The Art of Manliness - What You Can (Really) Learn About Exercise from Your Human Ancestors

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast we all know how

00:00:11.820 indisputably good exercise is for you yet a lot of folks still find it a struggle to engage in

00:00:16.880 much physical activity to understand the reason that this conflict and tension exists and how

00:00:20.980 to overcome it it helps to understand the lies of our human ancestors though not the way popular

00:00:26.200 culture understands them but the way someone who's actually studied them understands them my

00:00:30.140 guest today is such an expert guide his name is daniel lieberman he's a harvard professor of human

00:00:34.660 evolutionary biology and the author of the book exercised why something we never evolved to do

00:00:39.180 is healthy and rewarding today on the show daniel shares what we can really learn from our ancestors

00:00:43.380 as to our modern relationship with exercise while debunking some of the popular myths about our

00:00:47.780 hunter-gatherer history we begin by talking about how very recent actually quite weird the whole

00:00:52.240 concept of exercise is we then discuss the fact that our ancestors are not the natural super

00:00:56.680 athletes we typically imagine what their state of physicality was really like and how understanding

00:01:00.820 their lifestyle can help us understand the competing interest going on our own minds and bodies that

00:01:05.100 can leave us feeling ambivalent about getting up and moving around we then discuss if as it's been

00:01:09.480 said sitting is the new smoking and the less and more healthy ways to sit daniel impacts whether we're

00:01:14.160 evolved for running how our ancestors strength compares to our own and whether or not exercise

00:01:18.340 actually helps us lose weight and we in our conversation with how this background on the

00:01:22.000 past can help us in the present by showing us the two factors that are critical in helping us

00:01:26.020 moderns make exercise a regular habit after the show is over check out our show notes at

00:01:30.200 aom.is slash exercised all right daniel lieberman welcome to the show thank you so much so you are a

00:01:45.900 harvard professor professor of biological anthropology you've studied the evolution and physical activity in

00:01:51.180 humans all your career and you yourself are someone who's a marathon you're into fitness

00:01:54.940 but as you observe in your book exercised a lot of people struggle to exercise even though they know

00:02:00.860 it's good for them they should be doing it the doctor probably might have said that you need to start

00:02:04.000 exercising more and one reason you make this case in your book our bodies really aren't evolved for

00:02:09.180 exercise well it's not really so much that the human body didn't evolve to exercise it's really the

00:02:14.300 human mind that didn't evolve to exercise so so exercise is a kind of physical activity so you

00:02:20.360 know physical activity is just moving right when you go downstairs to make yourself a cup of tea or

00:02:23.840 or walk the dog or or carry groceries across the supermarket or go hunting or or whatever that's all physical

00:02:30.040 activity and exercise is discretionary voluntary physical activity that we undertake for the sake of

00:02:35.700 health and fitness so we did evolve to be active it's just that nobody ever evolved to go for a five mile

00:02:40.840 jog in the morning or nobody evolved to go to the gym and lift weights whose sole purpose was to be

00:02:45.080 lifted that's a really very modern strange behavior that essentially we created after the industrial

00:02:50.580 revolution when when we created you know when we have all these machines that do our work for us and

00:02:55.180 so people don't have to do labor anymore in certain parts of the world and we've had to substitute

00:02:59.560 exercise for the physical activity that we used to have to do i feel like your book argues that studying

00:03:04.700 our ancestors can help us wrap our minds around this very modern thing of exercise but not in the way

00:03:11.540 the popular culture thinks you know like part of your book is about what the positive things are what we

00:03:17.040 can actually learn from our ancestors and we're going to talk about that here in a bit but part of it's

00:03:21.240 also about debunking the myths around what we can learn from our ancestors about exercise and one myth

00:03:27.700 that seems to kind of underlie all the other myths is what you call the myth of the athletic savage

00:03:34.000 i'm guessing you're playing off the idea of the noble savage here what do you mean by the myth of the

00:03:38.240 athletic savage well we have this sort of idea it's a very popular idea out there that you know

