This is the Physical Activity Researcher Podcast, a podcast for researchers of sedentary behavior, physical activity, and sports. Join for a relaxed dialogue about research design, practicalities, and, well, anything related to research. Learn from your fellow researchers useful and relevant information that does not fit into formal content and limited space of scientific publications. And here is your host, researcher and entrepreneur, Ollie Tickenit. Welcome everyone. We are going to have a very interesting discussion about immature training to improve motivation and adherence to physical activity. And we have a great guest for this episode. He is a chartered psychologist and has done his PhD at the University of Plymouth in UK. He is the founding partner of immature coaching, company that measures and trains immature ability. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our guest, Dr. Jonathan Rhodes. Welcome, Jonathan. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, nice to have you. I had an honor to see a lecture from Dalai Lama some years ago, and he said that he goes through his death, I think seven times every morning. So basically he's, he's imagining his death every morning. And I thought that he's pretty balanced person. And I think after that I have started to do imagery for kind of horrible things. And for some reason it, it is really, really nice thing to do in a way. It sounds weird that you imagine your own death, but it really brings balance. It really brings gratitude what you are. And, and I think also considering imagining like what is it if my company gets bankrupts, I still have the people around me. It's not the big thing. So it kind of reduces stress. Do you ever go this far in the imagery that you go really, like, for example, thinking about your death? We wouldn't show. We usually go as far as as achieving your purpose. So we try to keep it as positivist as possible in terms of that goal. But what usually happens is people, you know, I would say we've got high success rates at the moment. I'm sure it will change, you know, with working with the set populations at the minute, people usually achieve goals and then go on to set new ones. So we are always trying to support them to imagine what really imagining would be like in a weird way. But yeah, we never overly focus in on that timeline. I have come across lots of, I mean, we do use in a way some kind of timeline basis. We'll say, where is your long-term goal? And again, for a lot of people, you know, it's often grandkids focused, like playing with grandkids. And I want to make sure that, you know, or even family-based, I want to, you know, my core value is family, my family person, my social person. I want to be able to ensure that I provide for my family. And, you know, and for their family, if possible as well. So we focus in on that point of, you know, what's that like? What's that goal like? And then we work backwards. Okay, so what are the KPIs from that goal? What are the other smaller goals? So we call that meso imagery. So what are the medium-term goals? Some people, using imagery based on long-term goals, it'll be very, it'll be uncomfortable. So if you say, you know, what's your long-term goal, they may say my long-term goal is to thinking of a guy I worked with the other day, is climate change? I want to save the world. Oh gosh, okay, let's work backwards because that's, I mean, what's it like? Let's experience it first. And then we work backwards and we'll say, right, well, you know, what's a manageable goal? A manageable goal is maybe in a year's time, I want to be able to, you know, in my household be, you know, carbon, whatever, or I want to be able to reduce my recycling or my carbon footprint and, you know, I want to cycle to work more often. Okay, so if that's your goal for a year or for two years, you know, what's it like in six months? Like, how would you know that you're on that rush trajectory to achieving your goal? Oh well, that means I would have had to have brought a bike. Okay, so let's work back again. So again, you know, I think having those big goals sometimes are overwhelming and they can produce stress. So working backwards and saying, right, well, where's a manageable point to start off with? It really does help to, there's always going to be stress with a goal, but to alleviate the stress slightly and to also start with action. So, you know, I think anything to do with, I think again, motivational goals must be action-centered. So what can you, what are you going to do right now to actually help you tomorrow and the next day and, you know, two weeks on and a six months on, etc. So I think, again, if you can make it as specific as possible for those immediate goals, it's hugely helpful. And again, what we often do is we use cues to what you to do, cues, you know, right here in where I am, I've got my coffee cup, you know, as I boil my kettle in the morning or as I, you know, as I hold my first cup of coffee, I'll hold it in my hands and that will cue my imagery for the day. So, right, okay. What are my obstacles today? What's coming up? Okay. Obstacles are X, Y and Z. Cool. How can I overcome them? And then what can I do right now? Like, when I put this cup down, what am I going to go and do? So it will always have to end in that kind of sequence. The reason why we use