The Power of Prevention: Michal Novotný on Movement and Longevity

Nigel Rawlins: Michal, welcome to the Wisepreneurs Podcast. Can you tell us where you're from and something about yourself?

Michel Novotny: Hello. Thank you for inviting me to your podcast. My name is Michal Novotny. I'm from Czech Republic. I'm a physical therapist, mostly in sport and a fitness coach.

Nigel Rawlins: One of the reasons I wanted to speak to you is because you work with elite athletes, but you also work with Hollywood stars. So what is it about working with elite athletes that they need your help?

Michel Novotny: Uh, yes, with professional athletes, I start to work, mostly in professional tennis when I become one of, five ATP, sports , physiotherapist. And, uh, slowly I was moving to another sport. Uh football players and professional athletes was getting in touch, uh, with me and, uh, all this sport is, uh, somehow connected.

So in one point I had a phone call from a manager of one actor. The first one was Orlando Bloom, uh, that he is, uh, shooting some movie in Czech Republic, in Prague, and, if I could help him.

So I went. It's supposed to be only one treatment and he felt quite comfortable. He felt some improvement. He asked me to come day after again and day after again. And at the end it was a collaboration for all the movie. And, all these actors, somehow they also connected, so, he mentioned my name to, uh, someone else and slowly they was calling me, after this first actor, uh, many others.

Nigel Rawlins: Now, what's interesting about that is, you're in the Czech Republic, so how do these actors and these sports people find you there?

Michel Novotny: Yeah, I don't know this how they, the way how to make the research. So honestly, I don't know. I don't ask. So I'm trying to just to talk with the result with my hands and releasing the pain. And I think also that's why all this, uh, famous people, um, feel comfortable with me because, uh, when I, come to them, I put my headphones, I put my Mozart music on and, uh, uh, they can talk whatever they want during the treatment. , I don't listen to them and, uh, so I, I don't know. But, uh, what I know is that all this work is very well connected because this actor knows managers from the sports and, uh, they working for the similar companies.

So the manager normally, they, uh, they interconnected also between them.

Nigel Rawlins: So tell me, you've worked with Rafael Nadal, is it? And Maria Sharapova. What's the difference in, well, obviously women and men, and they're working at an elite level. What do they need when they're actually in one of their matches in terms of your help? So you actually spend the whole season with them or the whole match?

Michel Novotny: I was working in ATP starting from the number one until number 150. Uh, so, uh, Nadal was one of the players which I felt very close, uh, because my Spanish is very good and when he start his first, ATP tournament, I was there. I was helping him. It was easy for him also to communicate with me because of the Spanish.

So there was many other moments. I was living in Spain. So, I start to collaborate as an ATP physio with him, uh, but, uh, slowly, uh, uh, somehow connection, friendship, or professional relationship, you can call it as you want, uh, uh, become closer. And he start to asking me, uh, help him also outside of the tennis.

So, I create some, uh, uh, full, uh, scan of his body to, uh, in a term to find the best prevention program. But I was not a physio like one on one, uh, to, traveling with him away. I was helping him outside of the court in the hotel, but not traveling like what I was doing after 10 years in ATP.

And Maria Sharapova, I was helping her in Tenerife. She came with her physio, which was Juan Reque, which is also a very interesting story because Juan Reque was somehow also my mentor. And, uh, uh, we both studied together, uh, in, uh, same university, same class. We were sitting next to each other. We both get to the university as a foreign, he came as a Swiss even he was partly Spanish, and I came as a Czech, otherwise was very difficult to get in physiotherapy school. And, uh, yeah, he become ATP physio. I become ATP physio. And he start to, uh, work after five years, close with, Maria Sharapova. He was always discussing uh, how I would deal with his problem.

And, yeah, Maria asked if she could come to, uh, my clinic to deal with her ankle problem. So, uh, that was a closer relationship. And then I was helping her also in, uh, if I remember well in Australia Open with her shoulder. So we also had some polite nice relationship with Maria, but also that was not really this one-on-one collaboration, which I had with another player, (hard to figure out the tennis players)

So I was working with a lot of, but especially with this two, which you, which you mentioned, it was not a classical one on one on tournament.

Nigel Rawlins: So obviously they're incredible athletes. So how, how easy is, is it for them to become injured at that point? what are some of the reasons they are getting their injuries?