00:03:43.220 modern human beings people like you and me and and people listening to this have been sort of

00:03:48.000 contaminated by civilization you know because we have shoes and gatorade and you know fancy watches and

00:03:54.280 and all that sort of stuff that that we sort of no longer kind of great athletes that we were

00:03:59.500 you know that humans are normally meant to be and so you get this idea that if you know people in

00:04:04.620 just just like the myth of the noble savage you know that that people who are uncontaminated by

00:04:09.440 civilization are naturally good and perfect and their children don't go through adolescence and

00:04:14.140 all that sort of stuff we have this idea that you know people who aren't contaminated by civilization

00:04:17.920 can get up in the morning and just run ultra marathons and that they're incredibly strong and that

00:04:21.880 you know and that they don't get injured and that they're flexible and you know the list goes on right

00:04:26.580 and i find that really troubling and disturbing because it's actually kind of not only is it not

00:04:31.660 true but it's also very dehumanizing you know the people in other parts of the world when they

00:04:35.820 participate in an impressive physical activity you know in long races or whatever it's not easy for

00:04:41.440 them either and they're working hard they're trying and they do it because they care because it's

00:04:46.120 worth it to them and and i think we need to get rid of this myth well so yeah i think a lot of times

00:04:52.300 when we think about oh we should exercise because our hunter-gatherer ancestors moved all the time

00:04:57.420 and were strenuous all the time but part of your work is you go to you know we can't go back in time

00:05:03.640 and see how people tens of thousands of years ago has actually lived but we you know you can look at

00:05:08.600 hunter-gatherer societies that exist today and get an idea of what it was like so when you actually

00:05:14.020 go visit and you do and you study like an anthropologist like do the field work how how do hunter-gatherer

00:05:21.060 people actually move their bodies and their level of physical activity well so most of my research is

00:05:26.680 not actually on hunter-gatherers i study subsistence farmers we've been looking at the transition from

00:05:30.980 farming to urban lifestyle in kenya and mexico but i have had the the good fortune to go spend some time

00:05:37.560 with hunter-gatherers and read the literature so so the data i've collected hasn't really been on

00:05:41.520 hunter-gatherers i've certainly report a lot of those data in my book and but when you spend time

00:05:45.920 with hunter-gatherers or for that matter people who don't have machines and cars and you know roads

00:05:51.200 and shoes and all that sort of stuff they're not actually all that different from us they're they're

00:05:55.860 physically active and in the sense that they do have to work but they don't work a huge amount

00:05:59.720 every day a typical hunter-gatherer works about two two and a quarter hours a day and if you hang

00:06:03.920 out in camp which i've had the good fortune to do most of the time people are just doing what you

00:06:08.660 know we're doing which is kind of hanging out they sit about 10 hours a day they're doing chores

00:06:13.660 they're you know taking care of their kids they're you know gossiping and they're really you know out

00:06:18.660 only about half the day doing doing work and it's mostly not that strenuous and they're not super

00:06:24.180 strong they're just kind of average ordinary people but but they're struggling to get food right it's not

00:06:29.220 easy for them to get food and so so when food is limited right when energy is limited then you have

00:06:34.800 to engage in trade-offs just like time right time is a clearly limited resource right so the time that

00:06:40.040 you're spending listening to me now is time that you're not spending doing something else that's

00:06:43.500 probably more useful right and and the same is true of energy right if i like i went for a five

00:06:48.660 mile run this morning just for the sake of going for a five mile run but if i were energy limited

00:06:53.820 and already had to be physically active to actually survive those 500 calories that i spent i could have

00:06:59.240 much better used for reproduction for taking care of my body for all kinds of good things well speaking

00:07:04.260 of running you begin the book kind of sort of showing the dichotomy of how people think about

00:07:09.500 exercise so you talk about us in the west yeah you go for a five mile run just because there's

00:07:14.180 people who dedicate their lives to training for ultra marathons and every day they're running but

