Meant to Move Episode #17
Summary:
In this inspiring episode, John Sinclair discusses the concept of “microdosing movement”—breaking down exercise into small, accessible, and purposeful doses tailored to individual lifestyles and needs. He explains how his company, Seven Movements, helps people improve function through seven-minute daily movement “snacks,” especially for those who find traditional fitness environments or 60-minute sessions inaccessible. John challenges conventional fitness programming, advocating for personalized, low-barrier approaches that prioritize well-being and function over aesthetics. By reframing movement as adult recess and tying it to purpose, he promotes sustainable, joyful habits that support long-term health, even in clinical populations.
Transcript:
Vanessa Leone (00:01)
Hello, John. All the way from, well, you’ve got lots of flags up there. Where are you coming from this morning? Afternoon.
John Sinclair (00:03)
I reside in Sunrise, Florida, so way south Florida, but I’m originally from Lucky Lake, Saskatchewan in Canada. Saskatchewan is the green and yellow flag right there. I was born in Manitoba, grew up in Saskatchewan, got my degree in Alberta. So I’m a prairie boy.
Vanessa Leone (00:24)
You’re Canadian true at heart, holds a fond place in my heart as well. It’s a beautiful spot. I lived in Vancouver for a little while, so I loved it. Now, John, we have been talking about this kind of evolution of what you do in the fitness industry. I just introduce everybody to you.
The main thing that I’m really curious about, I’ve been watching what’s happening in your life for a little while and you have a company called Seven Movements and you talk about something called micro dosing movements. So I want to go straight in because I feel like this will give us a really good platform today. What does micro dosing movement mean?
John Sinclair (01:17)
So if we were to take your traditional look at exercise, we may say that what we’ve done in the past and for so many years is like prescribed 60 minutes of exercise, right? And so we kind of, at Seven Movements, we kind of think of that as like a macro dose, right? So a traditional dose of exercise or amount of exercise we would give to somebody maybe in an exercise class or in a personal training session might.
last 60 minutes and however many sets of exercise or how much stress you accumulate over that time would be a dose of physical stress, right? So the way we look at a micro dosing is just taking less amount of total physical stress and putting it into smaller, more bite-size bits, right? And so it really started from us about 13 years ago.
My business partner, Dan Tatton, came to me with an interesting question after one of the workshops I was teaching. I think it was on sport performance or something. And he goes, John, this is really cool. This is really exciting. I love everything that you’re learning. I just have one question for you. How do we get more regular people into the gyms? Because everything you’re going and teaching and coming back is all right, performance related or correlated or what have you. How do we get, as an example, my grandma,
in the gym. And I was like, I don’t know, like what does she love doing? And he’s like, well, she loves to garden. And he’s like, but the only problem is she’s in constant pain. And I was like, I get it. So, and she goes, and further to that, I would never want to, she would never want to go into a gym anyways. So how do we get her to be more physically active knowing that her love is gardening? I said, well, our consideration might be, well, why don’t we just did little bits at a time to make her a little bit better.
and we’ll call her sport gardening, right? And there are all these different demands of gardening that just like if we compared it to hockey, here are the demands of the game of ice hockey, here are the demands for gardening, let’s prepare you wisely to be able to tolerate the stress of gardening in smaller doses at a time. And he was like, that’s great, well how many movements do you think we’d do it in? I was like, I don’t know, seven. And that’s where seven movements came from.
And it’s funny, because talking to personal trainers, they’re like, so what are the seven movements? There’s gotta be the cardinal seven that we have to fall to, right? And it was like, no, here’s the origin of the story and how it came to be. And so what we’ve done is we’ve built a whole company over the last 13 years validating our claims with research. We have two exercise physiology departments that we work with. One at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, with Dr. Jonathan Little.
the other in McMaster University with Dr. Martin Gavala. And what we’re looking at is looking at smaller doses on health outcomes. And so we measure that and then we built a whole platform to deliver this idea of microdosing movement catered to the 80 or 90 % of people that don’t exercise, right? And so finding that one true thing that they are really passionate about and then preparing their body to be able to tolerate the stress of that particular.
event, whether it’s gardening or maybe it’s occupational because they sit at an office all day long or they’re a nurse or they’re, right. So we just change their perspective on, hey, like we’re going to build programming for you based on the demands that you need it and then give you purpose, autonomy and mastery at movement skill as a precursor to ever jumping into the world of fitness.
