June 28, 2024 • 61 mins
This week I chat with Trek Leader and Human Performance Specialist Sami Dunk, about the changes in her mindset and body when preparing for Kokoda now that she has had children and the hormonal changes that come with that.
Plenty in this episode for the ladies and even for the men out there. I trust you'll enjoy this one. :-)
ADVENTURE PROFESSIONALS WEBSITE
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Apodjay Production.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
This podcast is proudly brought to you by Adventure Professionals
www dot Adventure Professionals dot com dot au.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
For me, Mission Ridge and Brigade Hill.
Speaker 4 (00:23):
The whole Kakoda campaign more people need to know about it,
or know everyone knows someone who's trek Kokoda, but to
actually understand the stories of what these young guys did,
it's harrowing what they went through.
Speaker 5 (00:33):
They were staunched to the end against odds uncountered, and
they fell with their faces to the.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Welcome to the Kakoda Track Podcast, hosted by former soulject
Glen Asa. This is the place to hear stories from
those who've trecked Kakoda and gained tips and knowledge about
what to expect on the track, or to relive your
own amazing experiences.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
The Kakoda Track.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Podcast keeping the spirit of Kakoda alive.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Hey Aroon, Welcome back to another episode of the Coda
Track Podcast. Now, as the title of this one suggests,
we're talking about fitness for Coacoda today. The most common
question that I get is around the fitness requirements, and
as I've said many times, it can be quite confusing.
But I've got to be honest, it's very, very simple.
The bottom line is get out and get your body moving.
(01:26):
It really is that simple. First and foremost, my advice
always is to commit as much time as possible to
the training so that you make the track itself as
easy as possible, no matter how hard it can be,
and it certainly can be at times, particularly the weather
sets in and so on, but that can happen. Yeah,
it's going to happen anyway. But if you're fitter, you've
(01:47):
got more capacity for mental strength. I know when I
was in the military, one of my roles was to
prepare soldiers physically to go to war. And what I
noticed when I was on deployments and the longer those
deployments went, is the soldiers who were physically fitter, who
had turned up regularly, who did the work, seem to
have a stronger mental edge when we're overseas. And I've
(02:09):
watched that on numerous deployments around the world, in harsh,
harsh environments, and always the same rang true. The soldiers
who did their best to get out of pt and
there's a few of those in the military and did
everything they could to avoid it, they definitely struggled once
they got over into deployment. So I've always thought there's
a very very strong correlation between our physical and mental health.
(02:31):
Now large parts of challenges like Kakoda are mental. So
if you can put yourself in as best physical shape
as possible, you're giving yourself the best chance of achieving
the goal that you set yourself, but more importantly, enjoying
the process, having the time and the energy to look around,
take things in, you know, observe the villages and how
(02:52):
life is as opposed to I'm just looking at my
feet and hoping to survive. I'm just trudging through the mud.
I'm just you know, cannot wait for the data and
morning tea, lunch, end of the day, cannot wait.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
For this trip to end.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
I think you miss far too much of the experience
if you put yourself into that situation. Yeah, you're probably
gaining something showing yourself what you can do when you
really put under duress. But you don't have to make
it harder than what it already is.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
You just don't.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
So recently, one of my good friends, someone that I
respect immensely, Sammy Dunk, reached out to me. Now, Sammy
is a former pe teacher, she's worked in special needs,
worked in pe, she works in a whole different vary.
She's worked in gym's. She's was a very competitive athlete.
I'm sure she's still very competitive, but back in her day,
(03:39):
pre having kids and stuff, she was competing at quite
a high level in intense fitness sports like soccer and
so on. And I've always had an immense amount of
respect for Sammy. Sammy's trek Kakoda ten or eleven times
as you listen to this, she'll be prepping up for
her next one, first one in a couple of years,
first one since COVID actually, And she messaged me recently
(04:01):
and said, I'd love to talk on the podcast about
women once they've had children and once we've hit you know,
our late thirties and into our forties, and how our
body changes, because this is now her experience from that
young fit athlete that did Cokoda with me whatever ten
plus years ago and her first Cokoda that is through
(04:22):
to now mum or two boys, a single mum of
two boys these days, you know, unfortunately, and I'm still
having to get herself physically prepared for Kakoda and just
what those different challenges are, so I thought, what a
great topic because we get so many questions around fitness. Now,
I'm sure for the guys out there, you're going to
get a benefit out of this as well, because we're
(04:44):
just going to chat general fitness and overall, but this
whole episode will be dedicated towards the different challenges that
people have, specifically women when we hit an older age
when and that's when most people are doing kakoda. To
be fair, when we're you know, financially more secure, we've
got a little bit of spare time up our sleep,
perhaps we've got the f available.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
You know.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
The downside is we're not physically what we were twenty
years ago, and that's just the reality of being a human.
So add on to that as women having had a
couple of children and what that does physically to your body. Well,
we're going to chat about all of that. And Sammy
is so well qualified for every reason I've mentioned. She
has the academic qualification, she has the experience in athleticism
(05:28):
and fitness and kakoda, she has the experience in having
had children, and now she's coming at the other end
of what it's like to physically prepare herself for Kakoda
at slightly older age. I know she'll hate you saying
that because she's much younger than me, but you know,
old age when she first started. So I hope that
you get immense value out of this episode. As I said,
Sam's one of my favorite people. If you come on
(05:50):
tracks with us, you're a good chance of getting a
trip with her once or twice a year when we
can get her over there. Absolute gun human, very very
passionate about Kakoda, and we'll talk a little bit about
that as well. So, without further ado, here is Sami
Dunk and I talking out fitness and co CODEA but
specifically for women that have gone through that change of life.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Good morning, morning Sammy.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Now I've got my headphones in. Am I clear enough?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
You're clear enough, beautiful.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Unless unless you're talking about anything to do with state
of origin, I can't hear that.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Your poor souls, Your poor poor soul.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Okay, we've got to keep it interesting. I didn't know.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
I didn't get to actually watch it because I was
setting up for this next two co Coda trips because
one trip's just gone as no one leaves tomorrow. Morning,
and then I've got another one that you're coming on
backing straight up. And so I was watching just the
online while I was in between doing stuff, thinking I'll
get back in front of the TV. And then when
we're down twenty four nil, I'm I'm like, no one
(07:06):
comes back from that in state of origin level. That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
So anyway, anyway, yeah, we're shut down. All your key. Yeah,
it was amazing some of the shot.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
There's a little bit too much ego within some of
our you know, the Reese Waltzes and people like that
who have got players, but the ego is they think.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
They're all He's kind of he's at that level that
Latrelle was at like five six years ago and just
needs that kick up the backside and he'll that's it,
you know, that's his boy brain.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
You call it maturity. Yes, they all right, so we
chat it obviously we'll go straight into this. So we
just The most common question we get through the podcast
and in general is around fitness. And I've had numerous
people like might've been on the track over the last
sort of eighteen months in particular, I've had a lot
more people coming up to me and saying, hey, I
(07:58):
listen to the podcast, and I'd love it if you
did more around.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Fitness, which I do.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
I find interesting because if you look, you can find
out how hard Coakota is just by looking online. People
talk about it, and I don't really know what all
the companies do, to be fair, but I would imagine
they give you some sort of half decent outline of
what to do fitness wise. But I have been trying
to talk more around fitness, and I did videos on
(08:26):
I actually did a video fitness program for Kakoda just
to try and solve that problem for our own people,
and anyone can buy, so it's not just for our people,
I guess, but we give it to our trekkers. So
then when you messaged and said, hey, let's talk about
that sort of you know, women who've had children who
had a different age and you've had that experience, because
(08:47):
I think this is ten or eleven cocodas for you
coming up this week or next week, but I killer
will know.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
But obviously you.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Started, as you know, a young and back in the
day right through to still a young compared to me.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
But yeah, haven't had two kids now.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Coming from a very high level sporting background, You've got
good knowledge in sport and exercise performance. So I thought
that actually sounds like a good topic to talk about,
and it's one that's you're very, very uniquely qualified to
talk about it. So hit me with your thoughts on
all of that. We'll just sort of see where the
convo goes.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, So, I guess is my body and what I've
learned to from working with Jewels at Fortify, who's come
and moved from Sydney to Foster and his affiliation with
ninety eight. He taught me a lot about functional strength
and the importance of aligning anatomically your body to the
(09:49):
center and all that type of stuff, which I've learned
at the very start of my university journey when I
did my PDHP degree and a bachelor and human movement
and it all just started connecting and really made sense.
And that was because I started to become, you know,
(10:10):
injured from doing things that I didn't think actually meant
that I was going to pay the price post session,
and because you know, the ninety eight concepts and what
they did was very much that Rugby League high impact session.
(10:31):
Jewell soon found out that the community that he moved
into he had to adapt and change that method. Otherwise
he was going to have clients, you know, calling a
message to him saying, I'm not going to be able
to come back to the gym for the next four
weeks because I've ruptured you know, this part of my body.
So and that actually did happen to me. So yeah,
(10:54):
I think discussing that journey, that transition also as well
being a female now over the age of thirty, we
know the increase in osteo to write it's importance to
nutrition and also that functional strength component and marrying all
of that together I think a really important thing for
females to understand. And also what is the definition of fit.
(11:19):
I think that stereotypical image and what is also put
out in social media and also what we've taught and
definitely what I was taught as a girl coming through
in the nineties and having magazines like Girlfriends and Dolly
of what we should look like. That's you know, that's
(11:42):
changed my perspective of what being a fit, healthy girl
and woman actually is. And it's about teaching now girls
in our community and the girls that I come into
contact with in you know, the coaching that I'm doing
at the moment with soccer that it's not about what
(12:03):
you look like, it's about how you preserve that body
of yours. So when you get to my age, you
know you're not rolling out of bed and going, oh,
I've just oh, I don't even know what I've torn today.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
It's actually funny like that's for men as well, I
guess at some level, but as you get older, because
I'm nearly fifty two and I just get out of
bed some days and you're just you're aching. And I
remember I've talked to her as before, but I was
doing a boxing session one morning, just with a client
and I said, oh, she just want backs tight, and
she said, oh, what happened? And I said, I just
got out of bed, nothing happened. There was no mode
(12:39):
of injury.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
So the other day, I literally crossed the road and
I was like, okay, I need to beat that car
that's coming towards me. So I'm just going to get
a little jog up and I felt like my hands
ring was going.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Are you still heating at sport?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
So the answer is yes. But I was rope into
and this is the competitive nature within my soul playing
soccer this year and the reason that I agreed to
do it is that eighty ninety percent of the girls
that I'm playing with are fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year old girls.
(13:17):
And the coach said to me, Sammy, this is a
really good opportunity for you to mentor this next generation.
So I was like, okay, And I'm at that point
now where I'm like, all right, this is definitely my
last year. No, it definitely is, because I've got the boys,
they're playing soccer themselves, and yeah, I'm now at that
(13:38):
happy place within my own conscious that, Okay, you really
need to preserve the next twenty thirty years of what
your body is actually capable of now, you know, And
that's a journey of realization in itself.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
But to.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, to have that kind of light bulb moment, I
guess is good because now I'm passing on the knowledge
that I have weren't through, you know, the twenty one
twenty two years of experience I've had since I started,
you know, going into gyms and actually working out what
(14:16):
my body needed and passing that on the girls here
in our community, which is really exciting. And you can
see obviously with the Mafielders that have forged that path
and just women in sport in general now and what's exploding,
like the origin tonight for the women is going to
be insane up to watch. Yeah, our community really thrives on.