00:07:19.600 then you also talk about this group of people i think it's the tara humara in mexico these are the

00:07:25.060 folks they they do they have like a ritual basically where they run like a race a really long race barefoot

00:07:30.040 oftentimes or just wearing sandals i think born to run really popular yeah they they do not run

00:07:36.380 barefoot by the way that's one of the myths okay so another myth that but they were kind of like

00:07:40.120 sandals right i think i think a very minimal shoe oftentimes yeah but you know i think you you talk

00:07:46.340 to them and you you tried i think you you talked about how you explained them yeah what do you think

00:07:50.500 about like americans like they run every day like 10 miles a day why don't you guys do that like to get

00:07:56.160 ready for this long race and they kind of looked at you like that's weird why would you why would

00:08:00.580 you run 10 miles every day if you didn't have to like i just do this race when i because it means

00:08:04.600 something to us and that's it yeah well that was really the origin of the book look the reason the

00:08:09.280 book is entitled exercised is because people today are exercised about exercise they're nervous they're

00:08:15.120 anxious and they're they're confused and they're fed all kinds of myths and they don't know how what

00:08:19.360 to think and and i think the biggest myth about exercise is that you're so it's normal and natural

00:08:25.240 to do and that if you don't do it there's something wrong with you and you're lazy and and yes it is good

00:08:30.020 for you i'm not arguing that exercise is bad for you but it's important to realize that you know just

00:08:34.740 going for a five mile run for the sake of going for a five mile run is a very strange and modern

00:08:38.580 behavior and so you know that to me was made crystal clear when i was doing the first time i went to do

00:08:45.300 research with the tara humara and i was talking to some runners and you know interviewing them about how

00:08:50.900 they get ready to run and this was my first time down there and i was trying to ask them about how

00:08:56.020 they trained i had my list of you know i was being a good anthropologist i had my list of questions

00:08:59.640 and everybody was sort of really confused about this question because there's no apparently there's

00:09:03.860 no word for training in in ramari the the language that they speak and so the translator i was working

00:09:08.680 with was working really hard to try to explain this and there was this one guy she was basically

00:09:13.520 saying look you know this gringo he runs like five miles every morning in order to get ready to 1.00

00:09:17.080 you know to run races and he looked at me with astonishment he said why would anybody run if they

00:09:22.260 didn't have to and and i remember laughing a little bit out of embarrassment but that was that

00:09:26.000 moment i suddenly realized you know exercise is yet another one of these very modern things that we

00:09:31.620 we have a very strange attitudes towards it yes it's good for us but let's not pretend that it's

00:09:36.860 abnormal to dislike exercise remember 80 percent of americans don't get the minimum levels of physical

00:09:42.440 activity that that that are recommended by every health organization on the planet right and it's not

00:09:47.640 that there's something wrong with those folks they're actually kind of normal and and we need to

00:09:51.180 understand that in order to help them do better so yeah running is or exercise is weird exercise

00:09:57.840 is weird absolutely there's lots of other weird things that we do i mean think about well i mean

00:10:01.520 obviously right now we're talking over a computer and and reading is weird right until recently nobody

00:10:06.180 read i mean reading is a completely modern behavior a few thousand years ago not a human being on the

00:10:10.880 planet read you know our lives are filled with weird things they're not necessarily bad but we have to

00:10:16.000 it's it's useful to step out of our kind of normal life and and think about how our world has changed

00:10:21.660 and understand how that affects the way we can we can do better so one thing you do in one chapter you

00:10:27.580 explore you know how we think about exercise a day you to figure that out you explore like what happens

00:10:33.660 when our bodies do nothing when they're inactive so like what it's like what first off what happens

00:10:38.800 what's going on in our bodies and we just kind of not do anything and then what insights can we get

00:10:43.540 about exercise by understanding what's going on in our bodies when we're inactive well that's a huge

00:10:50.240 question but i'll try to i'll try to kind of nail it to the you know focus on the key issues the first

