect is all about looking at our dynamic intelligence looking at our our kind of regulation, how do we manage ourselves because it’s the whole system that gives us the really good feeling the way to tackle life in general, it’s not just being able to run that long distance. It’s everything together.

John Campbell 2:11
So I want to look at three things today. Then I want to look at physical fitness. And then we’ll we’ll look at what we’re calling dynamic intelligence and how we can develop that. And finally, I want to consider self regulation because that’s what brings everything together for us. So to begin with physical fitness. Now, I categorise physical fitness into four areas. This is alertness, agility, endurance and power, we need to understand where we are within each of those. And depending on what you want to do, if you want to be a weightlifter, you would want to do something else if you want to be a sprinter, or a golfer or a tennis player, you will have your own physical demands on your body. But these four areas are what I would be looking to measure in any of my athletes that I coach so let’s quickly break this down alertness is all about the speed of reaction. We want people to be alert to the situation be able to react to the situation and and measuring the their alertness and speed the reaction and building that is really important from many, many sports. The second one is agility. Now we we see people as children grow and develop and the body mass changes and the frame changes. It’s all about flexibility and movement. If we get if somebody is not flexible, they will be restricted in different movements. If you want to be a really good tennis player or a golfer, there is an element of flexibility you have to be in there. So flexibility is something we should be looking at and working on. From a young ages. It’s really amazing to see gymnasts. If I have a gymnast in my athletics for example, you can see them definitely ahead and in many aspects of flexibility. And that comes out on on hurdling, it comes out in many different areas. So just a bit of focus on flexibility as part of the agility and how agile they are. And there’s many exercises I would I’d be doing and looking to work with on agility. The next one is endurance and speed. Now, this is very traditional that people want to know how far they can run, there might be a little uninsurance runner, they may be looking at speed. And this could be around a basketball court on a football pitch or rugby pitch. And it’s all about endurance and speed. And that is really important for young people and that I’ll come to some measurements would consider there and find finally is power. This is the explosive power that you would have now I focus on relative strength, which is really the power in relation to the height and weight not not about how many kilogrammes they can lift or having the bench presses its relative strength to their their own. So this is more like how far can the vertical jump? How can they? How far can they do a lateral jump? How explosive Are they from a standing points and and you can measure that then it’s building that explosiveness, that immediate power from their, their body, and how you can develop that to really help their overall physical fitness. So you’ve got alertness, agility, endurance, stroke, speed, and relative strength are the four areas I always recommend to measure. And we’ve got sheets and information on this. For anyone who would like them, I’m always keen to make sure you’ve got a measurement to start with, with, with your, with your children, or whoever you’re helping, you’ve got to know their their point, their starting point. And then you can put together a programme to help develop that you’ve got to identify who we are the need to develop to give you this overall physical balance, as I would call it. And, and we can give you lots of measurements, but several of them are very available. And you could do it anywhere. For example, the one I use for endurance and speed was kind of brought out in 1968 by

