4 Ways to Be as Fit as Your Primal Ancestors
Review these four rules for ancestral fitness and fat loss in a modern world. Make sure you’re following some semblance of these rules each week, and if you’re a real go-getter, even each day.
Ben Greenfield
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4 Ways to Be as Fit as Your Primal Ancestors
Last I checked, tapping away on the built-in WiFi of the gym’s elliptical trainer, checking your smartphone e-mail while hunched over on a weight bench, and barely breaking a sweat with a stretchy band so that you can earn yourself a giant Jamba Juice…
…was not ancestral. One could argue, in fact, that this style of fitness and fat loss is just one tiny step away from the scene in the cartoon Wally that features morbidly obese space-age civilians tooling along the space deck in their giant soda equipped land rovers.
Perhaps you’re chuckling contentedly—after all, you’re not one of those people. Instead, you go to a Crossfit box and punish your body under a barbell, or you strap on a pair of minimalist sandals and go running through the forest or you twist yourself into pretzel shapes while lost in a deep breathing trance. While I’ll admit that these modes of exercise are a much closer step to following a Paleo, primal, or ancestral fitness model, they can still be lacking in some respects. For example (at the risk of sounding haughty – but please hear me out anyways), I’ve hung out with many a Crossfitter who wimpers at the prospect of any icy cold shower and can’t last an hour in a dry sauna or swim in a glacier river, many a trail runner who can’t pick up a heavy rock or break into an all-out sprint without pulling a hammy and many a yogi who would definitely be the first to go in a Zombie apocalypse (granted, with a pacified smile on their face).
So what’s one to do? Here’s my recommendation: review these four rules for ancestral fitness and fat loss in a modern world. Make sure you’re following some semblance of these rules each week, and if you’re a real go-getter, even each day.
1. Shiver & Sweat
It is perhaps once each week that my hand turns the hot water handle on my shower, and that’s usually after a 20-30 minute swim in the icy river or the cold tub in my backyard. Aside from that, I take a 2-5 minute cold shower each morning, with water from a well fed by an underground spring 800 feet below my house. I keep my basement office at a crispy 55 degrees, my bedroom at 60 degrees, and my home rarely above 65 degrees. I visit my sauna 4-5 times per week to do yoga and will sit for 30-60 minutes until sweat is bleeding from my entire body and my mind and heart are humming with an intense heat.
So why am I so adamant about going out of my way to experience extremes in temperature? Go listen to the podcast episodes I’ve recorded with scientists like Ray Cronise and Rhonda Patrick: it’s because under temperature stress the body churns out compounds like brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), heat-shock proteins, nitric oxide, fat burning adiponectin and a shutdown of inflammatory cytokines. Our body’s are ancestrally wired to not be in a constant comfort zone of air conditioning and heaters, and so rule number one is to go out of your way every day to either make your body uncomfortably cold, uncomfortably hot or both.
2. Hunt & Be Hunted
Now don’t stop reading because you saw the word hunt and you don’t have a gun or a bow and aren’t comfortable plucking a turkey or field dressing a deer. I’m not saying that you have to don camouflage, hop in a pick-up with a rifle rack and go shoot all your own food (although I highly recommend it as a valuable life skill). But instead, you can at least simulate the same ancestral feel of the hunt by including sporting and fitness events that allow you to spot, stalk and capture prey.
For example, one my favorite workouts is getting a group of my buddies together and playing a giant forest or field game of capture the flag, complete with crawling through the mud, sprinting, stalking, and attempting to outwit the competition. Another favorite is putting on camouflage and a protective face mask and heading out into the woods with my twin boys and an arsenal of paintball guns. It can also be an exhilarating feeling to not just be the one doing the hunting, but also to be hunted. For example, rather than hopping on the treadmill, grab a few friends and head to the park for a game of freeze tag (I played for an hour last week and it was my toughest sprint workout of the month) or get on a bike, pretend a lion is chasing you, and ride as hard as you can for a mile – or until your lungs and legs are smoked. There are many ways to hunt and be hunted, and remember to tap into this strategy at least once a week.
