Ep 40: The secret to getting stronger? it’s not more exercise

Michael Dermansky

Hi everyone and welcome to the show to help you become more confident in your body so you can keep doing the things that you love. My name is Michael Dermansky, I’m senior physio  at the representative of and I have a special guest today, Kasal from Elite Academy. Kasal, welcome to the show.   

Kusal Goonewardena

Thanks for inviting me. It’s always nice to see you. So yeah, I’m looking forward to this.

Michael Dermansky

Well, Kasal and I have known each other for a few years now. When did we go to uni together? was between 1995 and 1998, so quite a few years ago now.

Kusal Goonewardena

Yes. Long time. Long time, Michael. We’ve known each other for a very long time.

Michael Dermansky

Well, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your journey, briefly your journey as a physio and elite academy and what you’re doing your studies at the moment too.

Kusal Goonewardena

So being a sports physio now for over 25 years, I’ve always loved sports physio. I, you know, even at uni, I really excelled in ⁓ musculoskeletal ⁓ and then got into sport. ⁓ Soon after graduating, went and worked in places like Singapore, worked in the country and then ⁓ ended up working in Melton and Backers Marsh. And then I ran those sports medicine clinics.

So I had the opportunity to grow the team, build those clinics up. After that, I was given the opportunity to set up the sports medicine clinic at the University of Melbourne. So I’ve been taking care of the University of Melbourne elite athletes from about 2010, 2011. And then we set up a clinic at the University of Melbourne as well, Michael.

I’ve been there for over 12 years, 13 years. Been growing that clinic. We’ve now got a team of 16, including physios, ⁓ massage staff, ⁓ science students. ⁓ We take in a lot of students to help them get experience at the clinics as well. And now we’ve got a few sites. there’s Melbourne University, Taylor’s Lakes, Summerton and also Dandy Nol. So we’re nicely and we’ve got a solid team that provide pretty good ⁓ excellent services for our clients and athletes ⁓ as we’re primarily based around sport and activity.

Michael Dermansky

And that’s not enough. Running those forklifts is enough. You decide to do add a PhD on top of that too.

Kusal Goonewardena

So I had this opportunity to start my PhD. So about a year and a half, two years ago, before that, I was a clinical supervisor for a few of the PhD students from the University of Melbourne. And then an opportunity arose to do my own PhD. So I’m currently investigating muscle fatigue, the effects of muscle fatigue on the body and ⁓ how we can probably

Michael Dermansky

Right.

Kusal Goonewardena

how we can interpret ⁓ muscle fatigue ⁓ from a biomechanics perspective. So it’s interesting work and ⁓ I’m nearly two years into it and yeah, we’re getting some ⁓ good information thus far. So I look forward to talking to you about that ⁓ in about a year or two years when everything is ready to be shared.

Michael Dermansky

Fantastic, well let’s go straight into the question as well. the big question today is the importance of recovery and building strength. And one of biggest problems we see is people doing too much. They think they need to train every day to get results they want, such as a better body, being fitter, being able to run a half marathon. Is there a problem with this and why?

Kusal Goonewardena

Yeah, I think there’s a very big problem because, ⁓ one of the main things about the human body is the importance of recovery. ⁓ there’s so much athletes and the regular public do they, you know, if you break up the 24 hour, ⁓ date, you have, ⁓ eight hours of ⁓ potential work, ⁓ eight hours of potential activity and, ⁓ eight hours of potential sleep. And, ⁓ you know, what clients do or what athletes tend to do is the activity levels of the sport. They really get that set ⁓ work, you know, that’s, that’s pretty much said as well. Sometimes sleep is the one people miss out on the most Michael. And I feel that when it comes to recovery, if there was one thing a person should be doing properly, it should be getting a good sleep. So instead of doing too much, to get the results, if they actually balance it out with the recovery, ⁓ we find that people get ⁓ a lot of very good results.

