Exercise: We Don’t Make the Rules
I would like to begin discussing exercise at the very beginning. This post may not be of interest to athletes or experienced trainees. I’ll get to you later. This one is directed at those of you who would like to be fit but aren’t there yet, and whose knowledge base regarding exercise is of the “everyone knows that” type. In other words, do you really know what you know, or is what you know common knowledge? Please hear me out.
The question that needs to be answered before we can go any further is this: How does the human animal move in nature? We can begin by looking at play. When we watch the play behavior of the juveniles of any mammalian species we see practice for escaping, hunting, and/or competing for mates. So what do our kids do? They engage in a multitude of movement patterns, at varying intensity levels, for varying and sporadic durations. Their play is also instinctive. We don’t have to teach our kids to have fun at the park. They dart and dash, jump, climb, crawl, push, pull, pick things up, throw things, wrestle, tumble, swing, twist and turn, and unpredictably change speed and direction, all instinctively. But they don’t do “cardio”. I have never opened the door to let my kids play outside only to watch them engage in one particular movement pattern at a constant low to moderate intensity level for an hour. Kids are too smart to find value in jogging. You have to be an adult to be that ridiculous.
I find it interesting that western society tends to measure fitness by one’s ability to perform movement patterns that are functionally useless harmful interventions. After millions of years of movements that literally kept us alive, we have come to this sad place where deliberate exercise is necessary for health and few seem to remember how we use to move. I cannot put together a better diatribe against running and cardio than Dr. Kurt Harris, so I will simply direct you here and here. (I encourage you to read those two posts in their entirety.) But I can pose another logical question: Where would a human ever find need to run more than a mile or two in nature? I think we would find that after a very short distance we would have either lost our prey or become prey.
I can already hear the die hard runners yelling, “What about the persistence hunters??” This argument is amusing and goes something like this – there are a few tribes that have demonstrated the ability to run down their prey over long distances, killing it after it collapses from exhaustion . Proponents of running often cite this behavior as proof that we were meant to run, but there are many of us with these pesky logical brains who disagree. First of all, one look at pictures of these tribesmen reveals that they are not remotely a picture of health and instead look like they are battling cancer like all elite level marathon runners look. Also, the energy return on such an endeavor doesn’t seem to cover the expenditure considering the time it takes to complete the hunt. It basically adds up to running your ass off all day for one meal. To take this a step further I quote Andrew at Evovify (again), “Natural selection may strongly favor distance-running traits and dropping dead at 50.” That is to say, there may have been a great deal of selective pressure to run down food for survival, only to die early since nature doesn’t care either way, as long as we live through the ages of reproductive fitness. This means we have probably never been subjected to much selective pressure to to become better distance runners. If incessant distance running kills us later in life, we have probably already procreated and nature is done with us.
Physical activity, like the kind we practice as children, has been inextricably linked to survival until very recently. For millions of years, eating required first expending energy to acquire food. Today, food acquisition often requires simply walking to the fridge or pulling into a drive-through. In contrast, hunter/gatherers like the Hadza people of Tanzania must walk, hunt, climb trees, dig for tubers, and carry game and foraged foods long distances back to camp. According to Frank W. Marlowe, author of The Hadza: Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania, Hadza women walk an average of 5.5 km (3.4 miles) per foray, with the maximum distance observed being 13.5 km (8.38 miles) per foray. Hadza men walk an average of 8.3 km (5.15 miles) per foray, with the maximum distance observed being 27.2 km (16.9 miles) per foray. Marlowe also states, “Hadza men rarely run. They may run briefly to get a second shot at a large herd. Occasionally when they see a small animal like a hyrax, they may run to cut it off before it can reach its home in a rock or crevice, or they may run after a burrowing animal before it can reach its burrow.” He makes no mention of women running at all.
To finally get to my point, evolution has clearly defined what it means to be fit. If you were to stumble into a wormhole and suddenly be transported 20,000 years back in time, would you have the physical capacity to survive? Daily life might require throwing a spear hard enough and far enough to bring down a gazelle, sprinting quickly enough to escape a grumpy hippo by the river, climbing into the tree tops to gather fruit, carrying a small child a few miles as your whole tribe moves camp to an exceptionally large kill, and overturning large rocks to dig up the tubers that grow between them. Not good news if you have always believed fitness is achieved on a treadmill or one of these:
“We don’t live in those times anymore, though,” you say. That is true. You aren’t likely to have to run from a hippo or climb a tree before the end of the day. Unfortunately, your ancient human genome doesn’t know that. These comfy times of invulnerability and easily accessible sustenance are but a flash in the pan compared to the time it took to develop your human body. You do not get to change evolution, no matter how strongly you believe in the value of movements that don’t make sense to your body. If you do not move your body like it was intended to move, you will eventually forfeit bits and pieces of your overall capacity until someone is changing your diaper and spoon feeding you jello.