(14:40):
So let's say talk halfways.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Yeah, which is great, but let's talk about non athletes
because you know, obviously kakota is about just everyday people,
so you're going to have sixteen year old girls and
fifty year old women and everyone in between, and even
outside of those parameters. I guess, so i'd be keen
to talk about going back first to your first one
or two kakotas. You know, obviously you were already fit,
(15:03):
but did you do any things specifically to train for
those kakodas that you can recall?
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, it was all based on what I was going
to go into, So I tried to make it. I
tried to assimilate it as close to what the conditions
and what the terrain was actually going to be like.
And I remember with the training program that you had
sent out to everyone, So my first trip in twenty thirteen,
(15:34):
it was that strength based component being really critical to
that endurance based like days that we had, you know,
trekking for eight ten. I think one of the longest
days that we had on that first trip was twelve hours.
So developing that not only that muscle memory that you
(15:57):
need for that strength component, but also that endurance which
then passes on to that mental aspect, because Kakoda is
I'm going to say ninety percent mental. If you can
train your body under fatigue and under stress before you
get over there, then you're actually going to enjoy the
(16:19):
reason that you're going there in the first place and
really see the beautiful place that is paping the new
Guineas for what it truly is.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
It's interesting that when you talk about the strength component,
because it is the first component that people drop off.
And I know that after years of talking to hundreds,
if not thousands of people you know who've either tricked
with me or other people is and even I'm mistakenly
I guess at times you get people telling me, you know,
I'm just so busy, And I always say to people,
this is a minimum of a twelve week commitment, maybe
(16:52):
a twelve month commitment for some people. It's not a
ten day commitment, which means a preparation. But if you're
really really busy, I'll always say, look the most important thing,
which I still maintain, is to get k's on your legs.
Of course the most important thing, but if you want
to set yourself up for an ideal preparation and therefore
the best experience you can, you would do all of
those pieces. You do the strength components, And even when
(17:14):
we do upper body people go why we're doing upper
body wise they're sort of bench press and whatever. Well,
that's for the structure of your body, so that when
you're carrying a pack or when you're fatiguing, you're not
sort of bent over at the core and struggling and
then your breathing is affected and your whole body is
going through this experience. So it's easy for people to
cut out the bits that they go, ah, that's probably
(17:36):
not that important. I mean, yeah, we think about squats
because our brain goes, yep, leg's going to be doing
a fever bit of work. But it's that strength component
in general to build the support network that your body needs,
as you just mentioned, to be able to do the endurance.
And then if your body's got the capacity to do
the endurance, then it makes the mental side of it
(17:56):
a little bit easy to do it because you know
your body can do what it needs to do.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Well exactly like you know how the body works. So
the oxygen is actually still going to your brain, whereas
the seed where's it going to all of those other
parts of the body that are screaming for help that
are about to be injured. So if we, yeah, look
at that strength component, and I'd like to talk about
how that changed in my own journey.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Was my next question.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
So you did that first trip, and then you've done
trips since then, still pre having the boys and so,
but still I'd imagine there's two things. I'd imagine that
you struck fairly well to a program because you had
a knowledge to understand why components were in a program,
and then you also have the capacity to modify to yourself,
(18:39):
whereas people with less knowledge will just cut out things
that they don't fully understand why it's in there. And
nothing in the program is in there just a filling space.
It's all there as I think a bare minimum if
you're not doing anything else. So if you're if you're
a guy a girl who's been working in an office
for ten fifteen years, you don't exercise regularly, and I
(19:00):
mean in the last month, if you haven't exercise three
times a week for the last month, not really exercising
regularly then, and then that person's program is going to
be very different to someone that lives in the gym,
enjoys a gym. It's a massive part of their lifestyle,
whether they're competing or not. And so you're dealing with
when you send out programs to people the masses, because
(19:20):
you just don't know people's knowledge based experience base, what
are they actually doing right now? So for you, how
did that strength component change or even your training change
for your next sort of few kakotas still pre having
the boys.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
So for me it was more just around is what
was actually happening within my own circle and life at
that time. So I was still playing pretty high level soccer,
high impact sport, but I also started playing league tag
as well. Kylie Hilda, who is now the coach of
(19:57):
the New South Wales Blues team, was actually in my
side that year into twenty sixteen, so I wanted to
learn a lot from her, and she's just a cracking
human being. I play soccer with her sister. Yeah, So
I love testing my body. I actually have always liked
to push my body to the limits. But again the
(20:20):
result of that was I ruptured my I tore my car,
I did a Grade two and that actually stopped me
from doing a trip with you. If you remember that
that you were not very happy. And yeah, and then
I also, I think I tore my quad anyway doing
(20:43):
those high impact sports and then looking at, Okay, what
do I need to preserve within myself to be able
to actually still go to work and function and do
the things that I'm passionate about. So again it was
that transition of Okay, I need to think about the
bigger picture here and not just about myself and my
journey anymore. So I changed really the type of the
(21:10):
type of activity that I was doing, so I made
it more general base. And I've always had a general
level base of strength training since I was sixteen. That's
when I first walked into a gym and learned everything
about the importance of functional strength. And then that naturally
(21:31):
progressed into you know, doing some more resistance training and
the different types of resistance training and what that looks like.
And people think that, oh, if I'm scoring one hundred
and twenty kilos, I must be strong. But I'd smashed
my body so much the twelve years at this point
that I really needed to think about this next stage.
(21:52):
So it was looking at more of the endurance based
strength stuff rather than the quick explosive stuff, which my
body is also good at. I'm very blessed. I've got
really good what we call fast switch and long twitch
(22:14):
fibers within my body, and I've trained those throughout my life.
But yeah, coming into that next phase and working with
you as well as a guide on the track, being
you know, a teacher looking after and managing around thirteen
staff below me at the time, I had to say, okay,
(22:35):
all right, I still need to be able to walk.
I still need to be able to take myself to
these different places. So it was, yeah, changing what that
strength looked like. So it became more endurance spaced strength.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
So a lot of what you're talking about there, which
is a good knowledge to have at a younger age,
is longevity. Because yes, you know, I've done tomorrow flowing
out for Cocoda number ninety two and ninety three when
you're with me for that next one back to back,
and some one might think that sounds impressive and all
that sort of stuff, but that's also required me to
(23:10):
be as a male. This is hard ten years ago
even to stop having an ego around being the fittest
and fastest in a gym session for forty five minutes
or an hour and absolutely knackering myself and risking injuries.
I wouldn't have had the longevity that I've got now.
I've become very very good at looking after my body.
I trained enough without overtraining, whereas once upon a time,
(23:32):
you know, you were trying to win workouts.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
I remember injuring my back once. Well. I had three or.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
Four CrossFit coaches at CrossFit Timber and then we had
Fighting Fit Timber at the time, and my coaches and
their coaches would come together and we'd trained together and
it was a good fun environment and we'd run the
session sometimes they'd run the session sometimes, but the ego
behind it. And I remember doing a workout that was
like twenty one fifteen nine of one hundred or one
(23:58):
hundred and twenty kilow deadlift followed by box jumps, So
twenty one dead lift, twenty one box jumps fifteen fifteen
nine to nine, and then there was another half of
the workout. But I remember doing t one hundred and
twenty kilos. My body weight isn't huge, but to do
it fast twenty one times trying to race other people,
you drop a bit of technique and I remember you
(24:19):
could just hear everyone's bars hitting the ground and it
was almost like unison, the bang bang bang. So you
didn't want to lose that rhythm because you didn't want
to get behind anyone.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
And I think it was around Rep.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Sixteen seventeen eighteen I felt my backgone and I prolapsed
this in my back when I was in the Army
in each team when I fell down, I set a
stairs at two o'clock in the morning under night vision
with a heavy pack on, like a forty five klo backpack,
and it has always just given me a little bit
of niggle here and there. And I remember I felt
it go. I was two weeks away from going to
doing a double mount Killum and jarro climb with two
(24:51):
different groups, and I kept trying to go, and then
when I got to the box jumps, I couldn't get
the box and I had to stop the workout. I
was crawling around on the floor at home for two
or three days. I really didn't think I was going
to make it to killing and I had to go
in get Actually we've got acupuncture, which I've never done before.
I was trying everything and it did get me going.
(25:11):
But that was the time. So this is probably about
twenty eleven, and I remember thinking I can't do this
to my body and then also run an adventure business
because I particularly like when you were injured that time.
That's okay because you know you're not my this is
my full time job.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Yeah, so if I'm out that if I'm out for
for a month, that could be two or three trips.
So yeah, so I had to learn about longevity. And
so I guess if someone's listening to this, they might
feel like that's not relevant to them. But what I
will say, just what I was thinking as you're talking
about that is everything we do should come with a
risk assessment and what do we lose if something goes wrong?
(25:55):
And for me, if I've invested, you know, by the
time you go to Kakata, by the time you get
international flights, pay for your trip over there, depending if
you're with a full package company or not, but we'll
still spend about the same You brought some boots and
you bought a bit of gear at Anaconda or whatever,
and you can easily spend seven to nine thousand dollars
somewhere between seven and nine for everything. And then if
(26:16):
you're the biggest problem I've had every trip, this still happens.
Someone gets injured, and they get injured doing little things
like touch football, squash, like all these fast netball believe
not these fast directional chain sports where it's a week
out and they don't want to miss their fixture game.
And you know we're not, like said, we're not playing Matilda's,
We're just playing a local level stuff. Yeah, but we
(26:39):
don't want to miss out and all that sort of stuff.
And then bang they blow something and then trips off.
And I've had people have to delay a trip twelve months,
so I always say too when we're in that twelve
week march, So three months out, it's time to start
consider sacrificing a few things because they don't quite pass
the risk assessment of am I willing to throw this
whole trip away because so that I can play a
(27:00):
couple of local games, And so that's you and I
think about that in a longevity sense. But if I've
signed up for Coakata, which is most people are listening
to this podcast twelve weeks out. My advice is start
to cut back any sports that could put you at risk. Look,
I've got mates that do mountain biking and all this,
and I always sad, mate, you should come mountain biking,
or you should come skiing, you know, like snow skiing
(27:23):
in the ski season. I say no, and they always go,
why They're too risky for me, and they laugh. They go,
all the stuff you've done and you find that risky?
I said, Know, the risk is if I blow a knee,
I can't run my business for six months and that's
not viable for me. And they go, oh yeah, fair.
So yeah, just putting a risk assessment over your investment
in this trip would be for twelve weeks out at
a time to start cutting some of those things back.
(27:44):
So tell me about now. So the how old are
the boys now?
Speaker 1 (27:51):
The Rivers just turned seven and the Bassians about to
turn that month apart was.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
A year out, so I was thinking five and six.
So six and seven, all right, So I guess what's
your body doing differently now? Firstly, and also, this is
your first kakoda in quite a few years. You know,
we had the COVID years, and we had all that
stuff going on, and you had your own personal stuff happening.
So now we're back to prepping for Kakoda. You've now
(28:16):
your body is different, you're a little bit older, you've
had children, You're going through your stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
What do you do?
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Tell me what your training plan looks like at the
moment or for or what advice would you give to
a woman your age had two kids getting ready for Kakoda.
That would be different to the twenty eight year old
version of Sammy getting ready.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Well, it's all about the hormones. So I'm thirty eight
this year, and the hormone shift has been huge, and
with that come you know, joints and fligaments and tendons
and aren't as strong and fibrous and responsive as what
(28:56):
they used to be. So a lot of my and
I'm not even going to call it training, it's more
like my own self preservation so that I can still
perform in all aspects of my life starts in the morning.