Vanessa Leone (05:07)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s such a great approach because, you know, I think in the industry, we talk about, you know, training for longevity and movement for life and these kinds of things. I, and you, and you see the movements, let’s go down this tangent. We see the seven movements or movements that get programmed into these macro doses that you’re calling it in, you know, and I want to caveat, I don’t think any of these movements are bad or wrong.
But we see, you know, a big heavy squat or a big heavy deadlift or a bench press or, know, some of those things. And you’re talking about, was it Dan’s gran or your gran?
John Sinclair (05:47)
Dan’s gran
Vanessa Leone (05:48)
Dan’s gran.
She doesn’t want to do a deadlift or a bench press and she wants to be able to garden and she wants to be able to basically, like you said, meet the demands of the thing that she loves. And I love how you treated that like a sport. That’s how your brain works. It’s so clever. It’s so good. But we don’t think about that enough.
we don’t hone in on that. And I think that what you’re doing is amazing. And do you want to elaborate on that a little further? Cause that’s such a great concept.
John Sinclair (06:20)
Well, I think if we were to actually look at any reason why a human body moves, why we move, there’s an external demand that requires us to move in certain ways. From an evolutionary standpoint, we evolved to be upright and our brains changed as a result of us using our hands. And then we became more upright and we started walking.
and developing gait patterns and all our bones shifted and remodelled to have some sort of demand that we needed to be good at. And those demands were external to us. They weren’t internal, it was survival and that’s how we evolved to get to that point where we are now. And the way we look at it now is that movement is just the action that makes up the task demand, right? And so that action,
is either a gross motor skill or a fine motor skill combined together to create that demand, right? So that’s the way I’ve always kind of looked at it and I learned that in university, right? When you take your motor demand and motor control courses, right? And then help me understand, well yeah, so if I’m throwing a baseball, the goal is put it as accurately and precisely as you can to this particular spot, but there’s a whole
cascade of things that need to be organized in order to get that task done. So if we’re looking at gardening, it might be raking, it might be being in an odd position on your hands and your knees relative to gravity and then I’m kind of like creating a little spot for my plant to go. Like there are a myriad of different demands and positions that the body can be in in order to get a task done.
So that’s the way we’ve looked at all of it, is we just looked at, okay, well, what are some of these actions, right? So squat, lunge, push, pull, twist, crawl, get up from the ground. Like we just list a whole bunch of them, then we go, what is your capacity or skill level and competency at being able to do all those specific movements in three dimensions, right? And then how do we teach that? And so that’s what we’ve done is we, as Ian and Scott have always said, the smarts are under the table.
What we do is we deliver at our tech platform is just mirror me, right? Just monkey see, monkey do, follow along with me, and we’re going to teach you this motor skill in a way that is meaningful to you. So we’ve got a variety of different programs and applications that deliver that concept, but at the core of it is what is the task demand? What’s the motor skill required in it?
And then how do I improve your confidence in that particular motor skill so that you can replicate it and be better at the things that you love doing. And so it can be from, it can be very specific occupationally. It could be for a particular sport or activity. It can be just, I’ve got back pain. What movement do I need to do to help alleviate back pain? Well, here are the areas I need to free up. I need to create better mobility. I need to improve circulation to drive fluid to that area.
These are all built into what we do, but it’s all purposely driven and self-selected by that individual. Which is, as you know, that’s the way that people connect with exercise again, right? Is there’s an outcome, I wanna get better at that outcome, here are the skills in order to get better at that outcome, this is what I need to be doing.
Vanessa Leone (09:45)
Yeah. And that self-select is so important because, you know, as much as people want to go see a personal trainer or they refer out to a health professional, the only real change ever comes from within. The only real consistency to achieve that outcome comes from within. No one is ever going to force you to do it. and I think that that’s where a lot of people
say they do have a fitness goal and just say they are just doing your traditional 60 minutes of exercise in the gym. I think that that self-selection is also a big part of the challenge because we don’t give enough people the competency, the skills that they need to be able to self-select to help them along that journey, to be able to choose their own intensity, their own load, their own movement. Because we were not taught the skills of movement. And that’s why I really love your concept. So it’s so clever. It’s great.
