Ep. 1 — Summer Exposes Movement Debt with Kyle Worell, Bill Fow & Lauren Rall

[0:07] Summer Exposes Movement Debt

Bill Fow: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the first episode of The Athletic Life. Today we're sitting down with Dr. Kyle Worrell from MOOV. Health, along with Lauren Rall from the performance and recovery side of the practice. One of the reasons we wanted to have this conversation right now is because Kyle and the team see the same pattern every single year around this time. People start moving more, golf season comes back, tennis, long weekends. And within a few weeks, a lot of people suddenly find themselves dealing with low back pain, stiffness, fatigue, recurring injuries, or just feeling like their body isn't responding the way it used to. Kyle's been doing this for over 20 years, working with athletes, high performers, and active adults across Manhattan, Greenwich, Westchester, and the Hamptons, and one of the concepts he talks about a lot is something called desk athlete syndrome, which we'll talk about in a little bit. so today we wanted to unpack why this happens every summer, what's actually going on physically underneath it, and how people can start preparing their body differently for long-term performance and longevity. Kyle, maybe that's a good place to start. You wrote something in this month's newsletter that stood out to me. "Summer exposes movement debt." Can you tell us what you mean by that?

Dr. Kyle Worell: Yeah. most people think that summer injuries happen because they suddenly become active, or in most cases, they think that their body's failed them, and they blame the disc, they blame the muscle, or, you know, fill in the blank, and then that's not actually the issue. the issue is usually inconsistent preparation. Modern athletes, or modern adults, sorry, still psychologically identify themselves as active, but, you know, they no longer consistently maintain te- the infrastructure that supports what's known as athletic living, you know? And then Memorial Day hits, and suddenly the body experiences it

Bill Fow: So it's less like I got injured golfing and more my body stopped tolerating inconsistency? Like, is that what

Dr. Kyle Worell: happens? absolutely. You know, they add more load, they add more rotation, they add more walking, instability, they add more... sorry. The things that they do start to actually increase a, a greater amount of recovery d- demand. They have less sleep, more alcohol, more food, more travel, all the summer activities, and then all at once, the body doesn't break in one moment, it breaks because of the enormous amount of accumulation.

Bill Fow: Yeah, it's humbling. Like, you can be an athlete your whole life and be very fit, but if you take a couple months off or you're, like, inactive, um, it, it's humbling to have to take it slow when you start again. I always end up with some kind of random pulled muscle or injury when I get a, the first chance. It's like a nice summer day, I wanna go outside. But a lot can happen even in just a couple months.

Lauren Rall: Absolutely. Well, and that's, that's what's really funny, is that people are like, "Oh, well, I didn't take any time off. I worked out over the winter. I did, you know, activity over the winter." But it's not the same. You don't go outside and run maybe a 10-mile race in the dead of winter versus the dead of summer. It's totally... It could be the exact same distance, but totally different races, and your body responds totally differently. Um, and then there's also, like Kyle said, there's all these events that are happening in the summer. Um, there's all these, you know, activities that you wanna participate in. So it compounds. So people think of themselves as these athletes, these runners, these people who are in constant shape and constantly active, but given different environments, your beha- your body behaves in different ways. So when Memorial Day comes around, everyone's like, "Great. Yes, I can go out and do all the things that I love to do," but you haven't done them in that exact same way for, since last Memorial Day. So the body has essentially lost its rhythm. It's lost its ability to like I've been saying, to understand what to do in those environments. So, uh--Mm-hmm it needs to be slowly but consciously put under load and force and tension and, you know, we can go into that a little bit more later. But yeah the line is that, like, you need to show up consistently and understand that the body that you had in October is not the body that you have now.

Bill Fow: Gotcha. Yeah, at least as I get older, I have a little more patience than I used to, so I'm getting injured a little bit less. Kyle, in this month's newsletter you used the phrase desk athlete syndrome, and that feels painfully accurate. I mean, at least as someone who sits in front of my desk most of the day. Can you dive into that for us a bit?

