Fitness
Dan Lloyd: Why I’ve decided to change my lifestyle
There’s a strong argument to say that this article shouldn’t be here. This is the Global CYCLING Network, and what I’m about to write is not specifically cycling-related. I’m going to write it anyway, and hope it makes it past the Editor-in-Chief (I’ll choose a slow news week).
I’m 43 now, and largely sat on my arse. Unfortunately it’s now on a couch instead of the 20-30 hours a week I used to perch it on a bike saddle. So, instead of buying a Porsche for my mid life crisis, I’ve made a decision to change a few things in my lifestyle. The aims being to stop the deterioration, to attempt to slow down the ageing process that I’ve recently been quite successful in speeding up, and to extend my life expectancy as much as I can. I’m doing it with the hope that I can inspire, or at least encourage, some of you to do it with me.
My attitude towards cycling over the years
Let me at least get some cycling into this. I LOVED riding and racing my bike – I cannot begin to articulate how obsessed I was with being the best I could possibly be. In that regard I am similar to most current or former pros. It’s not a sport you can excel in unless you have that determination and drive.
Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have the genetics to achieve Mathieu van der Poel level success, but fortunately for me, I had enough talent to turn pro, competing at many of the biggest races in the world. That includes the Tour de France in 2010, which I really made the most of – I got to enjoy it for a full four hours more than the (eventual) winner that year, Andy Schleck.
Fast forward two years and I was no longer a full-time cyclist (not my own choice, but probably a wise choice by team managers at that time). I did, however, remain in the ‘industry’. I’ve been here at GCN since its inception, and over the 12 years since, I’ve also had the privilege of doing a lot of commentary and punditry on the biggest races in the world.
In that time, I’ve learnt a lot about myself, and my relationship with cycling and exercise in general. I love talking about cycling, and watching it, but my love for riding a bike ebbed away immediately after I stopped competing. With a goal, I can push myself very hard, without one, I can’t see the point in doing anything.
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It’s interesting to look at how much riding ex-pros do in retirement. At least it is for me. It’s one of my weird fascinations, along with looking up the age of almost every famous person I see on TV (yes, that is weird, and no, I don’t know why). There’s very rarely any middle ground on this; Frank and Andy Schleck are good examples. Whilst Frank continued to ride more than 15,000km a year in retirement, Andy hung up his wheels and only started riding again quite recently. Most ex-pros either carry on riding a lot or don’t do much at all.
Having thought long and hard about the reasons behind this disparity, my conclusion is that it comes down to why you rode a bike in the first place.
For me, I loved the process of being the best I could be for competition – I loved making a training plan, and I loved sticking to it, ticking the boxes. There have been very few times in my life where I’ve just gone out for a bike ride for the sole reason that I wanted to go out and enjoy a bike ride. Each one had an aim and a plan.
That’s not the same for everyone, though – others just love riding their bikes, but happen to be amongst the most talented cyclists in the world, and end up making a career out of it. I’m not saying they don’t also follow training plans and tick boxes, but their love for riding remains with them even after they’re no longer paid.
That was a very long-winded way of explaining why I haven’t ridden my bike much for the last 12 years. My pro career was another box ticked – I may not have reached the heady heights of a big win, but I got further than I thought I would.
The one time I did get back into some serious riding was when I became obsessed with taking the Strava KOM around a local singletrack trail. It took me about six months to get it, after which I stopped cycling again. Sad, I know. I’ve also dabbled with running, which was great – I had no history with running, so I could be the best runner I’d ever been. I was back to ticking boxes… until I got injured.
So what happens next?
Long story short (maybe long story long by this point), I’ve not done a whole lot of consistent exercise over the last 12 years. What I have done a lot of is working, sitting, drinking alcohol, burning the candle at both ends, and… smoking. I’ve not admitted that last part publicly before. Mainly because it’s embarrassing that I did something so stupid for so long, but I smoked a fair bit between 2012 and 2020, before I finally managed to give up. At least the tobacco part – to this day I am using nicotine replacements.
It was late last year when I realised that I was on a slippery slope. My Whoop – who are sponsoring this series of videos – sleep scores during our Grand Tour coverage in particular were enough to make me want to change. Terrible sleep, an HRV barely in double digits, and a resting HR 10-15 beats higher than it would be without drinking.