Michel Novotny: I think the main problem of, uh, getting injury is that, uh, the prevention program, uh, is not set up from the young ages. If we take some prevention program, we can go to different deepness. Yes, let's say, some, football female team contact me if I could create a prevention program for their club.

This will be some, like a first level or first deep, uh, kind of superficial, uh, prevention program, which i would make, I will take three or four most frequent injury in female football team. And I will create, uh, for each injury some kind of the guidelines of this exercise intensity and that's it.

But, if we want to go really deep to the person where he is uh, based on his age uh, based on his genetic, his blood test, his biomarkers starting from HRV or, or resting frequency uh, um, uh, heartbeat. So, then it must be almost one-on-one collaboration. I must be with the athlete, uh, every day, control all this data, creating different graphs and, uh, uh, be in close contact with fitness coach and telling him today is better, uh, we make this, uh, technical training in the morning instead in the afternoon or today we, decrease the intensity.

So this is something I don't see is, uh, the elite sport are doing, mostly they doing it on something what they getting used to through the years. So my player is used to train two times per day for two hours and they just keep this routine, but uh, our body is changing. Our mind is changing, going through different, circumstances.

And, if you don't, really, tracking, this, markers and, some of them get away from you, you increase the risk of, injury.

Nigel Rawlins: Okay, yes, so what I'm hearing is you, you're actually talking about , measuring what's going on inside and then mapping that against their practice or their training, and advising them that probably not a good time to do that because this may lead to an injury. I used to run a lot, being a long distance runner, and uh, you know, if I sprained an ankle or something silly like that because I wasn't thinking, um, you're often injured for several weeks and that's the big issue.

So your athletes that you're working with, the tennis and the footballers, um, once they're injured, they could be out for a season, and I'm assuming that affects how they get paid as well.

Michel Novotny: Yes, exactly. One interesting thing is that i have been working with many athletes knowing them since their start uh till the end of, uh their, professional career professional career. And at the end I used to ask them what they would change, because this is some important question which I can just pass to a new generation kid.

And most of them will tell that they would start with physio much earlier stages. Uh, another thing, they will invest much more money in prevention. And they will adapt the fitness uh, to prevention. Yes. So these are most frequent answers. So if we put that in practice, because my goal is to decrease the injury .

Like you, when you go to run and you sprain your ankle, for the tennis player, one tournament can mean a lot, because, especially in tennis. Losing one tournament because of the injury can mean many points, money, and often it's not one tournament, but it's one month, and the career is very, very short.

That's why all the football teams which are collaborating, they're investing much more money now in, uh, prevention because if, uh, it's not difficult to find how much does it cost to one injury. So, I think the prevention, already Hippocrates told it that it's more important, it's the future of medicine.

The best physio, in my opinion, is the one who doesn't treat injuries but making that they don't happen.

Nigel Rawlins: So, in terms of the prevention, if they followed this through from obviously a young age, so I'm assuming say for example, a tennis player, they often start very, very young. And if they stay at tennis, they can go through. So if they were really focusing on their prevention at a young age, would their career last longer?

Or is there what we call a use by date for tennis players?

Michel Novotny: Yes, the, the prevention must be also adapt based on the age because it's not the same in let's say teenagers. In puberty the recovery is the fastest. So, this kind of the massages, uh, I don't know, contrast bath or cold bath or all this method which you're using in older age are not that important because their body is, very fast.

Normally also the sleeping phases, uh, and quality of the sleep. It's a very good, but as we getting older our regeneration is a slowlier and we need to adapt it. And, uh, this is the problem that when you take a tennis player, a professional, they normally they using quite a small grip on the racket because they are playing every day, so many hours, and they're using one grip, and when they are getting old, they're still using the same grip, with little difference.

And, similar happens with their intensity. They start with one intensity, and continue through the years with the same intensity, and not thinking that their body needs different breaks between the sessions. Needs a little bit more days off or increase the time or increase the intensity of the training.

Nigel Rawlins: We're going to talk about older adults and not necessarily sports people, but yes, what you're saying is you can't keep bashing away at the same intensity year in, year out, um, plus the changes in the body. So with your Hollywood stars, why do they need the same sort of treatment that say an elite tennis player needs or a football player?

Michel Novotny: Well, I can tell you, the first is if you take the Orlando Bloom and you look at him a little bit closer, you see that, uh, he is really almost like a professional athlete. His routine, he started the day with 15 minutes of mobilization. Of, uh, all his joints. He showed me his routine.