cues is because cues trigger thoughts. You know, if you pick up your phone, that's going to cue a thought. If it dings, that's going to cue it. Oh, no, not another email. Okay. How does it make you so so again, these cues are ways to trigger memories, but also to plan for a future use. So again, that's really important and how we use behavioral cues, then set up this kind of activating imagery and then this process of then carrying something out. Yeah. So I think many of our listeners are working on set entry behavior and physical activity. So how would you use this in this case? Like, what would be the first steps to use it? So we always start with motivational interviewing. And that is a real, that's the fundamentals of functional imagery training. So we'll always start with a motivational interview, purely to engage in conversation. So there are four phases or processes in motivational interviewing. So if you're not, if you're not aware of them, the first phase is engaged in conversation. So build rapport. The second phase is focus, which we would generally have a broad goal. And then we would focus in on one specific goal. And then we evoke motivation. And then we we work with individuals to plan. And the reason why this this is this works really well is because we have a human tendency to plan quite quickly. We want to support other people. So you know, what I always see when I when I train people is people will generally want to want to fix something. That's generally the worst thing that we can do as psychologists or as practitioners. So give people space, just develop rapport, connect is the first thing I would always say to individuals, just connect with your client. Don't worry about the fancy stuff. Just connect, have a conversation, get to know them. You know, even things like, what are you reading? What books are you reading? Because that will tell me a lot about that individual. And what music do you listen to? And what are you watching on Netflix? And what are you, you know, so all these questions will actually start developing rapport. So that's the first thing is that motivational interviewing is really important for the way that we deliver imagery. Imagery really for us starts in on focusing on something very specific. So one target goal, we use a lot of primers to say this is what imagery is. And this is what imagery is not. So we see imagery as more holistic to people quite often think that imagery is just visualizing. So visualizing is one part of imagery. So we get them to experience imagery, so cognitive imagery based on, you know, the sound of what you might hear and then the taste perhaps, the kinesthetics, you know, the movement of what you're doing. So we really immerse that individual. What we also know is that some people are not very good at that skill. So if we say to some people, you know, can you imagine an apple? They'll say, not really, no. So again, we would then work with those individuals to then increase their imagery ability. And again, we can we can increase that. We can say, can you imagine biting an apple? Can you imagine the, you know, the smell of an apple? Can you imagine if you threw it in the air and catching it? And we would then look at all these sensory ideas and work with individuals to then hone in their ability to use imagery more effectively. But the key thing for us as always, once you've got that, once you're working on a specific goal and you're focusing, we then look at, well, that's really immerse yourself in experiencing that goal. Positive and negative, and then again, working back to behavioural intentions as well. So as a starter for anyone listening, I would absolutely say develop rapport to start up with. What people generally come to see me for is not the specific goal. So again, give it time, rely on kind of your, you know, in NMI, we have, you know, open questions, affirmations, reflections, summaries, rely on your skills, enable those individuals to actually explore these areas themselves. And they're kind of introspecting as well through space, so allow them a bit of time to reflect. So, you know, in research, it's tricky in research, because, you know, we've only got a few amount of sessions to run and research, or it's a single session intervention, or it's tricky, you know, in the real world, you might be with a client for six months for a year, you know, so have that freedom as well, just to, you know, set tasks and check learning and imagery really is two way. So as the individual starts to learn how to use imagery, you then become the student and they become, you know, the practitioner in a way, that, you know, so what was it like at the weekend when you're doing this? What would it be like next weekend if you were going away and you were going to this, you know, or next session when we're in the gym or, you know, whatever it could be, you know, so focusing on those on those areas of recall, and then like more fantasy-based, what would it be like in the future? And, yeah, give people time to explore how they're using imagery and get them into explore ways that they, you know, that they can teach others and you on how they're using it. And then what we usually do for the planning stage is we then use queues. So again, you know, in the morning when you waking up, you know, as you're as you're getting out of bed, before