Dr. Kyle Worell: Yeah. It's, uh... It's a modern performance paradox, you-know? Everybody is mentally competitive, but physically, uh, inconsistent. You know, they do not do what they wanna do in these, summertime Memorial Day weekend events. Uh, throughout the summer, they do not actually do what they're trying to do all summer all year long. This generation of professionals, it's, uh... They're all cognitively o- overloaded, they're physically unprepared. It's really, people are always working intensely now, they're traveling constantly, at least across the, you know, the greater New York City, uh, tri-state area. People that are actually, uh, you know, that are high achievers that have you know, busy jobs. They're sleeping inconsistently because of work throughout the year. You know, they're... We're all stressed. They are stressed. And for the large majority of people in corporate America, finance, and, you-know, o- other careers like yourself, you just said most people are sitting most of the day, and then they're trying to compress all this active lifestyle and active athletic living into weekends. So it's what I've coined the desk athlete syndrome.

Bill Fow: athletes would never train that way.

Dr. Kyle Worell: No, not at all. Not at all

Bill Fow: So what would an elite athlete do?

Dr. Kyle Worell: Obviously, they do the proper amount of strengthening, conditioning.

Bill Fow: So Lauren,

[6:08] What Working with Move Looks Like

Bill Fow: when someone engages with MOOV. dealing with this what does it actually look like?

Lauren Rall: It's not very dramatic. So let's take away the, fluff of social media and everything. Like, when you're getting back into routine it's essentially that. You're gonna be identifying things like stiffness. You're gonna be identifying, tight hips. That's like my first indicator to myself to be like, "Oh, my body probably wasn't ready for these activities." And that's where we educate patients to be like, "Your body is not telling you that this is necessarily an injury. It's telling you that it's not fully ready for all of these things." So we're just trying to recognize those patterns, acknowledge them, but make it so it... But understand that it's not dramatic. It's just that, like, we need to make slow, measurable improvements small measurable changes, lifestyle changes, which is a big thing, too. If you wanna think of yourself as an athlete, then you have to kind of train like an athlete. So like Kyle is saying, like, you're constantly in motion. You're constantly doing something. It doesn't always have to be running 10 miles, but you have to start small, and you have to start somewhere. Uh, a lot of times people are shocked that it's... The, the recommendations usually start with something very simple because they always think it has to be, like, an all or nothing kind of approach, and that's not necessarily the case either. But you start small, make it understandable, make it something that is, you're capable of sticking to, and then from there you start expanding, and you start building that physical movement. So then you add things into your routine. You add some of these lifestyle changes. You add some of these specific rest and recovery things that Kyle just alluded to. So, uh, so yeah. So it's, it's not dramatic. It's not pretty. It's just, it's just putting in the work. That's usually the hardest thing for people.

Bill Fow: And

[7:56] Why It Gets Harder After 35

Bill Fow: why does it suddenly, or at least seem to feel harder after 35 or

Lauren Rall: 40? Kyle, do you wanna- Just by that age ... Kyle, do you wanna take this? Yeah. Or do you want me?

Dr. Kyle Worell: Why, are you insinuating because I am actually up in that age bracket

Lauren Rall: already? No, I was gonna say we're both in that age bracket. Are you kidding? Okay.

Dr. Kyle Worell: Yeah.

Bill Fow: We're all in the age bracket, actually.

Dr. Kyle Worell: Yeah. to put it in certain terms, recovery margins, they shrink. In our 20s or younger, we can usually override poor prepara- poor preparation, a little more aggressively. but eventually, as said a couple times now, sleep matters more. Recovery matters more in whatever ways we actually approach our recovery, whether it's just resting or actually active movement and active recovery. the tissue quality of our body matters way more as we edge towards 30 plus, 40 and 50. and then as Lauren said before, movement consistency matters the most. And ano- and to put it in o- o- other economic, financial, or business terms, the bill comes faster when you actually get to that age

Bill Fow: So aging isn't really the problem?

Dr. Kyle Worell: No, not at all. It's the inconsistency. even to personally put this to myself, like I actually think that consistency wins. Of course, it's trendy to say discipline and motivation wins also, but consistency wins over and over again. The toler- the body tolerates what it rehe- rehearses more, and Lauren alluded to this before. If you walk constantly, and I've pushed for this, five, six, even seven days a week. You don't need rest from walk. You just need consistency. resistance training, things that actually are weight training, strength cur- strength and conditioning, modalities consistently and preparing for that ability to do so.

