Move it or lose it

Hi friend!

I was reflecting recently, and expressing gratitude for the opportunities I’ve had to learn first-hand from some incredible teachers in the art of human movement.

In 2013 I was in Germany’s Black Forest to learn from Ido Portal (@portal.ido), an incredible movement teacher who gained global notoriety as one of Conor McGregor’s coaches in the run up to his UFC 194 bout with José Aldo in 2015.

Ido has since appeared on the Huberman Lab podcast with Stanford University professor, Dr. Andrew Huberman, discussing “The Science and Practice of Movement.”

A year later, I spent a few days in London with Tony Riddle (@thenaturallifestylist), a human movement specialist who last year summited the three highest peaks in the UK, running the 400+ miles between them over 9 days…barefoot.

You can check out the story in the doc “One man, two feet, three peaks”, winner of best documentary at the 2022 British Independent Film Festival.

Experiences like these and many more, learning from intuitive, committed and passionate people about the miracle that is the human body, and human movement, spoke to something that had been stirring in me for years.

That movement is central to the healthy expression of the human condition, and that mainstream fitness has been putting the cart before the horse.

I’ve been a member of one gym or another since I was 15. I’m 37 now, and for all but the last of those 22 years, I’ve loved the gym.

At times it’s been my catharsis, livelihood and, up until last year, a huge source of joy.

I’m not about to start bagging on gyms, just to point out something I’ve noticed, at least in the big commercial gyms, that sends a counterproductive message as far as health goes.

Fitness is big business.

Gyms need to make money.

Smaller gyms are able to offer a more intimate, community centered experience the big commercial gyms typically can’t.

So, the “Globo Gyms” have to rely on their equipment to do the selling. What that usually means is a constant slew of gadgets and shiny new things that ultimately sends a message that to be more, we need to do more.

What I’m here to tell you is that you don’t.

That the route to moving and living well isn’t in exponentially increasing complexity, it’s in expressing and honoring the relentlessly simple nature of the majestic mechanism that is the human body.

Here’s how;

1 - Zone 2 Cardio

2 - Rotation

3 - Triple Flexion Movements

4 - Rucking

Let’s dive in!

1 - Zone 2 Cardio

A hard truth for you.

Compared to other mammals our size, we’re low down the pecking order in terms of physical attributes.

We’re weak, slow, soft and fragile, and if it wasn’t for one thing we can do better than pretty much any other animal in existence, we’d have been wiped out long ago.

We’re endurance animals, we can outlast.

The animals we historically hunted - deer, elk, caribou, reindeer, boar - met their demise more from exhaustion than the tip of a spear.

While we could never dream of keeping up with them at top speed, tracking, persistence and efficient temperature regulation, i.e. the ability to sweat, became the key weapons in the prehistoric hunter’s armory.

Not sprinting unless absolutely necessary, not wrestling the animal to the ground with bare hands, but keeping a brisk enough pace over a long enough period to not lose it completely.

Sub-maximal, aerobic exercise.

Physician and longevity expert, Dr. Peter Attia (@PeterAttiaMD) has talked of the 5-fold reduction in “all cause mortality” in people with good levels of cardiovascular fitness.

A 500% reduction!

The best way to do it?

A minimum of 45 minutes at a time of something called “zone-2” cardio, a few times a week. For most of us that means a fast walk or slow jog where you can just about keep up light conversation.

You should get sweaty, but you should be able to talk.

As well as being effective for boosting cardiovascular health and fitness, it’s also the heart rate zone most correlated with fat loss.

2 - Rotation

Ok, you’ve tracked down your elk. It’s hot, tired, and within reach of an accurate spear throw.

You take hold, split your feet, and rotating back behind you, coil up all the stored torque you can muster, before uncoiling your body rapidly in a flash of power and (hopefully) accuracy.

Well that’s the idea.

How much of that is a present reality for you physically is up to you.

Could you?

Forget the elk, forget the spear even.

Could you move like that?

Rotating your body, stretching it, displacing your centre of mass confidently and reliably, without worrying about injury?

…

Hunting aside, we evolved to be almost constantly rotating, turning, shifting.

Walking through forests, across plains, through mountain passes.

Checking for predators and prey.