John Sinclair (11:00)
Thank you. Yeah, I just finished writing a program for pickleball. Right? And so, went and played some pickleball. I’ve been a multi-athlete all my life and I went and played pickleball and just kind of sat around the court and just observed the people playing, right? And one of the things was, as you observed people playing of an elderly age, their sphere of ability or function is really, really small, right?
Vanessa Leone (11:04)
Yeah, I saw that. That’s cool. Yeah.
John Sinclair (11:29)
They try to play the game and lower their level by bending forward instead of squatting and lowering, right? And so the idea for me was, well, what if I got you to be able to improve your ability to lower your level, but did it in a way that made you still think this is a lesson about pickleball, right? So it’s not about, I’m gonna teach you how to squat, right? So I’m gonna teach you how to lower your level and I got the paddle in my hand and.
we’re gonna hit some low shots right now, right? And so we did it in an organized way that every day you do a lesson, it’s a seven minute lesson. So it’s a small dose of activity that you’re gonna do that’s geared towards that. And really it’s a recess for adults. Right, when you think about when we were kids, we’d go out and play, right? We’d go out and play for recess and then you’d come in and you’d do your studies and then you’d go out and you’d play again. Well this is…
how we’ve built seven movements. It’s just recess for adults. And we’re trying to get that into the social norms of North America and abroad that why can’t we have recess for adults? And how do I get you moving to make you feel better so that your day goes by easier? And even further to that, how do I prepare you for the demands of your occupation? And then how do I teach you how to recover after so that when you get home, you’re fresh and you feel good and you can spend time with your family, right?
Vanessa Leone (12:32)
Yeah. Yeah. I love that you’re talking about the social norms of this, because I think that again, when we’re looking at barriers to people to entry to movement, cause this is what you’re talking about, right? Is, is this concept of adults don’t play unless it’s an organized sport or they have to go to the gym. And if you go for three, 10 minute walks in the middle of the day, you know, for your office, like at your office and you tell people intentionally, that’s what you’re doing.
You’re slacking. You’re not working hard enough. But if you sat there on your computer and you’re still not working, but you’re scrolling or, you know, you checking out holiday locations or you’re chatting to your partner on the phone, they don’t, they like, they don’t care because it gives the appearance that you’re working, but you’re not actually doing any work and you’re not benefiting yourself because you still sat there. haven’t changed your position. You’re still, you know, doing all those things that aren’t necessarily great for you.
And I think that that barrier, that social barrier, that social norm that you’re talking about in terms of, it’s not OK for me to have recess. It’s not OK for me to play and have fun in the middle of my work day. It’s not OK for me to enjoy doing these like movements or work towards these movements, I think is one that is completely backwards. And the ridiculous thing about it is the science and the research supports taking these micro breaks, these movements during the day, they help your productivity, they help your brain. So how like, how are we not getting this?
John Sinclair (14:46)
No, you make a great point.
Okay. No, I think that one of our challenges that we have is, and what we started doing, we started going higher to like the CEOs, the CEOs, COOs, the CFOs and started explaining like, here’s how we can impact movement into your organization. Here’s how we can possibly lower healthcare costs, all that stuff. They weren’t interested in any of it. And instead what we just decided to do is start at the grassroots level, right?
Because a revolution always starts at that grassroots level, where now people are excited about changing culture. And I’m of the opinion that culture isn’t created by the leaders, it’s created by the people that work in an environment, supported by the leaders. Right? And so the only way that we can truly make changes if people buy into this idea that, and are rewarded for
the reward that is movement, right? And that is, I will be more productive if you give me freedom to just, what are my tasks in that day? I’ll get them done by the end of the day, but let me choose how I get that done, right? And so a lot of it means changing corporate culture and corporations don’t like that idea, because how do you tell a manager, don’t micromanage me when that’s their sole reason for being in a lot of cases, right?
So what we’ve had to do is we are recruiting health leaders or advocates for seven movements and then training them to help get in their communities, teach them about the benefits of microdosing movement, adult recess, having a movement break or exercise snacks as they call it in the research, and then organizing people to want to take an active part in moving more frequently over smaller doses.
and in a way that makes them feel rewarded as a result of the outcome that they get from it. Which is generally just, I just feel better. So if we can get you to move just a little bit better, you’re probably gonna feel better afterwards, which means you’re gonna wanna move more.