00:10:56.240 is when we're doing nothing we're just sitting around on a couch or you know just hanging out our

00:11:00.760 bodies are actually doing a lot right two-thirds of the metabolic energy the energy that you spend

00:11:05.240 every day are just taking care of the basic functions of your body right so during rest your

00:11:10.260 body's actually spending a lot of calories taking care of your brain and you know regenerating all

00:11:14.880 the cells and throughout your body and you know keeping you healthy and fighting disease and you

00:11:20.420 know the list is very very long you spend about typical human male spends probably about 16

00:11:25.520 1700 calories a day just just existing right and when we exercise we do two things first of all we spend

00:11:33.240 energy just moving right so muscles you know muscles consume a lot of energy as we all know

00:11:37.800 so when we when we lift heavy weights or or go for a run or or whatever it is you like to do you're

00:11:43.780 spending energy to do that movement you know to pay for the the cost of the muscle but you're also

00:11:48.540 stressing your body you're generating all kinds of little bits of damage you're creating little

00:11:54.380 micro cracks in your bone and your muscle your your your mitochondria are producing are called

00:11:59.640 reactive oxygen species these are these are highly reactive molecules that that's more or less rust

00:12:04.720 your body you know like like an apple when it turns brown your dna is mutating you're producing

00:12:09.580 you're producing waste products like lactate and one of the things that exercise does is it also turns on

00:12:14.520 all kinds of repair and maintenance mechanisms that keep our bodies functioning really well and here's

00:12:19.540 the key because we never evolved not to be physically active right nobody ever could be a couch potato

00:12:24.080 24 7 back in the old days right we never evolved to turn on these repair and maintenance mechanisms

00:12:29.300 as effectively as you know just sitting around right and so that's really the key as to why

00:12:34.960 exercise you know physical activity in general but exercise in particular is so healthy because

00:12:39.620 without it we our bodies basically break down right and and physical activity keeps our bodies young

00:12:46.020 and healthy but there's also a point that there's kind of a there's two things going on there the

00:12:50.840 other on the other side though is like your body from an evolutionary standpoint they don't want to expend

00:12:55.320 calories or energy that they don't doesn't have to expend for survival or reproduction so there's

00:13:01.180 sort of a battle okay you need to move to repair your body and keep yourself physically healthy but

00:13:05.740 it's like if you go too much it's like wow man that's calories i could have stayed you know i could

00:13:10.560 have kept on for that famine that's going to come in a couple of months right yeah so back back in

00:13:15.860 until recently you know people were calorie limited they struggled to get enough calories right

00:13:19.760 and but they were also very physically active because every calorie they got in their body

00:13:23.920 was the result of work that they had to do you had to go out and you know forage for plants you had to

00:13:29.040 go out and get honey you had to go out and hunt animals you had to go out and do everything right

00:13:33.780 there was no machines to do anything for you whatsoever and so there was no way not to be

00:13:38.460 physically active as i said before you know the average hunter gatherers and spends about two and a

00:13:42.640 quarter hours a day in moderate to vigorous physical activity right and so in conditions like that

00:13:47.200 you know if you spend any extra energy on physical activity that doesn't benefit you in some way

00:13:53.360 that's not a good idea so so we evolved to be physically active for two reasons and two reasons

00:13:57.680 only right when it was necessary and when it was rewarding right so our ancestors also played they

00:14:03.360 danced they did fun things right and but that also has benefits it has social benefits it has you

00:14:08.760 know playing is important for developing capacities play is important for developing social skills play is

00:14:14.400 important for learning not to be you know reactively aggressive and you know learn learn good sportsmanship

00:14:19.900 dancing is of course every culture on the planet also has dancing and dancing is great for finding

00:14:24.660 mates and enjoying yourself and telling stories and you know healing who knows what but so those are the

00:14:31.240 reasons we were physically active but you know going to the gym is you know work and you know for me

00:14:35.260 the obviously sort of apotheosis of sort of how absurd exercises is a treadmill right that's why it's on the