He asked me if, uh, I think I think he should change something. So from, I don't know, 15 exercise, I change a couple of them based on the problem which he which he had. He got his own chef who is preparing on daily basis his food. He was sending me the pictures and asking if I I think that it's good based on the workout he's doing.

And, uh, similar thing was Miloš Raonic when I was traveling with him, he also had a private chef who was following the diet which we, design day by day, uh, if there is two training, one training match day, five sets, or three sets. All this parameter changing, because they spending different calories.

So the calories must be, uh, refilled. It's not the same when we're talking about endurance sport, or we're talking about speed sport. Yeah, I'm making this distinction between a marathon man and sprinter. Not only in the way how they should get the energy in, but also about the time between the session should be different because when we're working with the weight and we try to build the power. Uh, we need a little bit more time to look again inside of the muscle. And when we are working more endurance we need a little bit shorter time. But also, let's say you're running, this is, when the body is ready for the next run.

Normally people run and they feel their muscle tired, one, two days. And, in two days they feel muscle ready again, and they go around another 10 K. And, here is the also problem is that, uh, we feel a lot of muscles, but we don't feel much tendons. And we feel less ligaments and we feel even less the bone, but the bone with the running also get this microruptures and like a muscle get the microrupture during the exercise.

So, we are feeling our muscles, but we don't feel other structure and we also must think that even if we don't, uh, uh, feel them, we must know that we was running on some not optimal surface and maybe I need one or two days extra, even my muscle feels quite okay. Yes, and that's why more and more often we see this stress fracture because from this little bone catabolism phase when the bone is in microscopic stage damage, we don't give enough time to put it in an anabolic phase. And from a little rupture will happen more until we finish with a stress fracture.

Nigel Rawlins: Yes, I know exactly what that was like. I was running with a stress fracture in my femor um, when I was much, much younger and wondering why my right femur was in so much pain as I was running, I still outran everyone I ran with, but in those days it took ages to find out what the problem was.

They just didn't know where to look. So what I'm hearing from you is you're looking at not just their muscle and their skeletal, you're looking, you're, you're thinking about every part of them, but also how you feed. those parts of them, you know, the muscle and the bone. So how does the diet fit into this or calories?

Michel Novotny: Yeah, this is a very big subject and I listen this question very often but I will disappoint our listeners now, uh, because I think, uh, if we talking about exercise to get fit, to lose the weight, to build the muscles, to get healthy, that is not universal advice. And, uh, I think this is the biggest mistake from people searching in internet, because what works for one, uh, doesn't work for another one.

Because, we will try to make a three main category based on somatotype. Yes, we have ectomorph, endomorph, and mesomorph, to just make three. So, me for example, I'm ectomorph, which is, uh, like a rectangle, tall, thin, and, shoulders, are similar like, hips. I have good mobility, I have a very fast metabolism, so it means I can eat and you will not see it on my, on my weight.

But then we have a typical mesomorph, which is this athletic body, wide shoulders, thin, uh, typical, like Michael Phelps, let's say. They earn muscles very fast, uh, and they lose the muscles also very fast. This is a good point now to come to Chris Hemsworth. When I was working with him, uh, most for six months while he was shooting Extortion Two in Prague.

And I start uh, to work with him with treating some back pain, but at the end, because, he was also involved in fitness and diet, uh, he see that I have quite some interesting knowledge in these two areas also for him. So we start to, uh, do exercise together and going to the gym together.

And, I was doing the exercise with him and I could do it, the same period, and, the result visible on him in a couple of weeks and on me, you will notice, nothing. And we using the same exercise, but the result it's different because he's a typical athletic body.

And that's why he's very successful, from Thor in a couple months, lose the weight and get a Formula One suit for a movie Rush. And then lose the muscle but make a very good definition of them. So it's very easy.

But with people like me you need to get it very different way. You will need to put more intention on food, to increase more protein, to, to build up the muscles. That Chris Hemsworth doesn't need to focus that much in nutrition, like me. So, this diet, no matter if it's fitness, or if it's physiotherapy, I trying always attack, to, which is the goal. And to get to the goal attacking the body, mind with the diet, with rest, with many different areas. It's like a cardiovascular, digestion system, neurologic system, because all our body anyways, is connected. And, I think the best result is always attacking all this system.

