Designed to be fit!

I realized/remembered recently that this blog is named evolutionary training and yet I almost never talk about evolutionary theory. One might think: What the hell does evolutionary science have to do with this CrossFit wannabe blog? Well turns out the stuff that progressive non-repeating body weight, gymnastics workouts do is emulate our natural history. Not to mention that working out is science, an experiment on yourself and evolutionary science is the best of all sciences! Let me expound upon my thoughts.

The Natural History of a Workout Program

Our ancestors, at least our recent ancestors (circa 10,000 - 250,000 years ago) were likely some sort of hunter gatherer or farmer or combo of both practices (although recent human evolution in the last 10,000 years has exploded us into vastly different evolutionary landscapes). In both cases they had to work their asses off. Imagine the skills, strength, musculature, and endurance necessary to be a hunter, gatherer, or first generation farmer with out power tools.... Or, simply look to nature for examples of what we once were. You rarely see overweight, obese, out of shape animals. You know why? They get eaten. They fail to acquire enough resources to sustain bodily functions. They die in hibernation because they did not have the fitness to properly fatten up. They don't get selected as mating partners. The list goes on, but you'd be hard-pressed to find an out of shape (defined by species specific traits) wild-type (i.e. wild living) animal. They tend to get selected against, or as we might say weeded out!

The Hunter:

In order to be an efficient hunter you need a number of skills, not the least of which are navigation, shooting skills, tracking abilities, etc., but these are not the topics I wish to discuss here. Here I wish to discuss the fitness aspects of a hunter. In order to hunt, in an ancestral way you would have had to track animals for miles. If you found a pack of some ungulate you might want to eat, you would most likely have to construct a blind by carrying logs, and branches from far away. You'd have to have control over your body so that you could lay still in wait for hours. You might even have to climb a tree for an angle. If you get close enough to make the kill shot you'd likely have to heave a spear at the animal(s). So what fitness skills might be involved in these needed abilities?  Tracking prey for hours, or even days, over long distances would require a high level of metabolic conditioning. A hunter has to be able to move past the pain of lactate build-up in his muscles in order to keep on going. Bodily control while sitting and waiting. Not making a move or sound might require a strong core. Think plank! Climbing = pull-ups. Enough said. Spearing again would require core strength to toss the spear with accuracy and power enough to pierce the flesh of the prey animal.

The Gatherer:

You might think gathering would require less fitness abilities than hunting because inherently gathering is a proximal behavior; i.e. you do it close to where you live. However, gathering requires a number of behaviors that would tap your fitness. Gathering itself requires a bit of local movement. You need to move around in order to discover the ripest of items to gather. Digging and pulling would be required to get up tubors and other ground based veggies and you might also have to reach and pull a fruit or nut from a tree. Think axe movement: up and down and up and down with resistance at both ends. Finally, carrying the collected items (which would likely have some weight, imagine a bail of potatoes) back to your home. This could be several meters. Think carrying or running with a sandbag; this could occur via carrying in front of your body, on your head, on a backpack-ish device, etc. All good means of carrying stuff and adding weight to your transit. Like wearing a weight vest.

The Farmer:

OK, I am not going to belabor this point, but farmers too have a lot of fitness advantages. They have to man-handle livestock. They have to move bails of hay, feed, etc. A farmer has to perform many of the same behaviors discussed for gatherers as well, but only the distance of gathering would be localized to the, well the farm.

So, our ancestors who were able to conduct these behaviors, our ancestors who possessed the random genetic mutations that lent them to success at these behaviors, were those ancestors that left descendants (us!). We have been designed to be fit and the number one reason we have an obesity epidemic is because of this one single true fact. We are NOT designed to eat loads of sugar, sit in front of TV, sit around and order pizzas, eat drive-thru and take out, and so forth. Our bodies are revolting! I am not the first to say this, in fact this is a pretty well-known idea. In evolutionary psychology would generally refer to this as a mismatch between current industrialized conditions (modern day) and the type of environment we were "designed" to live in. Now that's not to say that everything we have, all our industry is not part of our evolutionary history. In fact it is. Those of us who are better equipped to deal with industrialized "stuff" are going to leave more descendants that have the "deal with technology better" genes. It's just plain simple science. The main issue is that the speed of technological change is extremely rapid, exponentially faster than biological change. And one final thought: the direction of technological change is random. That is, technology emerges from memetic evolution that has no basis in genetics and the phenotypes those genes create. So get your ass to the gym! The only thing you can do is maintain your fitness so you can deal with the rapid directionless change that awaits us all...