your feet test to floor or ask the test to floor, just go through your day, you know, go through the obstacles, take some time to be present and where you are, and then play out the day. What things are coming up? You know, how can you plan better yourself? So again, you know, that following that sequence is hugely beneficial. And if you're working in any area, I would say, yeah, just rely on those on that sequence. So evoke focus, sorry, sequences is, yeah, so right on these four processes. So as you as you start to engage in conversation, engage, focus on a specific area, evoke motivation, again, that's where we use positive negative based imagery, and then, and then allow the person to plan themselves. And I think again, there's a lot of, you know, we know that we need to eat healthily, we know that we need to exercise, we know that we need to do certain things, we know that. So you haven't got to tell the individual. Also, you know that you need to eat more vegetables, you know, that you shouldn't be drinking a lot, they know that, you know that you should be sleeping for, they know that. So again, you know, just just ask questions on, you know, how's your quality of sleep? You know, inquisitive questions, ask questions around, you know, how's your diet going? Don't give them advice on you should do this, because more advice actually sometimes could be detrimental. So just allow that individual to plan for you. And you'll hear it as well, you'll start to hear things, and I'll say, you know what, I've thought about drinking more water. What do you think on that? Hey, I think this is a great idea. What does it look like to you? Well, I've heard that drinking, you know, a couple of liters a day is really helpful. Yeah, that's a really good idea. Maybe, maybe you should try that. Okay. So again, all you're doing is you're just, you're just affirming what they already know as well. For most sedentary behavior and physical activity researchers, collecting the research data is one of the most frustrating steps of a project, especially as inefficient data collection steals too much of your precious time, causes unnecessary stress and hassle, and can easily derail progress of your project. This is why we devised a revolutionary new way to collect data, introducing amphibian sense motion, the beginning of a new era. Phibian sense motion is a cutting edge next generation system that allows you to easily and remotely collect, store and manage data. Our solution features a tiny waterproof device that captures the sedentary behavior and physical activity data, a mobile app for automatic uploading of the data from the device, and a cloud service for managing the data. Even better, all collected data is GDPR compliant, and you have access to automatically analyzed variables of activity types and raw three axis accelerometer data. Don't compromise on the quality of your research or the project timeframes. Discover the convenience and power behind our solution at sense.phibian.com. That is S-E-N-S.phibian.com. Phibian created by researchers for researchers. Yeah, I think a lot of good points there. And I think the building report is important and many times people go straight into into the theme. But that's that's a good point. If we go to practical terms, like, let's say quite many people are now working still at home and having quite many Zoom calls and probably they are sitting a little bit too much. Not exercising enough. And then we would have a health and fitness professional who tries to change this kind of behavior, sitting a bit less, moving more. How would this go? You said that you listen the person, but if we imagine a certain case, how would it go? What kind of cues you would use? How would you make people motivated to sit less or do these these health behaviors? Yeah. Well, I think that that's a question that's kind of baffled people for quite a while in terms of like what to do and how to do it around sedentary behaviors. And especially if you've got a desk job where you're, you know, you are over a keyboard for extra amount of hours, you know, a day is very, very tricky. So I think that people generally know that what to do, not to give them any direction of course as well, which is obviously breaking my rule. But I'd say, you know, if you have time to stand up, if you have time to go for a walk, to get into nature, if you have time to, you know, and even if that's five minutes, five minutes is perfect. So I think start small. We often use cues. So again, you know, back to if you've got a water bottle near you, that is the ideal. What would you often you just say? You know, if you're drinking, you know, every time you have a sip of your drink, again, you know, can you do it standing up and you have a quick micro stand up, shake your arms out, anything that you can possibly do to actually stretch and just to get out your seat for a second and walk around. Or, or, you know, make your flask, one of our guys, similar thing where he would have a big flask of water used and fun that he wouldn't get up as often. And then he switched to a smaller vessel, a little cup, which meant that he had to get up and go and fill it up. So things like that are really good interventions. So just get out of your chair. But at the same time, you know, if you've got five minutes in your day where you can go for