The Primal Blueprint (36 page)

“
Pursue challenges that turn you on instead of worrying about what the magazines say is the “best” workout or the marketing hype that glorifies extreme events
.
”

I’ll also assert that you can take the
Primal Blueprint
exercise laws all the way to the top. If you are a devoted gym rat looking to get ripped, if you dream of auditioning for a swimsuit ad, or if you are competing at the elite level in team or individual sports (yep, including endurance sports), a comparatively minimal time commitment of the
Primal Blueprint
approach can produce vastly superior results (and decreased risk of injuries and burnout) to a traditional approach of frequent, prolonged strenuous workouts.

For example, an optimal exercise week for a very devoted exerciser could include a two-hour hike, another easy cardio session of one hour, two full-body strength-training sessions lasting between 30 and 60 minutes each, another lasting just ten minutes, a sprint session with about 10 total minutes of maximum effort, and a hard “play” day (e.g., a pickup soccer, basketball, or Ultimate game). This still only totals about seven hours of exercise. If you are currently racking up a dozen or more hours of Chronic Cardio each week, or hitting the gym most every day for prolonged strength-training sessions isolating specific muscle groups, I encourage you to reframe your perspective from “more is better” to “intense is better.” If you find yourself bouncing off the walls with extra energy because your new Primal schedule is “too easy,” make your hard workouts
even harder
…not longer or more frequent. Remember, the goal is to trigger optimal gene expression, not fill in all the blanks of your log book.

For those interested in the effects of Primal exercise on weight loss, we must start with the critical assumption that you are eating Primally (as we’ve discussed at length, any potential weight-management benefits of working out are significantly compromised with a high-carb, high-insulin diet). Also understand that low level cardio sessions alone do not raise your metabolic rate significantly enough to stimulate significant fat reduction. However, low level cardio workouts greatly enhance your ability to metabolize fat—both during exercise and at rest. Meanwhile, brief, intense strength and sprint sessions elevate body temperature and stimulate an increase in your metabolic rate, not only during the workout but for many hours afterward.

Put everything together and you have a formula for successful long-term weight management: eating Primally and moving frequently at a slow pace (optimizing your fat-burning system) and lifting heavy things and running really fast occasionally (stimulating lean muscle development and increasing metabolic rate). This “round-the-clock” concept of reprogramming genes (through Primal diet and exercise habits) for optimal expression is the true secret to natural, effortless, long-term weight loss and/or weight management. The story stands in sharp contrast to Conventional Wisdom’s “calories in, calories out” model where you hope the 500 calories burned during your 50-minute step aerobics class will somehow lead to weight loss. (Recall that a depleted Kelly Korg inhaled double that on her quick visit to Jamba Juice!)

With a balanced regimen patterned after Grok and designed to promote optimal gene expression, you will develop what I call
Primal Fitness
. This means you have a broad range of skills and attributes (strength, power, speed, endurance) that allow you to do pretty much whatever you want (or, in Grok’s case, survive the various challenges of primal life) with a substantial degree of competence and minimal risk of injury.

If the urge struck, you could complete a half-marathon or triathlon successfully on very little added specific training. On your summer vacation at the lake, you could grab a water ski rope and enjoy a few exhilarating pulls—and still be able to get dressed the next morning. During the holidays, you could hold your own with the younger generation at a family basketball, soccer, or Ultimate game. If a sudden snowstorm hit, you could fervently shovel a path through two feet of white stuff with a smile on your face—instead of a stabbing pain in your back.

Primal Fitness means you possess the unmistakable physique of an athlete, but it’s hard to tell which sport! Contrast this with the Michelin Man–armed, Gumby-legged bodybuilders, the emaciated endurance athletes, or, worse yet, the droves of exercisers with flawed regimens—combined with flawed diets—who faithfully put in the hours but nevertheless fail to pare down excess body fat. While the Primal Fitness descriptions
of having broad athletic ability and an impressive physique sound reasonable, they are effectively out of reach for many devoted exercisers because of poor dietary habits that hamper fat reduction efforts, poor workout choices that lead to lingering fatigue and glaring muscle imbalances, or extreme performance goals that produce one-dimensional fitness.