Vanessa Leone (17:07)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s such a big point because, you know, you talk about feeling better. And I think that at the moment, like you said, you’re, you’re, recruiting these people to come in and change their culture. And that really needs to happen because at the moment, I think the people who are, who are doing this for themselves, feel like they’re doing it for themselves in spite of other people.
But the thing is that you do it for yourself and it makes everything else better around you. It makes you better for other people. It makes you better show up at work. It makes you better for the people at home. And I think that we really need that kind of idea to light fire is that doing these movements, snacking on exercise, having that mindset, changing the way that we look at exercise.
Yes, of course it helps you. It’s designed to help you. But there’s a huge knock on effect that if you’re a better person, it helps everybody else in your life as well.
John Sinclair (18:14)
sure. I think where our industry, if I labelled us as us being in the fitness industry, I try not to think of myself in there anymore. We failed over the last 30 years, right? So the fitness industry has increased, I would say in terms of becoming more progressive in in our ways, but we’ve only ever inspired people that were already interested in fitness, right?
Like the metrics improve everything, right? Like we have, inactivity is the fourth leading cause of death now. fitness hasn’t really helped inspire people to move more. In fact, it’s probably intimidated people and not wanted them to be a part of it. And so I think what we have to do is we have to embrace changing the way we program, be more inclusive of people and giving people other options.
I know in the early 90s when I got involved in the industry, well mid 90s I should say, when I got involved in the industry and was going through university, there was a franchise in North America, I’m not sure if it was in Australia, but it was called Curves. it was, yeah, and so that, we kind of laughed about that because it was a bit of a joke, but if you think about it, what they actually built is they built a community around
exercising just a little bit in an environment that you’ll feel comfortable. And it was like, why did that disappear? Right? Like they were a powerful franchise. If you’re thinking about the number of locations and all the metrics that are say uses to determine whether or not they’re a successful business model. I think from a societal standpoint, they were an epic success because what they did is they created an environment that was comfortable for people to join in.
and do a little bit of exercise. It wasn’t like a monstrous amount of exercise, right? And then we never adapted to that. We built like ladies only sections in our gym, but then left them to their own devices and never really helped them, right? And then our fitness programming got more and more complex. And now you’re adding technology that’s making it even more, more and more complex. Education’s going down. The amount of influencer impact on YouTube and places like that is going up.
There’s mass confusion as to what people are supposed to be doing. And so we’re at a precipice where the fitness industry really needs to look into itself and go, look, what is it that we wanna be doing? Is it only just operating clubs and turning a profit? Are we actually gonna try and make a difference and help some of these preventative health outcomes? And that’s what we’re doing is trying to justify our claims in seven movements.
by measuring the effect of microdosing on Parkinson’s disease, on cancer prevention, on obesity, on diabetes, type 2 diabetes. We’re actively involved in those studies right now, funded by those foundations. I haven’t seen any fitness industry want to move into those segments and create lasting solutions for them. There’s some, there’s some really great boxing interventions that are doing great things.
for Parkinson’s disease, there’s like these little segments. But as an industry as a whole, we haven’t done anything to go, look, you have this medical condition, we got you. We’ll help take care of you, right? It’s always a means to, how do I get more members in the gym? Not how do I serve these people at home, right? And that’s what we’re trying to do anyways, is try to, and we’re delivering our research, we have a research platform that is actually delivering research in people’s homes.
They don’t have to come to the laboratory. They don’t have to come to the gym. They can do them in their living room. So we’ve made the living room their laboratory.
Vanessa Leone (22:11)
And the lab’s scary as well when you’re talking about research and stuff like that. That’s a big barrier because, you know, I spent the first years of my uni degree in the lab and I didn’t even want to do half the research that was in the lab because it involved a hell of a lot of scary implements that I did not want near me. So, yeah, I totally get that.
John Sinclair (22:36)
I was crazy. Dr. Gordon Bell would do muscle biopsies on me and I would do it for free photocopying. I was like, that’s more money to be in the bar. This is awesome.
Vanessa Leone (22:43)
Oh my god that’s so funny. I want to hold that for a second there and pause.
