Paleo Fitness and Natural Movement with Darryl Edwards #7
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee interviews Darryl Edwards, Certified Personal Trainer & Nutritionist, about his Primal Play™ approach to make movement fun. They discuss reversing health issues through ancestral living and integrating physical activity into daily life.
Deep Dive Analysis
13 Topic Outline
Introduction to Darryl Edwards and Primal Play
Darryl's Personal Health Transformation Journey
Shift from Competitive Gym Training to Play
Exercise as a Modern Construct vs. Natural Movement
Low Adherence to Physical Activity Guidelines
Movement as Medicine: Dose and Variety
Dangers of Overtraining and Chronic Stress
Holistic Health: Beyond Diet, Importance of Movement
Lessons from Blue Zones and Healthy Defaults
The Primal Play Animal Moves Challenge
Movement for Stress Relief and Overall Well-being
Leveraging Technology to Increase Daily Movement
Four Simple Tips for More Enjoyable Movement
5 Key Concepts
Exercise as a modern construct
This concept describes exercise as a recent invention, serving as a substitute for the mandatory physical activity humans historically engaged in for survival, such as obtaining food or building shelter. With modern convenience, natural locomotion and physical activity became optional, making 'exercise' a deliberate effort to compensate for a lack of movement.
Movement nutrients
This is a metaphor for the diverse types of physical activity, varying in intensity from vigorous to moderate to low, that are necessary for a well-balanced 'movement diet.' It suggests that just as the body needs various dietary nutrients, it also requires a wide array of movement patterns for comprehensive health benefits.
Hormetic response
This biological principle explains that a beneficial stressor, such as exercise, prompts the body to adapt and become stronger. However, if the dose of this stress is too high or recovery is insufficient, the same stressor can become detrimental to health, leading to overtraining and harm.
Generalist movement potential
This refers to the unique human capacity to perform a wide range of movement patterns—including crawling, climbing, jumping, running, and sprinting—all at an above-average level. Unlike many animals that specialize in one or two movement types, humans are capable of diverse physical actions.
Pandiculation
This is the instinctive full-body stretching and often shaking that animals and young children perform upon waking from a deep sleep. This natural action helps to invigorate the body, increase alertness, and prepare for activity, serving as a natural wake-up mechanism.
6 Questions Answered
Conventional fitness often uses intimidating messages like 'no pain, no gain' and focuses on punishment, which can lead to an aversion to physical activity and a lack of enjoyment, making long-term adherence difficult.
The baseline recommendations are 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity activity and two days of resistance training. While about 35% of adults self-report meeting these, accelerometer data suggests only 5% to 8% actually do.
Movement is therapeutic and acts as medicine, offering benefits such as being anti-inflammatory, improving the gut microbiome, reducing blood pressure, and elevating mood hormones like serotonin and dopamine.
The Animal Moves Challenge is an online program developed by Darryl Edwards that encourages participants to engage in a wide repertoire of human movement patterns, like crawling, jumping, and balancing, by training like a generalist animal. It aims to make movement fun, engaging, and comprehensive, improving strength, flexibility, endurance, and and coordination.
The key is to focus on fun, choosing activities that are immediately enjoyable and engaging, like dancing, playing childhood games, or primal play, so that movement feels like play rather than punishment or exercise.
Technology can be used as an enabler, for example, by setting hourly alarms on a watch to prompt 60 seconds of movement, or by using activity trackers to become more aware of daily movement levels and encourage more non-sedentary time.
15 Actionable Insights
1. Make Movement Fun
Prioritize fun and enjoyment in physical activity, such as dancing, playing childhood games, or playful sports, to ensure long-term adherence and intrinsic motivation. This approach makes movement feel less like punishment and more like instant gratification.
2. Integrate Daily Micro-Movements
Find and utilize small opportunities to weave movement into your daily routine, such as standing during phone calls, using a standing desk, taking stairs, or performing short exercises during TV commercial breaks. This accumulates significant movement minutes without requiring dedicated workout time.
3. Actively Avoid Convenience
Consciously choose the less convenient option to increase daily movement, such as taking stairs instead of lifts, walking short distances instead of driving, or carrying groceries. This practice not only boosts physical activity but also translates to healthier choices in other life areas.
4. Embrace Holistic Health
Adopt a 360-degree approach to health, recognizing that food, sleep, stress management, and movement are all intertwined and equally important components. Avoid over-prioritizing one factor, as improving one area can positively impact others.
