The Primal Workout Plan - The Original Routine

Ever since I started weightlifting for football, way back in high school, it's always been easy for me to workout for 2 hours or more.

Why?

Because I liked it and I had the free time.

Enter today, I still do my best to wake up early and get in as much of my workouts as possible, but it's not always guaranteed.

It is possible to wake up even earlier (4:30? 4? Goodness…) but it's not necessary.

What do I mean?

Our bodies are meant for more than a 2 hour workout block, even though a good strength training has a lot of benefits.

I've been there, in a bad way. I was at one point the person who would train hard in the gym, only to come home and not do much else aside from sitting. It should be no surprise that I got really stiff doing this (it also led to a back injury).

But when I was lifting on top of running for football, or walking around college campus, or playing other sports in college for fun, my gainz miraculously didn't plummet and I got strong no problem.

So is there a way to stay limber and strong through our lives without having to rely on the 3x per week strength sessions to do that?

Not only do I believe that is the case, I think it's necessary.

We just have to act like the human animals that we are.

Workouts: A New Invention

There are a few groups of people that don't really have to think about exercise in a gym, yet they're perfectly physically capable.

Animals

I know, these aren't people, but have you ever sat around and just looked at animals in the wild? Maybe not wild animals like lions, tigers and bears, but just squirrels? They have to be fast to survive. They can sprint at a moment's notice, climb a tree, dig for food, etc. For their size, they can jump pretty high as well.

This makes them ridiculously strong. We all know how much stronger gorillas and even chimps are compared to us, yet they're not hitting the gym trying to deadlift a new PR every few days. They just get that way from lots of constant movement: crawling, walking, hanging, climbing, squatting, etc.

Most animals in the wild are this way.

The only "lazy" animals are the ones that live with us.

Ancient Man

There were benefits to the harsh conditions of the past:

• We had to walk everywhere.

• We had to grow our own food (stooping, squatting, more walking).

• We had to hunt our own animals (sprinting, lifting, dragging).

• We had to rest and sleep on the floor (squatting, ground sitting positions).

I have no way to measure this, but I'm sure our aches and pains were a lot fewer when we had to sleep on the ground, walk all day and squat down to eat (most adults today can't hold a squat longer than a couple minutes). All that motion provided nourishment to our bodies.

If you don't believe me, let me know how you feel after a 4 hour car ride.

Kids

There's a bell curve of children, movement, athleticism and activity. Out the womb, we're incredibly weak. Then we spend a few years getting to the ability to crawl, walk, sprint, jump, hang, squat, etc. Then when we play, we can do so all day every day.

At the peak of this curve are kids in high school or college. They just went through all of their development time and maybe are now competing in sports. They may even go on to compete professionally. But as we get older, we may try to keep training or playing sports, but it's about all we do and the rest of our time is sadly sedentary.

If you notice, kids never do anything related to traditional exercises. Yes they crawl a lot, hang from monkey bars, sprint, and can squat for minutes on end, but many aren't strong enough yet to do pushups or pullups.

Interesting.

For as active as they are, traditional exercises are the last thing they can physically do (except squats), but what they've done a lot of is constant movement and play.

There's a lesson in there.

Athletes

These are the "freaks."

Take any kid from the previous example, put them in sports for a few years (which involves a lot of outdoor time, running, sprinting, etc), then "magically" they can crush numbers in the weight room when that's not even their primary focus.

In America, we see this a lot.

It's the guys who are taking a "break" from the football season and are hitting numbers in the gym that make Olympic weightlifting coaches drool. But then when the seasons starts back up they go back to not caring and going about their footbally business.

It's almost as if all that other movement helps their overall strength.

Hmm.

Modern Man

Working out is relatively new compared to how long humans have been around. For the longest time, we just focused on surviving. Now that we're able to do so with the ease of comfortable living and readily available food, we can move on to other endeavors.

About 100 years ago, after humans got nice and comfortable, something called "exercising" came about. This can be seen with the oldest strongmen and women. Since they had the free time, they could go beyond just having enough muscle to do manual labor work and actually build more on top of that.

The key phrase there is "on top of that."

Even though they were pumping iron (or their own bodies) they still had to do all the other movement things mentioned since it was still early on in the industrial era. At the very least, not that many people had cars, so walking a lot was still mandatory.

Today, we run the risk of going too far in the opposite direction in our training. Since we don't have to work on a farm all day long, we wisely take part in the gym. The problem is that our bodies are meant for more than just a few 1-2 hour sessions of work per week and sitting for the rest. It's up to us to figure out ways to sneak movement in.

Working the Bottom of the Pyramid

An idea I recently read about was that movement in general can be thought of as a pyramid. At the top is the prized training method we choose: time in the gym, a sport, whatever. But the bottom levels of the pyramid are the things that got us to the top in the first place.

The bottom layer can be though of as our human developmental sequence from Original Strength:

• Deep breathing

• Head control

• Rolling

• Rocking

• Crawling/Gait pattern

These are the things we did to earn the right to walk.

The next layer are the things we did after that, usually the things you see kids doing:

• Walking/sprinting

• Carries

• Hanging from a bar

• Holding a squat

Moving up we have the strength patterns that we load in a gym setting:

• Push

• Pull

• Hinge

• Squat

Moving up even more could be a sport, competition, etc.

The ideal scenario is that we spend more time doing the stuff at the bottom of the pyramid. This is the stuff you can't do too much of. Countries without chairs, with toilets on the ground or who sleep on the floor will be much more limber than more "civilized" western countries. They'll also end up being more athletic too.