Vanessa Leone (24:06)
Okay, so I’ve paused you there because you said something that really, that really sparked me. And I’ve been like thinking about this for so long and changing what I do because talk about fitness programming and fitness programming for me, the way that trainers are taught, the way that even like, if you think about doctors and things like that, this is where I think we have this disconnect in the industry because
A lot of people who come to see me, they’re already in pain, they’ve had some kind of injury, illness, something or other, they’re middle aged, like they’re between the ages of 35 to 55, most of them. like we’re not talking, you know, the like the elderly pickleball people that you mentioned previous, we’re talking about people who are meant to be in the prime of their life. Okay.
Now, what is happening here. I have and and and this is no slight on people but you know they some of them can’t get up and down off the ground. Some of them are and that could be due to pain or it could be due to you know a whole number of things but like then we then we look at what we learnt in terms of fitness programming squat lunge push pull all of those things.
And trainers don’t know what to do with someone who can’t squat. Like we’re all meant to be able to squat, but what do you do if you can’t even squat? And there’s nothing there that fills that gap. And you’re talking about all of these diseases. I have an autoimmune disease. Nearly everybody who I know who is, again, in this age bracket, they’re talking to their doctors about these.
illnesses, these potential things that are creeping up on them. This is not something that happens when you’re older now. This is something that’s happening from your 30s, 40s and 50s. How do we address this, this shift in, we need to change what’s happening with fitness programming. Like where do you want to start John?
John Sinclair (26:17)
So I think I hear what you’re saying and I see it all the time. I have interns that are coming to do their practicum with me from universities and they tell me all the time like, John, I learned more from you in four weeks than I did in four months or in four years at university. And it’s not because I did anything crazy different, it’s just I had to shift their perspective on the way programming is presented at the university level.
versus here’s the people that we’re actually going to be working with, and then here’s how we scale it, right? And so I think it really comes down to understanding, and I had the same experience they did. I remember coming right out of university, my very first client was, she had arthritis in both her knees, she was obese, and she wanted to lose weight. I’m like, how am gonna teach her power cleans? Right? It was like, that’s what I learned in university. Like, where do I start? Let’s start on a machine, I guess, right? And so,
The challenge has always been, I think, in the fitness industry is that we make things too complicated and the dose is way too high. It’s too long. So imagine if you went in and you met with a coach and you got the opportunity to just feel a little bit better. I mean, Ian’s the genius at this, right? And I’ve learned so much from him. Imagine if I just put you on a power plate and just.
got some circulation going through you, then we went and sat on a bike and chatted for a little bit and then asked you how you felt, right? And that would be a good program for that individual, right? Or we might, you like tennis, here, let’s have a game of catch. Do you know what I mean? Like, that’s program. But here’s the thing is we don’t organize things that way because I think we’re scared to charge people for the things that they actually need, so we charge them for the things that we expect them to have to do.
that would fall in line with what I would be doing the cash transaction for, right? And that’s where I think our problem is. And then in terms of group exercise, there needs to be like, okay, here’s a class that’s gonna take 10 minutes, right? And then start having options for people that match their tolerance for stress. So Ian and Richard have a really good readiness assessment. We use a readiness assessment on our platform.
that dictates what prescription you’re gonna give or get on any given moment of the day, right? So that we’re giving you the right dose with the right strategies right then and there. It’s not this is everything that we’re going to give you, look at this entire gym, it’s my job to show you how everything works in the gym here. Then people are like, I don’t wanna do that. And then they leave, right? Like, let me walk you through all the Cybex pieces, all the…
really great life fitness pieces. Let me take you through all the hammer strength. like, I don’t know what you’re talking about, right? It’s because we’re not speaking in their language, we’re speaking in our language.
Vanessa Leone (29:46)
Yep, yep, yep.
Yeah. No, it’s, this is such an important message of the podcast that I, I want to give out because I, you know, I’ve emulated a lot of what I do from, from Ian from ID and you know, people come to see me and unfortunately a lot of them are in pain and you know, we might do three or four movements and, and that might be an entire session and, but they leave feeling
better. I think that we, people who like to exercise also have it in their head that if they only do 10 minutes, it’s not enough. It’s not worth doing just 10 minutes, because I should be doing 30 or 40 or 50 minutes. So if I only do 10, that’s not going to get me anywhere. So what’s the point? What would you say to someone who’s thinking like that?