Use it or lose it. The choice is yours.
Stay tuned.
I spent the last 2 years running 4-5 days a week without really seeing any results. What it did do was hurt my knees, shins and feet. I haven’t spent time on a treadmill since starting Crossfit a little over a month ago and I already feel better. Thanks for the posting that information. The Hawaiian Chair was hilarious!!
I have a very similar story. For most of my adult life I ran 5 to 6 times per week…3 to 5 miles per day. When I wasn’t running, I would be on the the elliptical machine for one hour or working out at aerobics classes for an hour or more. I saw no physical improvements, but ended up with intermittent knee and hip problems (probably because I never focused on the fact that my hips are weak). When I started Crossfit workouts back in May of 2010 I thought I was in great shape from all of my past running/aerobic workouts…boy was I wrong! Over the past months I have seen the benefits of strength training and short bursts of metabolic conditioning. All in all, distance running and long intense cardio workouts just aren’t good for anyone’s body.
“First of all, one look at pictures of these tribesmen reveals that they are not remotely a picture of health and instead look like they are battling cancer like all elite level marathon runners look. Also, the energy return on such an endeavor doesn’t seem to cover the expenditure considering the time it takes to complete the hunt. It basically adds up to running your ass off all day for one meal.”
LOVE IT!
Never looked at “kids play” at that angle Jason, but it makes sense. I can visualize a swarm of happy active kids screaming, playing, swinging, running through obstacles in the park not even aware that this is “exercise”. One mention of having to exercise, and you’d see a meltdown followed by a major tantrum.
Kids have a natural tendency to do this on their own if you ALLOW them to make it fun (and keep the grown ups out of it), no wonder they’re pooped out after an hour or two of strenuous play (a parents dream).
Making a child do ONE exercise movement?! BORING!!
That’s not how their minds work, they’re learning, creating and exploring, and this all falls into their play patterns along with socialization. That’s a whole other subject, but along with simple active playtime, parents need to step back and let them interact with others instead of meddling.
Running,…..it’s NEVER been my favorite movement, perhaps my body is not designed like others to run smoothly,….who knows. I do it if it’s needed, and part of the workout.
I suppose I would have been the one eaten by the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Rapter or some other wild creature at the time (my natural history info my be flawed, I’m just trying to create an image).
Thanks to Crossfit and Yoga, I’m able to move without excess pain, and am not burdened by a big gut brought on by excessive carbs via grains and sugar.
I have a membership to 24-hr fitness that I hold onto, just so I have a place to workout where ever I am in the world, but my workouts are done @ cross fit, as the movements performed there are FAR more natural to me than zoning out on the elliptical machine with the Ipod blaring in my head.
I agree with you that cross-training (or diversity of movement) is important, but you might want to read Born to Run. It provides a unique window into a group of Mexican hunter-gatherer tribes that run incredible distances (up to 500 miles). It would seem that, at least in some cases, running long distances was a part of our ancestral heritage. That said, I don’t think a fitness program that stresses the importance of constant, monotonous running is the answer.
I read it, and again, the avid runners who wrote it cite a few small tribes scattered around the world and (I guess) came to the conclusion that we all descend from them and that their complete lack of muscle tone is the picture of health. They also wrote Born to Run prior to this paper (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100212092304.htm) which negates a good chunk of their argument. My main point here is that we need to use our eyes and be logical. Do you want to look like an Olympic sprinter or an Olympic marathon runner like all of those tribesmen? Which one looks healthy? Now we apply science and find out who actually is healthy.
Also, humans training the ability to run in various parts of the world shouldn’t have made anyone think it was therefore better for all humans. What if we happened on a tribe that performed hundreds of pull-ups per day, maybe shaking fruit from trees. Should we automatically assume that humans would be healthier doing hundreds of pull-ups per day? No, that would be silly. All it would warrant is scientific investigation to determine whether or not these tribesmen experienced any actual benefit from so many pull-ups. The science against distance running is strong and growing.
Interesting article. I don’t think that running is an optimal training method nor do I think persistence hunting means we should all be running 30 miles a week but I have a couple of thoughts about your article I’d like you to comment on if you have the time.
Running down game as a method of hunting is an interesting concept but is not based on our ability to run long distances but to cool ourselves. Human beings can sweat allowing our bodies to be cooled in the proper climate. A hot and dry climate would increase the efficiency of the evaporation cooling effect from sweating. Based on how the cooling mechanism works I would guess that persistence hunting would work best in a hot a dry climate that is more open. These climates could have many factors (scarcity of food, water, heat, etc.) that could affect the health of these tribes. Attributing there overall health to their running doesn’t really seem to be a complete look at their health.