At that same time, I’d been listening to a lot of podcasts and reading a lot of books on longevity, and all the small things you can do to give yourself the best chance of a very long and healthy life. It’s now time to start implementing some of the things I’ve learned.
And that’s what I am going to document in a new series on the GCN YouTube channel and here on our website. The initial episode (which you can watch at the top of this page) goes through some thorough baseline tests which I was fortunate enough to do at the Nuffield Manchester Institute of Health and Performance. I will repeat those tests towards the end of this year, having made several small but significant changes to my lifestyle. Namely more exercise, better sleep, less drinking (I’m not confident I want to, or even could, completely cut alcohol out of my life), and an emphasis on generally healthier living.
I’m sure there are many people out there, reading this or watching the series, who also have some small things that they’d like to change about their lifestyle for the better, or maybe you just want to learn exactly what you can do to try and ensure you live the longest, healthiest life possible. That’s what this is all about – not living like a monk, or trying to make the perfect choices all day every day, but small changes that we can all implement if we really want to.
The end goal? A longer life, a happier life, and a healthier life. Yep, all the clichés, but I genuinely think that I, and we, can achieve it.
You can keep up to date with Dan’s progress here on the GCN website and over on the GCN YouTube channel. Let us know in the comments below if Dan’s inspired you to make some lifestyle adjustments. We’d love to hear your stories too.
It is difficult to hang from the ceiling in an inverted position, because your focus shifts, and there is a blood rush in the head. But, the Bigg Boss 15 winner managed to do it!
Tejasswi Prakash, just like many other celebrities, loves to sweat it out at the gym. But, instead of working out with dumbbells, kettlebell, weight plates and other gym paraphernalia, she loves to challenge herself with a yoga asana or two in order to stay fit and in shape. The Bigg Boss 15 winner loves to collaborate with celebrity yoga and holistic wellness expert Anshuka Parwani from time-to-time, and she was once again seen exercising at her yoga studio. The actor performed inverted aerial yoga first, which was followed by splits. Take a look at her session here.
Tejasswi made it look effortless, as she hung upside down from the ceiling, while performing inverted aerial yoga. While keeping her feet together, she locked her hands behind her head. Then, she folded her upper body in a way to bring her head closer to the knees. It is a great exercise for those who want to strengthen and shape their core.
Benefits Of Doing Inverted Aerial Yoga
Any kind of core routine requires a lot of practice. Doing it while hanging from the ceiling in an inverted position is all the more difficult because your focus shifts, and there is a blood rush in the head. But, inverted aerial yoga is extremely beneficial. When you exercise upside down, you allow your body and mind to release all the stress. It is extremely beneficial for people who may be suffering from anxiety issues, or even mood swings. According to aerialyogacademy.com, inverting can reduce tension in the muscles and enable you to sleep better at night. Additionally, aerial yoga allows your body to release happy hormones like endorphins and serotonin, which can fight stress and depression.
It also strengthens your core muscles, improves flexibility, and improves your focus.
Benefits Of Doing Splits
Tejasswi, 30, was also seen acing splits that require a lot of practice and come with many health benefits. Not only does it activate key muscle areas in the body, especially around the thighs, a split exercise can do wonders for your joints and flexibility. It enables one to become more focused and balanced, by forging a connection between the mind and the body.
While there are two different types of splits — side splits and front splits — Tejasswi was seen doing the latter. She did take the support of a pillow that was placed beneath her front leg, so as to avoid injuries. You may also do it in the presence of a fitness expert, who can guide you through it.
Tagging the actor, Parwani appreciated her efforts. She wrote in the caption that her client is ‘levelling up her core game and nailing those splits’.
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Fitness
'We need to be really concerned': How fitness influencers are creating 'a false sense of the world' for young boys
“Alright dumba**, welcome to lesson two here at fat f*** university.”
So begins one of the countless fleshy blurs of locally-produced fitness content pumped algorithmically into the feeds of Australian Instagram, TikTok and Facebook users.
It’s the sort of engagement-baiting approach that yields viewers and followers — designed to push men out of some apparent masculine malaise and into retaking control of their body and masculinity, usually via paid workout programs, products or supplements.