John Sinclair (30:48)
Yeah, so what we would do is we’d say, what would be the ideal amount of exercise for you? Right, like what really connects with you? What do you think would be valid? Right, and say, well, probably 30. I was like, could you commit to doing 10 minutes three times a day? Right, and help them see how valid it is to just do that same amount of dose in a day, just spread out. if the…
If the pharmacist prescribes you a bottle of antibiotics, you don’t open it up and take all of them all at once, right? There’s a dose to it, because there’s a dose response to all this. So you want to do 30 minutes of exercise, but the last time you did 30 minutes of exercise, you were crippled, right? So what if we still do that 30 minutes, we just break it up five minutes at a time, six times throughout the day, right? Because in the aggregate, we know that it affects biology in the exact same way.
Not if we’re talking about muscle hypertrophy. However, if I blast you with five minutes of squats at a high dose, right, or a high intensity, like in the aggregate, you still got the same amount of work done in the same day, right? You’re not gonna have the hormonal response from it, but it’s still going to be a dose of exercise that your body has to adapt to. So, I’m not saying we do that with our clients, I’m just trying to…
paint this parallel between people that might be listening to this saying, there’s no way you can get any reward from doing seven minutes of exercise a day. And it’s like, well, for people that can’t move, that’s seven times the amount that they would normally do, or a 700 % increase. Right? Like, you’re not gonna go out and do 700 % increase on what you’re currently doing, right? So, we just need to look at it through a different lens.
You know, I always say that like your perception of what’s going on is through you. Perspective is through somebody else, right? So they’re looking at the world through a completely different perspective than you are, right? And it’s us understanding that when we are trying to coach people and trying to program for them, we 100 % have to meet them where they’re at, but we also need to have at least some semblance of empathy to know that they cannot tolerate the stress that even they think they can handle and probably can’t tolerate the stress that you think they can handle, right?
Vanessa Leone (33:17)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, this speaks to me so much and I think for someone who’s listening, who flirts with this line of like, exercise and I hurt myself so I stop exercising or I can’t fit it in because of work and all of this kind of stuff, you know, I can’t send some of my clients to a Pilates class or to a yoga class because they don’t have the capacity for that dose. They don’t have the capacity.
to number one, do the amount. But also, like you said, the programming is so hard, like it’s so hard. And I think that we as fit people and fitness professionals, when we’ve been doing it our entire life, we have such a warped view of how hard exercise actually is. And it’s really challenging to take yourself out of that headspace. I’ve been exercising since I was quite literally a toddler.
like swimming, gymnastics, I’ve done it all the way through and I’ve never stopped. But it shouldn’t be that hard for us as fitness professionals to take ourself, like take your head out of your body and really see the people in front of you, really hear them, really try to put yourself into their challenges. And it’s pretty humbling pretty quickly that there’s not like, we need to change some things that are happening.
And I love like I’ve been looking at your at your posts and a whole bunch of things. And what I think that I really like about what you talk about is that you call yourself a health care professional, not a fitness professional. And was that a conscious like change in the wording there? Did you do that purposely?
John Sinclair (35:12)
Yeah, I started getting fed up with the fitness industry because everything was driven around making things more complicated, trying to get people more and more fit. Don’t get me wrong, like if you looked at my program, look what I do for myself, you’re like, no, you’re into fitness. I’m like, yeah, for me, but not for my clients. Like for the kids and athletes, I have a different perspective for them. So it’s 100 % sport performance for them. Somebody comes into me,
for pain and wants to lose weight. That’s a goal, but it doesn’t necessarily have to have fitness attached to it. And so I think our industry got moved away from really caring for other individuals and more caring about exercises. It became this exercise over this exercise or.
or this program over this program or my dogma over your dogma and it became I’m right, you’re wrong. And it’s like, what are we doing here? This doesn’t make any sense. And so I got frustrated with it took and like, and how now fitness is, it seems to me in just through my eyes that the fitness industry is more about vanity and more about sex than it is about the beauty of movement.
And so I was like, I don’t want to be associated with that anymore. There’s so many things that are wrong with the industry that I didn’t really want to be associated with it anymore. No one was interested in education. No clubs are interested in it anymore, right? Like I’ve been part of the education industry forever, right? And work on my butt off to learn enough to and create enough practical experience. I don’t know. I’m probably close to a hundred thousand hours of personal training now over my career. And I’m like, you don’t want to learn anything anymore?
