Our ancestors regularly covered long distances, and spend majority of their days on their feet, moving around, looking for food and shelter. They were strong, healthy, and they had incredibly long lasting endurance. The kind of endurance, we don’t really know here in modern world at all. Not even those people that are already fit and very active.
Low level, long lasting activity is primal to us
I know, you are already visiting a gym regularly almost every day and exercise. Maybe you get your exercise done In the morning, so you don’t have to think about it for the entire day. It’s done. You did your part. And that is certainly great for your health, but for becoming invincible, it is not enough. To become closer to invincible, you need to spend 50% of your waking hours on your feet or doing some other low intensity not resting activity.
This means, that if you get up at 7 AM and go to sleep at 11 AM, that is 16 waking hours. And you spend 8 of those hours on your feet or doing some kind of not resting kind of activity like, walking, swimming, standing, rowing, bicycling and others. This activity doesn’t have to be intensive. It actually should be low intensive, long lasting activity you engage in on top of your other intensive activities like weight lifting and others we will be talking about later. It could be just standing on your feet for 8 hours. Although, I wouldn’t recommend standing on one place. You might get crazy doing that.
Basically for 8 hours in your day you can’t sit or lie, including working at your desk. Washing dishes or cooking and watching TV in standing position counts as activity on your feet and you can count it into your 50% of time on your feet. Sitting on the sofa and watching TV, or reading book, or knitting, or surfing the web while sitting doesn’t count. But 3 hours of surfing real waves counts. I think you get the message by now.
You are not as fit as you might think
I will never forget the story, my friend Peter told me few years ago. He visited Papua New Guinea and decided to hike to some nearby peak. He hired the guides from the jungle villages, to help him get there. The guides being mainly children with their mothers. That’s being the main source of extra income for native people living in the jungle there.
It is pretty common to have a guide there, because, you are constantly hiking throughout the jungle. And if you didn’t have them, you would certainly get lost.
About 10 miles into the hike through the hot and humid jungle, Peter was physically and mentally drained. He couldn’t move anymore. His backpack, tent and other gear was already carried by his guides, the petite woman and three children that were not 12 yet.
I remember Peter as a very fit and tough guy at that time when we used to work for the same moving company, moving furniture for living. He was way fitter and stronger and mentally tougher than anybody else. He would carry the heaviest stuff and race everybody on the stairs with a big smile on his face. And we would happily let him, because it meant less work for us. He was so tough, that he would be the only guy not wearing wet suit when we went surfing the San Francisco ocean beach in April. And he wasn’t fat, he was skinny and strong. Peter was 23 at that time and in his physical and mental prime.
Peter being Czech, and Czechs are known as a nation with very fit, strong, hard working people, and some of the world greatest athletes in all kinds of sports was clearly feeling little ashamed by these Papua New Guinea kids.
There in the jungle, exhausted Peter is powerlessly sitting on the fallen three, looking at these kids playing and running around. Their mom looking at him, not understanding what’s wrong with him. Peter was at the end of his energy and he didn’t even have enough power to get back. He just wanted to stay there and didn’t want to move anymore.
To end this story, Peter was dragged back to the village by these kids and their mom and ended up sleeping for two days straight to recover.
Our meaning of fit is wrong
We need to redefine what it means fit in the western world. Peter would be considered as one of the fittest guys. But over there, in Papua New Guinea, he was the weakest of all by far.
The fit people over there can stay on their feet for the whole day, walking uphill and carrying heavy stuff and than get up early in the morning and do it again.
Compare to them, Peter is a big muscular guy, who works out regularly in a Gym, goes for a run here and there, plays hockey, swims in the ocean without wet suit and moves heavy furniture. Certainly a very fit guy to our standard. Bu in theirs? Very weak. They were all laughing at him sleeping for 2 days.
Keep moving and don’t stop
My trick to cover these long distances, since we don’t live in jungle is to stay on my feet for 50% of my day. Try it. It can be very tiring.