Nigel Rawlins: It's an amazing viewpoint. You're saying the body is the whole, you can't just treat one part. You, you need to treat the whole. You've also written, uh, a book called Sport is Pain. Can you tell us something about why you named it that and what does that involve?

Michel Novotny: Uh, so my career I maybe I start with this, our goals are changing. When, when I was young, uh, I was trying to build up the career, build a house, buy the car, have a boat. Yes. And, uh, slowly when you achieve all this things through the years, you realize that, um, you, you need something else or your goal are not the same.

And, I start to read, after my forties, maybe three more times than, than before. And as more I reading, I realizing that I know less. When I was young, I thought I know everything. And now I realize that I know nothing, uh, and I am much more hungry now about knowledges than before.

And, uh, slowly I understood also that I have some need to pass my experience and my knowledge to new generation of people. Physios. So, I'm in a Real Madrid University giving my lectures for upcoming sports physiotherapists. And, uh, so this is one area and then I thought maybe, uh, let's, continue with giving my knowledge and experience. And my wife was always pushing me and say you should write a book, but I never felt that I'm ready. I thought, what can I tell to people what they don't know? And, I get a offer from the best most successful non fiction published company,

jan Melville, which they make only 12–15 books per year, but they are all very distinguished and they're very well defined. So, I told them my idea about the book, they like it very much and I start to write. First I thought it will take one year, but then I realized that it's much more complicated and it took me three and a half year. I was counting even the hours and it was, uh, 2,500 hours to write the book.

And first I start to write and then I realized I better I start to get some knowledge from my favorite writer, so I took uh, Charles Bukowski, which is one of my favorite, writers uh, and he wrote about writing. Then I took Ernest Hemingway, he also wrote a book about writing. And I get some ideas how to write.

I put time next to me and I see that I wrote 500 words in three hours. And then I pass it to an editor, and he told me, uh, this is almost nothing. You need to catch it from different, so what I was, was for nothing. So, uh, it was a biggest, uh, project in my life. This book, it's much more difficult that to work with Nadal, Federer, Chris Hemsworth. The right book for, was for me the biggest challenge, that's, uh, for sure. The biggest problem I seen is that you, you asked me before this question about the diet, about the exercise, and I told you we are all different and what can be, uh, helpful for someone can make damage in another one. How you can write a non fiction book, which can be helpful for everyone. How you can recommend some kind of food, which for one can be bad and for someone can be good. The same exercise. So I need first part of the book to make this diversification, depending if it's more rectangular, triangle, or square I make my own test.

I explain to make some test if it's more endurance or if it's more sprinter. Also about the character. character is another very important area in term of melancholic, which will be probably an Nadal. Yes, a very perfectionist. It's completely different than Djokovic, which is, sanguinic, and you see McEnroe, or, Kyrgios. Uh, so all these, uh, different personalities. Uh, when I observing them right before coming out to the center court, uh, the way of their concentration, the way of spending their energy, uh, even the warmup, it's completely, uh, different. Federer, for example, which is typical phlegmatic, you see that his warm up almost didn't change through the years and, uh, Nadal with his perfectionism, so he got warm up before warm up and every warm up has different stages, so also this is important to include it.

Type of the character on the type of the activity which you choose and the way how you perform it, uh, in terms that, uh, the activity is long, because at the end we need to do the activity, not for one period, we need to do this activity till end of our life. Yeah, keeping biking until 80, picking up our grandchild to our shoulders.

To do it really in long term or life term you need to find the best activity. To find best time of the day because also it's not the same go for run in the morning or, or do the weight in the morning. Yes, because it's not the same for someone who going to sleep at two o'clock in the morning, uh, and it's more active in the evening than in the morning.

So all these individual factors are, uh, are important. And this is the first part of the book calling this chapter, who you are, to find who you are on metabolic way, body way, endurance way, a mental way. And then all this advices are coming based on this test and based on where the reader put himself.

Nigel Rawlins: That's very interesting when you think about it. What I was thinking when you were saying this is, for example, I played a little bit of tennis, but nothing serious. It was just hitting the ball backwards and forwards. And then you watch the experts playing tennis on television. But what you're seeing is something most of us don't see.

You're thinking about everything that's going on inside their body and inside their mind as well. So the depth that you go to is way past everyone else. One of the things you were talking about there, that's obviously of interest to me, I mean, when I was younger, I think I only started running when I was about 23, but I did stop, I just got sick and tired of it when I was probably in my 50s.