Speaking of one-dimensional, during my days as a marathoner, I would occasionally shock myself at how grossly unfit I was for anything besides running. I wouldn’t even play ball sports or side-to-side sports, for fear of injury. If I did so much as hoist a dozen sandbags into place to prevent flooding in my driveway, I’d get a backache that would compromise my training the next day.
MarksDailyApple.com
has extensive commentary about how pursuing specialized athletic goals is inherently destructive to your health. We are focusing on something entirely different here with Primal Fitness. Perhaps of most interest is the improvement in body composition you can enjoy with the combination of
Primal Blueprint
eating and exercise. By breaking free from the cycle of carbs fueling stressful, carb-burning Chronic Cardio workouts, you can easily get into the ideal body fat percentage range of 8 to 15 percent for men and 12 to 20 percent for women. This is true no matter who you are or how plump your family tree is.

For women, a Primal Fitness program will tone your entire body—not just lower body fat levels but also give you some Linda Hamilton-in-
Terminator 2
-style definition in your arms, legs, and core. While many female exercisers are concerned exclusively with weight management and not inclined toward competitive athletic endeavors, you may surprise yourself—and gain some street cred with the neighborhood kids—when you display your aptitude on the soccer field or in a footrace. When you expand your horizons beyond “jogging at a strenuous pace for five songs on my iPod,” your body will begin to show the effects all over, most notably by correcting the common trouble spots of excess butt, hip, thigh, and abdominal fat.

For the competitor, you can expect to branch out beyond your bread-and-butter skills to become a more complete athlete. Those who rely on bulk to hoist mucho plates or post up under the basket will become leaner and improve their power-to-weight ratio (how strong you are in relation to your body weight). This translates into more pull-ups, a higher vertical leap, and more quickness on your first step. Those who tend to be slight of frame and lacking in power will add a bit more muscle and improve pure strength and explosiveness, expanding their repertoire not only to outlast the competition but to out-power them.

Power-to-weight ratio is a critical Primal Fitness benchmark because it has a strong functional component. Bruce Lee, a skinny dude, was by reasonable definition more powerful than Hulk Hogan because of having a superior power-to-weight ratio. Bruce possessed incredible strength, power, and movement mastery, as well as the endurance
to apply that strength and power to execute his martial arts moves long enough to exhaust his opponent. By contrast, a bodybuilder can flex for 30 seconds onstage and then has to recover from dehydration for a week (just kidding…sort of). An endurance runner can bust out a 20-miler and be home in time for brunch, but might walk stiff for a week after a pickup basketball game.

American Brian Clay, 2008 Olympic decathlon gold medalist, is the quintessential Primal athlete. At five feet eleven inches and 180 pounds, Clay is smaller than many of his competitors but is capable of a stunning versatility of athletic performances. While his physique is certainly impressive and looks great on the beach, it is not overly bulky nor overly defined like the vein-popping magazine cover dudes. However, Clay can sprint, run hurdles, long and high jump, pole vault, and throw such implements as shot, discus, and javelin at very respectable levels when each is considered individually. Decathletes complete five events on day one and five more on day two, a schedule requiring tremendous endurance on top of the strength, power, and speed demanded for the various events. In the SPARQ (speed, power, agility, reaction, and quickness) test commonly used to evaluate NFL prospects, Clay achieved a phenomenal score of 130. In comparison, Reggie Bush, a remarkable physical specimen who won the Heisman Trophy for USC and became a running back for the New Orleans Saints, scored a 93.