Communicating, protecting, building, fighting.

And the evidence is there, hidden away under our skin.

Spiraling through our bodies, beginning under the arches of our feet and wrapping around our legs, hips, upper body and up into our necks and heads in a whirling web of potential energy, is something called fascia.

We think of our muscles as the stars of the show because that’s what we can see.

Fascia is the connective tissue that literally holds it all together, and as any unsung hero does, facilitates the proper function of everything around it.

Not in straight lines, but in rotating, helixical structures.

Fascia, and thus the rest of the body, benefits from heat, from regular rotational movement. The tricky thing about it, though, is when it doesn’t get it, it stiffens and tightens into whatever positions it’s most often subjected to.

Sitting for hours bent over the laptop.

Flopped down on the couch all weekend.

One day won’t hurt, but a year or decade’s worth certainly will.

I’m not trying to be insensitive to the demands of your job or your life.

Far from it.

This is objective as it gets.

Getting stiff, tight and stuck is just the natural reality if we don’t prioritize at least getting up out of the chair once an hour and moving about a bit.

Your body’s literally designed to rotate, twist and turn. So dance, run, play!

Move it or lose it.

3 - Triple Flexion Movements

Ok, back to the hunt.

You’ve uncoiled your spring and hit the mark.

You’ve been light on your feet and swift of spear, now comes the heavy lifting.

Very literally.

You won’t find any perfectly balanced barbells or pre-loaded machines here.

This will be heavy, awkward and cumbersome.

There’s one reality.

It’s going to take every single muscle you have, with full effort, working in perfectly unbalanced unison.

Ankles, knees, waist, all bent and under load.

What’s called triple flexion.

The weight’s lifted from the ground and hoisted up to the torso, where it’s carried either with the arms against the chest, on top of the shoulders or in a pack carried on the back.

A full body effort.

The human way.

Unless you’re a bodybuilder or just particularly interested in aesthetics, isolating exercises such as bicep curls and calf raises offer little to no practical benefit when compared to multi-joint compound movements.

As a general rule, the more major joints a movement uses, the greater the release of growth hormone and testosterone,…

(important for everyone, not just rugby players and NFL athletes)

…meaning greater global muscle growth, more calories burned, a higher metabolism and bone density, a more favorable response to carbohydrate consumption, improved cardiovascular health and prevention of cognitive decline.

Aside from the biology, prioritizing compound movements allows you to be a lot more efficient with your workouts, getting way more bang for your buck in half the time.

No need to get complicated.

Focus on variations of squats, deadlifts, lunges, cleans, snatches, pull-ups, weighted carries, overhead presses and yes, even the dreaded burpee if you’re really short on time.

Weight lifting should enhance your ability to move, not reduce it.

4 - Rucking

So, you’ve exhausted your elk, put your spear to good use, and managed to hoist your haul.

Job done!

Well, yes and no.

The light work’s done, now comes the tough stuff.

Carrying your hard-earned haul back to camp.

The average elk head alone weighs around 45lbs/20kg, so even broken down, you’ll be hiking with a few blue plates on your back.

Point being, not only did we evolve as persistence hunters and movement machines, we evolved as carriers.

Michael Easter, in his awesome book The Comfort Crisis, goes into great detail around the benefits of rucking. Sticking a few big bottles of water and some rocks in a backpack, and walking with it.

A bit more than that maybe, but carrying 15+ lbs/7kgs of extra weight has been show to produce massive improvements in bone density, muscle mass and cardiac health.

Adding a weighted pack to your walk’s going to get your heart rate up into or close to Zone 2 without even breaking into a trot. Especially useful if you’re limited in the amount of impact your ankles, knees or hips can comfortably take.

If you’ve stayed with me this far, clearly you’re comfortable with endurance, and hopefully I’ve got the point across that massive health and performance gains are available, and arguably more likely, if we keep things simple and remember what we’ve evolved to do best.

Lift, twist, carry and endure. Our true origin story.

In love and health,

Alex

Disclaimer: This post is for general information purposes only and is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical or psychological conditions. This information is not intended as a substitute for medical advice and readers should always consult their doctor, physician or registered healthcare practitioner before implementing anything they read in The Edge.