The Primal Blueprint (38 page)

For those heavily indoctrinated into the Conventional Wisdom that Chronic Cardio is the path to health, fitness, and weight control, consider again the premise of the
Primal Blueprint
. Because Grok was a lean, strong, extremely active dude, he probably was capable of running long distances, similar to today’s gung-ho endurance athletes, but he most likely very rarely decided to do so. When the concept of organized hunting came along, it appears that Grok relied more on superior tracking ability (using his highly evolved brain) and walking or slow jogging (using his superior fat-burning system), rather than literally chasing down his prey. In fact, squandering valuable energy reserves (and increasing glucose metabolism by a factor of 10) by running hard for long periods of time would have hastened his demise. Imagine Grok chasing some game animal all-out for a few hours and—oops—not succeeding in killing it. He’s spent an incredible amount of energy yet now has no food to replace that energy. He has suddenly become some other animal’s prey because he is physically exhausted.

A 2007 Taiwanese study published in the
British Journal of Sports Medicine
revealed that a single intense
sustained
workout (working at 85 percent of maximum effort for at least 30 minutes) disrupted immune system function, destroyed some white blood cells, and triggered whole body inflammation for up to 72 hours. In contrast, there are literally hundreds of scientific studies confirming the benefits of conducting occasional short-duration, intense workouts (such as interval workouts—spacing work efforts by a particular rest interval). Intervals and sprints quickly and time-efficiently improve key performance factors including VO2 Max (how efficiently you process oxygen during peak exercise effort), competitive performance, and body composition.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance of slowing down the pace of your cardio workouts to improve your health and fitness. (Note that I’m speaking to the vast numbers of fitness enthusiasts in the gyms and on the roads who generally take their pace to “slightly uncomfortable” in the name of pursuing Conventional Wisdom’s definition of “getting a workout.”) If you already like to take your time and smell the flowers on your walks, hikes, and bike rides, congratulations! Just get ready to add a few sprint workouts into the mix. That’s where huge benefits will accrue for little investment. As I will detail shortly, slowing down (and adding workouts from Laws #4 and #5) will not only improve health but will lead to outstanding fitness breakthroughs.

I am fully aware of the many loud and passionate voices extolling the psychological and lifestyle virtues of devoted endurance training and agree that pushing and challenging your body with inspiring competitive goals supports mental, emotional, and also physical health (albeit with the significant caveats already discussed). An exercise physiologist friend of mine countered my “case against cardio” position recently by reminding me that Hawaii Ironman finishers are vastly healthier than the average population. While true, let us not forget, in the words of Jay Leno, the “average” we are dealing with: “Today there are more overweight people in America than average-weight people. So overweight people are now average. Which means you’ve met your New Year’s resolution.”

“
You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She’s 97 today and we don’t know where the hell she is.

—
Ellen DeGeneres”

Furthermore, I’ll assert that an old has-been like myself (goals: eat Primally, with no processed carbs; visit the gym several days a week, for sessions of widely varied difficulty; and hang with teenagers for two hours of Ultimate on weekends) possesses far superior health and Primal Fitness to the lean, ripped (but often emaciated), super “fit” physical specimens that strut in their Speedos down the main drag of Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, every October during Ironman week. Yes, they can all drop me like a shot in a long-distance swim, cycling, or running race (it mighta been a different story back in the day), but their endurance superiority comes at great cost. Collectively, they tend to suffer from recurring fatigue and adrenal burnout, frequent overuse injuries, too-common minor illnesses from suppressed immune function (I get a cold maybe once every five years; a fair number of ironman triathletes probably get five every year), and, last but certainly not least, high overall life stress factor scores—something often touted as the number one heart attack risk factor.

Having spent many years immersed in the type A community of driven fitness enthusiasts and competitive endurance athletes, I am aware that many heads will nod in agreement with my message—and then turn around and plug along with their familiar exhausting training regimens. If serious endurance exercise is a centerpiece of your life, I don’t wish to deprive you of your passion. That’s right, go ahead and hammer that three-hour group ride or that 15-mile trail run with the big boys or big girls
once in a while
. If you follow my plan, you’ll certainly be fit enough to do it occasionally. Just don’t do it every weekend, or even every other weekend. Going long and hard once in a while (the specifics are quantified by your fitness level) produces far superior fitness benefits and eliminates the risk factors of repeating highly stressful workouts too frequently.

If the New York City Marathon or Hawaii Ironman is calling your name, enjoy the process as a twice-in-a-lifetime experience. That’s right—the first one is to say you finished, and the second one is to improve your previous time! The droves of folks with framed race numbers commemorating a dozen consecutive finishes of their signature event have in many respects achieved their superficial prizes at the expense of their health. Doing a marathon or an iron-man triathlon won’t kill you, but continuing to follow a stressful, regimented training program for the six months afterward—or doing dozens of extreme events over the years—will likely create significant to extreme stress-related damage in your body. Don’t be afraid to rest completely for three days after your big weekend hammer session, take an entire calendar year away from your competitive schedule, or simply step away from the cultural pressure to prove your athletic worth with measured results—in favor of more esoteric fitness goals. This is what Primal Fitness is all about.