Bill Fow: Yeah, I guess your goals mean a lot, uh, in that context because if you're training to get bigger or, um, to have more endurance, your body just tolerates what it rehearses regularly. So, like, if someone comes to you, Lauren, and says, "I just want to play golf or tennis without hurting my back anymore," where do you usually begin

Lauren Rall: well, so it's, it's usually removing the level of intimidation 'cause people think that like, "Oh my gosh, I'll never be able to play again if I can't get rid of my back pain," or, "I'll never be able to do golf, tennis, any kind of physical activity if I can't get rid of this pain," right? And that's not true. So a lot of it is you just need to break it down. So if, if tennis is what you wanna do, fantastic, but you can't go out like a weekend warrior, like Kyle says, and save all of your energy for the weekend, and then expect to be able to perform at your highest capabilities. It's not gonna function that way. You'll come out of it feeling super sore, you'll take the whole week to recover, and then you're gonna do the same thing again next weekend, and guess what? It's probably gonna hurt because the stimulus didn't change. The factors didn't change. You just basically re- rehearsed and repeated, like Dr. Kyle said, you rehearsed and repeated the same mechanism over and over again so your body learns that that's now how you handle things. You go out really hard, you hurt, you take a whole week to recover and you just repeat that whole cycle. So a lot of it starts with breaking down the movements. What do y- what movements do you need to do to be able to perform the activity that you wanna do? Where are you limited in some of those movements? Maybe you have some kind of restriction, so like- if you are... For example, if you're trying to do an overhead tennis serve, maybe your shoulders don't have full range of motion anymore, so you're still trying to whack away at this ball as if you were in your, teens and early 20s, but you physically don't have the mobility to do that anymore, and that's maybe what's causing some upper back pain or neck pain, for example. So we start with an assessment. What is bothering you? What are your limitations? Uh, then you start thinking, okay, well, how are you gonna build on those limitations to improve them? And that is not going out, like I said, every weekend and playing again. It's breaking it down and saying, "Okay, well I I'm weaker, or I'm tighter, or I'm stiffer, or I have pain and discomfort in this area. How am I gonna address that area?" So like I said, movement, strength, walking. What Kyle said already, walking is, is huge. People underestimate that a lot. Just movement, right? Movement is like lotion for the body, so if you want your body to be more fluid, you need lotion. Lotion is motion, okay? So then essentially once you are able to move a little bit smoother and better, then we increase more load and more tension and more force, and it's a general increase. So that way, again, you go out on the weekend really super hard. Come Monday, Tuesday, you're doing some kind of movement. Wednesday, Thursday, maybe some other kind of movement. By the time you go back out on Saturday, you've been moving all week. You're not stiff, so now you can perform better when you're out there on the weekend on the court. So that's what it is. Um, and then like Kyle said, too the whole walking with the five, six, seven days thing, um, he has a coin. He calls it 567. Uh, no, it's not 67, but close. Uh, so he recommends doing that, trying to get out there and do something consistent five to six to seven days a week, whether it's walking, whether you have another form of motion that is your preferred form of motion, then that's what you do. But yeah, it's about trying to build up that level of intensity, that level of endurance so that by the time the activity comes back around on the following weekend, you're in a much better position, a much better, safer, healthier, happier position for your body

Bill Fow: Motion is lotion. I love that. Yeah, I skateboard, that's my thing. That's how I stay active, and I'll lose my tricks in a, in a month. But I, I find that I don't know what to do during the week when I'm working and I have 5 or 10 minutes, and it's not skateboarding. I kinda struggle to come up with, like, what is it that I should be practicing to, like, keep me ready for the weekend. And that's why I love what you guys do because I know all the exerci- I have too much information in my head now. I need to, like, unlearn

Dr. Kyle Worell: you and everybody else. Yeah, that's, uh, yep. You and everybody else.

Lauren Rall: Yep.

Dr. Kyle Worell: There's too much information these days, and also it's too complicated. Everybody across every sector of sports, fitness, goals and achievements, it's too complicated, I think that majority of people need to actually start to embrace, that silly but, effective, acronym, keep it simple stupid. Most people should actually be preparing themselves to con- be consistent with movement, like the five, six, seven, thing that that I've suggested before. And body weight exercise too, tremendous value in being able to do that consistently. most people unfortunately have gone to the other end of the spectrum these days and, work out too much, too hard, too fast, too soon. they're increasing things, greater than p- 10% time over time, workout over workout, week over week. They're increasing things way too fast and also trying to overachieve in whatever it is, whether it's minute miles or weights and plates. most people are actually adding too much to their workout instead of actually giving it the consistency that it needs.

Bill Fow: So based on everything we've just talked about,

[14:40] Performance Longevity

Bill Fow: what does performance longevity actually mean to both of you?