3. Build Stuff
Some of us can take a hammer, a few wood screws, and an old pile of 2×4’s and construct a beautiful bird house, a raised garden bed and an elaborate carving. Others of us less talented with handywork might attempt to create what appears to be kindergarten craft project gone awry. But no matter what your skills are in building stuff, remember that our ancestors has to craft everything from weapons to shelters, and if you’ve ever spent the day tilling in a garden, building a rock wall or working on a farm, then you know that building stuff can be hard.
But unless you work in construction, or you’re a farmer, or a blacksmith (does anyone do that these days) or a car mechanic or engage all day in some other laborious position, you’re like going to need to fabricate a few times during the week to simulate the process of “building stuff.” Want an example? Here’s an idea from my own workout database: I have a pile of 30 heavy cinder blocks at the bottom of my ¼ mile driveway. One of my workouts is to transport the blocks, as many times as I’d like, to the top of my driveway, and then back down. This isn’t quite as productive as another of my go-to weekly winter workouts: chain sawing a giant tamarac tree in my backyard forest, sectioning it into two foot pieces, hatcheting the kindling off the tree and cleaning it up, hauling each piece back to my house, then splitting each section with a wood maul into quarters.
Even if you’re not a fan of craftsmanship, you don’t have a forest to chop down and you feel no pressing urge to build a giant rock wall, you can easily include a few items such as hay bales or boulders in your backyard or workout environment that force you to simulate the act of building by carrying, rolling, dragging, pushing and pulling those objects from point A to point B, and also by including heavy swinging and chopping activites such as sledgehammering a giant tire.
4. Be An Ape
I’ve purposefully equipped my house and living environment full of things to hang from. For example, I ordered two giant 30 foot long pieces of rope online, along with 6 smaller 4 foot sections with knots on the end. One long rope is hung from a tree in my backyard for vertical climbing, another long rope is tied from one tree to another for horizontal climbing, and the 6 smaller ropes are hung tarzan-swing style along a beam on the side of the driveway. There’s a pull-up bar in the door of my office, and another pull-up bar in the gym, along with a set of rings. The stairwell has beams on either side of it for climbing.
I’ll often stop during a trail run or a jog along the river and climb a tree as high as I’m comfortable going on my own, along with clambering up rock walls on my hands and feet, crawling in a lumbering gorilla style fashion across grassy patches, and box jumping onto park benches. By going out of my way to make areas of my home look like a playground from Planet Of The Apes and by ensuring that I keep my shoulder mobility tuned and my grip strong, I’m tapping into yet another primal, ancestral form of moving: gripping, hanging, swinging and using forms of locomotion that go beyond simply walking, jogging or running. Once you begin to view the world through the eyes of a chimpanzee, your perspective on fitness will change quite a bit, although your banana budget and Tarzan-style grunts may simultaneously increase.
Want more ape-like tips? Check out the episode on How To Train Like An American Ninja Warrior.
Summary
As you can see, following these rules can be subtle or extreme. You may simply want to start by keeping your house a bit cooler, playing the occasional game of tag, lifting some heavy rocks and doing more pull-ups. Or you may want to take things to the next level and start into a daily cold shower and weekly cold soak, purchase a hunting license and learn to field dress an animal, build an enormous rock wall in your back yard, and hang ropes from the trees in your front yard. You choose your own journey, but you get the idea: don’t get stuck in the stale routine of a gym, a box, or a running trail.
By following these four rules, you’ll be well on your way to moving like a warrior, feeling like a beast and rising one step above our modern world’s acceptance of what it means to be truly fit.
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about these four ways to be as fit as your primal ancestors? Join the conversation at Facebook.com/getfitguy.
About the Author
Ben Greenfield received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Idaho in sports science and exercise physiology; personal training and strength and conditioning certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA); a sports nutrition certification from the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), an advanced bicycle fitting certification from Serotta. He has over 11 years’ experience in coaching professional, collegiate, and recreational athletes from all sports, and as helped hundreds of clients achieve weight loss and fitness success.