It’s also the type of content increasingly filtering into the phones of teenage boys.
While there is a more developed conversation about idealised images on social media and body image pressures on young girls, experts say research is less advanced when it comes to boys.
“I think boys are now objectifying themselves like never before and we do need to be really concerned,” said Danielle Rowland, Head of Prevention at national eating disorder charity the Butterfly Foundation.
“The intensity of training advice, nutrition and misinformation is greater than ever.”
Feeds serving up different diet
When Anthony Lee started high school in regional Victoria six years ago, social media had a different feel to it.
“In Year 7, it was just basically a way to keep up with your mates,” he said.
By the time he finished Year 12 last year, the feeds of his classmates had changed. So too, the surrounding culture.
“There is a growing problem with men having that feed of perfect body content,” he said.
“There are people who will see influencers on social media and say, ‘I’ve got to have bigger arms, toned legs, I got to have calves the size of mountains’.”
Linger on one Instagram reel showing off a set of dumbbell exercises, and you’ll likely get five more videos zeroing in on how to get “boulder shoulders”, or some protein-heavy diet advice from a shirtless influencer.
Josh Ward travels to schools in Sydney and around regional NSW, hearing from young boys as part of his work as a facilitator for men’s mental health organisation Tomorrow Man.
“There’s been a huge jump in the last two to three years in the amount of boys opening up in workshops around their body,” he said.
Mr Ward believes there’s no coincidence it’s occurred alongside a “big spike” in the amount of fitness and gym influencer content turning up in their feeds.
“If someone was in school walking around with a fitness mag in their pocket, bringing it out every recess or lunch, you’d think ‘that is some strange behaviour’. But that’s what [teenage boys] are celebrating now,” he said.
“The danger for young people is they don’t realise they’re actually the pioneer generation in terms of that exposure.
“In the last five years there’s been a crazy amount of fitness content, but that’s just what they’ve always been exposed to, so they don’t realise how strange it is.”
‘It creates a false sense of the world’
For many teenage boys on the path through puberty, working out in gyms has long represented an accelerated part of the journey into manhood.
Images of muscle-ripped celebrities and athletes serving as aesthetic inspiration, if not an unattainable physical ideal, is nothing new either.
But it’s the nature of that exposure — the type of content and the saturation of it — that has experts concerned.
“It’s that ‘in-your-face, all-the-time’ aspect of it,” said Associate Professor Ivanka Prichard from Flinders University.
“It’s seeing something on Instagram when we’re perhaps not in that frame of mind, making a comparison to this really fit person and have that influence the way we might feel about ourselves.
“We’re fed a whole range of things through those algorithms that we would never have had exposure to before and would never have sought out.”
Multiple experts the ABC spoke to reported seeing digitally-altered and even AI-generated images of supposedly naturally-fit bodies on social media.
Ms Prichard, a former fitness instructor whose research sits at the intersection of psychology, social media and exercise science, believes the constant barrage of perfectly sculpted bodies could destabilise the mental health of some teenage boys.
“For young people shaping their identity, it creates a false sense of the world,” she said.
Of the estimated 1.1 million Australians who had an eating disorder last year, one in three were male, according to the Butterfly Foundation.
For over a decade, Scott Griffiths has studied body image and psychological disorders, with a recent focus on male eating disorders, body dysmorphia and particularly, muscle dysmorphia.
“Muscle dysmorphia is a psychological disorder. It’s not just being a gym junkie,” said Mr Griffiths, an associate professor and lead of the Physical Appearance Research Team at the University of Melbourne.
“It’s a preoccupation. You are always thinking about food, training, your appearance. It’s on your mind all the time.”
According to the Butterfly Foundation, people aged between 15 and 19 are 2.7 times more likely to experience an eating disorder. It makes social media an animating and potentially potent driver.
“It can reinforce in your mind that your worth is very closely tied to, if not wholly dependent upon, your appearance, which is not the basis for healthy self-esteem,” Dr Griffiths said.
“[TikTok and Instagram] are more likely to feature influencer bodies you are extremely unlikely to be able to achieve without performance enhancement, or a level of commitment to dieting and exercise that would overcome most people.”