Dr. Kyle Worell: For me, it means building a body that supports your life, instead of re- instead of recovering from the life you're trying to achieve. It means being able to actually do things super consistently so that when you actually go out, you're not actually trying to recover from the thing you just overdid.

Bill Fow: Lauren, what does it mean to you?

Lauren Rall: For me, it's exact same like Kyle with some caveats. Being a woman turning 40 this year it means less focus on the aesthetics and more focus on how it feels internally, how I feel doing exercise, how I feel my body improving regardless of what the scale says, regardless of what the pant size is that I'm putting on. So for me, , it's changed more from what is this... what does performance longevity look like aesthetically to more how am I literally going to keep my body physically active so that I'm able to someday chase down grandchildren, right? So it's really looking internally to pull away from the social media aesthetics of how a fit person or how, , a healthy person should look. I can say that, for example, from my own personal standpoint I have been on a health journey to do , a competition that's coming up. That's a whole nother segment that will come up. , but I've been doing this, I've been training really hard for this competition, and when I started, from where I started for, to where I am now, my body hasn't changed necessarily size-wise. It hasn't changed from a pant size perspective. If anything, I've probably maintained the same weight or gained slightly more, but my health has improved dramatically. I am able to run. I am able to breathe comfortably. I actually enjoy working out at harder capacities now than I ever did before. So for me, the longevity part , is getting away from what society is telling us of how our bodies should look with working out, and it should focus on, "How does my body feel? Can I feel a difference?" And I feel much healthier and that's been more also just changing that mentality around it has been, , difficult but meaningful in terms of the longevity of being able to stay healthy , as an aging midlife. We'll find another word for that when you d- We'll figure

Bill Fow: it out.

Lauren Rall: As , as a middle-aged, soon-to-be middle-aged, , woman.

Bill Fow: That sounds way less intimidating than most fitness culture-

Lauren Rall: Yes ...

Bill Fow: that I'm used to seeing.

Dr. Kyle Worell: You know, Lauren said something in th- there too that I think that matters dramatically right now, especially when you start to use, you know, the, the, the numbers of, uh, 40, 50, 60-year-olds. Being able to continue to perform for the decades, um, whether it's actually someone actually hoping to be able to actually pick up grandchildren or, you know, even my own personal goals, um, being able to do the same things now that I'm gonna actually be able to do when I am in my 80s and, you know, there's... I, I have a target number of, like, wanting to know that I can do the same things that, I'm nearly gonna be 55 in a couple years, and I actually have the same exact goals and training plan that I wanna be able to do when I'm 85. Um, certain things are, you know, they're, they're achieving goals. Uh, uh, picking a number. I've been teaching people for years now to be able to say, "What's the number that's important to you?" Whether it's an age or currently right now, for instance, being able to do pushups or squats or something of that, uh, nature and your age. You know, whether it's actually broken down to one set or actually a few sets, it's just being able to know that you've you know, accomplished that same thing over the decades. Being able to actually do that consistently for years to come and setting that goal is actually probably one of the most important things c- people can adopt, and stop being connected to the trendier ways of actually, uh, you know, fitness or performance that are usually the reason why, uh, myself and, um, folks like Dr. Lauren actually have a job, fitness actually does more to bring people into our offices and into our clinics and, um, than it does to actually solve people's lives sometimes. Bill Fow: Crazy. Lauren Rall: Yeah, I agree with that. There was... I'll never forget, it was the first couple years out of, I was out of school, and I had a gentleman come in, and he had gotten his knee replacement, but he was in his, like, late 70s, maybe possibly even early 80s, and I was like, "How have you been able to go this long before needing to get a knee replacement?"

Lauren Rall: Because by the time you hit 80, a, a lot... I don't know the percentage. We would have to look that up, but a lot of individuals, especially aging adults, are dealing with some kind of knee pain, some kind of chronic knee pain. , and he said, "You know what?" He's , "I've been running..." And I don't wanna say every day, but he , "I was running for the majority of my life." And I don't think he was doing, though, , the super hardcore training, the super hardcore, , running marathons every other weekend type of experience. He was just consistent with his running. So again, it doesn't necessarily matter what the activity is, as long as you're consistent. That's what we keep saying, right?

Bill Fow: Is that that saying, "If you don't use it, you lose it"?

Lauren Rall: Oh, yes. That... Yes.

Bill Fow: Heard

Lauren Rall: that a lot. Yes, 1,000%. 1,000%, that is true. Physically- Yeah ... mentally, emotionally, intellectually, everything.