Michael Dermansky

Why? Why is it so important?

Kusal Goonewardena

Well, you know, the, the body and the mind cannot keep on going. It needs to have a break. the simple example I like to use is, you know, sleep deprivation is a torture technique because, ⁓ ultimately people, ⁓ you know, if you’re sleep deprived will, you know, as I said, it’s a torture technique. ⁓ so if it is that bad for the system,

And that’s not just for the body, but for the mind as well. it can have dire consequences. And if you’re looking at it from an athletic perspective, you can exercise, which means, you know, getting your biomechanics, right? Your flexibility, your strength, your core, your, you know, strength and conditioning. you, if you optimize all of that, but you ignore recovery, you’re not letting the body and the mind, ⁓ you know, be optimized.

So I feel that’s very important. you know, from my, from my clinical work and some of my elite athletes who’ve done things really well over a long period of time, they have a priority. They actually prioritize, ⁓ recovery, ⁓ first and foremost.

Michael Dermansky

And it’s interesting because people don’t realize that recovery is an active part of the process. So if you load yourself up, you exercise, it’s easy to miss what happens in between sessions.

Because if you load yourself up in terms of exercise of strength training running, whatever you’re trying to work on as well The adaptations don’t occur when you exercise they occur afterwards when you sleep between sessions as well You know your body has micro tears it adapts to though it goes beyond that and repairs It’s an active part of the process and if we ignore that major part What it means is that you don’t train the same next time you actually have lost the whole point of the reason why you’re training in the first

So you’re trying to load your body up to do more of the table doing and then give it time to adapt so that when you’re in the session doing strength session or running session or whatever session next you’ve actually adapted from the previous one so we can push you more harder to the next level we want to do. If you ignore that recovery part you’re actually losing that adaptation effect that you’re trying to get from the exercise program. So it’s not just you’re being slack and you’re being lazy you’re actually avoiding a major part of the change you want to achieve.

Kusal Goonewardena

Yeah, I agree. you know, from the science perspective, we know that when we do exercise and if you’re doing exercise really well, you know, you’re creating a stress on the system. So your cortisol levels can slightly increase, increase. And if you continue increasing this, it’s not good for the system because it’s not just the body that gets affected. It’s the brain as well. So the brain goes into almost a shutdown mode.

or a protective mode. Whereas this is why before big events like the Olympics, know, some of my athletes will go into a tapering mode, which means that they’ve trained up, trained up, trained up, and then they’ve tapered off completely to let the mind and the body really ⁓ relax and get back into an optimum system. ⁓ you build up, build up, and then if you get

the recovery right, you can actually flush out that cortisol and ⁓ the hormones that actually create for productivity flush into the, they come into the system. So it’s very important to have that ⁓ built in Michael. It’s very important to have that in a schedule. So it’s almost like a non-negotiable schedule.

You might be exercising three, four times a week, say if it’s strength training, but on top of that, have your recovery days. ⁓ and the recovery, there’s various ways to consider recovery. ⁓ but as I said, the first and foremost thing is get the sleep right.

Michael Dermansky

Yeah. And I mean, when you’re talking about sleep and cortisol levels as well, how does sleep affect cortisol and why is cortisol a problem? Like, you can say you get a, when you exercise, there’s a stressor of the body, your cortisol levels rise. Okay. So what, what’s the big deal about that?

Kusal Goonewardena

So look, cortisol is a very good, ⁓ it’s a very good hormone to protect the system. it creates, it’s all about the fight or flight response. And when we’re talking about the fight or flight, know, back in the day when we were all living in caves, there’s a lion out there, you know, obviously the body has to prepare to either get you out of there as quickly as possible. So these kinds of things and these kinds of systems have

Michael Dermansky

Yeah.