Blurred lines at the gym
Joshie Glover, 27, has seen just how profoundly positive a gym environment can be for young boys.
In his work at young men’s mental health charity Man Cave, he estimates he’s facilitated over 170 school workshops of more than 5,550 students.
In that time, Mr Glover has witnessed countless examples of the physical and mental health benefits that a gym can provide, as well as the connection between mates working out.
It’s when those workouts veer toward the obsessive that problems emerged.
“With gym habits, it’s very blurred lines, which is why it’s quite insidious,” he said.
In Man Cave workshops, boys often speak about being bullied over their weight, only to reframe it as a positive.
“A lot of them will say, ‘I’m actually really grateful that I’ve been teased about how [fat] I was, because it motivated me to get to go to the gym and get big’,” Mr Glover said.
“The line of when it goes from a positive social thing, motivating each other, doing something physically, to slipping into a pressured, coercive kind of motivation by ridicule, it’s really blurred.”
Andrew Tate and the problem with ‘discipline’
Another online fixation that routinely comes up in workshops is Andrew Tate, the disgraced misogynist content creator currently awaiting a criminal trial on allegations of rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.
Mr Glover said there was an uneasy through line between the much-discussed appeal of Tate, who used to be a professional kickboxer, and the growing obsession with social media gym culture.
“Many boys are so confused as to what it means to be a man, who are the role models?” he said.
“One thing they’ve really latched onto is that a man is disciplined. Whenever you ask, ‘what’s the good bits about Andrew Tate?’, they’ll say, ‘he’s disciplined’.
“The main way that discipline can play out is attending to your physical body. There’s not really much desire for discipline in schoolwork or discipline in any other areas, it’s manifested in the gym.”
The irony that past generations have decried a lack of discipline in today’s kids is not lost on Mr Glover — but he said the dangers lie in its interpretation.
“The toxic, maybe unhealthy, part of it is that there are so many different kinds of bodies that a teenage boy would have, and they’re all being channelled into this one kind of mould of what the body of a disciplined person looks like,” he said.
The influencer credibility gap
Where parents and teachers may try, often in vain, to ward young boys away from specific individuals like Tate, telling them to ignore an entire social media ecosystem is even harder.
Fitness influencers and gym content creators have argued they are merely promoting healthy physical habits and dieting advice.
Some accounts function almost as communities of collective support for people trying to reach their goals, while many frame workout content through the lens of positive mental health.
Recent studies co-authored by Associate Professor Ivanka Prichard have analysed the content and credibility of fitness accounts on Instagram and TikTok.
The research found two-thirds of the accounts audited on Instagram “lacked credibility or contained potentially harmful or unhealthy content”, while exercise and diet advice promoted on TikTok was often at odds with national health guidelines.
In late 2022, US fitness content creator Brian “Liver King” Johnston suffered an ignominious fall from grace after admitting to spending tens of thousands of dollars on steroids and performance-enhancing drugs.
The Liver King had previously maintained his improbable physique was the result of hard workouts and eating raw meat, and that others should aspire to do the same.
Ms Prichard recommended seeking out content creators with relevant qualifications or failing that, the accounts of athletes and those who emphasise physical performance over aesthetics.
“From a user perspective, red flags are anything that has quite a lot of skin on display, is sexualised or is hyper-focussed on the appearance of the body,” she said.
“I would definitely encourage parents to also just talk to young people about what they are viewing on social media.”
At a recent barbecue, Danni Rowlands bent an ear toward a conversation her 10-year-old son was having with a few boys his age.
“They were looking at each other’s calves and deciding who had the veins popping out,” she said.
“They ranged from 10 to 12. One was saying ‘here’s my six-pack’.”
Ms Rowlands, who played netball at an elite level and has her own lived experience with eating disorders, knows an obsessive focus on physique can affect mental health, school participation and relationships with friends and family.
“I think it gets minimised and oversimplified — that it’s just a teenage thing — but there’s a real danger for a young person’s self-esteem, their identity, their mental health,” she said.
“It’s not wrong to want to take care of ourselves, but the pursuit of perfection, because we think that is the answer to all of our problems, is really setting ourselves up in a negative way to move through adulthood.”
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