a walk around your building, if you've got, you know, anytime at all to go to get out of your chair, it's hugely beneficial, hugely beneficial. So don't feel that. And this is what I often hear with my clients is that, you know, well, what's five minutes? I don't mean to do a great deal. Or, you know, well, I could, I could go to the gym on my lunch break, but, you know, it's getting changed and it's getting showered and getting back into it. But even if you're going for 10 minutes for 15 minutes, amazing. So don't, I would say don't put a time limit on it by it in a way, just put the activity, you know, if you've, if you've committed to it, if you want to get healthy, then start small, start with a single step. And then, and then, yeah, any kind of intervention around, you know, size of your cups, or, you know, again, if you're in a network of people who go to the gym, you know, we know that you're more likely to, to go even if you're in a group as well, in a communal, you know, work group. So all these things that you probably already know, are hugely beneficial as well. But even stretching your desk is also very good. So, but again, I think people generally know that, but go, you know, well, finding the time to do it or remembering to do it. So that's what we use cues. And, and I think people, like you said, people know what they should do, but it is not getting it done. You said that, for example, you make your first cup of coffee and the coffee might accuse you to think what are the obstacles. Would you, in this case, kind of have, for example, that every morning, you look at the calendar, and you plan that when do you go for a walk, when it's, it's a long stretch, what do you need to do to achieve that daily goal? Would you, would you do it in that way? So I would like to, but I'm really unorganized, my honesty. So, so for me personally, planning to the nth degree doesn't really motivate me personally. Right. Some people, that's how they operate. They have to put everything in their calendar, in their diary, and they would follow that through. Some people don't really like that regimented effect. So, yeah, so I'd say get, this is why rapport is really important, is if you can find a way that works for yourself and for your, or for your client, then, and then make it into a routine, if possible. Again, cues for me really effective. So just reminding myself, you know, if you've got an Apple watch, I'm sure that it buzzes at you and tells you to stand up and to breathe and all sorts. So again, their cues for you to then start to refocus your attention. But yeah, I mean, again, I'm not sure I'm not sure whether you're a meticulously planning person, but I, you know, for me, definitely, I like the serendipity, the randomness of going for a run and finding an hour and a day every so often and getting out. But I also say that what we know is, and this is probably the better point, actually, is plan for tomorrow today. Don't plan for today today. So, so, you know, what we know with our samples is that, and definitely for that, for the studies that we've conducted around the ultra runners, is that ultra runners, they plan for tomorrow today, they will go right. Where's my running kit? Where's my shoes? Right, I'm going to put this by the door. I'm going to put my running pack by the door. I'm going to put my gels by the door. So, when they wake up in the morning, there's no, I've got to go and find my shoes. Oh, my socks aren't dry. So limit that limit those excuses by, by giving yourself the opportunity to where possible. Yeah, you know, be more effective today for tomorrow, you. And that's, that's a huge benefit. So, I'll always say plan a day ahead. I have five pairs of running and training shoes right next to the door. So, they are always there. No need to plan it for day before. Yeah, good, good points. And, and if somebody is interested, they to do a motivational interview with their customers and start using this, you kind of described how it goes. But is there a good resource? How to do it? How could people learn how to do a good motivational interview? Yeah, there are courses that you can go on to to do Motivational Interviewing. So, you can, if you Google it, you'll find 101 courses. We run a course as well. We run a course at the university. And also, with imagery coaching as well, we run a course which is a kind of more of a condensed course over five days that you can then learn, not just Motivational Interviewing, but also imagery as well. So, we know that the imagery, the, the motivational interviewing part is hugely beneficial. But we also know that functional imagery training is around four to five times more effective than just Motivational Interviewing. And that's for weight loss. This is for resilience to the military. This is for healthy behaviors. So, the imagery part is the real game changer for us. And again, we run courses on it. And I think our next course is in June as well, which you can find out about. So, yeah, that's, yeah, so I think that's the more structured approach. Again, as I say, if you were to Google, there's various things you can find 101 courses out there on Motivational Interviewing. The other important point says as well is that it should, where possible, where possible be, by delity check. So, the quality of what you do really matters. So, again, if