It’s Time to Rewild Your Fitness
By: Ben Walker
Tags: Rewilding, Fitness, Nature, Life, Health

It’s Time to Rewild Your Fitness

The primal roots of human physicality

We’re animals. We all know it to be scientifically true, but how often do we actually allow that to guide what we do?

Civilisation has drastically changed the way we live, but it hasn’t changed our bodies. It hasn’t changed our bio-mechanics or physiology. Evolutionarily, we are still the same animals we were 30,000 years ago.

And that means we need to be moving the same way.

Our bodies are not designed to be sedentary for 20+ hours a day. We’re not designed to find ourselves in the same seated position enabled by the prevalence of chairs in our world.

We’re not designed to pack intense activity into one hour of ‘workout’ a day, trying to correct for those other 23 hours of ‘civilised’ life. And because we’re not designed that way, our bodies don’t respond well to it.

We’re rife with obesity, heart disease, diabetes. Even those of us that are fit are often worn down and prone to injury. Vast swathes of the aging population suffer from knee, hip or spinal disorders.

How does your body feel? Do you wake up with niggles, aches, pains? There’s a better way.

We can be functionally fit. Ready to take on life, to adapt to changing physical demands and to age healthily. We can navigate the world with the confidence of an animal designed for it’s environment. The better way is to rewild our conceptions of fitness.

Photo by David Bartus from Pexels

Roots

Rewilding is a concept you might have seen applied to many different areas of life. Popularised by George Monbiot’s book Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life; it’s often discussed in the context of agricultural practices. The ways that our society interacts with and exploits nature. Rewilded agricultural land is all about mixed cropping, encouragement of wild species & biodiversity, traditional food production techniques and shunning of artificial compounds.

Rewilding is about, in some senses, ‘going back’. But it’s also a step forward. Our society swings like a pendulum between embracing our animalistic nature, and artificial, technology-centric development. Right now, we’ve swung way too far from a healthy relationship with nature, and that’s reflected in how we operate our bodies.

The backswing is inevitable, yet offers us progress.

Rewilding isn’t a rejection of the successes of modern life, but a re-balancing. We have to embrace the advantages, but recognise the traps and make efforts to move away from them. We have to be considerate of how we’re treating our bodies 24/7, and intentionally give them stimuli that are more like what they’re designed for. We have to move naturally.

This is your guide to getting fit like they do on the discovery channel.

Animal movement

The foundational principle of rewilding our fitness is to make our movement more closely resemble that of our ancestors. Of course, our lives are structured very differently, but we can find ways to slip more animalistic movement into each day.

Focus on functional bodyweight movement first

We can choose to make our physical training more closely resemble what the human body is actually designed to do. That means functional movements that don’t just isolate one muscle or joint.

Think about starting with bodyweight movements that tend to use lots of different parts of the body. Squats, lunges, pullups, pushups, turkish get ups. These all resemble things that the human animal would do in the wild.

Society has actually got this perfectly right in one area — children’s jungle gyms. Lots of different shapes to climb, hang and swing from, jump off and slide down. These are exactly the sorts of things our bodies expect to do.

For some structure, variety and fun, there are methodologies that embrace rewilded training. MovNat goes all in on natural movements (as the name would suggest) structured around the basic proficiencies that the natural world requires us to possess; balancing, walking, running, jumping, climbing, swimming, lifting, carrying, throwing, catching, striking and grappling.

Animal Flow is a ground-based movement concept that looks like a mix between yoga, martial arts and dance. Animal Flow movements use the entire body and develop your capacity to move in complex ways, linking limbs, shoulders and hips together. This teaches us to transfer power through the trunk. It’s a little more abstract than MovNat, but also more accessible as you need little more than an open space.

In a similiar vein, you could incorporate some yoga into your days. Often thought of as a ‘yummy mummy’ activity, yoga offers us way more than over-the-top flexibility and force-fed spirituality. Certain styles, such as Ashtanga, Rocket or Budokon, involve a lot of strength and skill. These are great for keeping our bodies functional. Similiar to Animal Flow, yoga teaches us to use the whole body as one unit, which carries over to many other activities.

Even if the gym is your second home, try to rewild your workouts. Focus on big, compound movements that demand strength, skill and mobility. Deadlifts, squats, rows, bench and overhead presses, and all the variations of these, build real-world strength. Always choose free weights over machines. If you can make an exercise asymmetrical then it really increases the demands on the body — for example you might do a half-knelt one arm overhead press, or a single-leg romanian deadlift.

Scatter movement and physical activity throughout your day

It’s not all about those times that we choose to ‘workout’. Think about it — even if we hit it hard and workout for 10 hours a week, there’s still 154 other hours. Our bodies adapt to the stimuli they experience, and if 22 out of 24 hours are stationary then that’s what they’ll adapt to.