Like what is wrong with our industry? Like why do we want to move backwards? Right? And now all this talk about AI and this and that replacing this and that, I’m like, you guys are going in the wrong direction. Like this is about humans connecting with other humans and taking care of one another, right? Healthcare kinda does that, right? Probably not as good as it should, right? In a lot of cases.
But I think its intention is still, I’m here to take care of you and make sure that your care and your willingness to want to engage in self-care, I can guide you through that. Right, and so that’s kind of where I’ve, I’m either sport performance or I’m more healthcare. That’s kind of where I’ve positioned myself now, not just with my clientele, but just philosophically.
I’ve become disenchanted with what the fitness industry has become over the last 10 years.
Vanessa Leone (38:12)
Yeah, no, I like that. It’s like you can wear different hats. You know, like you said, I love fitness for me and I love programming like, you know, all of those crazy, fun, complicated things. I do too. It’s not the hat you need to wear with some people. And I think that we’re not great at switching personas, but I’m really aware that I want to give people something that they can take away. So if there was…
a micro dose of movement that you recommend that like, you know, is going to benefit anybody. What’s that micro dose of movement for you?
John Sinclair (38:55)
Well, usually when we engage people, a group of people that don’t exercise so much, the goal is really about how do I improve circulation first and foremost. So for me, it’s if you can get up and you can go for a short walk, that’s probably going to do more to four domains of performance, right? Your physical domain, your mental and emotional domain, your cognitive domain and your social domain.
So if you get out and you go walk in a park and say hi to some folks and you do that for 10 minutes, you’re getting all the benefits of circulation as well as you’re moving the needle on all those other domains of performance. So I would say walking is probably the one thing that if you have the capacity to walk, it’s the one simple thing that you could do more frequently and frequently throughout the day that’s gonna give you a greater reward no matter what your end goal is.
So even if you are into fitness, if you walked more frequently, you’d probably be even a little bit healthier, right? And you’d probably be a little bit leaner too. So if that’s the way you want to look at it, right? And so that, I would say that kind of goes under the idea of microdosing global circulation. And then we got all the beautiful things that Ian has taught us, right? Which is how do I microdose or rub and scrub a particular joint to make that joint feel better?
So one of the things that I’ll always do in front of people is I’ll say, well hey, let me show you how to rub and scrub your knee. Right, so we’ll do a test, we’ll try a little test, and then we do the rub and scrub of the knee, and just a vigorous rub and drive circulation of that joint and say, try and squat now. And that one knee moves so much better than the other one that you’re like, that was magic, man. Like what are you, Mr. Miyagi, this is crazy, right? And then you do the other knee and you feel better and you’re like, all right, now you’ve earned the right to go a little lower in your squat because you feel better, let’s do that.
And so what we do is we drip feed little doses of little strategies that might be mobility theme, it might be a recovery theme, it might be a squat strength theme, it might be a cardio theme. And then we have a readiness score that organizes those prescriptions for you. And then we have a seven minute dose, which is a little bit different. So in that seven minutes, I might teach you how to get rid of your back pain in seven minutes.
Right, and so I will organize, we’ll start with circulation, then we’ll go into mobility, then we’ll go into activation, then we’ll go into some integration. And that’s the recipe of a seven minute dose. And so we have all those labelled based on what outcomes do people want here, right? And so then I take you through that same recipe every time. It’s just monkey see, monkey do. You have this complaint, click on the video, and then I take you through it and you feel great, right? And so,
That’s the way we do it. Now we’ve got like a master series. So we teach you a micro dose. If you’re really into Viper Pro, like around my corner, I’m take you through a micro dose of Viper Pro so you can get better at this one task, because it looks kind of cool. And then by the end, I teach you how to put it all together and you’re like, wow, that was really cool. I feel like a ninja now, right? And so we do it with different tools and stuff like that. So now it’s not just about playing a sport.
it’s maybe, hey, look at how I became more proficient at these movement skills with a different external device. And so we’re trying to layer all that in and create almost like a, you remember in phys ed class when you had to learn to shoot a basketball? It’s like that, I’m gonna give you a skill, we’re gonna learn this skill, we’re gonna chunk it, and we’re gonna organize it so by the end you’re like, hey, watch this. And it’s like, holy cow, look at this thing that you learned. And so it just takes motor learning to another level.
