"Ten thousand years ago sounds like a long time, but in terms of how long the human genus has existed (2.5 million years), 10,000 years is a blink of the eye on an evolutionary time scale. The lifestyle of today's hunter-gatherers still holds invaluable clues to the exercise and dietary patterns that are built into our genes. The idea that cross training has value could have been figured out much earlier had we taken notice of clues from hunter-gatherers. Few modern people have ever experienced what it is like to "run with the hunt". One notable exception is Dr. Kim Hill, an anthropologist at Arizona State, who has spent 30 years living with and studying the Ache hunter-gatherers of Paraguay and the Hiwi foragers of Southwestern Venezuela. His description below represents a rare glimpse into the activity that would have been required of us all, were it not for the Agricultural Revolution."The Ache hunted every day of the year if it didn't rain...GPS data I collected ... suggests that about 10 km per day is probably closer to their average distance covered during search. They might cover another 1-2 km per day in very rapid pursuit. Sometimes pursuits can be extremely strenuous and last more than an hour. Ache hunters often take an easy day after any particularly difficult day, and rainfall forces them to take a day or two a week with only an hour or two of exercise. Basically they do moderate days most of the time, and sometimes really hard days usually followed by a very easy day. The difficulty of the terrain is really what killed me (ducking under low branches and vines about once every 20 seconds all day long, and climbing over fallen trees, moving through tangled thorns etc.) I was often drenched in sweat within an hour of leaving camp, and usually didn't return for 7-9 hours wi th not more than 30 minutes rest during the day.""The Hiwi on the other hand only hunted about 2-3 days a week and often told me they wouldn't go out on a particular day because they were 'tired'. They would stay home and work on tools, etc. Their travel was not as strenuous as among the Ache (they often canoed to the hunt site), and their pursuits were usually shorter. But the Hiwi sometimes did amazing long distance walks that would have really hurt the Ache. They would walk to visit another village maybe 80-100 km away and then stay for only an hour or two before returning. This often included walking all night long as well as during the day. When I hunted with Machiguenga, Yora, Yanomamo Indians in the 1980s, my focal man days were much, much easier than with the Ache. And virtually all these groups take an easy day after a particularly difficult one.""While hunter gatherers are generally in good physical condition if they haven't yet been exposed to modern diseases and diets that come soon after permanent outside contact, I would not want to exaggerate their abilities. They are what you would expect if you took a genetic cross section of humans and put them in lifetime physical training at moderate to hard levels. Most hunting is search time not pursuit, thus a good deal of aerobic long distance travel is often involved (over rough terrain and carrying loads if the hunt is successful). I used to train for marathons as a grad student and could run at a 6:00 per mile pace for 10 miles, but the Ache would run me into the ground following peccary tracks through dense bush for a couple of hours. I did the 100 yd in 10.2 in high school (I was a fast pass catcher on my football team), and some Ache men can sprint as fast as me.""But hunter-gatherers do not generally compare to world class athletes, who are probably genetically very gifted and then undergo even more rigorous and specialized training than any forager. So the bottom lines is foragers are often in good shape and they look it. They sprint, jog, climb, carry, jump, etc all day long but are not specialists and do not compare to Olympic athletes in modern societies." Dr. Hill tells us part of the story, but not everything. Today, women are just as likely as men to be found at the gym lifting weights, or running or riding their bikes. In stark contrast, hunter-gatherer women almost never participated in hunting large animals. Does this mean that women did no hard aerobic work? Absolutely not! Women routinely gathered food every two or three days. The fruits of their labors just didn't include plant foods, but also small animals such as tortoises, small reptiles, shellfish, insects, bird eggs and small mammals. They spent many hours walking to sources of food, water and wood. Sometimes they would help carrying butchered game back to camp. Their foraging often involved strenuous digging, climbing, and then hauling heavy loads back to camp while carrying infants and young children. Other common activities, some physically taxing, included tool making, shelter construction, childcare, butchering, food preparation, and visiting. Dan ces were a major recreation for hunter-gatherers, and could take place several nights a week and often last for hours. So, the overall activity of women, like men, was cyclic with days of intense physical exertion (both aerobic and resistive) alternated with days of rest and light activity.What hunter-gatherers had to do in their day-to-day activities is turning out to be good for modern day athletes. When the famous track coach Bill Bowerman advocated the easy/hard concept back in the 60's, it was thought to be both brilliant and revolutionary. Using his system of easy/hard, athletes recovered more easily from hard workouts, and their chances of getting injured were reduced. Ironically, coach Bowerman's revolutionary training strategy was as old as humanity itself.Similarly, weight training combined with swimming was a stunning innovation at Doc Counsilman's world famous swim program in the 1960's. Now, it is a rare world class endurance coach who doesn't advocate cross training to improve performance, increase strength, and reduce injury incidence.For humans living before the Agricultural Revolution, energy input (food) and energy expenditure (exercise) were directly linked. If Stone Age people wanted to eat, they had to hunt, gather, forage or fish. In the modern world, we have totally obliterated the evolutionary link between exercise and food. When we eat more energy than we expend, we gain weight and our health suffers. Two thirds of all Americans are either overweight or obese. Forty million American have type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S."
Kind of makes sense doesn't it? I especially liked the approach to so called "periodization": If you are beat down from a hard day, rest the next day! Crazy I know, but thats where the recovery comes from, not to mention muscle growth!
