The Primal Workout Week 1 - Reset Your Body

There was a moment when I was a flawed Olympic lifter.

By flawed I mean I wasn't doing much else aside from lifting physically. I'd come home, play DotA 1 and eat.

Not great for my waistline, but hey, at least my lifts went up (a little).

I also had this notion that too much walking would interfere with my strength progress.

Like I said, it was a flawed mindset.

The obvious problem aside from getting bigger was that there just wasn't enough movement in my days. Yes I was training hard for 1-2 hours per day, but the rest of the day matters as well.

Walking and even stretching are great starts to add to this, but there is a baseline that everyone did before those two, one that keeps you mobile and physically sharp.

I'm talking about Original Strength.

We can use it to stay mobile, have less aches and pains and even get stronger.

Let's explain why.

The Original Workout

I discovered OS back in 2012 or 2013. I was looking up how to increase ankle mobility and stumbled upon Aleks Salkin (another OS coach). He recommended the Original Strength program, so I bought the book on Kindle and started to read.

It was eye opening.

Created by Tim Anderson and Geoff Neupert, it was more of an observation than a creation. It was actually more like a prayer to not be so injured any more.

They observed that all babies go through the same movement sequence before they can stand up and walk. No one teaches them how to do it. It's just ingrained in us all.

The moves are:

• Deep diaphragmatic breathing (babies come out doing this anyway).

• Head control

• Rolling over

• Rocking on their hands and knees

• Crawling

Each one of these has a purpose, which we'll break down later.

The Vestibular System

The folks at OS talk a lot about the vestibular system. It's the system in your ears that gives your brain information about your position in space. Lack of this development leads to loss of balance/vertigo. This system ties to everything else. It starts to get formed after 5 weeks in the womb.

I'd say it's pretty important, since the loss of balance is the first sign of physical decay in older populations.

The Posture

We all get told to "stand up straight." We know what good posture looks like, and what it isn't. We may struggle to remember to keep our heads up and backs straight. In this day, it's hard to do since there is comfort everywhere and we live in the opposite of good posture:

• Sitting too long

• Head forward (or down) looking at a screen or driving or eating

• Keeping our head completely still

Here's the kicker:

Posture is a reflex.

A reflex means something that you shouldn't have to think about.

Just look at any toddler or young kid. First of all, their heads are bigger in proportion to their size, forcing them to keep their heads up, but they all have good posture. They walk with all four limbs and none of them slouch. Did they ever need to be told to stand up straight? Nope. Everything they did before being able to walk helped them walk with purpose.

Now on the other end, if people spend too long in chairs, they look like they're still in a chair when they stand up. Their heads are forward. Their hips don't extend. Is it age or lack of use?

So a phrase that the OS guys came up with is "reflexive strength." The strength of your reflexes. These movements can be done for an infinite amount of reps. When you do that, your body starts to solidify that position. If you rock and nod your head up and down enough, the muscles involved will re-learn how to fire and get stronger.

Stronger posture muscles means a stronger posture.

The Strength

There is a moment in a teenager's development where they have the chance to be a monster in the gym. Yes they go through puberty, but what else is there?

They probably have fewer bumps and bruises and mobility issues. However most kids aren't flexible gymnasts that stretch a lot. They have strength from being kids.

We go from the OS stuff to playing on the playground to playing a sport to the weight room. All of this stuff isn't easy. It's small levels of strength training. Just look at any sprinter. They're not lifting a single weight, but it's a massive toll on their muscles and nervous system. This would make quite a strong and explosive athlete, barbell or not.

So this age range is closer to using their OS than adults that sit in a cubicle all day. It should also be obvious that just moving around more, playing sports and playing outside are all extra levels of Original Strength as well: gait pattern with running, the strength to squat down, crawling on the ground, etc.

On top of all of this, OS is very "core" intensive. The movements work your midsection, even though it's not just crunches. It's more than your abs. Your glutes have to work, your shoulders and lats have to work, your upper back has to work, your hip flexors have to work. If all these muscles are "on," leading to greater stability overall, your limbs are free to move rather than try to do stabilize you. As an example, sometimes you see people that need to keep their arms still while they walk because that's what's holding them up.