00:14:41.460 cover of the book right because you know a treadmill you think about it you pay a lot of money either to

00:14:45.800 go to a gym or buy one yourself to work on a machine that gets you absolutely nowhere it gets you know

00:14:50.820 it's you know it's good for you but it's a very very strange thing imagine trying to explain that to

00:14:56.060 your you know great great great great great great grandparents so i mean that's part of the reason

00:15:00.040 why what makes being motivated to exercise so hard at least the way we think of exercise today it's

00:15:04.680 like there's not really any immediate reward doesn't get you food doesn't allow you to survive

00:15:09.440 and if you're on a treadmill it's like that's not really motivating so you're just like well

00:15:13.680 your body's like well you know what not really worth it i think i'll just sit on i'll just stay

00:15:17.960 home and take it easy yeah absolutely i mean i i hate treadmill i put people on treadmills for a

00:15:24.100 living and i can't stand using a treadmill i always i have to coerce myself in various ways you

00:15:28.720 know i have to watch something on tv or listen to a podcast or something it's the only way i can ever

00:15:33.140 tolerate a treadmill we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:15:36.500 and now back to the show all right so we need to move for health for survival but again there's

00:15:44.840 this sort of battle we don't want to move too much because there's like no immediate reward for that

00:15:49.320 we need to save calories so we're battling against that a little bit but going you know going further

00:15:55.760 this idea of inactivity one thing you've seen you know people or health websites magazines books hit

00:16:01.760 really hard is this idea of that sitting sitting is the new smoking and we've had i think we've had

00:16:06.740 someone a pod we've had a podcast about this i've talked about the benefits of standing decks on the

00:16:10.520 website and so when i read this like well is sitting really the new smoking what does the research say

00:16:16.400 about that yeah so i think sitting is a is like a perfect example of how we make people exercised about

00:16:22.900 about exercise and health and bodies etc right look everybody knows you don't need to be a scientist or

00:16:28.740 you know doctor or whatever to to realize that too much sitting is bad for you i mean that's kind of

00:16:33.220 obvious right but what we've done is you know to to exercise people about it right we've now claimed

00:16:38.040 that sitting is the new smoking and that your chair is out to kill you i mean and you don't i mean if i

00:16:43.800 were just an average ordinary person hearing somebody tell me that sitting is like like a cigarette i would

00:16:49.500 get suspicious right because it's obviously you know a cigarette is a is a form of toxin you know it's it's

00:16:54.440 poison that you're ingesting into your body and how can something as normal and and basic as sitting

00:16:59.460 be that bad for you right and i think if you look more carefully at the data it turns out that yes

00:17:05.200 if you sit too much that's a problem but but it's actually mostly leisure time sitting which is

00:17:10.440 associated with negative health outcomes so people who work you know at a job and are sitting at their

00:17:15.140 desk you know much of the day they're doing fine if they're still exercising and walking to work and

00:17:20.220 you know doing all those other sorts of things the folks who are really in trouble are the ones who

00:17:23.900 you know sit at their desk all day and then when they and then also they're sitting in their car

00:17:27.300 to get to work and then they're sitting in their car to get home and then they're sitting all evening

00:17:30.240 long and and basically they're never doing any physical activity so that's that's one issue we

00:17:34.340 shouldn't demonize sitting secondly it turns out that sitting is completely normal i mean you know

00:17:39.460 my dog spends the day sitting all over the house hunter-gatherers sit 10 hours a day so let's not

00:17:44.040 pretend sitting is something abnormal and modern and then third it turns out that there are healthier and

00:17:48.500 less healthy ways to sit so many studies show that what really matters is how long you sit for

00:17:53.500 what's called active sitting so you and i might both sit 10 hours a day but if i get up every 10

00:17:58.720 minutes and you get up only every 40 minutes my health outcome is going to be much much better than

00:18:03.340 yours and that's because you're turning on when you turn on muscles even even just a little bit it's

00:18:07.920 like turning on your car you're turning on all kinds of and you're turning on the engine you're