To do that, spend 50% of your time on your feet everyday.
If you work in the office and you sit all day, than change your sitting work station to standing work station. And work while standing.
Walk everywhere you can
Go for very long hikes in your days off. Cover long distances. Extremely long hikes are one of the best activities you can do to improve your different, long lasting toughness – different fitness. And you are building this kind of fitness in a beautiful environment surrounded by nature, fresh air, rain, snow, wind, cold, heat, humid conditions, and other factors that makes your body tougher and closer to being invincible.
Move until you drop
I usually get my low intensity long lasting activity on my feet while training other people. Some days I am on my feet not for 50% of my time, but my entire day.
For example on Mondays, I get up at 5 am. I open beautiful outdoors swimming club, which is mainly physical work, lots of pulling, pushing, walking around, chasing leafs. I stay there mainly on my feet for 8 hours, always doing something. Than I have about 2 training sessions, sometimes more also moving around, handling dumbbells, showing exercises. I get home, have something to eat and show up for a tennis game at 7:30 PM. And we usually play until 9:30PM when lights on tennis courts go off. I come home at around 10 PM, eat few apples, take a shower and totally exhausted crush into bed.
The other days of mine are not different, with exception of instead of playing tennis, I sit on my surfboard in the ocean, or play ping pong, soccer or rollerblade. Hiking is not my favorite activity, but I want to find a joy in it in the future, since it is very important for adding extra low intensity activity to your day.
I basically live on my feet. I am writing this while standing. Majority of my meals are eaten while walking and some of them while sprinting.
Yes, I feel tired at the end of the day, but it is that kind of tired you are looking for. I know, that you might not be as lucky as I am with a kind of work on my feet I do. And maybe you have to spend your day in your office cubicle and it is hard to stand and move around while working. But, I urge you to give it a try. If you can’t do it at work, do it after. Don’t crush on your sofa after you get home, or sit in the front of computer for the entire evening. Move! Grab your child and carry him around a lot or go for a walk, play some game, cook or whatever. Just don’t sit still. It’s killing you.
The same applies for the weekends. Plan them ahead. Spend majority of your weekends in nature by yourself, with friends or with the entire family. And than move, hike, throw, play, jump, bike, surf, swim, chase. But don’t sit still. You are not as fit as you think you are.
Kids from Papua New Guinea are laughing at us
And maybe some day, you’ll be able to keep up with some kids in Papua New Guinea. The bar that means fit is set way, way higher in the world than in here, in western world. Somehow fit here means actually being really, really weak in other fitter, healthier parts of the world.
The funny thing is, that you won’t find gyms in these part of the world. It’s all people moving, building, covering long distances on their feet, finding food, dragging woods, bringing water to survive. Luckily or sadly, we don’t have that here. We are a modern society after all, that’s full of germs infested, air conditioned, stinky, indoors fit clubs.
They are healthier and happier, and we sicker than ever before
Oh yeah, and another thing we have here what they don’t are things like cancer, heart attack, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. Yes, we are the proud, weak, sick society, that damages everything around us, including our health.
Driving in my Jeep from work, that’s about 3 miles away, and takes gallon of gas to burn to cover 12 mile distance makes me realize, that I am not any different. I am part of the weak general public in this otherwise beautiful country. Even do, I am fit, strong, and being incredibly fit and strong is part of my profession, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with these 12 year old kids from Papua New Guinea.
But keeping that thought in the back of my mind will at least make me more uncomfortable and I will move, stand, walk, carry more, even if I don’t have to. And maybe instead of driving to buy milk I will walk instead. And so should you. Because, if you really think, that you don’t have to, because you think, you are already strong and fit, I am sorry to tell you, that you are not even close to that level. Even if you spend your hour sweating in the gym everyday. To become invincible, your physical movement doesn’t end with the early morning 45 minute intensive workout before work. It just begins there. Keep that in mind.