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Free Willy And The 3 Gorillas: Part 2…

On Wednesday I published a piece about Free Willy and the 3 gorillas…

Far from a Disney epic, it simply detailed that we are shaped by our external and internal environments.

Willy’s fin collapsed because he was missing the natural loads created by his natural environment, and was instead exposed to unnatural loads in an unnatural environment.

Brooks, Mokolo and Bebac were obese and unhealthy because they were missing their natural foods, and were instead given an unnatural diet consisting of a bucket of biscuits…

Every species has a baseline for movement, nutrition, sleep, etc that has developed over millions of years. The duration of our chair and Coco Pop culture - the leading edge of our evolution[!] - is nothing compared to the millions of years we spent as hunter gatherers.

As we saw with Brooks, failure to meet his baseline - or even come close to it - had a pretty s***ty outcome… Mokolo and Bebac were heading the same way, but through changing their internal environment they reversed their symptoms… This was a restoration of their baseline… If we restore these baselines - in our case, if we get our diet, movement and sleep requirements - the body will return to its natural state: happy, healthy, lean and strong.

Will 4 hours a week at CrossFit Blackbrook return you to your baseline?

No… In all honesty…

You will struggle to fit 16+ hours of natural movement [hunting, foraging, playing, digging, crafting, etc] into one hour a day…  

But here’s the thing:

1. It will go a f*** of a long way towards it…
2. Most people have jobs and mortgages, plus social and family commitments, and preferences… So 16+ hours of foraging may not be entirely practical or enticing…

In one hour at Blackbrook you could expect something along the lines 300ft sandbag carries for load, maybe loaded lunge walks, pull ups, etc - these things are primal movements, and at the risk of generalising too much, we could say that the body experiences natural loads when performing them… You will close in on your baseline.

[Similar to carrying a heavy kill back to camp, or climbing a tree to get apples…]

Couple this with walking the dog, carrying the kid to bed, loading the dishwasher - general day-to-day physical movement - and we have a half decent alternative to chasing deer and digging for tubers all day.

45 minutes on the stairmaster, 3x12 on the chest press machine, EZ bar curls… These things are not considered primal… I’m not saying don’t do them, I’m just saying these, when repeated too frequently, are unnatural loads…

[Little balance or thought required, and an “isolation” movement rarely found outside of the gym…]

Try to keep “the return to your natural state: happy, healthy, lean and strong” first and foremost in your mind. To return to your natural state, consider the advice given in part 1… Link here: http://www.crossfitblackbrook.com/freewilly.html

Our physiology is very logical in how it responds to what you give it… You are what you eat, you are how you move, and you are how you sleep… You are shaped by your external and internal environments.   


“Sit the f*** down and have a beer….”

~ Coach Collins

Copyright 2018

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