Bill Fow: , so yeah, in the summer, you wanna be able to go outside , and enjoy. , at least in the northeast, , it seems like you gotta cram a lot into these warm months.

[20:17] Summer Prep & Takeaways

Bill Fow: "Summer should expand your life, not break your body." Just wanted to talk about that for a bit , as we come up to summer. There's nothing worse than getting injured right at the beginning of the summer and missing out on the months before it gets hot and sticky and buggy.

Dr. Kyle Worell: Yeah, , most people actually these days are chasing their weekends. , they're, they're, they're... and they're trying to condense into these summer months of the northeast, , way too much. , they, they end up actually condensing in, , sometimes it's 36 rounds of golf and potentially some other workout class, , y- on the front side or the back of that or, , a variety of things. And, r- right now we actually have to, , get, get away from that because you don't want your actual weekend to lead to your week. , and , , what I've found sometimes is some people are actually paying the price in trying to find that appointment with their chiro or physio, , right after the end of the weekend because they've done too much.

Bill Fow: , and Lauren, I don't know if you wanted , to add in- Yeah ... about summer,

Lauren Rall: like- I, I was just gonna say, it's, it, that's when it's fun and exciting to get out. You're with your friends, you're with your family, you're with loved ones. And it's fantastic. It's a great opportunity to get out and be more social, to be more active. But I think the tendency is everyone is trying to use that as an opportunity to make up for any kind of thing that they were lacking prior to the summer. - Mm ... whether it... W- it could even be just social engagements, right? But regardless of what it is social engagements can be very taxing, same way that physical activities can be taxing. So you need to, , think about every part of your life needs to have some consistency to it. Now we're getting super, , into, , the whole total lifestyle management, but that's really kinda what it comes down to- Yeah ... 'cause your physicality is also a representation of your mentality. Starting small, starting with, a walk tomorrow, trying to get more hours of sleep, and maybe not even necessarily more hours of sleep, that's always ideal, but consistency. So if you always go to bed at the same time, you always wake up at the same time, , you're not trying to catch up for your sleep on the weekend either. So if you're catching up on sleep, catching up on activity on the weekend, you're really , , burning the candle at both ends, which doesn't help from a consistency and lifestyle perspective as well. so yeah. So it's really just, don't stop yourself from doing the things that you wanna do, but you gotta be mindful of how you're doing it and what the results may be, and just understand that if your body is telling you something, it's giving you a signal. It's not telling you that it's an emergency, but it's giving you a signal, and not to ignore it.

Bill Fow: So Memorial Day coming up. One sentence each, what do you want someone heading into summer to understand if they're listening to this episode right now? Just one sentence.

Dr. Kyle Worell: Well, as the, uh, you know, as the newsletter and a- a- as the conversation has actually consistently said, you know,

Edward: usually it's not summer that's create the problem, it usually exposes the preparation that wasn't done, throughout the year

Dr. Kyle Worell: These folks that actually, you know, we're, we're, we're running into Memorial Day right now, and everybody has big goals and ideas about what they can do from this weekend forward. Usually actually, uh, you, you have to start slow. You actually have to start actually, you know, just being consistent so that you can enjoy your entire summer.

Bill Fow: And Lauren?

Lauren Rall: I was gonna say along those lines too. It's you don't need to be extreme, you just need to be consistent. You just need to have a goal, and you need to be consistent. There's gonna be days that you don't wanna do what you're supposed to do. But the ultimate goal of having those, whatever those goals are achieved or achievable is where the beauty comes from it. So consistency, not ex- Consistency over extremism.

Bill Fow: So it sounds like that's the real shift. Less proving, more preparation.

Dr. Kyle Worell: Agreed, 100%. Be consistent.

Bill Fow: All right.

Lauren Rall: Consistency never killed the cat.

Bill Fow: Thanks. I'm taking motion with lotion, or mo- motion is lotion, with me throughout the rest of the week. Thanks for walking through everything with us. You can learn more at moov-health.com, and we'll see you in the next episode.

Dr. Kyle Worell: Thanks. Bye.

Lauren Rall: Thanks everyone. Bye.

Edward: Consistency over extremism — that's the real shift. To work with Dr. Kyle and the team at Move Health, visit move-health.com. If this episode helped you, share it with someone heading into Memorial Day weekend. We'll see you next time on The Athletic Life.