00:18:12.020 you're using up some fats and and sugars in your bloodstream you're turning on all kinds of

00:18:16.320 genes it's you know it's really healthy or if you like sitting in a chair that requires you to use

00:18:20.940 some muscles like right now i'm sitting at the edge of my chair i have a standing desk and i often

00:18:25.260 stand up but but but i'm not using a backrest right and so i'm having to use back muscles to

00:18:30.240 kind of stabilize my upper body and again that's using a little bit of energy it's not a lot of

00:18:34.160 energy but it's still kind of healthier than the kind of more passive sitting that people do so let's

00:18:39.380 not tell people that sitting is the new smoking let's help people get the correct information about

00:18:44.620 how to sit a little bit more healthily and and stop scaring them well and you what i love about this

00:18:49.620 chapter two is you explore okay if you're inactive or you sit for that like a long period of time that

00:18:54.560 leisure sitting you you get into the research like what's going on like why is it bad for your body

00:18:59.040 and basically it's your your body there's it's like a low-grade inflammation going on when you're

00:19:04.400 inactive for long periods of time that can cause all sorts of problems correct exactly so so so sitting

00:19:10.480 can be pro-inflammatory for two reasons the first is that you can add fat so if you're sitting all day

00:19:15.680 long and you're not getting any exercise any excess energy you're taking in well your body

00:19:20.860 will store its fat and that fat can cause this kind of low-grade inflammation basically your body is

00:19:25.100 starting to attack yourself and then the other reason is that if you're not being physically active

00:19:29.880 and you're not using your muscles it turns out your muscles are the major tissues right the major

00:19:36.640 tissues that actually produce molecules that turn down inflammation they're called myokines and and so

00:19:43.800 you know you have a lot more muscle than white blood cells which are also regulating inflammation

00:19:47.300 so when you're active you're you're not only preventing yourself from storing up excess fat which

00:19:53.120 promotes inflammation you're also turning on your muscles which then turn down inflammation so so

00:19:58.860 sitting a lot and being physically inactive is kind of a double whammy in that regard but but here's

00:20:03.500 the good news you don't need a huge amount of physical activity to get those benefits you know it's not

00:20:08.240 like you have to you know run a marathon or or go to the gym and lift you know ridiculous amounts of

00:20:12.820 weight do crossfit workouts i mean there's nothing wrong with any of that sort of stuff but but you

00:20:16.760 don't need that to get the benefits all right so don't don't beat yourself about sitting down

00:20:20.720 most of humans around the world even hunter-gatherers they spend a lot of time sitting they just

00:20:24.700 are a little bit more active when they sit yeah no it's it's not really very complicated well here's

00:20:30.560 a question so i've got like that feature on my iWatch where like tell it reminds me to stand

00:20:34.320 am i exercising myself like am i being exercised by sitting by having that feature is that do you

00:20:40.460 think that'd be is that helpful no it's cool it's fine i mean look whatever makes you happy

00:20:44.660 right i mean there's lots of ways to use technology i mean i'm not opposed to technology and just

00:20:48.720 because it's new doesn't mean it's bad yeah i mean you know i i try to find ways to force myself to

00:20:53.640 get up every once in a while too i don't have an iWatch but i you know i i intentionally have a coffee

00:20:58.480 mug that gets cold right so i go and you know warm it up again and things like that or my dog comes

00:21:03.100 and bothers me on a regular basis and i have to scritch her and you know i'm constantly trying to get up

00:21:07.280 i'm a fidgeter too so that helps me but you know whatever works for you is fine there's no

00:21:11.540 you know we shouldn't be you know let a thousand different ways of you know interrupting your

00:21:16.480 sitting bloom whatever works for you well the other idea you explore in the book is how you know

00:21:22.820 there's this idea that humans were evolved for endurance activities yeah and you know they'll point

00:21:28.880 to you know persistent hunters i think people have seen that youtube video i think it's in africa