I could still run fairly fast because I was still lean, but I put on a bit of weight and it gets more difficult. So, something an amateur might be doing is not always that exciting later on. So if, if for example, there's probably a lot of people out there who've never done a lot of exercise in their life, they're keen on being as well as they can be for as long as they can be.

So I'm 68. Since I was a young age, I've always been into good diet, though I did get a bit fat at one point, but I've always exercised and I exercise a lot more, but I've noticed, especially if I'm sitting down at a desk, I can get up and I'm stiff. Now, I'm, I'm not, I don't want to just talk about myself.

I'm thinking about other adults out there. Now I move a lot, but if somebody's working in a professional position, for example, you're going to, as you get older, how old are you now? Sorry, I should ask. You're in your fifties?

Michel Novotny: 50, 50

Nigel Rawlins: Fifty years

old. Okay. When you're 60 and when you're 70, um, you, I'm assuming you'll still be working in some sort of capacity, but maybe you'll be doing more sitting and maybe you'll be doing more research, reading, maybe writing and stuff like that. So for somebody who hasn't got an exercise background like you have, or maybe I have, what should they be doing do you think? And again, I guess it comes back to the type of body they've got and their motivation. But what's the basic thing to keep ourselves going into our 80s. Especially if, say, we want to keep our cognitive ability going, stay smart, that is.

Michel Novotny: Yes, this is also a part, which I wrote in my book, which is division based of the age which is very important. It's never late I believe truly and I have experienced that with my clients that there is really no bad moment to start no matter if you are 60, 70, 80, your body, human body is, uh, uh, amazing, this body can adapt very fast.

So in my book, I make a division and I calling it where you are, from 30 to 40 and then from 40 to 60, from 60 to 90, and I call it bronze, silver, uh, gold and diamond. Diamond period, it's after 90 years, which is supposed to be goal to all of us to uh, to get there.

So what is important is depending which age we start, if later, the line of growing the intensity must be slowlier. If you never have run before, and, uh, would like to run at 70, uh, obviously I will not tell him to start to run, but I will ask him to walk.

Yes. And, and slowly every day increase, only one factor. So, uh, the next day, so let's say, okay, you walk 10 kilometers. Next time you walk 11 kilometers. Yes. Uh, next day you walk 10 kilometers, but faster. And then you walk 11 kilometers faster.

So focusing to create some line of progress. It's important and this line of the progress will be very different if you are starting at 50 60 or 70.

Nigel Rawlins: So, obviously, that's going to improve their heart. What about muscle strength, I mean, or growing muscle? Because, one of the biggest problems, I think, even the age of about 40, you start losing muscle definition. So, keeping your muscles up.

Michel Novotny: Yeah. Keeping the muscle up again, depending in which age we starting, you mentioned very, well, actually after 30 already, we starting losing muscle, muscle capacity and in woman, it's the density of the bone. So again we need to distinguish if we are dealing with a man or a woman.

But, to make it simple as older we start exercising to avoid losing the muscles. The movement with a weight doesn't matter if we working with a machine or free weight or body must be very slow. And as older we getting better, slowlier.

Yes. And, so this will be the one. And second, let's take a typical visit in the gym. And the first, what you see is, uh, I don't know, 50, 60 years old man doing the bench press. Yes, let's talk about this typical exercise, which everybody knows all the men likes to do, because somehow feels, uh, that the chest up after is full of blood is growing and it looks, it looks good.

And this is a first question, what are you doing the gym for? Uh And if the patient or client is honest, will tell you I'm doing. A gym to be here for many years or because it looks good on me. Yes. Uh, so if you do this bench press, uh, with the idea that it looks good, it's fine. But let's focus on the people who doing exercise in the gym to be here for longer.

This bench press lying down is not very functional movement because when we are lying and lifting up something from us, almost never. Yes. We need to push something, maybe car. Yes. Uh, but when we pushing the car, or something, we are using same muscle, uh, in arm, like during the bench press, but together with the legs, with the correct position with the correct breathing.

And, this apply to tennis, probably your chest, because I know that you are doing chest and you are, you are strong. Probably you will lift more weight than professional tennis player. It's possible, but the speed and strength on the serve on professional tennis player, it's much bigger uh, the power of the serves coming mostly from the pectoral. But, in tennis player use all this kinetic chain starting from the ankle, knee, the hip, and the end, the result is much better on the tennis player because he knows to use this kinetic chain.

