LITTLE ROCK — When it’s workout time at Core Fitness Chicago, out comes the sledgehammer.
And the 80-pound bag of mulch. And the 2010 Jeep Grand Cherokee - for pushing across a rooftop parking lot while someone steps lightly on the brake.
Don’t even bother looking for a treadmill.
Called Paleo, primal, caveman or - the umbrella term of the moment - “ancestral,” the regimen replaces contemporary “working out” with approximate movements that Paleolithic people supposedly used to survive: pushing, pulling, lifting, squatting, bending, walking and the occasional high-intensity sprint.
Pushing an SUV and pounding tires with a sledgehammer are central to Core Fitness Chicago’s classes. Those class offerings include “Train Like Jane” for women and “Primal Training” for men. “The first time I saw it, it just intimidated me,” said Tricia Keller, 22, who has taken the “Train Like Jane” class for a year.
Now she drags the weighted sled as fiercely as anyone.
Ancestral exercise, which for many people includes a diet heavy on meats and vegetables and forsaking dairy and grain, isn’t a household term but the Cross Fit exercise regimen, which includes many similar philosophies, has developed a strong national following, and the recently formed Ancestral Health Society held its first Ancestral Health Symposium during two days in August.
More than 500 people went to Los Angeles for the symposium, which included seminars such as “Organic Fitness: How to Train Like a Hunter-Gatherer.” The next Ancestral Health Symposium will be at Harvard University in August.
“There’s a natural community coming together around these ideas,” said Brent Pottenger, a medical student who lives in Baltimore and is co-founder of the Ancestral Health Society.
WHAT’S THE CONCEPT?
Adherents disagree on the ideal ancestral exercise routine. For every person who swears by barefoot running, a handful of others will call the notion absurd. Still others say running itself is not ancestrally justified.
But there are commonalities, and at the top of the list is that the modern notion of exercise has gone astray.
The argument is this: When humans began planting crops and building societies after nearly 2 million years of hunting and gathering, we betrayed our genetic dispositions. And as technology has improved - from elevators to e-mail - we’ve only done ourselves a greater disservice by becoming more sedentary. We’ve made up for it with a misguided exercise industry focused on marketing rather than health.
ONE VISION
“Forget the concept of ‘cardio,’” said Mark Sisson, a former marathoner who has written four books, including The Primal Blueprint, and who blogs about ancestral living at marksdailyapple.com.
“Lacing up your shoes for a 5- to 15-mile run every day is antithetical to health,” he said. “It’s a concept some people have a tough time embracing because they think they have to go to the gym and burn 450 calories on the elliptical machine or they’re a bad person.”
Instead, he said, do as ancient ancestors did: walk. He suggests walking one to 3 miles a day, plus maintaining a light but steady level of activity throughout the day.
“We were born to walk, migrate, climb, forage - all these things that are low-level aerobic activities,” Sisson said. “We were not born to be carbohydrate-munching sugar burners.”
Ancestral exercise also emphasizes short bursts of weight-bearing intensity, such as pushing a weighted sled or pounding a tire with a sledgehammer. The most dedicated adherents create backyard gyms where they carry rocks, lift tree branches and use “adult monkey bars”for chin-ups, climbing and dips.
Keli Roberts, a spokesman for San Diego-based American Council on Exercise, said many of the concepts of ancestral exercise, such as interval training and natural body movements, are admirable but should not come at the expense of cardiovascular exercise.
“You’d be hard-pressed to find scientific evidence that supports interval training without cardio,” Roberts said.
Her organization recommends low-intensity cardiovascular endurance exercise, such as brisk walking, five times each week for 30 minutes or high-intensity cardio, such as jogging or swimming, three times each week for 30 minutes.
ActiveStyle, Pages 23 on 03/26/2012