So I get out of bed and I have one
(29:19):
of those muscle memory mats on the floor which you
can just dissolve your body into, and my morning starts
with using one of those large phone rollers. They getting
the body activating nice and warm and really working on
centralizing my body because I am left handed, so I
(29:42):
have a job that's really high in cognitive focus, which
means that I have to sit at a desk a
lot of the time. So I'm behavior specialists now and
because of that, we naturally, you know, when we're typing
(30:03):
things change that hormone shift. I've really noticed now that
I need to focus on maintaining that core strength and
with that that middle to lower back area. So I
had both of the boys naturally they were both eight
pound three and yeah, and one of them had quite
(30:29):
the large melon. The second one came out really fast
and because of that, he really shifted my pelvic floor.
So connecting the anatomy of the pelvic area for a
woman and the hormone shift that comes from that in
(30:50):
this middle age part of life is really critical to
my ability to get it off the lounge and to
be able to drive a car and feel strong within myself.
So the roller is my friend. Those resistance fans are
my best friend. And also functional stretching as well, so
(31:13):
not static stretching more of the and not dynamic stretching
sort of that middle ground where we're taking the muscle
to a point where it's un comfortable, but then we're
trying to lengthen and sustain, so more of.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
A range emotion stretching.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yes, yes, absolutely, Yeah. So it's like this really dynamic
warm up type thing that I do every day, and
that's just in response to how my body's feeling when
I get out of bed. So at the moment, my
left shoulder is quite sore and I'm looking at you know,
(31:54):
working more on my right side. So actually connecting that
right side of my body and the right side of
my brain and making everything central, that's really really important. Yeah,
because I started to get firsitis in my hits, and
that was the result of training really really highly still
(32:16):
within the gym setting and thinking that I could still
push my body to the point where it could go
previous to having children. But when I went saw my
sports physio and said, Sammy, you cannot keep doing what
you're doing. You know, you know that women over the
age of thirty you start to decrease, you know, all
(32:41):
of the calcium and you become deficient in vitamin D
and all of that transition hinto becoming menopausal, so we
need to look at Okay, what can you do now
to keep your body nice and strong. So it's that
shift now from what I used to do, which was yeah,
one hundred and twenty kilo squats, to actually consciously thinking
(33:07):
about what part of the body I have to activate
to get it to work. And it's not difficult. It's
just about paring everything back, flowing everything down, and bringing
yourself back to your own conscious self with your body
and your brain and connecting all of that. And I
teach that to my clients every day in the jobs
(33:28):
that I do. If we have that holistic nature of
what's in front of me and what's within myself and
I train my body in a way that responds to
what it needs, what's the result of that. I'm going
to be a happy, happier, healthier, more focused individual that
(33:48):
can do what's in front of them. So yeah, when
I myself and had birth etis in my right here,
I was like, Okay, things need to change. So I
started really working on I've always had really weak g
loops and the physio Jonathan said to me at the time, look,
(34:09):
you've really got a focus on that strength component of
your glutes, and you know that that's the strongest, most
powerful muscle that we carry, and you really need to
focus on that. So you know, I'll do glute bridges
of the morning really slowly in you know that the
(34:30):
rising stage just as an example, and I'm contracting my
glutes to lift my body off the ground, and what
comes of that is the strengthening of the core and
my middle back and all of that then realigns itself
and it switches on. So you're doing that isometric isotonic
(34:52):
type strength. So I'm not even using any weights themselves.
It's all functional and that's because of that hormone shift.
I really need to preserve that next stage of life.
But the result of that is I actually feel stronger.
(35:13):
That's you know, that's quite.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
A relative jam.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
But you're not maybe not on the numbers that you're squatting,
but on your overall capacity in life.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Is that how you mean?
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Absolutely? Yes, it's all relative to where I'm at now.
And like you said, with that longevity, you know the
word of longevity in itself, I really like that concept,
and yeah, what I need to do now in that
next that next component and stage, because if I was
(35:44):
to go into the gym you know today and try
and even just squat forty kilos without warming up my
body first for a good forty minutes. That's pretty much
what it takes now. I and the kids next to
me that I play soccer with, go, Sammie, what are
you doing? I said, I'm warming up my body. They're like,
why so? Because when I was your age I didn't
(36:05):
and this is what I have to do now, And
they're like, oh so, you know, it's all that resistance
and rolling activation stuff for a good forty minutes before
I'm playing a sport like soccer. And even then when
I walk out on the pitch, you know, I am
fas and have always been. But now it's okay. I'll
(36:26):
do the quick, you know, change of direction with the ball.
But then I'm passing it off to the fourteen year
old that's next to me and saying, all right, you
now take it to the gold mouse.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
I'm quite happy with my longevity now, obviously, but it
took that injury for me to be able to consider that.
And I think that's sometimes the way. There's something that
gives us a little wake up core that says, your
body doesn't do what it used to do and it's
not going to ever get back to that if you're
looking at the numbers of what you lift and all that.
(36:57):
But so what is what do one need it to do?
And for me, obviously, longevity in the adventure business is
really important. I have two questions based off what we
just went through, and the first one is these hormonal
shifts that we're talking about in women. Is this an
do children add or take away anything? Or is it
just going to be an ageing that even if you
(37:18):
haven't had children and you're thirty eight, you're still going
to be going through that. Or does having children make
it worse or better? Or what's the an excuse my
ignorance in that, But I'm just yeah, I'm just interested.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
If thirty eight, who has you know?
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Or there is no one answer to that. So every
individual is different and every woman is different and it
depends on a lot of different factors. So we're talking
about genetics, we're talking about your pregnancy. You know what
you actually fuelled your body with, how your birth was,
(37:54):
was it natural? Was it Caesar? Did you need help
to get the baby out? Et cetera, et cetera, and
also to for me how quickly I had my two
boys in between. So I had Reuben in May of
twenty and seventeen, and within four months I was back
(38:16):
doing Kakota. So what was that May June, July, Augus, September.
I came over and did a trip that my body
really bounced back. And that was because I had listened
to my body. I trained functionally during the pregnancy, and
I was still running it at twenty eight weeks and
(38:38):
then I just listened to my body flowed down. Yeah,
had Rubes and then and did the trip and then
after that that's when it all changed. So my body
bounced back brilliantly. My pelvic floor was back to where
(38:58):
I thought it had been previous to having Reuben. And
then I became pregnant with Fast when Reuben was five
and a half months old, and then the journey of
the hormones really began, so I couldn't run. My binnacologist
(39:21):
obstetrician at the time said Sammy, look, this hormone flood
that's now coming through your body is telling you that
if you continue doing this high impact impact work, which
I know that you still want to do. And this
was a really difficult conversation that a person's having in
front of me, because it's a life change. Now it's okay,
(39:46):
you're not that person anymore. You're now this person. You're
not single living the life that you want to live,
pushing your body to the limits. You're now a mum
of two. All right, You've got to shift that mindset
and shift that perspective and look again and at that longevity.
(40:06):
So yeah, she said to me, you know, with this
hormone ships happening, which is the progesterone and the estrogen
working hand in hand, and the baby takes everything for you.
When you're pregnant, you need to.
Speaker 4 (40:21):
There's a competitive athlete in you. And when you're having
that initial conversation, go, nah, I'm going to be different.
You know, you haven't.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
Seen you don't know, do you know?
Speaker 1 (40:31):
The first thought in my mind, I was like, what
the actual f No One told me that this was
going to happen. And this is also a really interesting
thing because education is key in everything that we do,
in all aspects of our lives. And looking back now
and what I was told and then subsequently the nursing
(40:55):
team that took me on my journey and I think
if I'd have had more education on what I needed
to do for my body, particularly with that horn loon shift,
that I would have done things differently in preparation for
those pregnancies. And that all came down to the nutrition
(41:15):
component of things, so really fuelling my body with the
vitamins and minerals that it needed, which I knew based concept,
you know, with the PDHPE teaching that I had done
and learning all about that and teaching that, but when
you're actually experiencing it yourself, it's not until yeah, we
(41:41):
look back on and go, all right, would I have
done things differently? And the answer in that moment is yes.
And it all came down to the nutrition side of things,
so really focusing on things like zinc, magnesium, potassium, vitamin
D and focusing on what my body needed to fuel
(42:04):
that pregnant. Yeah. So as an example, I put on
I put on too much weight with Ruben. I think
I put on around eighteen kilos, which was probably five
kilos over the ideal, but that was because the last
trimester I got hungry. I just ate what my body grave,
(42:27):
which was salt, and it wasn't until I then became
pregnant with Sebastian that I was like, all right, I
actually know why my body is creating salts because it's
lacking magnesium. So I just went to the pharmacist soon
as like, yeap, double dose of magnesium and that was
all I needed. It reduced the cramps. I'm not sure
(42:48):
what happened then it dropped out.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
That's right, we're back. So yeah, reduced the cramps, and
that's where you disappeared on me.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Yeah, reduced the cramps, helped with healthy skin, all of
those things that we need to you know, supply all
of that nutrition that the baby's taking from us. So yeah,
it was about preserving not only my pelvic floor but
also this baby that I was carrying. And I had,
(43:16):
you know, a four and a half months old that
I had to raise as well at the same time.
Speaker 4 (43:23):
So my next question, I guess around off what we
talked because I had too. One was around aging children
and it's quite an I know, it's an in depth
question and we yeah, yeah, try and bring it down.
But the next one is around making adjustments to the
current Cocoda program. And for those that don't trick with us,
we have a really sixty seven page document. It's got
(43:44):
nutrition and recovery and all the bits and pieces that
you need. And then I've got a very basic fitness program.
Because most people seem to follow that because the sixty
seven pages they go, oh's too much. But like you
just said, education is key, so it is worth when
you're investing this much doing that extra work. But most
people will be really honest with me. And when I
started looking and it was sixty seven pages, I was like, nah,
(44:06):
I'm not reading that. And then I'll give them another
program which says do one hundred squat's body weight to it.
And again I'm gonna do that one because it's real basic.
But what I always say to people is take that
bigger program to your personal trainer or your exercise physiologists
or whoever you're using your physiotherapist, and tell them I'm
preparing for coacoda because me as a fifty year old bloa,
you as a thirty eight year old woman. You know
(44:28):
all the different people that are listening to this. You're
all unique, even if you're my age or Sammi's age.
And take it to your trainer and let because I'm
not precious about that knowledge. Because a lot of trainers
in my experience, this is not to disrespect them, but
they don't know much outside of the gym. I've had
trainers put clients on just a staremaster program to get
(44:49):
them ready for coakoda, and that's not it. That's not
going to do the job. You get outdoors to do
your walking and you do your strength based component in
the gym. That's just what needs to be done. There's
no in the gym component of walking uphill on a
treadmill that's going to be the same as doing kakoda.
I want them to have this knowledge to go, well,
this is what the program is about. Now I'm modify
it for you as an individual because I know your circumstances.
(45:12):
You're a forty year old woman, you've had two kids,
you haven't trained regularly for a while, So we're going
to modify that program. So I'm wondering with the video program,
and I know you obviously haven't gone through that video program,
but maybe we should do. We need to make an
adjustment and start to put in more of that mobility.
Even for a fifty year old bloke to say, hey,
(45:33):
you know this mobility first thing in the morning is
probably going to be pretty helpful in your life, let
alone in your prep for Kakoda. Maybe that and nutrition,
maybe we need to start putting a bit more nutrition
advice in there, because, as you know, at twenty to
twenty five and even to thirty, you can pretty much
eat and drink what you want and still perform. You
can outtrain a bad diet even though they say you can't.