Kusal Goonewardena

continued ⁓ in our bodies, in our minds, and throughout our lives. So that continues. Now, it’s all about understanding what these hormones do. They’re all there to protect us, but too much of anything, too much of a good thing is bad, too much of a bad thing is bad too. It has to be maintained. Everything should be regulated. And this is where…

you know, too much cortisol, which is a stress hormone. When you have too much of a stress hormone, focus, concentration, clear thinking, they tend to go out the window. Now, if you look at focus, concentration, clear thinking, those are the types of, ⁓ those are key things that we need for everyday life. For, you know, for performance. And, and I’m not just talking about sport, but it could be what we do in everyday life. So in that.

⁓ you know, add eight hour window of sport training activity, eight hours of work. You want to have the brain working at its optimum, not under stress.

Michael Dermansky

And also on top of that too, cortisol is a catabolic steroid. It breaks tissues down, gives you the energy you need to run away from the line you talked about. So short term wise, want that stress, it’s there for that stress response to get you out of danger. After that, you’re compromising your muscle mass. If you’re trying to build muscle, you’ve got these larger amounts of catabolic steroids, it’s the opposite to what you need. So if you can’t get your cortisol levels down, it’s going to compromise your ability to, because it’s going to, what cortisol does is break

Kusal Goonewardena

Mmm.

Michael Dermansky

The catabolic steroid breakdown muscle mass allows you to have energy into the body as well. And it also stores fat. So if you’re trying to lose weight or you’re trying to get fitter, having excessive amounts of cortisol makes that process so much harder.

Kusal Goonewardena

Definitely. Yep.

Michael Dermansky

Yeah, recovery should be planned into your training schedule as well. What does that look like from your perspective? you’ve got, as you said, at work roughly eight hours, you know, sleeping eight, seven, eight hour dish, and then you’ve got this training regime into that too. How do you see ⁓ recovery being planned into that?

Kusal Goonewardena

So recovery is much more than sleep, by the way. And when it comes to sleep as well, I’m a big advocate for children getting much more than the eight hours. ⁓ Children, the brain actually only stops developing after the age of 28. So up until the age of 28, our brains are still developing. So kids specifically need to get a lot more sleep. ⁓ So…I’m a big advocate of telling kids to sleep up to even 11, 12 hours. Some of the parents I’ve worked with saying, oh, my teenagers, they can sleep forever. I don’t say that’s a bad thing. even say, look, that’s actually good for them because their whole bodies are growing and they just need that time for the recovery. if we talk about the sleep, yes, sleep’s very important, but it’s not the be all, sorry, it’s not the only thing that needs to be addressed. The other things to be addressed, know, hydration is very important. under hydration, have, you know, we’re 70 to 80 % fluid, which means that we need to replenish this as we exercise because we obviously get dehydrated. When I’ve been asked, well, what’s the right amount to drink after exercise?

There’s actually a clear or an easy way of doing this before you compete or before you train, you can weigh yourself. ⁓ and after you train, after you compete, once again, you can weigh yourself and whatever you’ve lost. It might be 400 grams. might be 500 grams. That’s actually fluid. So consuming that in, in water is ideal. There’s also that, ⁓ you know, the good, good drinks, electrolyte drinks that can be consumed. Because there’s a lot of electrolytes that pass through the system when you exercise. So ⁓ the Gatorades of the world, ⁓ all of those drinks are very good. Now, when people are worried about sugar, I say to them, take the non-sugary Gatorade, because you’re still getting the supplements that are required, you know, you’re not dosing up in sugar. So then there’s the nutrition that you have to consider. Now, there’s no cookie cutter approach for nutrition. I find that nutrition is something that you have to test your own system out. ⁓ I can’t be saying, you know, eat three vegetables and, you know, two fruits ⁓ for everyone because everyone’s different and everyone’s tolerance and how they respond to the foods and ⁓ the fluids are different. So you have to measure that yourself and you have to know how to measure that. And we can talk about that in a little bit, Michael. The next thing to know is, once you get the nutrition right, it’s things what we do for our own body. So a lot of people don’t realize the importance of compression, sports compression is very important. One of the groups that we use Supercall, which was ⁓ designed and patented by a physio, that was created to create this compression that optimizes the muscles while exercising, but also optimizes recovery. So after you exercise, if you put the compression on and the when you get the compression right, ⁓ it’s like getting an ongoing massage and ongoing ⁓ improvements in circulation. So it reduces things like DOMS, which is delayed onset muscle soreness. And when you put all of this into practice, ⁓ the other things, you know, I’m a sports physio and there’s a lot more that can be done post exercise, the hands-on techniques.

