Read some highlights from our interview with Michael Welch below or find the complete conversation here.

It occurs to me that, with this kind of specialized understanding of the human body and such, half the battle has to be translating these principles, diagnosis and implications into more layman’s terminology for clients to be useful; are there any things you’ve come to understand about how best to have these types of potentially intimidating or complex conversations with clients?

This is an important topic I often discuss with students. When you're a student going through a healthcare program, effective communication is something students might not really think about too much. However, students working with patients or clients that do not have the same educational background or experiences, they too often are unfamiliar, or just do not understand the scientific and medical terminology being used, which can be confusing and frustrating, not to mention intimidating and anxiety provoking, albeit unintended. A student could have ten different patients or clients with ten different backgrounds, which can often include language barriers. Their ability to effectively deliver the needed information to patients in ten different ways, in a manner their patient/client, or accompanying companion to an appointment, will understand, is not an easy task and is a skill that is developed over time. It is an art form, and one that many of us aren't really great at at the very beginning of our careers. 

There is a quote I read once that always resonated with me on this topic, and I believe it may be Albert Einstein who is credited with saying “if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” I think this speaks directly to the simplicity of understanding a topic from many different perspectives and contextual factors. To put it another way (which I often use in my courses), is to address a student's understanding of a topic/concept by posing a hypothetical question: “How might (or could) you explain this to an 8 year old child in a way they would understand what you are trying to say…?”  This approach takes a bit of time to hone this skill, but the goal should be to be able to sit a patient or client down and use whatever analogies and examples that might make sense to them, based on their experiences in life, in a way for them to understand. If you can do this, that tells me you yourself have a very strong understanding of the topic at hand.

What would you want people to think about regarding exercise science and public health?

The phrase “exercise is medicine” seems to have become more prevalent in the media in recent years, and I don’t really disagree with the idea. Medical providers can, and do, prescribe exercise for treating or managing various health conditions. Certain chronic conditions are best treated by including exercise with other forms of interventions, like pharmaceuticals, cardiovascular conditions being a notable example. Metabolic conditions often lead to weight gain, and then cardiovascular and muscular strengthening activities become important in managing symptoms. One area where I think there’s a bit of a disconnect is the use of the term “exercise,” which can be intimidating to many people, and often misleading. For individuals who may have always played sports or lived an active lifestyle, then “exercise” might be something that wouldn’t be second guessed. However, much of the population may not have grown up with this kind of perspective or lifestyle. For many people, they may have been turned off by things like gym class or even social aspects about exercise, sports, etc. 

So then, I tend to think that the term “physical activity” is much more appropriate and useful, in that it can mean a broader range of things for people and does a better job at making the incorporation of purposeful activities for one's health seem doable for people, regardless of their socioeconomic status, physical capabilities or lifestyle demands. This kind of reframing, in my mind, makes “exercise” more achievable, palatable and easier to incorporate. You say “exercise” to someone who doesn’t have access to a gym and it starts to feel like a dead end, but if you say “physical activity” and suggest something like taking the stairs a couple times a week, walking a few extra laps around the store, etc., then I just think we start to get towards a better place faster.

That’s a really great reframing. I might say we live in a very marketing message saturated culture with a particular emphasis on sports and high performance athletes if you consume certain media, so if you say “exercise” to someone, their mind could easily go to things like playing full court basketball, even if that’s not the clinical suggestion is. 

The research around exercise goals (i.e. New Year's resolutions) shows that exercise focused resolutions really tend to only last around four weeks, because it’s a big and hard lifestyle change to make for most. The exercise habit and the physical activity habit are different things. More and more I’m interested in the better incorporation of physical activity from younger ages as a way to improve public health. One of our former Health and Exercise Science students, Haleigh St. Hilaire, who I’ll give a shout out to here, has been exploring this territory during her senior year internship and she continues to do a really great job. Part of her academic interests has been working with a state representative looking at recess time in the state of Massachusetts.