you were going to train with someone, make sure that they got a good background in Motivational Interviewing or imagery training or similar. So, that's a real important takeaway as well. So, so you have a course, is it online or how do you do it? Yeah. So, on imagerycoaching.com, you can find out all the details online. The course is on Zoom and we've, we're on our fourth course next in June. We generally get a few people from, well, obviously all over the world. But we get, yeah, it could be health and management practitioners. It could be psychologists, researchers, doctors, we've had a few surgeons who have come on with us as well around supporting with decision-making, athletes, performance directors, or people who are just generally interested in, you know, coaching and upskilling themselves around using this, this method. But it's all, it's all, I want to say new, but it's not new anymore really. We've got a lot of research in these areas and we've been really proactive across, across industry, across universities as well to make sure that what we're doing really matters. You can't replicate it. And yeah, and our course, yeah, I mean, I enjoy teaching it, as you can probably tell. And yeah, we get great feedback as well on, you know, from all of our practitioners. You go on and, you know, again, work with companies, work with working, gyms, working, you know, healthcare facilities all around the world. So it's, it's online, it's several days. Could you tell a little bit more about the structure? How much is it about lectures, workshops, practicing? Of course, yeah. So it's five days, mostly on Zoom. So there is a another online platform as well that we can give you video to support your learning. The five days, day one is primarily motivational interviewing. So we go through, it's around 30 minutes worth of a lecture, kind of like a workshop. And then you get to practice and we give you scenarios. And we work through each of the four processes. And we give you all of the MI skills to go alongside it. Usually, we have people who know a bit about MI. So they're not, it's not all new. And we're really refining their ability to use motivational interview on the first day. So that's three hours that we usually run it. So in, in British time, it's, I think it's two till five to three hours for the course and then if you're Eastern time based and it's nine in the morning. So just for three hours. And then yeah, we do like a mini workshop, an electric kind of start into breakouts, practicals. And that kind of repeats itself over those five days, but gets into more depth. And again, what the aim is, is that by the end of day five, you're able to use the model. You feel very comfortable using this kind of process driven model. And what we do, which is very unique to us, we don't just teach it to individuals, we also do MI and functioning image training to teams as well. So from my point of view, working in the military, for example, I have to, I have to do my my motivational interviewing and my, my, my imagery training training to groups of 50 people. So again, if you're working with big groups, there are different techniques that we use, which is day five of the course, to get the most out of refining imagery ability, increasing effort and motivation through big group workshops as well. So we've got loads of research as well that we go through for that. Did you mean that you do the course for the big groups or that when you are coaching, you have a big group? When I'm, so, so, so I'm, I'm part of the, the, the, the team that delivered the, all the training through a team of us, as a guy called Carl Nedser, who works alongside Joe, myself. And we, we work on the, on the five day program. But I'm the one that goes out and in terms of the, the applied work, does the research around the, the group based interventions. And again, we've got a couple of papers out which are with big teams that we've worked with. And it's a very tricky thing to do using imagery for big groups. So again, again, we've had a huge success with our research program. But again, it's been a real journey of like, sometimes it doesn't work. And we've had to refine what we've done per team. And we've had to make it into a rigorous, rigorously checked approach. So then when we teach other individuals, they can hopefully get the same benefits. And that's what we're seeing at the minute with our, with our global team, is that they are getting, yeah, the same effects on big groups using imagery training. When you have a bigger group, do you do the motivational interview individually? Or do you do it as a group? As a group. Yeah, as a group. All right. Which is tricky in itself because we, you know, historically made the most of interviewing is very much one-on-one. So we, we're often given a group who's generally got a specific goal. So if I'm working with a, a sailing team, they're going to have a certain goal or an F1 team or whatever, they're going to have a specific goal. So we go through values, beliefs, et cetera, attitudes. We look at cognitions and we work with individuals, sorry, with, with teams. And they share, they share their goals, they share their, they, they share their values, they connect. And they become their own kind of trainers, I suppose, in a way. So we, we give them a method to follow, which gets the most