Michael Dermansky

Right.

Kusal Goonewardena

There’s the soft tissue techniques, deep tissue techniques, there’s the techniques on the joints, ⁓ adjustments can be made to the neuromuscular system. So all of these little techniques that can then optimize the recovery. And all of these little things ultimately mean that the person has recovered fast and they’ve been able to then…

back up again with another session, but that whole session of exercise is then completely optimized. So they’re getting better results in a shorter period of time.

Michael Dermansky

Yeah, let’s go back to the nutrition stuff as well. So you said it’s individualized and you said you go through what would be normal. You talked about hydration as well, what should be the amount of hydration you get. The electrolyte drinks are better, particularly the non sugary ones as well, about how much you during the session. If you lose half a kilo, that means roughly you need to be drinking half a liter of water or electrolyte water as well. So you talked about nutrition. You said you can elaborate on that a bit more.

Kusal Goonewardena

Yeah. So, you know, when people are told to eat a certain diet, ⁓ some people, the, if you’re unsure whether the diet is good for you, you can measure it against performance. So if you consider a diet and then you go and train or you go and compete, and if your performance is above the level of what you were previously then obviously whatever you’re taking whatever you’re consuming is then a direct result Another way of looking at it is mood So if whatever you’re eating or consuming if the mood is not there or it’s making you feel terrible Well, you know, that’s actually not the right foods for you and not the right foods for your exercise and your well-being ⁓ So those are the those are some easy ways to consider that some of the latest techniques we’re using is a sports performance DNA test. Now with the DNA test, ⁓ it actually, you do a cheek swab and, ⁓ you send, ⁓ you get the results in a month. You get 117 page report, ⁓ on the types of foods you should eat based on your, genetic makeup. Now that then helps you, look at what you should be taking to optimize your system. you know, these are some of the various things that are available right now. lot of, you know, 20 years ago, Michael, you know, when we were still at university, a test like that would cost something close to a hundred million dollars. Right now, you know, 25, 27 years later for us, that test is about $400. And, you know, you can get it done in Melbourne. We’ve been told that within the next 18 to 24 months that that test will be available through Medicare. So, you know, it’ll be something that will be bulk build, which is rather nice. And imagine everyone who is then exercising or, you know, who wants to either compete either at an elite level, amateur level, or just be a better version of themselves. They know exactly what type of foods are optimized or what type of foods optimize ⁓ their system. That also, so there’s the foods and then there’s the micronutrients as well. ⁓ You you’ll know exactly what kind of micronutrients and the minerals that you should consume. look, we’re heading into a very exciting era for health and wellness. And obviously I’ve worked in sport and what do we do for athletes? There’s a huge translation to the regular public and I guess to answer your question when you get nutrition, right? It’s all about your mood improving and your performance improving if you can measure those two things You’re well on track. The one last thing I’d like to share about nutrition is It’s all about the nutritious value of the food, ⁓ you know, there’s a lot of  information out there saying, here’s the number of calories that are out there with these kinds of foods. But, you know, if you only count calories and a simple example of this is you could eat McDonald’s or fast food for three days straight and you can feel terrible because the nutritious value of that food is not there. Whereas the nutritious value ⁓ of say the Mediterranean foods or even considering how our grandparents used to live and how they used to eat. If you can consider that, that’s much higher and you’re going to get far better results.