Others point to the diverse athletic demands of boxing as fodder for the greatest all-around athlete distinction. Basketball stars, such as Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, blend an incredible array of skills—speed and endurance, strength and quickness—to perform seemingly superhuman feats. (Ever try a 360-degree slam dunk—even on a low basket? It ain’t easy!)
CrossFit.com
, a popular exercise Web site, idealizes the ultimate athlete as a combination gymnast, power lifter, and sprinter. For the last word, I’ll echo the
Primal Blueprint
philosophy about dietary habits. The ideal body that you build comes down to personal preference within the broad guidelines of the
Primal Blueprint
. Do the exercises that turn you on the most—in your mind, your heart, and your genes!

Regarding the specific workout plan to reach your Primal Fitness goals, your exercise program should be like your eating style: intuitive and free of excessive struggle or regimentation. There, I have just saved you hundreds of dollars in personal training fees, magazine subscriptions, and book purchases that add unnecessary layers of complexity and confusion to your quest for fitness. Instead of following a strict schedule, you should make sure your workout decisions align with your energy and motivation levels. Sprint once in a while when you are super motivated and energized. Take a walk around the block or hike up to the radio tower on Sunday morning if you feel the urge, or stay home and read the newspaper in bed if you are dragging and just don’t feel like working out.

An intuitive approach might feel uncomfortable if you are under the influence of flawed Conventional Wisdom that values consistency, gadgetry, and judging your fitness progress by the obsessive tracking of quantifiable data such as miles covered, calories burned, reps completed, time in target heart rate zone, or placing in the race. Grok knew nothing of this superficial silliness. His motivation to exercise was completely pure: to acquire his basic needs of food and shelter or to satisfy the innate human desire for adventure, competition, and play and for exploring the boundaries of the human spirit, regardless of what measured results came of it. I urge you to determine the success of your fitness program by
how much fun you are having
! Pursue challenges that turn you on instead of worrying about what the magazines say is the best workout or about the marketing hype that glorifies extreme events, such as the marathon or ironman triathlon, as the ultimate athletic accomplishment.

“
Instead of following a strict schedule, you should make sure your workout decisions align with your energy and motivation levels. Sprint once in a while when you are super motivated and energized…or stay home and read the newspaper in bed if you are dragging and you just don’t feel like working out
.
”

If you fall somewhere short of fitness freak on the continuum, keep in mind that the benefits of a sensible exercise program extend far beyond competitive success and looking good. The more lean muscle you maintain throughout life, the better your organs will function (up to a point of diminishing returns; e.g., a bodybuilder has heaps of excess muscle that serve little or no functional purpose and requires a lot of caloric energy to sustain). Optimal organ function correlates with maximum longevity and excellent health. Organs, like muscles, adhere to the “use it or lose it” natural law. When you hit the deck for 50 push-ups, the conscious decision to engage these muscles in a work effort calls your heart, lungs, liver, adrenals, and other organs into action. Blood chemistry changes as you burn glycogen and fat, process oxygen, and produce metabolic by-products (e.g., lactic acid) at an accelerated rate. You are asking your organs to keep up with your active lifestyle, in the process strengthening them to better withstand the demands of daily life and the natural aging process.

In contrast, when your activity diminishes, as in the classic paradigm of aging, you send signals telling your muscles and organs to atrophy. Their function decreases because they are given no reason to remain at 100 percent efficiency. An unfit person has lower bone-density, less lung capacity (the quantity of air you can exchange on each breath)
and stroke volume (the amount of blood your heart pumps with each beat) than a fit person. The aging process—at least in America—should really be called the “process of physical decline largely due to inactivity.”

Because all of your organs and body systems work synergistically, you are vulnerable to the often fatal effects of your weakest link. For example, an unfit accident victim or a surgery patient who loses a lot of blood and has a heart operating at only 45 percent of potential capacity will often fare differently than a fit person with superior heart function suffering the same trauma. Bones break more easily among the unfit. Pneumonia is a common cause of death among the elderly often due to the inability of their weakened lungs to help clear the germ-laden mucus effectively through coughing.