At those ages you can. But then when you get
(45:56):
a little bit older, you can't do that anymore. The
little shortcuts you might have taken in some areas. I've
got really high performing athletes here in our gym and
who will still sneak away and have a KFC meal
when they feel like they've earned it, which is I
don't have a big problem with. But for me at fifty,
to go and have a KFC meal, it's got a
slightly different outcome that takes a slightly longer time to
(46:16):
return from. So I wonder if we should make adjustments
to those programs first and foremost, and then secondly, my
advice to people listening is, no matter who you get
a program off, take it to someone that knows your body,
that you've worked with before, or a trainer and exercise
someone with knowledge who can then adjust the program and
get the same.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
Outcomes for you.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Yeah. Absolutely, I think if we're looking at a video
component of that, the functional strength and nutrition, I think
that would serve a lot of the people that come
on not only our adventures, but anyone that's going to
do Kakoda a really good set of knowledges to what
they need to do. And like you said, that sixty
seven page document can be quite overwhelming for people that
(47:03):
have never done like this before. But at the end
of the day, I think too, it's trusting the process
and trusting the people that you have signed up with
that they are the best individuals to help you with
that journey and that twelve week and they want you
to succeed, right They absolutely.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
Myself and I'm sure all comers are same. We don't
want people to sign up and not make it. We
don't want anyone to have that experience.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
No, at the end of the day, it's about and
what I said at the start, that experience of why
have you chosen to do this? Because we all have
you know, that bucket list, but why have you put
this onto your list? What is that? That reason? What
(47:52):
is your purpose. And I think if we look at
that and that person that's listening thinks about that first
and then goes right, I need to trust the process.
My brain can't comprehend a sixty seven page document, but
I can certainly take that to someone that has that
(48:12):
knowledge base and that experience to give me, you know,
a subsequent program that compliments what is required, but that
reflects my body based on where I'm at, the age
that i'm at, the sex that i'm at, and what
I've done leading up to leading up to this point.
Speaker 4 (48:35):
So you've got a fourty year old lady gives you
a call or your meets and says, I'm going to
Kakota and you know, I'd like some help preparing. What
would I just wrote wrote down a quick process as
we been talking, like for you, as someone with your
knowledge base or any exosphysiologist or human performance specialist, to
(48:56):
me that it would be a case of meet the person,
test and analyze where they're at currently, so get an
understanding of what they're currently doing, write them appro which
is based off our base program, but you would adjust
that for the individual, and then at a four or
six week mark, retests are we actually moving in the
direction we want to move in, and then just building
markers perhaps that they should be achieving, but also get
(49:18):
feedback from them about how they're performing. But if someone
that's how I would build a program if I'm working
with an individual. But a lot of time we just
get a phone call someone's nowhere near us and they say, hey,
you know what do I need to do to get
ready for Cocada? So we give them a program and
it's a very in depth program, but still generic because
it can't just be one size fits all. What would
your sort of generic advice be to say, forty year
(49:41):
old lady listening to this is thinking about signing up
for Kakoda to make sure that she's physically ready.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Those resistance bands are definitely your best friends for those
varying resistance. They come generally in a five pack. I
would say go to kmart or get them off Eva,
order them online, whatever you need to do, and get
them at your doorsteps to prep you for this adventure
and modifying and adapting to those five bands based on
(50:13):
where you're at with your strength, and you work out
really really quickly where those weaknesses are in your body.
So if we're looking at putting those resistance fans around
your upper side area, so around your quads, and you
notice that your right knee dropped in. Okay, I need
(50:34):
to work on the strength of that right knee to
push it back out again, to realign my body anatomically
to that central mutual position. Because if I'm working on
that functional strength and I'm using those bands as that
natural resistance that my body needs, I'm going to be
(50:57):
strengthening all of those different joints and ligaments and tendons
and fibers in my body that need that. Because when
I get over to the track and I have to
walk down, decline is not your best friend for two hours,
it's pouring down rain, the sludgy mud everywhere. You're going
(51:18):
to want to make sure that your body is as
functionally strong as it can be for those moments, because
when your brain switches off, your body goes to work,
and with that functional strength and using those resistance stands,
it's an absolute game changer, absolute game changer.
Speaker 4 (51:42):
Your muscle memory kicks in when your brain's not working anymore,
and your body will just what you've trained it to do. Yep, yeah,
any sort of you know, sort of last, because we're
approaching up to the sort of our mark of this party,
which is normal sort of size of it. Any sort
of last bits of advice for people listening and particularly
aiming this at women who've been through you know, life
changes and childbirth and whatever that sort of journey you know,
(52:06):
through towards menopause, even any sort of last bits of
advice for them prepping for Kakada in general.
Speaker 1 (52:11):
Yeah, don't freak out, you know, if you're a week out,
if you're two days out, if you're four weeks out,
don't freak out about what what you've done to this
point and what you think your body is going to
be capable of. We subconsciously think about, and I have
in the past, you know, the worst case scenario, what if,
(52:34):
what if this happens? What if? And again it's coming
back and trusting that process and that journey that they're
about to go on, because you know, when I first
did at in two thousand and thirteen and met you
and experience what that beautiful country has to offer and
(52:56):
the people within the villages that everyone's about to immerse
themselves in, you come back a different person. So the
more that you can just do those really simple things
with your body and your brain in preparation for what's
about to be an absolute changing, life changing experience. Yeah,
(53:22):
is some advice that I think, you know, people need
to to really think about and just pairing everything back.
You know, as soon as your feet hit the tarmac
off you know, the little plane that we're going to
catch into Pop and Debta before our beautiful truck ride
(53:43):
to Kakoda, you know, that's really when you start to go,
oh shit, like all right, this is actually real, But
don't break out, like, just take every day as it comes,
take every moment as it comes. I learned from you
really really quickly that everyone is going to have a
(54:04):
bad us included, and that's just all about being a human.
But trusting the process, trusting the people that you're about
to go on this journey with but you've never met before,
that it's not anymore about you as it is about them,
and teamwork makes the dream work. You're gonna have days
(54:25):
where you're like, why did I sign up for this?
You have other moments where you say, this is exactly
why I've chosen to do what I've done, but again, break.
Speaker 3 (54:36):
Out absolutely.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
Yeah, and you hit that you know, it's very much
like you go through this journey and then you finish
and then it's like it's that classic honeymoon period of
holy shit, like what have I just done? And you're
like on top of the world, and then it's not
until and for me personally, it wasn't until you know,
(55:01):
weeks after coming back and landing and going back to
your normal life that you really then start to reflect
on what you've just done. But again, don't freak out.
Let's just go one day at a time, one step
at a time, one moment at a time, because when
you switch off from the world that's around you and
you immerse yourself in what you're about to do, everything changes.
Speaker 4 (55:24):
I'm looking forward to this trip and not mine extrap
obviously I am not my extra, but I mean I'm
looking forward to my next trip with you, which is
the one after, because you know, we're very good friends
and we've been doing this together for a long time
and we've had a bit of a break. So I'm
looking forward to seeing you back out on the track
because I think you absolutely belong there. It's a place
that I know, on a personal level you've used when
(55:45):
you've had challenges in life. You know, when Dad passed away,
the first thing you want to do is come back
to Kakoda. And so it's got such a strong emotional
and psychological hook for you. Your passion for the track,
and I don't you know, I don't blow wind up
people's backside, but you are an amazing human and your
passion for that country, for those people, for Killer and
the Boy is what always draws me to having you
(56:07):
lead trips, and I know people get so much out
of you as a result. So I'm actually pumped to
be back on the track with you. And i'd tell
you that privately, but I want to say that publicly.
I'd love to do a potty at the end of
that trip somewhere and just to get that new experience
after three five years, whatever it's been that you've been
off the track to just sort of touch on your
(56:28):
own personal experiences this time, I really want you to
take it all in on a personal level, and I
know you will because you've still been through a lot
of life changes since Alaska Code and that's life. So yeah,
I want to come back and do all of this
again because I think this has been really informative. But
I want to talk more about your personal experience on
the next one, and I am absolutely pumped that you
and I getting back out on the track together.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
Oh the skin is crawling, like the good sums already
there and we're a week out and that's just stuff
having this conversation. So yeah, it's been five years. My
last trip was my first lead solo, and I just
I cannot wait to see the boys and to just
immerse myself back into what is going to be an
(57:11):
absolutely life changing experience for the people that we get
to share this journey with.
Speaker 3 (57:17):
Thank you before I let you go?
Speaker 4 (57:19):
Is like, if people wanted to do like a one
on one session with you via resume or something, is
that something you would consider doing, Like, say, I'm a
lady in particular listening to this and think, oh, I've
got a lot of value out of this. I wouldn't
mind just having a conversation. Is that something you would
ever consider?
Speaker 1 (57:34):
Yeah? One, Yeah, Like I said before, education is key,
So I'm happy to pass on and also learned from
those that you know are maybe older individuals to me,
you know, it's it's learning for me. It's education for me.
It's listening to them and what their body's you know,
(57:56):
doing then in that stage of life, and how I
can help them and they can help me learn more
about that too.
Speaker 4 (58:02):
Also, so if anyone's listening, even if you're not tricking
with us, and you're listening and you're interested in connecting
with Sammy, just email Brooklyn, who's my oldest daughter who
does all admin. She's at info at adventure professionals dot
com dot you, and I'll make sure that she hooks
you guys up. And just so you know that, there's
my whole goal of this podcast. Obviously we run our
(58:22):
own adventure company, but it's not about that. It's about
having as many people as possible have a positive experience
on Kakoda because too often I've seen people not having
great experiences. You know, there are dodgy operators out there
and dodgy companies, and there's a lot of good ones,
but there's also a lot of sort of chaff. So
this whole purposes podcast has always been about giving people
(58:43):
the tools and the knowledge to have the best experience
they can. So if if you need that and you
want to connect with Sammy, just email Brooklyn info at
adventure Professionals dot com dot you and we'll connect you
guys up.
Speaker 3 (58:54):
That's it. Sammy will sign off.
Speaker 4 (58:55):
You're an absolute legend because for those that don't, we
wouldn't know you message me at three thirty am this morning,
some ready to go. So we're recording this very early
because that's the sort of humans we are.
Speaker 1 (59:07):
When all of the change happens. Right.
Speaker 4 (59:11):
I went to bed early because I was crying because
cleansings thumped in the state of origin.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
I didn't think we were discussing that.
Speaker 3 (59:19):
You're a legend.
Speaker 1 (59:20):
Thanks Hammy, Welcome, Thanks Glenn.
Speaker 6 (59:24):
Right Less of us Stube Fee pressing bond and visits.
Speaker 5 (59:48):
The bond between Aussie's and the people of Papi and
New Guinea was forged in war and it endures in peace.
We felt that friendliness, that special connection in the comforting
presence of our porters and in every small community of
on the Kakoda track.
Speaker 6 (01:00:07):
Whoa as we are.
Speaker 4 (01:00:26):
Okay, guys, thanks for tuning in. It would be awesome
if you'd share this with anyone you know that's going
to the Kokoda Track or that has been and has
a keen interest in the track. It's people and those
that choose to track it. The pillars of is Sharaba say, courage,
endurance of makeshif and sacrifice great words to live by,
and this podcast will offer makeshift and a place for
those that live and love the co Coda Track experience.
(01:00:47):
Until next episode, live a life that inspires you and
those around you, and remember to take time out to
think about what's really important, what's really important?
Speaker 6 (01:00:56):
What's really important?
Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Thanks fellowstak to the Katkoda Track Podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
To get it touched or stay up to.
Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
Date, go to Kakoda Track Podcast on Facebook or email
Glen at Adventure Professionals dot com dola you don't forget
to subscribe and share with your friends. Let's keep the
spirit and the stories of Kakoda and the P and
G people alive.
Apodjay Production.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
This podcast is proudly brought to you by Adventure Professionals
www dot Adventure Professionals dot com dot au.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
For me, Mission Ridge and Brigade Hill.
Speaker 4 (00:23):
The whole Kakoda campaign more people need to know about it,
or know everyone knows someone who's trek Kokoda, but to
actually understand the stories of what these young guys did,
it's harrowing what they went through.
Speaker 5 (00:33):
They were staunched to the end against odds uncountered, and
they fell with their faces to the.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Welcome to the Kakoda Track Podcast, hosted by former soulject
Glen Asa. This is the place to hear stories from
those who've trecked Kakoda and gained tips and knowledge about
what to expect on the track, or to relive your
own amazing experiences.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
The Kakoda Track.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Podcast keeping the spirit of Kakoda alive.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Hey Aroon, Welcome back to another episode of the Coda
Track Podcast. Now, as the title of this one suggests,
we're talking about fitness for Coacoda today. The most common
question that I get is around the fitness requirements, and
as I've said many times, it can be quite confusing.
But I've got to be honest, it's very, very simple.
The bottom line is get out and get your body moving.
(01:26):
It really is that simple. First and foremost, my advice
always is to commit as much time as possible to
the training so that you make the track itself as
easy as possible, no matter how hard it can be,
and it certainly can be at times, particularly the weather
sets in and so on, but that can happen. Yeah,
it's going to happen anyway. But if you're fitter, you've
(01:47):
got more capacity for mental strength. I know when I
was in the military, one of my roles was to
prepare soldiers physically to go to war. And what I
noticed when I was on deployments and the longer those
deployments went, is the soldiers who were physically fitter, who
had turned up regularly, who did the work, seem to
have a stronger mental edge when we're overseas. And I've
(02:09):
watched that on numerous deployments around the world, in harsh,
harsh environments, and always the same rang true. The soldiers
who did their best to get out of pt and
there's a few of those in the military and did
everything they could to avoid it, they definitely struggled once
they got over into deployment. So I've always thought there's
a very very strong correlation between our physical and mental health.
(02:31):
Now large parts of challenges like Kakoda are mental. So
if you can put yourself in as best physical shape
as possible, you're giving yourself the best chance of achieving
the goal that you set yourself, but more importantly, enjoying
the process, having the time and the energy to look around,
take things in, you know, observe the villages and how
(02:52):
life is as opposed to I'm just looking at my
feet and hoping to survive. I'm just trudging through the mud.
I'm just you know, cannot wait for the data and
morning tea, lunch, end of the day, cannot wait.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
For this trip to end.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
I think you miss far too much of the experience
if you put yourself into that situation. Yeah, you're probably
gaining something showing yourself what you can do when you
really put under duress. But you don't have to make
it harder than what it already is.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
You just don't.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
So recently, one of my good friends, someone that I
respect immensely, Sammy Dunk, reached out to me. Now, Sammy
is a former pe teacher, she's worked in special needs,
worked in pe, she works in a whole different vary.
She's worked in gym's. She's was a very competitive athlete.
I'm sure she's still very competitive, but back in her day,
(03:39):
pre having kids and stuff, she was competing at quite
a high level in intense fitness sports like soccer and
so on. And I've always had an immense amount of
respect for Sammy. Sammy's trek Kakoda ten or eleven times
as you listen to this, she'll be prepping up for
her next one, first one in a couple of years,
first one since COVID actually, And she messaged me recently
(04:01):
and said, I'd love to talk on the podcast about
women once they've had children and once we've hit you know,
our late thirties and into our forties, and how our
body changes, because this is now her experience from that
young fit athlete that did Cokoda with me whatever ten
plus years ago and her first Cokoda that is through
(04:22):
to now mum or two boys, a single mum of
two boys these days, you know, unfortunately, and I'm still
having to get herself physically prepared for Kakoda and just
what those different challenges are, so I thought, what a
great topic because we get so many questions around fitness. Now,
I'm sure for the guys out there, you're going to
get a benefit out of this as well, because we're
(04:44):
just going to chat general fitness and overall, but this
whole episode will be dedicated towards the different challenges that
people have, specifically women when we hit an older age
when and that's when most people are doing kakoda. To
be fair, when we're you know, financially more secure, we've
got a little bit of spare time up our sleep,
perhaps we've got the f available.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
You know.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
The downside is we're not physically what we were twenty
years ago, and that's just the reality of being a human.
So add on to that as women having had a
couple of children and what that does physically to your body. Well,
we're going to chat about all of that. And Sammy
is so well qualified for every reason I've mentioned. She
has the academic qualification, she has the experience in athleticism
(05:28):
and fitness and kakoda, she has the experience in having
had children, and now she's coming at the other end
of what it's like to physically prepare herself for Kakoda
at slightly older age. I know she'll hate you saying
that because she's much younger than me, but you know,
old age when she first started. So I hope that
you get immense value out of this episode. As I said,
Sam's one of my favorite people. If you come on
(05:50):
tracks with us, you're a good chance of getting a
trip with her once or twice a year when we
can get her over there. Absolute gun human, very very
passionate about Kakoda, and we'll talk a little bit about
that as well. So, without further ado, here is Sami
Dunk and I talking out fitness and co CODEA but
specifically for women that have gone through that change of life.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Good morning, morning Sammy.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Now I've got my headphones in. Am I clear enough?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
You're clear enough, beautiful.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Unless unless you're talking about anything to do with state
of origin, I can't hear that.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Your poor souls, Your poor poor soul.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Okay, we've got to keep it interesting. I didn't know.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
I didn't get to actually watch it because I was
setting up for this next two co Coda trips because
one trip's just gone as no one leaves tomorrow. Morning,
and then I've got another one that you're coming on
backing straight up. And so I was watching just the
online while I was in between doing stuff, thinking I'll
get back in front of the TV. And then when
we're down twenty four nil, I'm I'm like, no one
(07:06):
comes back from that in state of origin level. That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
So anyway, anyway, yeah, we're shut down. All your key. Yeah,
it was amazing some of the shot.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
There's a little bit too much ego within some of
our you know, the Reese Waltzes and people like that
who have got players, but the ego is they think.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
They're all He's kind of he's at that level that
Latrelle was at like five six years ago and just
needs that kick up the backside and he'll that's it,
you know, that's his boy brain.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
You call it maturity. Yes, they all right, so we
chat it obviously we'll go straight into this. So we
just The most common question we get through the podcast
and in general is around fitness. And I've had numerous
people like might've been on the track over the last
sort of eighteen months in particular, I've had a lot
more people coming up to me and saying, hey, I
(07:58):
listen to the podcast, and I'd love it if you
did more around.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Fitness, which I do.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
I find interesting because if you look, you can find
out how hard Coakota is just by looking online. People
talk about it, and I don't really know what all
the companies do, to be fair, but I would imagine
they give you some sort of half decent outline of
what to do fitness wise. But I have been trying
to talk more around fitness, and I did videos on
(08:26):
I actually did a video fitness program for Kakoda just
to try and solve that problem for our own people,
and anyone can buy, so it's not just for our people,
I guess, but we give it to our trekkers. So
then when you messaged and said, hey, let's talk about
that sort of you know, women who've had children who
had a different age and you've had that experience, because
(08:47):
I think this is ten or eleven cocodas for you
coming up this week or next week, but I killer
will know.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
But obviously you.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Started, as you know, a young and back in the
day right through to still a young compared to me.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
But yeah, haven't had two kids now.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Coming from a very high level sporting background, You've got
good knowledge in sport and exercise performance. So I thought
that actually sounds like a good topic to talk about,
and it's one that's you're very, very uniquely qualified to
talk about it. So hit me with your thoughts on
all of that. We'll just sort of see where the
convo goes.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, So, I guess is my body and what I've
learned to from working with Jewels at Fortify, who's come
and moved from Sydney to Foster and his affiliation with
ninety eight. He taught me a lot about functional strength
and the importance of aligning anatomically your body to the
(09:49):
center and all that type of stuff, which I've learned
at the very start of my university journey when I
did my PDHP degree and a bachelor and human movement
and it all just started connecting and really made sense.
And that was because I started to become, you know,
(10:10):
injured from doing things that I didn't think actually meant
that I was going to pay the price post session,
and because you know, the ninety eight concepts and what
they did was very much that Rugby League high impact session.
(10:31):
Jewell soon found out that the community that he moved
into he had to adapt and change that method. Otherwise
he was going to have clients, you know, calling a
message to him saying, I'm not going to be able
to come back to the gym for the next four
weeks because I've ruptured you know, this part of my body.
So and that actually did happen to me. So yeah,
(10:54):
I think discussing that journey, that transition also as well
being a female now over the age of thirty, we
know the increase in osteo to write it's importance to
nutrition and also that functional strength component and marrying all
of that together I think a really important thing for
females to understand. And also what is the definition of fit.
(11:19):
I think that stereotypical image and what is also put
out in social media and also what we've taught and
definitely what I was taught as a girl coming through
in the nineties and having magazines like Girlfriends and Dolly
of what we should look like. That's you know, that's
(11:42):
changed my perspective of what being a fit, healthy girl
and woman actually is. And it's about teaching now girls
in our community and the girls that I come into
contact with in you know, the coaching that I'm doing
at the moment with soccer that it's not about what
(12:03):
you look like, it's about how you preserve that body
of yours. So when you get to my age, you
know you're not rolling out of bed and going, oh,
I've just oh, I don't even know what I've torn today.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
It's actually funny like that's for men as well, I
guess at some level, but as you get older, because
I'm nearly fifty two and I just get out of
bed some days and you're just you're aching. And I
remember I've talked to her as before, but I was
doing a boxing session one morning, just with a client
and I said, oh, she just want backs tight, and
she said, oh, what happened? And I said, I just
got out of bed, nothing happened. There was no mode
(12:39):
of injury.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
So the other day, I literally crossed the road and
I was like, okay, I need to beat that car
that's coming towards me. So I'm just going to get
a little jog up and I felt like my hands
ring was going.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Are you still heating at sport?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
So the answer is yes. But I was rope into
and this is the competitive nature within my soul playing
soccer this year and the reason that I agreed to
do it is that eighty ninety percent of the girls
that I'm playing with are fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year old girls.
(13:17):
And the coach said to me, Sammy, this is a
really good opportunity for you to mentor this next generation.
So I was like, okay, And I'm at that point
now where I'm like, all right, this is definitely my
last year. No, it definitely is, because I've got the boys,
they're playing soccer themselves, and yeah, I'm now at that
(13:38):
happy place within my own conscious that, Okay, you really
need to preserve the next twenty thirty years of what
your body is actually capable of now, you know, And
that's a journey of realization in itself.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
But to.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, to have that kind of light bulb moment, I
guess is good because now I'm passing on the knowledge
that I have weren't through, you know, the twenty one
twenty two years of experience I've had since I started,
you know, going into gyms and actually working out what
(14:16):
my body needed and passing that on the girls here
in our community, which is really exciting. And you can
see obviously with the Mafielders that have forged that path
and just women in sport in general now and what's exploding,
like the origin tonight for the women is going to
be insane up to watch. Yeah, our community really thrives on.
(14:40):
So let's say talk halfways.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Yeah, which is great, but let's talk about non athletes
because you know, obviously kakota is about just everyday people,
so you're going to have sixteen year old girls and
fifty year old women and everyone in between, and even
outside of those parameters. I guess, so i'd be keen
to talk about going back first to your first one
or two kakotas. You know, obviously you were already fit,
(15:03):
but did you do any things specifically to train for
those kakodas that you can recall?
