Primal Workouts

by Mike Westerdal

Nature is amazing. Plants, animals, humans, insects and ecosystems, left on their own, over time adapt to their environment to not just exist, but to thrive. Each species is designed to do whatever it does best. For example, carnivores like wolves, lions and tigers are built to hunt and kill. They're strong and fast with sharp teeth and powerful jaws. And all this happens naturally. When they are born, their parents don't sit them down and explain to them what they have to do to become skilled hunters-they just go about living their lives and they develop that way naturally.

Animals in nature don't go to the gym. They don't lift weights, they don't do cardio, they don't read about the latest hot training routine and they don't go on diets. Yet despite the fact that they don't do any of these things, wolf cubs, lion cubs and others grow up to be skilled hunters with lean but incredibly strong bodies. Why? Because they live their lives the way nature intended, doing the activities that nature intended them to be doing without giving it any thought. It's like this throughout nature, with all species. What does this have to do with building a better body and why should you care? A lot-and I am going to tell you why.

Over the last thousand years or so man has gotten soft. By nature, we're hunter-gatherers, meaning that our bodies are built both to hunt and to forage for food-we kind of get the best of both worlds. But as our society has become more civilized we've moved away from doing the things that nature intended our bodies to be doing. And as a result, for the most part we've become flabby, soft and out-of-shape. We don't have to hunt down animals and kill them with our bare hands or with simple tools and we don't have to traverse long distances, searching for fruits, vegetables and nuts. When we did have to do those things every day in order to survive, we developed naturally lean and strong bodies-without even thinking about it.

Today though, we go to the gym, use machines, moon over the latest fad diet or hot new supplement. And what's the result? More people than ever before are overweight or obese. Our intellect and knowledge have grown exponentially but yet overall, we're in progressively worse shape than at any time in our history. What's the problem? I'll tell you what the problem is-it's us. When man intervenes things start to get all mucked up.

We've moved away from living the way nature intended us to live. We train at the gym doing exercises that are unnatural and wonder why we don't get results. Our ancestors didn't do this but yet they thrived. Look at the warrior cultures like the Spartans, the Vikings, the Roman Gladiators and others. They didn't have gyms but they developed lean, powerful, muscular bodies. They got that way because they did what they had to do to survive. They trained every day not doing isolated, contrived movements, but using compound movements that incorporated a variety of training styles and developed real-world skills.

Our ancestors didn't order carry-out food. If they were hungry they had to go out and forage or hunt. And while doing this, sometimes they got chased by wolves, bears or other humans. Food had to be carried across distances. If they killed a bear, they probably had to drag it a long ways back to camp. And the warrior cultures did the same thing-trekking across the land wearing their heavy battle gear and lugging cumbersome weapons, supplies and even wounded soldiers. These are the kinds of activities that are bodies were built to do. When we did those things on a daily basis, we just naturally got the best results without even thinking about it. Our ancestors-the hunter/gatherers and the warrior cultures developed into what they were and thrived because if they didn't, they would have perished.

And if we today want to see the same kind of results and be lean, muscular, strong and healthy, we need to stop looking for the magic bullet and look to our past. We need to get primal and train the way nature intended our bodies to train. To get really healthy and get the bodies we want we need to exercise the way our ancestors lived by getting primal in our workouts. So how's a modern guy supposed to "get primal" in his workout? One of the best ways to train like our ancestors is by following training strategies like Lean Hybrid Muscle Training and others.

As you may already know hybrid muscle training is a training philosophy. It incorporates the best of bodybuilding, powerlifting, strongman and cardio and combining them into a cohesive training philosophy that essentially mimics the sorts of intense physical activities our ancestors would have done on a daily basis. The approach runs totally contrary to most of what you may have read in magazines but most "revolutionary" ideas have done the same. It's a way to burn fat and build muscle at the same time, without the hit or miss-mostly miss-hassles of bulking and cutting. Lean Hybrid Muscle Training will really supercharge workouts and completely maximize your results.