In the wild our training was very different than it is today – it was functional, it was incidental and it was constant. That is to say that we didn’t ‘set out’ to get strong and healthy, but that it was simply a product of our lifestyle – of tracking wild animals through the African Savannah for days at a time then killing them, then dragging them back to our caves then tearing the flesh off their bones with our bare hands... you get the picture. Today though we spend most of our time sat down, either in an office, or a classroom, or a car, or the living room... you get the picture. If we’re of the frame of mind that favours fitness, we then randomly tax our muscles and our cardio for one random hour before returning to our wholly sedentary lives. Cave men didn’t worry about sets and reps, or about rest times... they simply got on with it and they were probably in much better shape. Maybe there’s something to be learned from that?

In terms of muscle growth, this style of training wouldn’t benefit us. For such active lifestyle with such scarcity of food having muscle would actually be detrimental to our survival – slowing us down and using up a large amount of calories and energy simply to maintain; in a desert a fat person would survive much longer than a bodybuilder. The good news is though that the ‘cave man’ style of training is great for general fitness and a lean physique, and if you use some incidental training along with your usual routine this can benefit bodybuilders as well.

So how do you fit this constant exercise into your daily life? Well there are two methods – one is to tailor your house so that you have constant challenges, making it almost a makeshift fitness circuit, and another is to make simple daily tasks more difficult so creating a workout from them.

An example of leaving workout stations around your house is to put a pull up bar in your door frame. They only cost about £5 ($10 from Argos) and are adaptable so as to fit in almost any doorway. Once you’ve erected one in a room you have to use fairly frequently, set yourself the challenge of performing ten reps every time you walk underneath it. This means that every time you head in and back out in a short space of time you’re doing two sets, or twenty reps in total – that’s almost a mini workout! By doing this, muscles in your whole body will repeatedly be being called into action and throughout the day you’ll be constantly burning calories and building muscle.

A similar station could be to leave a dumbbell by the sofa. Now, every time you sit down to watch TV you pump out eight reps. That includes coming back from the toilet or fetching a drink. You could even be really ambitious and get yourself to do a set each time there’s a commercial break. Another one could be to leave the forearm grippers by your computer and use those in your spare hand when you sit down to check your e-mails or write. You can even do this one at work! How about calf raises on the top step? Or press ups before you eat?

This kind of training will mean that fat never has a chance to build up as you’re always burning it, and as each set is so small it won’t seem like a massive undertaking. Believe it or not they can actually be quite fun. If your goal is simply to lose weight then this is a fantastic technique you’re unlikely to read about elsewhere. However if you are training to build muscle then don’t worry that you’re not getting a big rest, if you just do a couple of these it won’t really hurt your days off, it’ll just trigger your muscles into anabolic and catabolic work and burn excess fat – just don’t overdo it.

The other way to train ‘incidentally’ is to fit it more fundamentally into your lifestyle. This involves little lifestyle changes such as riding a bike to work, or even running. You can pretty much run anywhere in actual fact so long as you don’t get too sweaty. Going to the post office? Why not run? Getting a sandwich on your lunch break? Run! It’ll all add up to lots and lots of calories burned and great cardio fitness – training your heart and lungs as they’re meant to be trained – as an adaptation to your lifestyle, not an infrequent burst of activity.

So don’t shy away from any opportunity to tax yourself. Always pick the active option over the lazy or convenient one – take the stairs to your office, walk to the shops instead of driving (or run) and why not turn those shopping bags into dumbbells for a set of lunges rather than carrying them normally?

And never let yourself get bored – if you’re bored you could be doing a few exercises of any sort. That doesn’t just mean sit ups when you’re bored at home – if you’re bored waiting for a bus do calf raises on the curb! Just tensing your abs under your shirt can be a workout (great if someone is really boring you with their conversation) and you can do press ups against a wall while in the lift or waiting in the corridor to be seen (though you might look a little bit weird on the CCTV). Life is training and if you make it just that little bit more active you’ll reap the rewards in your fitness and in your physique.

Mack LeMouse

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