You say that the energy expenditure doesn’t make sense. I’m not sure that I would agree with that. If you look at an average size whitetail deer as an example it would take approximately 80 man-hours of total running to expend more energy than you could gain from harvesting a single animal. Just a “back of the envelope calculation” assuming a 150lb deer, 120 lbs used for food at 30 calories per ounce and average calories burned for a 10 minute mile.
Regarding running and heart disease is the heart disease cause from running or the excessive amounts of grains that runners typically eat? It doesn’t seem completely clear or understood yet.
It seems that running could be a problem with health due to putting yourself under constant stress and the inflammation that would result from that. People have successfully done harm to themselves doing crossfit so is the problem running or how people set up their training program. I know that if I hit crossfit hard when work is very stressful my body pays a price.
I think that with a program with a core strength program, mobility work, smart nutrition, and less volume could result in a decent weekend long distance running competitor and it wouldn’t be a problem for their health. For me I’ll stick with the strength training and conditioning.
Looking forward to more articles. Thanks for starting the blog Jason.
Some decent points, Justin. I’ll address them individually.
Your point about running and our ability to cool ourselves is not something I addressed in this article because I do not doubt that we have the ability to train ourselves to run long distances. What I’m saying here is that doing so is harmful. This study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19332846?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=1
And this paper: http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/ACC/19091
were the focus of Dr. Harris’ post that I linked above and they clearly demonstrate damage done by distance running, and probably not all that much of it. Studying the habits of specific tribes in hot dry climates certainly has many confounding variables, but these few tribes are used as examples for how all humans should exercise, which is rediculous. The question that should be asked is: Are humans able to run long distances without causing themselves harm? (The studies above answer that question pretty clearly.) But weare instead being told that humans should run long distances because we are designed that way.
As for the caloric value of persisatnce hunting, I may not have made my point clearly. These guys sometime must run for 8 hours (I don’t have an average hunt length) in one hunt. Including some walking, let’s say they average a 12 minute mile, or 5 mph. Let’s also assume these men are 140 lbs on average and unbelievably efficient runners and only burn 100 calories per mile, despite the heat. That comes out to about 500 calories per hour, and 4000 calories per hunt. Figuring the meat at around 50 calories per ounce, they need to eat 80 ounces of meat to recover the expended calories. Since we know very few people are able to finish a 72 ounce steak in eating challenges, these guys might have to eat 2 meals of 2.5 lbs of meat to recover, assuming no more caloric expenditure. Eating is required for all movement, and the caloric expenditure of obtaining food in this manor doesn’t appear to leave energy available for food prep, maintaining one’s home/shelter, tending to the very young/old in the tribe, escaping danger, bathing, etc, especially since we can’t just inject 4000 calories back into them after the hunt.
The studies I linked didn’t control for grain consumption, but the control groups were certainly consuming grains at levels high enough to elevate inflammation, since all western societies demonstrate such a level of grain consumption and these study participants were westerners.
Comparing the price your body pays (soreness, I’m guessing) after high intensity interval training and heart disease caused by distance running isn’t really a comparison at all. One is about pushing yourself too hard and the other is about the promotion of disease. I will contend that one can overtrain at any activity, but that is not what I’m discussing here. Most people in the western world believe distance running to be healthy, and I am arguing that even at moderate distances that cause no soreness this is simply not true. Runners who regularly run 5 to 10 miles would not be considered to be overtraining by most, but it does not mean they have engaged in a safe activity that makes sense to their 2.6 million year old genome, especially not because a few tribes do it sometimes.
I hope I covered all your points. Thanks for tuning in.
I was visited by my 7 year old grand daughter over the Easter weekend. We played checkers, the game of Life and Badminton, for hours. We would go from one to another. She didn’t get tired at all, but I was worn out from all the badminton. It is true, the best way to get in shape is work and play, simple as that.
I just finished my 1st 1/2 marathon yesterday at age 53. Before March 2010 I never ran more than a mile in my life. My doctor told me that people over 50 shouldn’t do 510 lb deadlifts. 450 lb squats, or 300 lb bench presses and advised me to do cardio stuff like biking & running. I did a few 5K runs and a couple duathlons last year but I still lift; although it’s only about 75% of my max lifts. I do interval or Tabata training to stay in shape.
Nice work on the half marathon George, but you’ve done that now, tell all your friends about it and stop running. And tell your doctor that it’s completely fine for him to get an actual education if he wants to keep advising people on these matters.
My wife laughed at the video and then read the article..loved it
weightlifters wives are often totally immune to health advice ..
thanks, if she enjoyed it, you can write to anyones audience