And so those are the things that we get really fired up about doing is just coming up with interesting little strategies to create, put the humanity back in human movement and make people feel like I’m accomplishing something and a particular skill or a task or a demand that I wasn’t able to do last year and now I can do it, now I feel successful.
Vanessa Leone (43:13)
That’s incredible. I really, I really love like how you’re approaching that. That’s cool. That’s really cool. So anyone who’s interested, all of that information is there in the show notes. One last question to finish. And I asked this of everybody who I talk to. I call myself a movement therapist, like yourself. I was disenchanted with the word trainer. And I believe that, you know, pretty much anything can be movement therapy.
whatever it could be. I’m really curious, John, what do you do for yourself for movement therapy?
John Sinclair (43:50)
love it. So for me, I’ve always been like an athlete. So anytime I’m playing sports, I’m probably at my most happiest. But as I get older, my capacity for playing sports all day long has obviously gone away. My body doesn’t like it so much. So I’ve actually become more passionate about bodybuilding, which is something, if you knew me 10 years ago, they’d be like, no, man, like, I don’t like bodybuilding. I’ve never spent any time.
Vanessa, I have dreams about the health club I used to work at and all the amazing bodybuilding equipment they had. So I’m I’m obsessed with going on Facebook Marketplace. Yesterday, I saw a Cybex leg extension machine in Edmonton Oilers colours and I was just vibrating, thinking of all the ways I’m gonna go buy this machine and figure out how to get it to my house. So my therapy now has been kind of what I started with when I first entered the industry was
going back to loaded linear bodybuilding activities for this reason and this reason only. I’m not in pain when I do it. I can satisfy my body with movement as opposed to if I’m out playing sports, now my back is starting to bother me, my knee is starting to bother me, I’m sore in ways that impacts my workout the following day, you know? And I’m like really geeking out on bodybuilding now, which I’ve never done in…
Like I started like in 1995 I was into it, right? And I’ve gone 30 years later, I’m back into it and I’m just enjoying it. So that’s kind of been my therapy this last year really. Yeah.
Vanessa Leone (45:24)
That’s so cool. I’ve got Arnie’s encyclopedia of bodybuilding behind me somewhere, should I? Yeah, that’s my partner’s favorite book.
John Sinclair (45:39)
the best.It’s the best. You know what? Like if you’re into YouTube and you’re following bodybuilders, they’re only regurgitating things that he said in his book years ago. Right? Like this, that encyclopedia came out forever ago and it’s still brilliant. I still flip through it because it’s, it’s so entertaining just to listen to it and see all these vintage pictures and things like that. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So it’s, it’s weird that I’ve made that shift from sport performance to
to bodybuilding and every now and then I’ll do some power cleans and some snatches because I’ve got to keep my skill at it and I’ll always be doing Viper Pro because I’m the director of programming for Viper Pro so I’ve to keep that skill up. And then what else do I do? Oh, I’ve fallen in love with the shock T-mat, you know, the acupressure mat.
Vanessa Leone (46:35)
yes.
John Sinclair (46:36)
It looks like golf spikes on a mat.
That is like, if I know that I don’t really feel very good, I lay on that thing, play on some Tibetan singing bowls, you know, like dong, and just like, and I’ll fall asleep on that thing. It’s like sleeping on a bed of nails, it’s bananas. But yeah, so that’s like one of my like, all right, I’m gonna treat myself by sleeping on a bed of nails. Yeah.
Vanessa Leone (47:03)
And this is why we don’t call ourselves fitness professionals anymore. Yeah, yeah, no, it’s so good. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing all of this incredible knowledge today. I appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on. I definitely will be. I have this vision of getting you, Michelle, Ian, and maybe Richard all on at the same time and just letting fitness chaos ensue. No, healthcare chaos ensue.
John Sinclair (47:36)
Yeah, no, it would be hilarious to actually listen to the banter. You’d have to probably do a disclaimer at the start of it. Like, there will be some swearing and laughing and anarchy going on, but it’ll be a blast.
Vanessa Leone (47:51)
Yeah, I mean, I’m Australian swearing. Swearing is part of the territory. All right, thanks again, John. We’ll see you soon.
John Sinclair (48:00)
Hey, thank you so much.
Vanessa Leone Movement Therapist 