Train Like A Caveman

When it’s workout time at Nu Beginnings Dallas, out comes the boulder, club and loin cloth. Ok, maybe Dr W is embellishing a little but if you are looking for a bike or tradmill you've arrived at the wrong office (Yes, we do normal physical therapy with the expected equipment but for weight/fat loss it is very different).   

Nu Beginnings mimics our ancestral (caveman) regimen replacing contemporary "working out" withreal-life movements that our Paleolithic ancestors used to survive: pushing, pulling, lifting, squatting, bending, walking and the occasional high-intensity sprint.  

As a current patient stated the other day. "I feel like if I went back to a regular gym, I wouldn’t see these kinds of results and I’d get burned out," she said

Ancestral exercise, which for Nu Beginnings patients includes a diet component heavy on meats, poultry, seafood and vegetables and forsaking dairy and grain, slowly has crept into the mainstream in recent years.  I  just recently posted a video from NBC here on this facebook page. 

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 email — 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.

Forget Cardio.  Toss the treadmill. Ditch the recumbant bike.  Use the elliptical as a clothes rack.

Instead, do as our Paleolithic ancestors did: walk. At least one to three miles a day, plus maintaining a low level of activity throughout the day.

We were born to walk, migrate, climb, forage — all these things that are low-level aerobic activities.  We were not born to be carbohydrate-munching sugar burners.

Ancestral exercise also places emphasis on short bursts of weight-bearing intensity, however, such as pushing a weighted sled or pounding a tire with a sledgehammer. The most dedicated adherents create backyard gyms that can involve carrying rocks, lifting tree branches and using "adult monkey bars" for chin-ups, climbing and dips.

At Nu Beginnings Dallas, little emphasis is put on classic cardio work. Dr Wagle believes in the movements of the past and anything that fits biomechanically with what we do as human beings.  Want to get super strong and lean...ditch the treadmill!

Train Like A Caveman!!!