You’ve heard about the supposed benefits of eating like a caveman (or woman), thanks to the wildly popular Paleo Diet. Now you can also exercise like your long-ago ancestors with a new workout regimen known as Paleo fitness (a.k.a., primal fitness or evolutionary fitness).
The idea is that instead of using free weights, kettlebells, resistance bands, treadmills, or elliptical trainers, you exercise using natural objects such as heavy logs and rocks. You can crawl, jump, or scramble over obstacles. You can climb over boulders or through trees. Simply put, the approach is based on the style of movements that were required when our ancestors needed to survive in the wild.
Proponents claim this style of exercise is still relevant today because, like the Paleo Diet, it is compatible with our evolution. “The difference from conventional fitness is that a Paleo approach is more based on functional movements rather than muscle isolation or machine-based workouts,” explains Erwan Le Corre, founder of MovNat, a physical education and fitness system that trains the full range of natural human movement.
“Moving your body in functional ways makes exercise more enjoyable and meaningful – and it’s more fun. Biomechanically and biologically, multi-plane movements make more sense than stationary, mechanistic exercise. It’s about practicality and adaptability.”
Paleo-style workouts encompass the full range of natural human movements –walking, running, jumping, crawling, climbing, lifting, carrying, throwing, catching, balancing, swimming, and even engaging in physical combat – and they can be adapted to various environments and situations. In other words, the movements really do resemble how our ancestors would move and perform in the wild as they climbed or walked across fallen trees, swung from trees, slogged through swamps, and undertook other physical challenges that were required for survival.
But it’s more than caveman calisthenics, Le Corre says. This form of training offers practical results that can transfer to current “day-to-day needs – running and catching the last bus or train, moving heavy furniture, hopping the fence, carrying groceries up the stairs, or picking up a young child and carrying him with ease,” explains Le Corre, who grew up in France and now lives in Santa Fe.
Anyone at any fitness level can perform a Paleo workout – since these are movements that come naturally. However, this form of exercise may not appeal to everyone. People who are out mostly to improve their physical appearance – as opposed to gaining functional strength and stamina – may not gravitate toward a primal-fitness approach. The focus isn’t on targeting specific muscles to tone or sculpt them or on burning calories to lose weight, although these results can occur as almost a side effect of the program, Le Corre says.
“By moving a lot in many ways, you will lose weight and improve your looks but the mindset is different,” he notes.
Paleo workouts are terrific for those looking to achieve a high level of functional fitness, says Richard Cotton, national director of certification for the American College of Sports Medicine. But it’s important to “progress into it very gradually,” he adds, “to avoid injury and unnecessary discomfort from pushing too hard too soon.”
Although Paleo workouts are gaining in popularity, many gyms don’t offer them since practitioners don’t need health club equipment. However, you can get started with one of many books that have been written on the subject, including: Paleo Fitness, Paleo Workouts for Dummies, and Exuberant Animal. You can also find instructional podcasts and videos at: eplifefit.com. Some personal trainers now offer Paleo workouts.
“Moving in ways that are evolutionarily natural makes sense for everyone,” Le Corre says, “because the body is a unit and muscles work synergistically and symbiotically, not in isolation.”
The good news, he says, is that “it is never too late to move the way nature intended.”
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