And that's why I recommend, when we talking about fitness for longevity to work this pattern movement, which is composed movement, let's say if you're doing biceps, typical biceps, so there is this kind of the chair where you sit and, uh, you take the bar and doing the biceps.

Yes. This is also not movement which you do in a real life, but if you stand up and you make a flexion of your knee, and, you're using your legs together with the biceps, you activate all the chain and when you're using the right posture, you're using better oxygen and you're increasing the VO max.

So, uh, I think it's easier to lie down and do the bench press, I think for the life and the longevity is better to change or involve more of this global movement and global patterns.

Nigel Rawlins: Yes, that's quite interesting. Um, I use a band system with a bar and a plate. I have a push day and I have a pull day, but it's basically standing to do it all. But I've noticed my VO2 max is fairly high for my age. It's probably not nothing near an athlete's or anything like that, but at my age, it's, it's at the high end.

And I'm not doing a lot of aerobic exercise. I basically enjoy my walk in the morning, but I think it's the strength training that's actually improved my VO2. and it doesn't help to do a minute of skipping. And I've got to admit one minute of skipping, you think one minute's not a long time.

Try skipping for one minute. It's, it's incredibly long. All right. One of the things we spoke about earlier is the wisdom of some of the early artists. You mentioned that, when you are doing your lectures, you pictures of some of the artists. Can you talk a little bit about why you do that?

Michel Novotny: So, um, my wife is, um, uh, historician, uh, art doctor. So, slowly she was pushing every time we was visiting some city, we was always visiting the museum in that city. And, uh, uh, it was always hard to me to understand because I'm not a creative person. I am more function. I'm a little bit like a robot. You need to tell me what I need to read, what I need to write. And I, I do it like a, like a robot. But my, uh, wife, she is a pure artist, uh, with, um, uh, background also in art history, as I told. And, uh, She is pushing our kids to, since they are small, to be in a museum and showing them some very didactic way how to get to the art.

So I was basically like one of her kids and getting into the art and slowly. Uh, much faster than my kids. Now art is, another big part of my life. If you see my book, I, I think, I have the same amount of books from, anatomy and fitness, as from the art.

And, uh, I start to focus about how different artists represent their body, the proportions, and uh, how the different position of the joints if it's really correct, what, what I know from the anatomy, what, uh the represent, and I found that the real masters about this are Michelangelo and, um, uh, Leonardo Da Vinci.

And, from them I get even to Caravaggio and joining that, uh, together and I start, write a book actually, which now it's little bit in pause. I have a. Structure. I choose seven most famous artists.

And, I represent this artist into the human body. And, somehow I use it. The idea comes when I've been invited, two years ago to Pardubice, where I was, actually yesterday again in giving my uh, talk, um, talk about prevention. But it was different place in the same city and it was a very beautiful, room full of painting from Baroque and these columns.

And when they sent me a picture where will be my talk I was thinking that my talk cannot be done like usual with this anatomic models boring. And I told, uh, I will change them for, uh, paintings of my favorite painters. So, when I was talking about fascia, I put Ruben's, The Three Graces on

the picture and on Ruben's painting the llumbosacral fascia is one example. Caravaggio, when we are talking about muscle weakness, because I first found one body, which I see very weak. So, I think it's interesting. All the world somehow is connected. Art is connected with science.

Leonardo da Vinci maybe is the typical, uh, connection, connection between art and science, but we see it everywhere. And, uh, I think the artists around us should be our, uh, escape, uh, to meditation or escape to another world or escape to some uh, inspiration.

Nigel Rawlins: When you said you weren't very creative, but one of my speakers, Peter Compo, was talking about creative is sometimes being creative is to show somebody from a different angle how to understand something. Or how to explain something better is creativity as well.

And you sound like you're, you've got lots and lots of creativity. Now, the worst part about your books is unfortunately they're all in Czech. They're not in English at this stage. Is there, um, any chance of those being translated into English at some point?