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, it was all based on what I was going
to go into, So I tried to make it. I
tried to assimilate it as close to what the conditions
and what the terrain was actually going to be like.
And I remember with the training program that you had
sent out to everyone, So my first trip in twenty thirteen,
(15:34):
it was that strength based component being really critical to
that endurance based like days that we had, you know,
trekking for eight ten. I think one of the longest
days that we had on that first trip was twelve hours.
So developing that not only that muscle memory that you
(15:57):
need for that strength component, but also that endurance which
then passes on to that mental aspect, because Kakoda is
I'm going to say ninety percent mental. If you can
train your body under fatigue and under stress before you
get over there, then you're actually going to enjoy the
(16:19):
reason that you're going there in the first place and
really see the beautiful place that is paping the new
Guineas for what it truly is.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
It's interesting that when you talk about the strength component,
because it is the first component that people drop off.
And I know that after years of talking to hundreds,
if not thousands of people you know who've either tricked
with me or other people is and even I'm mistakenly
I guess at times you get people telling me, you know,
I'm just so busy, And I always say to people,
this is a minimum of a twelve week commitment, maybe
(16:52):
a twelve month commitment for some people. It's not a
ten day commitment, which means a preparation. But if you're
really really busy, I'll always say, look the most important thing,
which I still maintain, is to get k's on your legs.
Of course the most important thing, but if you want
to set yourself up for an ideal preparation and therefore
the best experience you can, you would do all of
those pieces. You do the strength components, And even when
(17:14):
we do upper body people go why we're doing upper
body wise they're sort of bench press and whatever. Well,
that's for the structure of your body, so that when
you're carrying a pack or when you're fatiguing, you're not
sort of bent over at the core and struggling and
then your breathing is affected and your whole body is
going through this experience. So it's easy for people to
cut out the bits that they go, ah, that's probably
(17:36):
not that important. I mean, yeah, we think about squats
because our brain goes, yep, leg's going to be doing
a fever bit of work. But it's that strength component
in general to build the support network that your body needs,
as you just mentioned, to be able to do the endurance.
And then if your body's got the capacity to do
the endurance, then it makes the mental side of it
(17:56):
a little bit easy to do it because you know
your body can do what it needs to do.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Well exactly like you know how the body works. So
the oxygen is actually still going to your brain, whereas
the seed where's it going to all of those other
parts of the body that are screaming for help that
are about to be injured. So if we, yeah, look
at that strength component, and I'd like to talk about
how that changed in my own journey.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Was my next question.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
So you did that first trip, and then you've done
trips since then, still pre having the boys and so,
but still I'd imagine there's two things. I'd imagine that
you struck fairly well to a program because you had
a knowledge to understand why components were in a program,
and then you also have the capacity to modify to yourself,
(18:39):
whereas people with less knowledge will just cut out things
that they don't fully understand why it's in there. And
nothing in the program is in there just a filling space.
It's all there as I think a bare minimum if
you're not doing anything else. So if you're if you're
a guy a girl who's been working in an office
for ten fifteen years, you don't exercise regularly, and I
(19:00):
mean in the last month, if you haven't exercise three
times a week for the last month, not really exercising
regularly then, and then that person's program is going to
be very different to someone that lives in the gym,
enjoys a gym. It's a massive part of their lifestyle,
whether they're competing or not. And so you're dealing with
when you send out programs to people the masses, because
(19:20):
you just don't know people's knowledge based experience base, what
are they actually doing right now? So for you, how
did that strength component change or even your training change
for your next sort of few kakotas still pre having
the boys.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
So for me it was more just around is what
was actually happening within my own circle and life at
that time. So I was still playing pretty high level soccer,
high impact sport, but I also started playing league tag
as well. Kylie Hilda, who is now the coach of
(19:57):
the New South Wales Blues team, was actually in my
side that year into twenty sixteen, so I wanted to
learn a lot from her, and she's just a cracking
human being. I play soccer with her sister. Yeah, So
I love testing my body. I actually have always liked
to push my body to the limits. But again the
(20:20):
result of that was I ruptured my I tore my car,
I did a Grade two and that actually stopped me
from doing a trip with you. If you remember that
that you were not very happy. And yeah, and then
I also, I think I tore my quad anyway doing
(20:43):
those high impact sports and then looking at, Okay, what
do I need to preserve within myself to be able
to actually still go to work and function and do
the things that I'm passionate about. So again it was
that transition of Okay, I need to think about the
bigger picture here and not just about myself and my
journey anymore. So I changed really the type of the
(21:10):
type of activity that I was doing, so I made
it more general base. And I've always had a general
level base of strength training since I was sixteen. That's
when I first walked into a gym and learned everything
about the importance of functional strength. And then that naturally
(21:31):
progressed into you know, doing some more resistance training and
the different types of resistance training and what that looks like.
And people think that, oh, if I'm scoring one hundred
and twenty kilos, I must be strong. But I'd smashed
my body so much the twelve years at this point
that I really needed to think about this next stage.
(21:52):
So it was looking at more of the endurance based
strength stuff rather than the quick explosive stuff, which my
body is also good at. I'm very blessed. I've got
really good what we call fast switch and long twitch
(22:14):
fibers within my body, and I've trained those throughout my life.
But yeah, coming into that next phase and working with
you as well as a guide on the track, being
you know, a teacher looking after and managing around thirteen
staff below me at the time, I had to say, okay,
(22:35):
all right, I still need to be able to walk.
I still need to be able to take myself to
these different places. So it was, yeah, changing what that
strength looked like. So it became more endurance spaced strength.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
So a lot of what you're talking about there, which
is a good knowledge to have at a younger age,
is longevity. Because yes, you know, I've done tomorrow flowing
out for Cocoda number ninety two and ninety three when
you're with me for that next one back to back,
and some one might think that sounds impressive and all
that sort of stuff, but that's also required me to
(23:10):
be as a male. This is hard ten years ago
even to stop having an ego around being the fittest
and fastest in a gym session for forty five minutes
or an hour and absolutely knackering myself and risking injuries.
I wouldn't have had the longevity that I've got now.
I've become very very good at looking after my body.
I trained enough without overtraining, whereas once upon a time,
(23:32):
you know, you were trying to win workouts.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
I remember injuring my back once. Well. I had three or.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
Four CrossFit coaches at CrossFit Timber and then we had
Fighting Fit Timber at the time, and my coaches and
their coaches would come together and we'd trained together and
it was a good fun environment and we'd run the
session sometimes they'd run the session sometimes, but the ego
behind it. And I remember doing a workout that was
like twenty one fifteen nine of one hundred or one
(23:58):
hundred and twenty kilow deadlift followed by box jumps, So
twenty one dead lift, twenty one box jumps fifteen fifteen
nine to nine, and then there was another half of
the workout. But I remember doing t one hundred and
twenty kilos. My body weight isn't huge, but to do
it fast twenty one times trying to race other people,
you drop a bit of technique and I remember you
(24:19):
could just hear everyone's bars hitting the ground and it
was almost like unison, the bang bang bang. So you
didn't want to lose that rhythm because you didn't want
to get behind anyone.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
And I think it was around Rep.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Sixteen seventeen eighteen I felt my backgone and I prolapsed
this in my back when I was in the Army
in each team when I fell down, I set a
stairs at two o'clock in the morning under night vision
with a heavy pack on, like a forty five klo backpack,
and it has always just given me a little bit
of niggle here and there. And I remember I felt
it go. I was two weeks away from going to
doing a double mount Killum and jarro climb with two
(24:51):
different groups, and I kept trying to go, and then
when I got to the box jumps, I couldn't get
the box and I had to stop the workout. I
was crawling around on the floor at home for two
or three days. I really didn't think I was going
to make it to killing and I had to go
in get Actually we've got acupuncture, which I've never done before.
I was trying everything and it did get me going.
(25:11):
But that was the time. So this is probably about
twenty eleven, and I remember thinking I can't do this
to my body and then also run an adventure business
because I particularly like when you were injured that time.
That's okay because you know you're not my this is
my full time job.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Yeah, so if I'm out that if I'm out for
for a month, that could be two or three trips.
So yeah, so I had to learn about longevity. And
so I guess if someone's listening to this, they might
feel like that's not relevant to them. But what I
will say, just what I was thinking as you're talking
about that is everything we do should come with a
risk assessment and what do we lose if something goes wrong?
(25:55):
And for me, if I've invested, you know, by the
time you go to Kakata, by the time you get
international flights, pay for your trip over there, depending if
you're with a full package company or not, but we'll
still spend about the same You brought some boots and
you bought a bit of gear at Anaconda or whatever,
and you can easily spend seven to nine thousand dollars
somewhere between seven and nine for everything. And then if
(26:16):
you're the biggest problem I've had every trip, this still happens.
Someone gets injured, and they get injured doing little things
like touch football, squash, like all these fast netball believe
not these fast directional chain sports where it's a week
out and they don't want to miss their fixture game.
And you know we're not, like said, we're not playing Matilda's,
We're just playing a local level stuff. Yeah, but we
(26:39):
don't want to miss out and all that sort of stuff.
And then bang they blow something and then trips off.
And I've had people have to delay a trip twelve months,
so I always say too when we're in that twelve
week march, So three months out, it's time to start
consider sacrificing a few things because they don't quite pass
the risk assessment of am I willing to throw this
whole trip away because so that I can play a
(27:00):
couple of local games, And so that's you and I
think about that in a longevity sense. But if I've
signed up for Coakata, which is most people are listening
to this podcast twelve weeks out. My advice is start
to cut back any sports that could put you at risk. Look,
I've got mates that do mountain biking and all this,
and I always sad, mate, you should come mountain biking,
or you should come skiing, you know, like snow skiing
(27:23):
in the ski season. I say no, and they always go,
why They're too risky for me, and they laugh. They go,
all the stuff you've done and you find that risky?
I said, Know, the risk is if I blow a knee,
I can't run my business for six months and that's
not viable for me. And they go, oh yeah, fair.
So yeah, just putting a risk assessment over your investment
in this trip would be for twelve weeks out at
a time to start cutting some of those things back.
(27:44):
So tell me about now. So the how old are
the boys now?
Speaker 1 (27:51):
The Rivers just turned seven and the Bassians about to
turn that month apart was.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
A year out, so I was thinking five and six.
So six and seven, all right, So I guess what's
your body doing differently now? Firstly, and also, this is
your first kakoda in quite a few years. You know,
we had the COVID years, and we had all that
stuff going on, and you had your own personal stuff happening.
So now we're back to prepping for Kakoda. You've now
(28:16):
your body is different, you're a little bit older, you've
had children, You're going through your stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
What do you do?
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Tell me what your training plan looks like at the
moment or for or what advice would you give to
a woman your age had two kids getting ready for Kakoda.
That would be different to the twenty eight year old
version of Sammy getting ready.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Well, it's all about the hormones. So I'm thirty eight
this year, and the hormone shift has been huge, and
with that come you know, joints and fligaments and tendons
and aren't as strong and fibrous and responsive as what
(28:56):
they used to be. So a lot of my and
I'm not even going to call it training, it's more
like my own self preservation so that I can still
perform in all aspects of my life starts in the morning.