out of those sessions. And again, in the research world, it's pretty quick. But in the applied world, you know, easily it lasts for, for six or seven weeks when we go through, yeah, group-based motivational goals and then specific refining and measurement of imagery. And then, you know, take, and then upskilling them in imagery and then retesting again to look at the benefits over time. And, and when you go this with the crew, how do they, they come and do they lift their hand and somebody says, or do they do it as a work group where they write down? It's more like a work group. So a huge, we used to do this. It was like that kind of more hand, hand-up-y, but we know that it doesn't really work. So what we did is we changed it to, I do like a task for two or three minutes. And then they go into big breakouts. They might be in groups of two, they might be two, five, and they share, they, they discuss topics, they explore motivation, explore values, again, hugely based on all the motivational interviewing research for groups. And then we've got a way to connect them pretty quickly. Like, I was thinking about phase one rapport being hugely important. We get them to connect straight, straight away, find something meaningful in common, but also they have to share vulnerability. They've got to share something which has importance to them. It can't be something, you know, on the minutiae, which isn't overly relevant. So we, we've got a program that we teach individuals on the course, but then in the applied world, when we're doing it, yeah, it's, it's full on. I mean, on the end of it, I'm sweating, it's a lot of hard work. Yeah, yeah, so I'm thinking this, the applicability of this that I think it works probably well for a, let's say, F1 team, they are all together, they have a common goal. Could you see that this could work, for example, if you have a group of pre-diabetic people who, who have a common goal probably that they don't want to get tied to diabetes, how would it work in this kind of, it's exactly this, exactly the same as you're saying, that there's normally a common goal. And actually, it's more empowering for individuals to share their common goal in the group. So it might be obstacles and struggles that they might have. And again, in that open conversation, if we're in a group of 50, we'd break them down to smaller groups. And the smaller groups usually have very similar conversations, where one person will say, this is my obstacle, this is my struggle, this is the, this is the reality of it. And the people will generally say, it's the same as me, that's what I, that's how I struggle as well. Except for me, it's slightly different. You know, and they start to share these ideas, and that is hugely important. And again, I think, you know, is it more powerful than the individual MI based session? Sometimes it probably is, because they connect really quickly with someone who's going through something which is very similar to them. And rather than me sitting there, opposite, you know, talking about their goals, they can then share ideas. And again, a lot of people would have said, I've tried before, but it hasn't worked. You know, how do I control my thinking? I can't do it. I just find myself automatically doing this. So again, it's, and again, in groups, they've usually come up with a lot of amazing solutions. So restructuring thinking. Yeah, I think that's a really important point, because it's about scalability. Like you might have an intervention that if everybody would have a personal coach 24/7, they would be super healthy and they would achieve all the goals. But that's usually not the reality. So this kind of scalable approach for a motivational interview and maybe inventory training could be really interesting. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's what we are. We're in this kind of area now where the territory of being really excited because a lot of our results are exciting our group work, our clinical work that we're doing as well, is hugely valuable and exciting for us because we're seeing real change over time. And we're seeing people stick to, you know, really a greed goal, you know, personally agree goals. We're seeing weight loss studies, you know, people keeping the weight off over time. So we're seeing a lot of interesting findings for for what is generally a very straightforward, easy to teach intervention. Yeah, really, really good discussions. And it would be interesting to continue. But I think we are running to our end of our time. So thank you, Channel 10, for taking the time for this podcast. Thank you very much, Ollie, as well as for having me on. And thanks for being so open and allowing a very good discussion as well. Thanks for joining us this week on physical activity research through podcast. If you like the show, make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing or following the show on Twitter. This podcast is made possible by listeners like you. Thank you for your support. If you found value in the show, we would really appreciate rating on Apple podcast or whichever app you use. Or if you would, in a real old school way, simply tell a friend about the show, it would be a great help for us. We have a fantastic lineup of guests before coming episodes, so be sure to tune in. Thank you all for your support and have a great day.
