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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Untapped, The Extra Mile with me, Spencer Matthews. And me, Olly Patrick. Indeed. We're here again. Today, we're talking about stress. I think, firstly, what would be good would be to define stress. I think...
Chapter 2: What is the impact of stress on fitness and performance?
You know, I hear the word stress and I think bad sleep, mind racing, nail biting. You know, how do I fix this problem as soon as possible? I think, you know, arguments with my wife. I think, you know, delays on product production. I think of all kinds of things that irritate me.
Yeah. That's a really classic... sort of depiction of what people think stress is. People think stress is the negative stuff that weighs us down. I think the broader definition is we sort of don't want to start with the word stress. We want to think of pressures. We all have pressures. You know, we have things that are expected of us. There's lots of different types of stress.
There's the stress of a hot room. There's the stress of a difficult emotional relationship. There's the stress of a chemical. There's the stress of an exercise session. So I don't mean to interrupt you, but the hot rooms are just death. Like when you said that, I thought, ugh. Until they become a sauna, in which case they are life.
Yes, I know. But just, I was thinking more for sleep. Like I had a shocking night's sleep the other night and it was just... boiling and just horrendous.
It's a great example. So that stress is talked about in a similar way to you having an argument with someone this morning or someone failing to email you back under expectation. So people struggle with stress because it's all those things. But how does that make sense against the way I feel?
And I think if we go to the word pressure, you and I've got lots of pressures or inputs that are required of us today, some obligations. We have to get our children out of bed and we have to feed them. We have to turn up. I wish they'd stay in
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Chapter 3: How do pressures and stress differ in our daily lives?
In bed sometimes. Well, amen. And sometimes get them out of bed. I'm at the tipping point. So you're at that interesting point. We all have pressures. And really when most people think about stress is without any of those pressures, that is unhealthy. If I take to you retirement or you go away for four weeks to a desert island, you will be clawing at the walls because you need those pressures.
Not on a desert island. You will be. But there are no walls. That's a very good point. It feels like an unnecessary point to make, but I'm going to accept it. So, you know, all these abundant pressures give us purpose. They give us the elixir of performance until those pressures overwhelm you. And then those pressures move from positive to negative.
And really, when we think of stress, it's when the pressures have overwhelmed an individual's ability to cope.
That's actually really, really interesting. I would say, and this is good timing, this episode, because I was stressed yesterday. And I don't ordinarily feel stress in...
a kind of uh you know stereotypical way really like i i think i'm i love really busy days yeah but yesterday for whatever reason um i don't know i had a real spanner like chucked into my brain just a couple of things were really bothering me And I wasn't on form at all. And I came home from work a little early to help my wife with the kids. And I felt like I was being a bit of a bad parent.
Like I just had quite a short fuse. Like I just wasn't very patient with my kids, which fueled them to be even more annoying, you know, obviously because it's a game to them.
Yeah.
And then I had to cancel something because I didn't want to go. And then I went for a run, even though it was really late, you know, just because I was kind of behind on my weekly mileage. And, you know, my wife was a little bit annoyed with me because it was very clear that I wasn't fully there. I wasn't good to be around at all. The run helped. So that's a win right there.
But it doesn't have too much to do with stress. Although I'm sure you could probably find a way of making it have something to do with stress. It's all got to do with stress. Wonderful.
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Chapter 4: What role does cortisol play in our body?
Because they share quite a lot of our genetic material. Do they? Yeah.
Rats?
It's hard to believe, isn't it? They've got a really quick, they've got a quick metabolism. So the cells turn over quicker, so you can expedite testing quicker. They've got a short life cycle. People don't feel as morally conflicted. I was about to say. People will see a rat in a lab.
People don't so much mind about rats, do they? They don't. It's strange. What's the film, actually? There's a film that says, you know, like, it's a funny scene in a film that basically says, oh, it's not funny at all. It's Inglourious Bastards. Yes. Where he says at the table, you know, that we all have an inclination to just dislike rats.
Yeah.
You know, like if a rat were to crawl across the floorboards, you would want to kill it. You'd want to get it out of your house. Whereas, you know, if something, if a squirrel were to come into your living room, you'd think it was sweet. Whereas actually it's very similar. It's interesting. I don't know why that is, but that is true. And so... Like I like squirrels.
I wouldn't say that I love rats, but it's funny. It's just the... It's... They could use a rebranding.
Do you know what I mean?
I'm not a brand specialist for, again, rodents, but I think principally there was an endocrinologist called Hans Sale who had no emotional connection with the rodent world.
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Chapter 5: How does stress affect recovery and training?
Well, then we're adding... a new layer of sensory input, which is asking you to think about things you wouldn't have thought about before.
So 120 years ago, you wouldn't have gone to bed thinking whether that bloke's a serial killer or not, or whether the Strait of Hormuz is going to be opened and your flights are going to be cancelled in a period of time, or whatever bothered you at CleanCo is going to happen or not happen. And what's interesting about this volume of sensory inputs, they're giving our physiology a new cue
which is overwhelming, which is be ready for something that might happen.
Anxiety.
Well, anxiety is a significant expression of that, which in some cases has a very clear clinical roots and is a medical condition. For low-level anxiety and this sort of sense of trepidation, which is very present, it's being ready for something that might happen that you can't control.
Yeah, I know we're talking about stress here, but obviously, to me, anxiety comes into that. I'm not an anxious person. I don't suffer from anxiety. Anxiety inherently is worrying about something that hasn't happened, right?
It's anticipating. So there's some stress there. Enormously. And we go back to the quote of Winston Churchill's, I knew the story of a man who would have had a wonderful life were it not for all the terrible things that never happened to him. And I was using this example recently where I used to have a fear of flying. And that's quite common, quite common, a fear of flying.
And so if you explore that as a stressful event, what is stressful about flying? What do I think is going to happen on the airplane? If you and I go away for a little jaunt.
Well, if we went away on a jaunt, I would tell you that you're more likely to die in the car on the way to the airport. It's an emotional feeling. Forget the stats. I'm not a stat man. I would also say that, you know, a plane has never been knocked out of the sky by turbulence and not to worry about the turbulence.
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