5. Convert Bad Habits with Cues
Create environmental cues to convert poor lifestyle habits into better ones, such as placing workout gear by your bed to prompt immediate movement upon waking, even for just a minute or two. This strategy helps forge new habits over time.
6. View Movement as Medicine
Recognize movement as a form of daily medicine that offers therapeutic benefits like reducing inflammation, improving gut microbiome, lowering blood pressure, and boosting mood hormones. Understand that you need a daily dose, with varying intensities.
7. Personalize Movement Approach
Understand how to personalize your movement approach based on your current context, recognizing that intense physical activity may be detrimental when you are chronically stressed or sleep-deprived. Sometimes, longer sleep or a gentle walk is more beneficial than a hard workout.
8. Prioritize Rest & Recovery
Ensure adequate rest and recovery, especially sleep, to allow your body to repair and rebuild after physical activity. Neglecting sleep can undo the positive effects of exercise and lead to overtraining.
9. Break Up Sedentary Periods
Actively break up prolonged periods of sitting throughout the day, as an hour of exercise in the evening may not fully counteract the negative effects of being sedentary for many hours. Find opportunities to stand or move frequently.
10. Explore Animal Moves
Engage in ‘animal moves’ (crawling, jumping, balancing, varied intensity, strength, mindful movement) to activate a wide repertoire of human movement patterns. This approach can be fun, engaging, and improve overall fitness components like agility and coordination.
11. Mindful Movement for Stress
Utilize mindful movement, such as mimicking various animal moves, to relieve stress and switch off from daily pressures. This type of engagement can be therapeutic and contribute to overall well-being.
12. Use Tech for Movement Nudges
Leverage modern technology, such as setting an hourly alarm on a smartwatch, to provide gentle nudges to move throughout the day. When prompted, perform 60 seconds of any movement to break sedentary periods.
13. Engage Family in Play
Involve family members, especially children, in playful movement activities like ‘primal play tag’ to make physical activity fun and engaging for everyone. This fosters connection, creates lasting memories, and provides an effective workout.
14. Invigorate Mornings with Movement
Start your day with vigorous activity, such as extended stretches and body shakes (pandiculation), mimicking how young children and animals naturally wake up. This can serve as a catalyst to feel alert and ready to ’take on the world’ without needing stimulants like coffee.
15. Foster Community Movement
Initiate or participate in group movement challenges, like encouraging colleagues to take the stairs together, to build community support and sustain new healthy habits over the long term. This shared experience can increase adherence and motivation.
5 Key Quotes
Exercise is a modern, fairly recent and modern construct, which is a substitute for the lack of physical activity that we would be getting in our day-to-day lives.
Darryl Edwards
Movement has been engineered out of our environments pretty significantly. It's been replaced with convenience. So locomotion, which used to be mandatory, is now optional. Physical activity, which again used to be mandatory, is now optional.
Darryl Edwards
When you start picking out one of those as being the only thing that's important, the only way you can reach health nirvana, that's when I believe it's dangerous.
Darryl Edwards
It's about what foods are available to them, which are local, healthy, unprocessed. It's about the fact that they have to move in order to live because it's part and parcel of their day.
Darryl Edwards
It doesn't feel like punishment and pain. It just doesn't feel like exercise. It just feels like movement.
Darryl Edwards
3 Protocols
Converting Poor Habits to Better Movement Habits
Darryl Edwards- Place your training gear and outfit right at the side of your bed.
- Make a decision to put on your training gear every time you see it.
- Engage in some form of movement for whatever period of time, even if it's just a minute or two, committing to this daily.
Integrating More Movement Minutes Throughout the Day
Darryl Edwards- Get a few minutes of movement done first thing in the morning (e.g., crawling, jumping, dancing while preparing breakfast).
- Find opportunities for movement throughout the day, such as standing during phone calls.
- Take the stairs more often than elevators or lifts.
- Engage in short bursts of activity like bear crawling across the living room or squatting during commercial breaks while watching TV.
Avoiding Convenience to Increase Movement
Darryl Edwards- Choose stairs over lifts or elevators when available.
- Walk to nearby shops instead of taking the car.
- Carry shopping bags back home instead of opting for grocery delivery.
- Walk one or two bus stops further than your local stop instead of taking the bus directly.