When you ask most people what it takes to be fit, you get some pretty wild answers. Hours on the treadmill or pounding pavement every day. Hours in the weight room. Obsessing over how to turn every moment of the day into an opportunity for some kind of workout move.
I never liked what I heard, and after many decades of overtraining, I decided it was time to come up with a sane alternative—Primal Blueprint Fitness as I’ve called it over the years. It boils down to three logical steps all rooted in ancestral patterns people lived for hundreds of thousands of years:
All told, it’s a handful of hours a week, most of it moving frequently. In addition to those 4-5 hours a week of walking or other light movement, throw in an hour’s worth of strength training and 15 minutes of sprint time. There you go. Do that, and you’ll be in darn good shape.
Today I’m sharing a whole host of video how-tos and routines that touch on all of those three Primal Fitness Laws—but especially #4 and #5. Sit back, watch the ones that speak to you, and see how they’ll shake up how you’re working out….
For those who have these moves down and want to step up the effort, variations are one tool.
Advanced Variations On Basic Moves
One-Leg Push-Ups
Dead Stop Push-Ups
Now let’s move on to resistance training workouts.
Lifting Heavy Things
My Favorite Way To Lift Heavy Things
Deadlift
That brings us to Primal Law #5: Sprint Once In a While….
Sprinting How-Tos
My Sprinting Workout
Running Form Primer
Now that you’ve got the basics, let’s move on to quick workouts you can do anywhere.
Quick Workouts
Microworkouts
On the Road Warrior Workout
More About My Personal Routine
How My Routine Has Changed
My Take On “Ab” Workouts
How I Rest: Matters for Ancestral Fitness
My Favorite Way To Play… After All These Years
Thanks for stopping in, everybody. Have thoughts or questions about any of the above moves or routines—or anything fitness related? Shoot me a line below. Have a great week.
Mark Sisson is the founder of Mark’s Daily Apple, godfather to the Primal food and lifestyle movement, and the New York Times bestselling author of The Keto Reset Diet. His latest book is Keto for Life, where he discusses how he combines the keto diet with a Primal lifestyle for optimal health and longevity. Mark is the author of numerous other books as well, including The Primal Blueprint, which was credited with turbocharging the growth of the primal/paleo movement back in 2009. After spending three decades researching and educating folks on why food is the key component to achieving and maintaining optimal wellness, Mark launched Primal Kitchen, a real-food company that creates Primal/paleo, keto, and Whole30-friendly kitchen staples.