So we're going to figure out ways to sprinkle in this movement throughout the day. It'll keep your limber and avoid aches and pains as well.

All you'll need is a TODO list.

You'll also need something to hang from, which could cost you some money (unless you have a sturdy tree handy).

I decided to make this a series, so this is the intro. I'll go into each movement as the weeks come on. For now, I will just summarize the movements so you can formulate your own "workout."

The Primal Workout Blueprint

Yes I stole 75% of this title from Mark Sisson and his diet, but great artists steal, right?

Here are the moves that I've been tinkering with again in some kind of order, but it's not set in stone.

Press Reset

This is the term that the folks at Original Strength coined. It's doing the movements from the human developmental sequence each day so that you "press the reset button" on your body.

You can do these for whatever reps you please for about 10 minutes.

• Deep breathing

• Head control (nods)

• Rolling on the ground (using one limb at a time)

• Rocking on your hands and knees

• Crawling (or any gait pattern movement).

Why?

These movements made you strong enough to walk as a baby. If you keep doing them, they restore your body as an adult. Think of this as maintenance on your body. Besides, you have 10 minutes a day, right?

Walk More (and maybe even sprint)

After the Original Strength stuff, you should just be walking more. The benefits are plenty:

• More sun and a clear head (if done outdoors).

• Clear out your lymphatic system (this system helps immunity, it can only be cleared out by movement).

• Easy cardio

• You're not sitting down

The ultimate aim is about 10k steps. If your stems are low right now, just try to double whatever your average is right now. If you're strapped for time, give yourself a range like 7-10k per day or throw in a 20-30 minute walk each day.

To amplify things, you can pick stuff up and walk a bit, put it down, pick it up again and walk back. These are "carries." I thought about giving it its own category, but you can think of anything with locomotion on two feet. Whether that's walking, rucking or carrying, it's all good and adds steps to your step counter.

Hang from a Bar

Grip strength is super important as you age. One of the best (and most natural) ways to improve it is just to hang from a bar for time. Yes, those little hand grippy things are great, but I also like the benefits on the shoulder with hanging. Since we share close anatomy with apes, and our shoulders are made to hang, it only makes sense to use the hanging method. (As a bonus you can start working on pullups too.)

It's also a free way to improve your posture.

Hang for 30 seconds for the rest of your life and you'll be in great shape.

Hold a Squat

Little kids can do this no problem.

But we get stiff as adults, right?

Kids just have a lower center of gravity than us, right?

No.

We just don't use this position enough.

Just look at "under-developed" countries who still use this position through their days. They kept it by maintaining it.

It's supposed to be a position of rest, but for the older population (maybe even starting in grade school) it's probably a position of stress. The only way to get past this point is to just do your best every day.

There have been many coaches that have preached the benefits of this position. One of which is Zack Telander (Olympic Lifting guy). He recommends 5 minutes per day and used that himself to get more limber for the Olympic lifts. That's plenty of time for anyone. If you can do this for 5 minutes straight, great! If you have to split it up or even do 5 1-minute sessions through the day, also great! The latter is probably the way we'd traditionally use it anyway.

This will melt away your low back pain and give you the best bang for your buck ankle, knee and hip mobility.

Strength Train

This is where a lot of people go to first, but I made a point to put this in here last.

Why?

As I said before, a lot of people will put their full efforts into their 3-4 day per week workout split. But if they don't maintain everything we've listed about, they'll be missing out on free recovery, strength and easy cardio benefits benefits.

A hard session can only be done so many times. This other primal stuff can be done a lot more. But the primal stuff can aid in increasing your work capacity for the strength stuff you want to do.

A strength training program is both written here as the last thing, but also the most important thing at the same time.

What do I mean?

In terms of longevity, you want more muscle mass. If we're going to lose muscle mast each year as a result of getting older, we might as well delay it for as long as possible. If strength training isn't your jam, you need something that you can measurably improve (such as people that enjoy long distance exercise). Either way, more strength helps everything, whether you use bodyweight or iron.

So adding weight to your squat, as an example, is something you can measure and make progress on each day, week and month. Walking 10k steps? It's just something you check off on a box and move on. Yes it has a lot of benefits, but it's more like a maintenance program (unless you take up competitive rucking or something).

So have your strength training programs set in stone, then add in all the other things around it.

This is the way.

Implementation

So to recap the standards:

• Press reset

• Walk more (7-10k steps)

• Squat down more (5 minutes)

• Hang (30 seconds)

• Strength train (done 3-5 days per week)

How do you implement all this stuff?

The best way is to just get a simple habit tracker or make your own. Put the tasks at the top of a piece of paper and write down the days of the month along the left hand side. Each time you finish something, you tick it off. If you want to use a phone, go ahead, but I've found paper on a wall puts it in your face so it can't hide and you forget about it.

Figure out how to add each part in your schedule and go forth and live your new primal life:

• Go on a walk after lunch and/or dinner

• Squat down for some time before your workout and a bit after

• Hang from a bar before a workout for a little bit

• Press reset to calm yourself down before bed or as part of a warmup

I can't give you specifics because I'm not you. Experiment.

Go Back to Nature

I just threw a lot of things at you. Just keep in mind that the strength training comes first, then it's up to you to figure out how to sprinkle in movement more through the day.

You'll probably find your aches and pains start to melt away as you accept this "new normal" of constant movement.

Yes it gets a bit annoying sometimes because you have to move around more, but just pretend you're a kid again and remember how active they're able to be.

It's not because they're kids.

It's because they move.

As I said, this will be a series and I'll break down each of these in future posts. Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading!

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to reply to this newsletter.