Michel Novotny: I think my book become, um, uh, quite unique. First I think I read a lot, uh, my wife much more, but, uh, I, uh, wrote a book which I, uh, would like to have for me. So this, this is one moment. Then another interesting moment is that, uh, um, I don't like, uh, pictures in the book, no fiction book I don't like picture. And somehow I want to express many exercise because you will find exercise. How should look warm up? How should look cool down? Uh, different kind of the stretching and different exercise to prevent the injury from, uh, the sport which you're doing. The history of injury which you had in the past, what you should do to decrease this risk of the injury.

So I spent uh one week in the recording uh, studio with many cameras around and recording myself doing all the exercise and putting the QR codes in the book. So book is quite unique. Uh, and I thought that it will be very easy to, to get it to other languages, especially to Spanish, because, I'm quite known in Spain because, uh, I work with many famous Spanish athletes and when I talk to my published company, they told that, uh, they working in Czech Republic, they have their distribution company and all this PR and everything, uh, well organized in Czech, but not in, other countries. And, if I want I will need to translate it with someone and and go to different and publish company and offer the book, uh, basically on my own.

Because, the other way, the English writers, it's much easier to get them from English to other language, but from Czech to English, it's a big handicap in my area. Uh, so I haven't done it yet. I'm somehow waiting that maybe someone will take the book in Czech and tell it looks very good, can you tell me about and maybe translate it and, uh, sell it?

Um, This, book Sport Is Pain, and I didn't answer your question also why it's calling sport is pain. And it was also discussion with a published company about the name that is quite negative and it can be maybe, uh, not, um, Good for marketing purposes.

So I, I told everyone who's doing the sport knows that it will feel the pain and the pain is nothing bad.

Pain Pain is our friend. And, uh, also, going back to museum when we see how the painters from 14 or 15 century was representing the pain. It was something normal.

It was part of the life. And, uh, as we are trying to avoid uh, minimum pain. We try to live to make, our kids in almost sterile surrounding. We trying to avoid, uh, any, uh, pain. Anesthesia. Now you go to dentist for, uh, minimum thing, they put anesthesia.

And, uh, I think we are losing connection with our uh body because we are scared of the pain. So the pain become our enemy when pain is our friend. Uh, there are also many illnesses when, uh, perception of the pain is decreased or minimized, to minimum, and these people unfortunately they don't live for long.

So this is also that. The pain is our bodyguard. It's our protection. But we need to distinguish between good pain and bad pain. And, the good pain is when we are in the gym and when we doing our exercise and we feeling the pain after the gym. The good pain is when I have my patient, and this patient is on the table and I producing him some painful manual therapy. So there is always this good pain. The patient tell, yes, this is the pain I need, I want. This pain will, uh, help me with the pain. But if I would increase little bit more. this intensity, uh, suddenly the result will be different. The patient become almost in cramp or in, uh, tension. And the result is different.

So also as a physio, we need to have this kind of the sensitivity and in our hands to get to this end field the closest possible and to get this good pain in the gym the same. If you do weight too much, you instead to make a micro rupture, you make macro rupture. When you have this sharp pain, this is this bad pain.

To be honest, when I wrote the first book I never expect that the first book will become a number one, and bestseller. They was quite confidence about it, but not me because it was my first book and I just wanted to have my book maybe for my grandchildren.

And, when the book is there forever, you know, you go to conference, people listen, uh, forget, but the book will be there forever. And I was thinking, okay, keeping myself quite modest and calm and say, no matter if the book will not sell, uh, maybe when I die, as many artists, you know, the book become, popular after, uh, many years.

So it's always like some expectation that, uh, maybe not now, but maybe in 20 or 30 years it will be popular and it's, it's okay. But the first book become a bestseller immediately, which, uh, surprised me and with very good critics. So, I get directly offer from another published company which is the biggest one.

It's calling Albatross. to write another book, which took me exactly one year because, uh, one year ago came the first book and now the second one, uh, it was quite faster but it was different.,

Nigel Rawlins: Unfortunately the recording suffered from a glitch while Michal was going to tell us more about his second book., The Secret of Healthy Movement sold out in four weeks and beame a best seller, the same with his first book Sport is Pain.

Unfortunately, the recording at this point suffered a glitch and it didn't upload. Michal was going to tell us a bit more about his second book, which was called The, Secret of Healthy Movement. It actually sold out in four weeks and became a best seller. Just the same as his first book Sport is Pain.

I want to thank  Michal for being my guest on the podcast. It's much appreciated and I hope our listeners find your ideas and your talk, useful and practical. Thank you for listening.