That’s why it’s so important to slip movement into every part of the day, wherever you can. Actively search for the opportunities to get active. Sometimes life gives you options to complete a task — do it with movement, or while sedentary. Choose movement.

For example, the old classic: cycle or walk to work every day. If it’s too far, get off the bus early or park further away and walk the last 20 minutes. While you’re on that bus or train, choose to stand and train your balance on every commute.

When you’re at work, school or shopping, take the stairs. Elevators and escalators rob us of movement opportunities. They subtly steal a calorie burning and leg strengthening moment. Don’t give in to the mechanical thieves.

Never sit still

Even when we have to be in one place, we don’t have to be sedentary. Chairs force us into limited positions for long periods, but we don’t have to rely on them. If you can use a standing desk at work, get to it. Encourage walking meetings when you need to chat with colleagues.

If you have the luxury at whatever spot you work in, choose to sit on the floor. The floor is a wonderful place to be because it allows us to roll through thousands of different positions. Maybe we crouch down in a deep squat, or sit cross legged, perhaps on our knees, or wide legs, or mix and match. There’s so many different options, and the ability to keep moving, even while staying in one place, is a game-changer.

Constant shifting of position encourages our joints to stay mobile and tissues supple. Furthermore, it stimulates our minds and helps foster creativity in our work.

Get outside

Photo: Pixabay via Pexels

The whole point of rewilded movement is to be more ‘natural’. What better way than to spend time in nature? The outdoors demands that we move in natural ways in order to navigate the terrain. It’s the landscape that our bodies are literally designed to inhabit.

Hiking is an excellent way to enjoy your local green spaces. Seek out hills, woods, rough land to scramble through. Variation, steep climbs and dynamic descents all stimulate our bodies in the non-uniform way they crave.

Maybe running or cycling is more your style — great! Trail runs, or mountain biking, require high-speed response to uneven terrain and are incredibly stimulating both for body and mind. Layer on top of that the wonderful sights, smells and sounds of nature and we’ve got a powerhouse of revitalisation.

There’s a Japanese concept known as shrinrin-yoku — or ‘forest bathing’. It’s an acknowledgement that being amongst nature works miracles for overall well-being. Just spending time outdoors is de-stressing and like a mild form of therapy.

Another bonus is the sense of exploration and independence we can find with nature. Spending most of our life in the city, where everything is organised and taken care of, really cements a reliance on other people. In nature we take care of ourselves, and enjoy the associated boost in self-confidence long afterwards.

Now why would we choose to exercise in artificially-lit, plastic-filled gyms when we could be getting active plus enjoying all the benefits of the wild? Spend more time outside and you’ll never regret it.

Play

This is the fun part, literally. Part of being alive is experiencing play. All social animals engage in playtime, and it carries scores of benefits. It helps nurture communities and cement social bonds, develop relationships, teach us about boundaries and competition, and just downright enjoy ourselves.

It’s also incredibly physically stimulating. Play requires us to react physically and cognitively to the novel, often unanticipated, actions of our playmates. It sucks away conformity and standardisation of movement, naturally generating variety in the process.

For many of us the most familiar form of play is organised sports. If you have a sport, make time for it. It’s incredibly important. And don’t underestimate the value of interacting with others during the game — that’s half the benefit.

But sport isn’t our only way to access play. When the kids are bored and need entertaining, don’t just shove an iPad into their hands — take the opportunity to get down to ground level and interact with them. You’ll be physically challenged in ways that adults can’t provide, and be nourishing their development and growth at the same time.

While we’re at it, might as well play with our adult friends too. There’s nothing wrong with a little friendly rough and tumble — all animals playfight. We’ve been socialised into thinking that adults shouldn’t get physical with each other, that it’s a sign of immaturity. Actually, it’s a sign of enduring physical health and well-being. Play doesn’t stop being good for us as we age — it becomes more important.

We’re naturally drawn to be playful because it’s so important to our health. So it’s only natural that rewilded movement is underpinned by a playful character.

Nature know’s whats up

To summarise;

Focus on functional bodyweight movement

Scatter movement through your day

Never sit still

Get outside

Play

This doesn’t have to be so time-consuming. A lot of activities tick all of these boxes at once. The key is to integrate physical activity into your life, not separate it into it’s own little bubble.

Our bodies know what’s good for them — all we have to do is get out of their way. Society has done wonderful things for our lives, but not without cost. It’s a good job we have the intelligence to identify what’s healthy and what’s not.

So use that intelligence — embrace those parts of society that are useful, and rewild the rest.

You’re a human animal. Act like it.