“
If you start to feel good during a marathon, don’t worry, that will pass. —
Don Kardong
,
U.S. Olympic marathoner and author
”

Granted, those with competitive endurance goals may not be satisfied to putter along exclusively at a slow pace and think they can take down the competition with that approach. The most direct performance benefits occur from the intense workouts that approximate the challenge of your competitive goals. However, whether you are a casual fitness enthusiast or a professional athlete, you must establish a strong base of low-level aerobic conditioning before you can introduce more stressful, higher-intensity workouts. With a strong aerobic conditioning base in place, you then have the ability to absorb and benefit from the
occasional
intense workouts that lead directly to competitive success—if you’ve chosen such goals. The tertiary benefits of low-level work (better balance, strong postural muscles, increased mitochondria development and capillary profusion, and strengthening of bones, tendons, and ligaments to prevent injury) might not be as readily apparent as the direct competitive application of beating your personal record at a time trial, but one cannot happen without the other.

This concept of base first, then intensity has been proven successful by the training regimens of the world’s greatest endurance athletes of the last 50 years, beginning with the pioneering work of New Zealand running coach Arthur Lydiard. Lydiard’s prize students, including 1960 and 1964 Olympic track gold medalist Peter Snell (today one of the world’s leading exercise physiologists, in Dallas, Texas), showed that long-duration, low-intensity training, coupled with intense interval training and adequate rest (rest was
another far-out concept for the ’60s), could lead directly to Olympic gold medals and world records at races as short as 800 meters (which lasts less than two minutes).

When I completed my career as an elite marathoner and triathlete and transitioned into a career as a personal trainer, my training regimen shifted dramatically. I was still out there moving for several hours a day, but I went from banging my brains out with super fit training partners to dawdling along with a succession of clients on my daily calendar. Unlike many of today’s fitness trainers who stand there and count reps, I got outside with my unfit to moderately fit clients and did their workouts with them. Bike rides that I previously hammered at 20+ mph for hours were now conducted at 13 mph (it seemed like any slower and we’d tip over!). The long, hard trail runs of my marathon days were replaced with easy jogs where my heart rate barely exceeded 100 beats per minute (only 50 percent of my max). With a young family and a career filling my days, I rarely had time to do my own specific workouts. I made the most of these opportunities by conducting extremely intense interval sessions once or twice a week—on cardio equipment or with a few quick laps around the track. Usually these sessions lasted around 20 minutes—until my next client came strolling in!

When I jumped into the occasional long or ultra-distance endurance race, the results were shocking to me. My “by chance” regimen of very, very slow workouts coupled with occasional very short, intense workouts allowed me to place among the top competitors in the world in my age group and very close to the standards set by top professionals of that era! Indeed, the
Primal Blueprint
parameters literally took shape in my mind as I blew by my rivals (who were putting in big Chronic Cardio miles, just like I used to) at races despite what most experts and prevailing Conventional Wisdom would deem ridiculously inadequate preparation.

Mike Pigg and Mark Allen, world champion professional triathletes who dominated the sport in the late ’80s and early ’90s, both claimed their careers were elevated to the next level—and extended by several years—when they moderated their training pace to stay below an individually determined maximum
aerobic
heart rate with great discipline. Guided by applied kinesiologist and endurance training pioneer Dr. Phil Maffetone, they were able to improve their aerobic conditioning in each discipline (swimming, biking, and running) by training at a sensible, comfortable pace that represented about 80 percent of their maximum heart rate. (I advocate an upper limit of 75 percent for all but the most highly trained endurance athletes.)

By limiting the majority of their efforts to the aerobic zone, they could exercise for long hours without breaking down or succumbing to the fatigue that is so common among elite triathletes. At their peak, Pigg or Allen could maintain a running speed of better than six minutes per mile for a half-hour or cycle at 25 mph for hours on end with a predominantly aerobic, fat-burning metabolism. In contrast, a lesser-trained individual
training side by side would quickly become depleted and exhausted due to the
relatively
intense pace of the session. When it came time to race, Pigg and Allen could dispose of the competition because their aerobic efficiency allowed them to maintain an unmatched all-out race pace. It follows that if running a six-minute mile is “easy” for a superior endurance athlete, he or she has more room to escalate pace until reaching maximum effort than an athlete who struggles at a pace of six-minutes per mile.

The popular Conventional Wisdom concept of following a strength-training routine that involves repeating the same workout several days a week is flawed. Your body thrives on intuitive, spontaneous, and fluctuating workout habits—not ego-driven regimentation organized around an arbitrary time period of seven days that has no special relevance to your fitness progress. In asking, “What would Grok do?” (that is, what is best for your genes), you’ll realize that intermittent workouts that continually vary in type and intensity level will bring the best results. Some researchers refer to this as shocking or surprising the muscles, so they don’t get used to doing the same things over and over. Others have called it muscle confusion. Remember, it’s the signals created when your muscles are challenged beyond what they are used to that prompt genes to make those muscles stronger. Get creative and integrate the “lift heavy things” law into daily life, aside from your formal sessions. For example, come fall, try raking your leaves vigorously—it’s an unsurpassed shoulder, core, and abs session, and it will get your yard clean to boot!