So I get out of bed and I have one
(29:19):
of those muscle memory mats on the floor which you
can just dissolve your body into, and my morning starts
with using one of those large phone rollers. They getting
the body activating nice and warm and really working on
centralizing my body because I am left handed, so I
(29:42):
have a job that's really high in cognitive focus, which
means that I have to sit at a desk a
lot of the time. So I'm behavior specialists now and
because of that, we naturally, you know, when we're typing
(30:03):
things change that hormone shift. I've really noticed now that
I need to focus on maintaining that core strength and
with that that middle to lower back area. So I
had both of the boys naturally they were both eight
pound three and yeah, and one of them had quite
(30:29):
the large melon. The second one came out really fast
and because of that, he really shifted my pelvic floor.
So connecting the anatomy of the pelvic area for a
woman and the hormone shift that comes from that in
(30:50):
this middle age part of life is really critical to
my ability to get it off the lounge and to
be able to drive a car and feel strong within myself.
So the roller is my friend. Those resistance fans are
my best friend. And also functional stretching as well, so
(31:13):
not static stretching more of the and not dynamic stretching
sort of that middle ground where we're taking the muscle
to a point where it's un comfortable, but then we're
trying to lengthen and sustain, so more of.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
A range emotion stretching.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yes, yes, absolutely, Yeah. So it's like this really dynamic
warm up type thing that I do every day, and
that's just in response to how my body's feeling when
I get out of bed. So at the moment, my
left shoulder is quite sore and I'm looking at you know,
(31:54):
working more on my right side. So actually connecting that
right side of my body and the right side of
my brain and making everything central, that's really really important. Yeah,
because I started to get firsitis in my hits, and
that was the result of training really really highly still
(32:16):
within the gym setting and thinking that I could still
push my body to the point where it could go
previous to having children. But when I went saw my
sports physio and said, Sammy, you cannot keep doing what
you're doing. You know, you know that women over the
age of thirty you start to decrease, you know, all
(32:41):
of the calcium and you become deficient in vitamin D
and all of that transition hinto becoming menopausal, so we
need to look at Okay, what can you do now
to keep your body nice and strong. So it's that
shift now from what I used to do, which was yeah,
one hundred and twenty kilo squats, to actually consciously thinking
(33:07):
about what part of the body I have to activate
to get it to work. And it's not difficult. It's
just about paring everything back, flowing everything down, and bringing
yourself back to your own conscious self with your body
and your brain and connecting all of that. And I
teach that to my clients every day in the jobs
(33:28):
that I do. If we have that holistic nature of
what's in front of me and what's within myself and
I train my body in a way that responds to
what it needs, what's the result of that. I'm going
to be a happy, happier, healthier, more focused individual that
(33:48):
can do what's in front of them. So yeah, when
I myself and had birth etis in my right here,
I was like, Okay, things need to change. So I
started really working on I've always had really weak g
loops and the physio Jonathan said to me at the time, look,
(34:09):
you've really got a focus on that strength component of
your glutes, and you know that that's the strongest, most
powerful muscle that we carry, and you really need to
focus on that. So you know, I'll do glute bridges
of the morning really slowly in you know that the
(34:30):
rising stage just as an example, and I'm contracting my
glutes to lift my body off the ground, and what
comes of that is the strengthening of the core and
my middle back and all of that then realigns itself
and it switches on. So you're doing that isometric isotonic
(34:52):
type strength. So I'm not even using any weights themselves.
It's all functional and that's because of that hormone shift.
I really need to preserve that next stage of life.
But the result of that is I actually feel stronger.
(35:13):
That's you know, that's quite.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
A relative jam.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
But you're not maybe not on the numbers that you're squatting,
but on your overall capacity in life.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Is that how you mean?
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Absolutely? Yes, it's all relative to where I'm at now.
And like you said, with that longevity, you know the
word of longevity in itself, I really like that concept,
and yeah, what I need to do now in that
next that next component and stage, because if I was
(35:44):
to go into the gym you know today and try
and even just squat forty kilos without warming up my
body first for a good forty minutes. That's pretty much
what it takes now. I and the kids next to
me that I play soccer with, go, Sammie, what are
you doing? I said, I'm warming up my body. They're like,
why so? Because when I was your age I didn't
(36:05):
and this is what I have to do now, And
they're like, oh so, you know, it's all that resistance
and rolling activation stuff for a good forty minutes before
I'm playing a sport like soccer. And even then when
I walk out on the pitch, you know, I am
fas and have always been. But now it's okay. I'll
(36:26):
do the quick, you know, change of direction with the ball.
But then I'm passing it off to the fourteen year
old that's next to me and saying, all right, you
now take it to the gold mouse.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
I'm quite happy with my longevity now, obviously, but it
took that injury for me to be able to consider that.
And I think that's sometimes the way. There's something that
gives us a little wake up core that says, your
body doesn't do what it used to do and it's
not going to ever get back to that if you're
looking at the numbers of what you lift and all that.
(36:57):
But so what is what do one need it to do?
And for me, obviously, longevity in the adventure business is
really important. I have two questions based off what we
just went through, and the first one is these hormonal
shifts that we're talking about in women. Is this an
do children add or take away anything? Or is it
just going to be an ageing that even if you
(37:18):
haven't had children and you're thirty eight, you're still going
to be going through that. Or does having children make
it worse or better? Or what's the an excuse my
ignorance in that, But I'm just yeah, I'm just interested.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
If thirty eight, who has you know?
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Or there is no one answer to that. So every
individual is different and every woman is different and it
depends on a lot of different factors. So we're talking
about genetics, we're talking about your pregnancy. You know what
you actually fuelled your body with, how your birth was,
(37:54):
was it natural? Was it Caesar? Did you need help
to get the baby out? Et cetera, et cetera, and
also to for me how quickly I had my two
boys in between. So I had Reuben in May of
twenty and seventeen, and within four months I was back
(38:16):
doing Kakota. So what was that May June, July, Augus, September.
I came over and did a trip that my body
really bounced back. And that was because I had listened
to my body. I trained functionally during the pregnancy, and
I was still running it at twenty eight weeks and
(38:38):
then I just listened to my body flowed down. Yeah,
had Rubes and then and did the trip and then
after that that's when it all changed. So my body
bounced back brilliantly. My pelvic floor was back to where
(38:58):
I thought it had been previous to having Reuben. And
then I became pregnant with Fast when Reuben was five
and a half months old, and then the journey of
the hormones really began, so I couldn't run. My binnacologist
(39:21):
obstetrician at the time said Sammy, look, this hormone flood
that's now coming through your body is telling you that
if you continue doing this high impact impact work, which
I know that you still want to do. And this
was a really difficult conversation that a person's having in
front of me, because it's a life change. Now it's okay,
(39:46):
you're not that person anymore. You're now this person. You're
not single living the life that you want to live,
pushing your body to the limits. You're now a mum
of two. All right, You've got to shift that mindset
and shift that perspective and look again and at that longevity.
(40:06):
So yeah, she said to me, you know, with this
hormone ships happening, which is the progesterone and the estrogen
working hand in hand, and the baby takes everything for you.
When you're pregnant, you need to.
Speaker 4 (40:21):
There's a competitive athlete in you. And when you're having
that initial conversation, go, nah, I'm going to be different.
You know, you haven't.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
Seen you don't know, do you know?
Speaker 1 (40:31):
The first thought in my mind, I was like, what
the actual f No One told me that this was
going to happen. And this is also a really interesting
thing because education is key in everything that we do,
in all aspects of our lives. And looking back now
and what I was told and then subsequently the nursing
(40:55):
team that took me on my journey and I think
if I'd have had more education on what I needed
to do for my body, particularly with that horn loon shift,
that I would have done things differently in preparation for
those pregnancies. And that all came down to the nutrition
(41:15):
component of things, so really fuelling my body with the
vitamins and minerals that it needed, which I knew based concept,
you know, with the PDHPE teaching that I had done
and learning all about that and teaching that, but when
you're actually experiencing it yourself, it's not until yeah, we
(41:41):
look back on and go, all right, would I have
done things differently? And the answer in that moment is yes.
And it all came down to the nutrition side of things,
so really focusing on things like zinc, magnesium, potassium, vitamin
D and focusing on what my body needed to fuel
(42:04):
that pregnant. Yeah. So as an example, I put on
I put on too much weight with Ruben. I think
I put on around eighteen kilos, which was probably five
kilos over the ideal, but that was because the last
trimester I got hungry. I just ate what my body grave,
(42:27):
which was salt, and it wasn't until I then became
pregnant with Sebastian that I was like, all right, I
actually know why my body is creating salts because it's
lacking magnesium. So I just went to the pharmacist soon
as like, yeap, double dose of magnesium and that was
all I needed. It reduced the cramps. I'm not sure
(42:48):
what happened then it dropped out.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
That's right, we're back. So yeah, reduced the cramps, and
that's where you disappeared on me.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Yeah, reduced the cramps, helped with healthy skin, all of
those things that we need to you know, supply all
of that nutrition that the baby's taking from us. So yeah,
it was about preserving not only my pelvic floor but
also this baby that I was carrying. And I had,
(43:16):
you know, a four and a half months old that
I had to raise as well at the same time.
Speaker 4 (43:23):
So my next question, I guess around off what we
talked because I had too. One was around aging children
and it's quite an I know, it's an in depth
question and we yeah, yeah, try and bring it down.
But the next one is around making adjustments to the
current Cocoda program. And for those that don't trick with us,
we have a really sixty seven page document. It's got
(43:44):
nutrition and recovery and all the bits and pieces that
you need. And then I've got a very basic fitness program.
Because most people seem to follow that because the sixty
seven pages they go, oh's too much. But like you
just said, education is key, so it is worth when
you're investing this much doing that extra work. But most
people will be really honest with me. And when I
started looking and it was sixty seven pages, I was like, nah,
(44:06):
I'm not reading that. And then I'll give them another
program which says do one hundred squat's body weight to it.
And again I'm gonna do that one because it's real basic.
But what I always say to people is take that
bigger program to your personal trainer or your exercise physiologists
or whoever you're using your physiotherapist, and tell them I'm
preparing for coacoda because me as a fifty year old bloa,
you as a thirty eight year old woman. You know
(44:28):
all the different people that are listening to this. You're
all unique, even if you're my age or Sammi's age.
And take it to your trainer and let because I'm
not precious about that knowledge. Because a lot of trainers
in my experience, this is not to disrespect them, but
they don't know much outside of the gym. I've had
trainers put clients on just a staremaster program to get
(44:49):
them ready for coakoda, and that's not it. That's not
going to do the job. You get outdoors to do
your walking and you do your strength based component in
the gym. That's just what needs to be done. There's
no in the gym component of walking uphill on a
treadmill that's going to be the same as doing kakoda.
I want them to have this knowledge to go, well,
this is what the program is about. Now I'm modify
it for you as an individual because I know your circumstances.
(45:12):
You're a forty year old woman, you've had two kids,
you haven't trained regularly for a while, So we're going
to modify that program. So I'm wondering with the video program,
and I know you obviously haven't gone through that video program,
but maybe we should do. We need to make an
adjustment and start to put in more of that mobility.
Even for a fifty year old bloke to say, hey,
(45:33):
you know this mobility first thing in the morning is
probably going to be pretty helpful in your life, let
alone in your prep for Kakoda. Maybe that and nutrition,
maybe we need to start putting a bit more nutrition
advice in there, because, as you know, at twenty to
twenty five and even to thirty, you can pretty much
eat and drink what you want and still perform. You
can outtrain a bad diet even though they say you can't.
