#5: Optimise your recovery using the power of light with James Strong

James Strong is a former rugby player having represented Wales at age group levels plus on the IRB 7s circuit. He played for 8 years at London Welsh and 4 years at Rosslyn Park semi professionally. Alongside rugby, he qualified as an accountant while working in financial services and completed a full time MBA at Cass Business School in 2010.

After rugby he got into endurance sports such as triathlons but soon after started to suffer with his recovery and even his focus. He started to seek out ways to help with this and one of the things he found was light therapy. Off the back of this and the amazing results he achieved in 2017, he founded Red Light Rising as a passion project. Since then the company has grown significantly, with players in 3 of the 6 Nations teams using their lights, plus world champion heavy weight boxers, F1 drivers, Olympic athletes and many more.

In this conversation we dive pretty deep into a discussion on health and various ways you can improve and optimise it. One of the key components is sleep and James goes into depth on the affect of different types of light has on us and our sleep patterns. His company aims to offer solutions to some of the challenges faced in the modern world with exposure to blue light through with our use of technology among other things with blue light blocking glasses. These glasses along with red light therapy devices offers modern ways to help us replicate our ancient connection to the natural cycles called our circadian rhythm. 

We also discuss some healthy hacks and things you can do around the home to create your own 'biohacking house' as James has successfully done after taking on a renovation project to create his new family home in the midlands. 

A huge huge thanks to James for his time this morning and I hope you are able to pick something out of that talk today to implement in your own routine. To find out a bit more about James and his company Red Light Rising their website is here: 

www.redlightrising.co.uk

You can also follow them on Instagram here: 

https://www.instagram.com/redlightrising

Finally, The Post Rugby Podcast would like to invite you our Free Facebook Group - The Post Rugby Community to connect with other rugby players (current and retired) and like minded people to continue your journey to happier and healthier life post rugby. 

The time for raising awareness for improved physical and mental health in the game of rugby is over and the time for taking action is here. I hope you found some inspiration listening to the podcast today and are encouraged to take action by trying some of the things the guest talks about. See you next time :)