If you ever try to do the advanced levels of crawling, namely the leopard and Spider-Man crawl, you'll learn very quickly that this training isn't childish. Everyone knows the bear crawl, but when you keep the hips low and the head looking straight ahead, the crawl becomes harder because your core has to work harder. Try this for 30 seconds to a minute to see what I mean. Tim Anderson has done a mile, which took him over 40 minutes. Very humbling. It's just you and your body, the purest form of strength training.

As a side note:

I know there are other "primal" training programs out there such as Movenat, etc, but I found OS first and it made sense to me, so I went with it. If you want to play around with anything you find, go ahead.

The Original Strength Recharge

All you need is about 10 minutes. If that's too much to think about, then just do 10 reps each. It may not seem much, but you get a huge return on your efforts when you use these movements. They deliberately work your body (and brain), specifically the muscles that have all the benefits we talked about above.

Deep Breathing

Lie on your belly. Place your head on your hands. Close your eyes if you wish, and breathe. You need to breathe deeply into your belly. If you're lying facing down, you'll notice that your belly pushes you up a little bit.

Why is this so important? Don't we breathe all day anyway?

We're meant to breathe deeply. If your core is your center, then the space between your diaphragm and your pelvic floor is the center of your center. They work in harmony, making your core stronger.

What's the opposite of deep breathing?

Stress breathing.

You know the picture: short breaths, using your shoulders. This isn't how relaxed breathing or even relaxed living looks. Babies breathe deeply because their stress breathing muscles aren't strong enough yet to be used, but forcing yourself to do this as an adult can melt stress away.

It also retrains you to breathe through your NOSE (both in and out) instead of being a mouth breather (which actually causes a lot of problems, aside from the insulting name).

Aside from relaxing, it helps your workouts because you train your body to get more air and be in charge of your breathing during a hard workout if you do these enough.

Don't skip this.

Do 10 per day.

Head Nods

In the same position, look up as high as you can and down as low as you can. Look left and right. Lead with the eyes.

This is where your vestibular system starts to get work. Remember all that head forward stuff and being still all the time? This starts to undo the effects. You want to keep your head and neck mobile all through your years. Imagine someone older or someone that tweaks something. You have to move your head by moving your entire upper body.

It also starts to retrain your balance since that starts in your head.

Again, do 10 per day.

Rolling

This one seems goofy, but rolling is a part of your gait pattern.

If you look at a sprinter in slow motion, you'll see that their torso is rotating a lot, not statically going forward.

That plus we really don't have a lot of chance to roll and move our spine today. Our spines are made to move, after all.

The way you roll is to lie down, choose a limb and use the strength of that limb to pull you over, either from belly to back or back to belly. Make sure to only use one limb at a time and not cheat with the rest of your body.

If anything feels sticky, keep at it until it all feels smooth.

Do 2 rolls each limb.

I know that's 8 reps, but you could do 3 and that makes it 12. It's not 10…but just do something.

Rocking

Get up on your hands and knees. Look straight ahead. Rock back and forth.

This is what babies do (although much faster) right before they figure out how to crawl. It's strengthens their shoulders, hips, feet and starts to set the natural curve in their spines. (Babies actually come out of the womb with spines that look like a C.)

If you do this while keeping your head up and only going as far as you're able to keep your back with its natural curves, it's another posture booster.

Do 10.

Crawling

This is the final piece. You're still on your hands and knees, now crawl for some distance. You can either count paces or time or distance. It's up to you.

There is no hiding your gait pattern when you do this. Some people could walk without using their arms. That's not possible with a crawl.

Do it forwards, do it backwards, do it sideways.

If you can do this for 10 minutes, you've done some good work.

This step is the move that you can make harder by now crawling on your hands and feet only instead of using your knees.

This is brutal, but worth it once you can do a few minutes at a time. If you can only do a few seconds at a time, good. Keep at it.

System Reset

Do this for the rest of your life. You might not be able to do this every day since you might not have the time, but that's OK. However, it's gentle enough to get thrown into the little time you do have to reap some great benefits.

Do deep breathing and nods before bed.

Do some crawling if you want a hard workout.

Rock a little bit after sitting still all day.

Any time you can muster is beneficial.

This system is ingrained in you, so you've done it before. Actively working these moves again will recharge and strengthen your body.

It's really is a factory reset.

Thanks for reading!

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

This is the first part of a 4 part series. Last week’s was an intro. Stay tuned for the rest.