John Campbell 6:16
a doctor called Kenneth Cooper, and he created what we now call the Cooper test, which is how far you can run in 12 minutes. And what this is really allowing you to do is measure your your aerobic capability. And I knew there’s two types of exercise, aerobic and anaerobic aerobic is where you bring in air to really work on your exercises. So it’s really endurance work. And anaerobic is when it’s really short, sharp. And it’s it’s with without kind of long term use of oxygen, it sits like under two minutes or under, you would you would then be doing short, sharp work. And that’s a different set of exercises. But the one I like most is aerobic and really getting younger people to be able to work with their oxygen work with the ability in the Cooper test is just a way that I don’t like to see whether it’s good or bad, everybody’s got their own capability. But what it does allow you to do is to create a measurement to create that starting point. So you can then put a development plan together for them in the future. And you can see how with the work you’re doing, how they can improving. So there are several tests like that, we can introduce another one, I use it for agility, the t test. And this is the ability of somebody who’s running a short distance, to be able to change directions backwards, forward, sideways. And it’s that kind of change, agility to change direction, which is very important aligned to all another test all these things on their own wouldn’t mean much. But it’s bringing this whole and the whole test environment together. So you can gauge with those four areas I mentioned, alertness, agility, endurance, and power, you can see where they are, and you can put a plan together for them. And that’s what I like to do with with all my athletes and people I help and coach. So in addition to the physical elements of what I’m looking at, as the concept of full system fitness, is you’ve got to look at two other well known facts, which is nutrition and sleep These are so we central to the whole physical well being. Now we can do separate sessions on nutrition, which we will do and and on on good practices for sleep. But it’s those three things on my physical point of view, terms of your physical, your, what you eat, and your rest and your sleep that come together for your physical fitness. What I want to look at next is some elements which you would always forget or not necessarily link with your fitness. And this one is this is what gives us the full system fitness night dynamic intelligence is what is what is termed as, and it’s really looking at our ability to adapt, it’s our ability to continually monitor what’s happening, and to regulate, it’s relative to thinking it’s that quick thinking that’s looking at your imagination, and you’re exploring and continuous. Creating creativity and problem solving. This is a really important part of our fitness. And when somebody is developing and growing and they can be really physically fit. But if they don’t have this dynamic intelligence, they really will struggle to adapt to what’s around them. So we really keen to look at how we can develop some of these dynamic intelligence as a balance with their physical fitness. And this is a key component within the concept of the full system fitness and the framework that that we’ve put together and I truly believe in so to help this I really use creativity as as a key pillar. And and, and to allow people to use their creativity. So the way I would bring this out is Setting setting problem solving problem solving is a really great way to develop somebody’s creativity and their dynamic intelligence and their general adapting to be able to react and be flexible to changes around them. The system thinking is everything around you as you your environment, your family, your people. And, and it’s and it can be connected to mindset and growth mindset. We’re not getting to that in this in this discussion. But in terms of the full system fitness, physical and dynamic intelligence are critical and set some problems set some set some goals, set some challenges to let them think clearly think out the box is all about their their fitness is their dynamic intelligence, their dynamic fitness, which are the is the second of the really key components and I will do a whole podcast on dynamic intelligence separately. And as part of the the framework we’ve pulled together, but I’ll leave it at that for today that is a key component alongside physical fitness is your dynamic intelligence. And And the final one in this concept of full system fitness is is your self regulation. Now we’re talking about physical we’re document anomic intelligence, self regulation is really looking after yourself. It’s it’s working out a way to make sure you’re feeling good. Now this is a concept that as you know, often bring together with with your physical fitness. But this is so important that it’s your own well being in terms of feeling great, and some people different ways to feel good. And that could be listening to music, it could be reading books, you’ve got to recharge yourself, a great way to recharge yourself is getting out into nature. And that’s something that we we really do advocate and work with young people and getting them out into nature that has a very self kind of fulfilling and motivating result is and that’s well known. And we can talk about that another time. But the self regulation is something you have to work at and and really look at how can you recharge your own batteries. And it’s not all about physical going to the gym or anything, it’s you do need some me time to allow you to recharge batteries. There are a couple of ways that that as well known for it for this, which I’m not going to go into the detail is conditional and unconditional regulation here and conditional is, is really working with things you love, which could be you listen to music, as I mentioned, it could be working on a project you have it could be reading a book, it could even be spending time on your Xbox. And it’s that time to just help that self regulation. The unconditional regulation is more going into your meditation and your visualisation, which a lot of people definitely benefit from, I’m not going to go through that in this, I might bring that into different podcasts. But it’s not an area that I am an expert in. But I do understand the importance of it as part of just getting yourself regulation getting you as a person feeling better. So in summary, there are three key areas we’ve got to look for in your concept of full fitness. One is your physical fitness, which we’ve talked about. The second is your dynamic intelligence is your ability to problem solve, it’s

John Campbell 13:26
your creativity, it’s it’s really getting that flexible, adaptive thinking. And the final and the third one is self regulating. Now it’s looking after yourself is not selfish, at all, to look after yourself and spend your time, you’ve got to be inwardly feeling great to help others and to really come across as someone who is happy with everything around them. So you’ve got to look at those three things. And when we look at our young people, our children, our own kids got to respect those three things. There’s no point always pushing them out for physical fitness or always telling them they can’t go on Xbox or why are you just listening to music, it’s it’s the combination of all three aspects that really develop the all round fitness for for our children and young people and ourselves. So we have to think about these three things. And that’s a real passion to where I am pulling together a framework and something called the condition model to allow us to pull us together and I will look at aspects of this as we go forward and bring this into other podcasts. I hope you find it useful. Please Please connect with me if there’s anything that you enjoyed or wanted to ask about in from this podcast. It’s really important for me to work with, with a range of people looking at how we can improve their whole system fitness and really engage and help us all to do Enjoy and be able to react to what’s around us. For more information, just connect to ignition dot inspired and active.com that’s ignition dot inspired, inspired and active.com. And we will be pleased to send you more information about the full system training and other aspects as we develop a programme around this whole area to help you be the best you can be. That will be enjoyed, and I’ll speak to you next time. Thanks for listening again to this burden active podcast please connect with us on Instagram inspired an active one on Facebook and leave a review for the podcast. It does help us to get more audience and we look forward to coming to you each fortnight with just more interesting topics. We’ve got some great interviews lined up and I really do hope you will get out and about and enjoy this time. Thanks a lot for listening

Transcribed by https://otter.ai