At those ages you can. But then when you get
(45:56):
a little bit older, you can't do that anymore. The
little shortcuts you might have taken in some areas. I've
got really high performing athletes here in our gym and
who will still sneak away and have a KFC meal
when they feel like they've earned it, which is I
don't have a big problem with. But for me at fifty,
to go and have a KFC meal, it's got a
slightly different outcome that takes a slightly longer time to
(46:16):
return from. So I wonder if we should make adjustments
to those programs first and foremost, and then secondly, my
advice to people listening is, no matter who you get
a program off, take it to someone that knows your body,
that you've worked with before, or a trainer and exercise
someone with knowledge who can then adjust the program and
get the same.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
Outcomes for you.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Yeah. Absolutely, I think if we're looking at a video
component of that, the functional strength and nutrition, I think
that would serve a lot of the people that come
on not only our adventures, but anyone that's going to
do Kakoda a really good set of knowledges to what
they need to do. And like you said, that sixty
seven page document can be quite overwhelming for people that
(47:03):
have never done like this before. But at the end
of the day, I think too, it's trusting the process
and trusting the people that you have signed up with
that they are the best individuals to help you with
that journey and that twelve week and they want you
to succeed, right They absolutely.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
Myself and I'm sure all comers are same. We don't
want people to sign up and not make it. We
don't want anyone to have that experience.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
No, at the end of the day, it's about and
what I said at the start, that experience of why
have you chosen to do this? Because we all have
you know, that bucket list, but why have you put
this onto your list? What is that? That reason? What
(47:52):
is your purpose. And I think if we look at
that and that person that's listening thinks about that first
and then goes right, I need to trust the process.
My brain can't comprehend a sixty seven page document, but
I can certainly take that to someone that has that
(48:12):
knowledge base and that experience to give me, you know,
a subsequent program that compliments what is required, but that
reflects my body based on where I'm at, the age
that i'm at, the sex that i'm at, and what
I've done leading up to leading up to this point.
Speaker 4 (48:35):
So you've got a fourty year old lady gives you
a call or your meets and says, I'm going to
Kakota and you know, I'd like some help preparing. What
would I just wrote wrote down a quick process as
we been talking, like for you, as someone with your
knowledge base or any exosphysiologist or human performance specialist, to
(48:56):
me that it would be a case of meet the person,
test and analyze where they're at currently, so get an
understanding of what they're currently doing, write them appro which
is based off our base program, but you would adjust
that for the individual, and then at a four or
six week mark, retests are we actually moving in the
direction we want to move in, and then just building
markers perhaps that they should be achieving, but also get
(49:18):
feedback from them about how they're performing. But if someone
that's how I would build a program if I'm working
with an individual. But a lot of time we just
get a phone call someone's nowhere near us and they say, hey,
you know what do I need to do to get
ready for Cocada? So we give them a program and
it's a very in depth program, but still generic because
it can't just be one size fits all. What would
your sort of generic advice be to say, forty year
(49:41):
old lady listening to this is thinking about signing up
for Kakoda to make sure that she's physically ready.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Those resistance bands are definitely your best friends for those
varying resistance. They come generally in a five pack. I
would say go to kmart or get them off Eva,
order them online, whatever you need to do, and get
them at your doorsteps to prep you for this adventure
and modifying and adapting to those five bands based on
(50:13):
where you're at with your strength, and you work out
really really quickly where those weaknesses are in your body.
So if we're looking at putting those resistance fans around
your upper side area, so around your quads, and you
notice that your right knee dropped in. Okay, I need
(50:34):
to work on the strength of that right knee to
push it back out again, to realign my body anatomically
to that central mutual position. Because if I'm working on
that functional strength and I'm using those bands as that
natural resistance that my body needs, I'm going to be
(50:57):
strengthening all of those different joints and ligaments and tendons
and fibers in my body that need that. Because when
I get over to the track and I have to
walk down, decline is not your best friend for two hours,
it's pouring down rain, the sludgy mud everywhere. You're going
(51:18):
to want to make sure that your body is as
functionally strong as it can be for those moments, because
when your brain switches off, your body goes to work,
and with that functional strength and using those resistance stands,
it's an absolute game changer, absolute game changer.
Speaker 4 (51:42):
Your muscle memory kicks in when your brain's not working anymore,
and your body will just what you've trained it to do. Yep, yeah,
any sort of you know, sort of last, because we're
approaching up to the sort of our mark of this party,
which is normal sort of size of it. Any sort
of last bits of advice for people listening and particularly
aiming this at women who've been through you know, life
changes and childbirth and whatever that sort of journey you know,
(52:06):
through towards menopause, even any sort of last bits of
advice for them prepping for Kakada in general.
Speaker 1 (52:11):
Yeah, don't freak out, you know, if you're a week out,
if you're two days out, if you're four weeks out,
don't freak out about what what you've done to this
point and what you think your body is going to
be capable of. We subconsciously think about, and I have
in the past, you know, the worst case scenario, what if,
(52:34):
what if this happens? What if? And again it's coming
back and trusting that process and that journey that they're
about to go on, because you know, when I first
did at in two thousand and thirteen and met you
and experience what that beautiful country has to offer and
(52:56):
the people within the villages that everyone's about to immerse
themselves in, you come back a different person. So the
more that you can just do those really simple things
with your body and your brain in preparation for what's
about to be an absolute changing, life changing experience. Yeah,
(53:22):
is some advice that I think, you know, people need
to to really think about and just pairing everything back.
You know, as soon as your feet hit the tarmac
off you know, the little plane that we're going to
catch into Pop and Debta before our beautiful truck ride
(53:43):
to Kakoda, you know, that's really when you start to go,
oh shit, like all right, this is actually real, But
don't break out, like, just take every day as it comes,
take every moment as it comes. I learned from you
really really quickly that everyone is going to have a
(54:04):
bad us included, and that's just all about being a human.
But trusting the process, trusting the people that you're about
to go on this journey with but you've never met before,
that it's not anymore about you as it is about them,
and teamwork makes the dream work. You're gonna have days
(54:25):
where you're like, why did I sign up for this?
You have other moments where you say, this is exactly
why I've chosen to do what I've done, but again, break.
Speaker 3 (54:36):
Out absolutely.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
Yeah, and you hit that you know, it's very much
like you go through this journey and then you finish
and then it's like it's that classic honeymoon period of
holy shit, like what have I just done? And you're
like on top of the world, and then it's not
until and for me personally, it wasn't until you know,
(55:01):
weeks after coming back and landing and going back to
your normal life that you really then start to reflect
on what you've just done. But again, don't freak out.
Let's just go one day at a time, one step
at a time, one moment at a time, because when
you switch off from the world that's around you and
you immerse yourself in what you're about to do, everything changes.
Speaker 4 (55:24):
I'm looking forward to this trip and not mine extrap
obviously I am not my extra, but I mean I'm
looking forward to my next trip with you, which is
the one after, because you know, we're very good friends
and we've been doing this together for a long time
and we've had a bit of a break. So I'm
looking forward to seeing you back out on the track
because I think you absolutely belong there. It's a place
that I know, on a personal level you've used when
(55:45):
you've had challenges in life. You know, when Dad passed away,
the first thing you want to do is come back
to Kakoda. And so it's got such a strong emotional
and psychological hook for you. Your passion for the track,
and I don't you know, I don't blow wind up
people's backside, but you are an amazing human and your
passion for that country, for those people, for Killer and
the Boy is what always draws me to having you
(56:07):
lead trips, and I know people get so much out
of you as a result. So I'm actually pumped to
be back on the track with you. And i'd tell
you that privately, but I want to say that publicly.
I'd love to do a potty at the end of
that trip somewhere and just to get that new experience
after three five years, whatever it's been that you've been
off the track to just sort of touch on your
(56:28):
own personal experiences this time, I really want you to
take it all in on a personal level, and I
know you will because you've still been through a lot
of life changes since Alaska Code and that's life. So yeah,
I want to come back and do all of this
again because I think this has been really informative. But
I want to talk more about your personal experience on
the next one, and I am absolutely pumped that you
and I getting back out on the track together.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
Oh the skin is crawling, like the good sums already
there and we're a week out and that's just stuff
having this conversation. So yeah, it's been five years. My
last trip was my first lead solo, and I just
I cannot wait to see the boys and to just
immerse myself back into what is going to be an
(57:11):
absolutely life changing experience for the people that we get
to share this journey with.
Speaker 3 (57:17):
Thank you before I let you go?
Speaker 4 (57:19):
Is like, if people wanted to do like a one
on one session with you via resume or something, is
that something you would consider doing, Like, say, I'm a
lady in particular listening to this and think, oh, I've
got a lot of value out of this. I wouldn't
mind just having a conversation. Is that something you would
ever consider?
Speaker 1 (57:34):
Yeah? One, Yeah, Like I said before, education is key,
So I'm happy to pass on and also learned from
those that you know are maybe older individuals to me,
you know, it's it's learning for me. It's education for me.
It's listening to them and what their body's you know,
(57:56):
doing then in that stage of life, and how I
can help them and they can help me learn more
about that too.
Speaker 4 (58:02):
Also, so if anyone's listening, even if you're not tricking
with us, and you're listening and you're interested in connecting
with Sammy, just email Brooklyn, who's my oldest daughter who
does all admin. She's at info at adventure professionals dot
com dot you, and I'll make sure that she hooks
you guys up. And just so you know that, there's
my whole goal of this podcast. Obviously we run our
(58:22):
own adventure company, but it's not about that. It's about
having as many people as possible have a positive experience
on Kakoda because too often I've seen people not having
great experiences. You know, there are dodgy operators out there
and dodgy companies, and there's a lot of good ones,
but there's also a lot of sort of chaff. So
this whole purposes podcast has always been about giving people
(58:43):
the tools and the knowledge to have the best experience
they can. So if if you need that and you
want to connect with Sammy, just email Brooklyn info at
adventure Professionals dot com dot you and we'll connect you
guys up.
Speaker 3 (58:54):
That's it. Sammy will sign off.
Speaker 4 (58:55):
You're an absolute legend because for those that don't, we
wouldn't know you message me at three thirty am this morning,
some ready to go. So we're recording this very early
because that's the sort of humans we are.
Speaker 1 (59:07):
When all of the change happens. Right.
Speaker 4 (59:11):
I went to bed early because I was crying because
cleansings thumped in the state of origin.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
I didn't think we were discussing that.
Speaker 3 (59:19):
You're a legend.
Speaker 1 (59:20):
Thanks Hammy, Welcome, Thanks Glenn.
Speaker 6 (59:24):
Right Less of us Stube Fee pressing bond and visits.
Speaker 5 (59:48):
The bond between Aussie's and the people of Papi and
New Guinea was forged in war and it endures in peace.
We felt that friendliness, that special connection in the comforting
presence of our porters and in every small community of
on the Kakoda track.
Speaker 6 (01:00:07):
Whoa as we are.
Speaker 4 (01:00:26):
Okay, guys, thanks for tuning in. It would be awesome
if you'd share this with anyone you know that's going
to the Kokoda Track or that has been and has
a keen interest in the track. It's people and those
that choose to track it. The pillars of is Sharaba say, courage,
endurance of makeshif and sacrifice great words to live by,
and this podcast will offer makeshift and a place for
those that live and love the co Coda Track experience.
(01:00:47):
Until next episode, live a life that inspires you and
those around you, and remember to take time out to
think about what's really important, what's really important?
Speaker 6 (01:00:56):
What's really important?
Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Thanks fellowstak to the Katkoda Track Podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
To get it touched or stay up to.
Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
Date, go to Kakoda Track Podcast on Facebook or email
Glen at Adventure Professionals dot com dola you don't forget
to subscribe and share with your friends. Let's keep the
spirit and the stories of Kakoda and the P and
G people alive.
Popular Podcasts
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com