00:21:33.740 these guys who just chase this gazelle or this antelope for miles until it just passes out and

00:21:39.140 dies and then they they do it like well yeah if humans evolved to do that well then maybe we should

00:21:43.740 run ultra marathons the conclusion well can you talk a little bit about what we know about humans

00:21:48.900 and endurance activities and is it should we make that i imagine the answer is no but should we make

00:21:54.400 that jump from well we did we're really good at persistent hunting so maybe we should also run ultra

00:21:59.120 marathons well i'm partly to blame for this this idea right because the research that i've done for

00:22:05.460 many years has been on the evolution of hunting and we were that you know my colleague dennis bramble

00:22:09.660 and i published that paper in in nature in 2004 it was entitled born to run that kind of got a lot of

00:22:15.320 this started right and i do believe there's no question that humans evolved to run long distances

00:22:19.920 and we evolved that around two million years ago in order to become scavengers and hunters it's

00:22:24.580 really important for us and and we have all kinds of adaptations in our bodies literally from our

00:22:28.680 heads to our toes that make us exceptional at long distance running but you know they didn't like

00:22:33.440 do that on a regular basis they didn't do it really fast and you don't necessarily need to do that in

00:22:38.460 order to get the health benefits of physical activity so if you like to run marathons which i do

00:22:43.600 right that's great if you like to run ultra marathons that's also great but we have this idea that just

00:22:48.000 because our ancestors did those kinds of runs that you know that's something that we necessarily have to

00:22:52.460 do and and that's certainly not the case it's it's something that's built into us and endurance is

00:22:57.620 definitely important for human health i mean if you look at every sort of study of the effects of

00:23:03.120 physical activity on health there's no question that that cardio you know that endurance physical

00:23:07.880 activity is sort of the bedrock of every major program right and it's really good for you in

00:23:12.340 a thousand ways it's good for your brain it's good for your metabolism it's good for your

00:23:15.980 your cardiovascular system on and on and on in fact and in fact we've published studies which show that

00:23:22.300 you know even if you do a lot of weight training it's the absence of cardio that can can result in

00:23:27.220 some degree of of health risk so so everybody should do some cardio but you don't need to do

00:23:32.680 an enormous amount of cardio to get the benefits but on the other hand if you if you like doing

00:23:38.020 ultra marathons or marathons that's also fine too and people are always worrying about if you can

00:23:42.000 exercise too much really there's there's very little evidence that you can exercise too much of course

00:23:46.800 there are very few people who actually get out there in terms of that that those distances and

00:23:50.860 so there's not a lot of information really well can we backtrack a little bit like talk about the

00:23:55.340 adaptations that make us great endurance athletes i put that in quotation marks so like yeah like

00:24:00.900 sweating sweating is one right so like humans can sweat most animals can't sweat what else has

00:24:05.860 made us good so we have thermoregulatory adaptations we have metabolic adaptations we have genes that help

00:24:10.800 us you know have higher aerobic capacity in terms of musculoskeletal adaptations we have springs in our

00:24:16.120 feet we have long achilles tendons we have short toes the gluteus maximus which you know most

00:24:20.840 of us are sitting on right that's a muscle that's enlarged in order to make us really good

00:24:24.520 at running we have specialized stabilizers in our head our arms when we pump our arms we have

00:24:30.420 abilities to actually use our arms to balance our head to keep our heads from bouncing so much

00:24:34.840 we have a ton of features in our bodies that make us really really good at long distance running

00:24:39.100 and that we can see many of these evolved around two million years ago and have been important parts

00:24:44.520 of our evolutionary history until recently pretty much you know running was something that

00:24:48.940 everybody had to do you couldn't be a hunter back in the old days unless you could run and hunting

00:24:52.780 was a very important part of our evolutionary history but we live in a world today where we

00:24:57.100 don't have to do that anymore and a lot of people have lost the skill of running very well and it's

00:25:02.360 which is too bad because i think it's it's the most fundamental basic kind of vigorous physical

00:25:06.440 activity but yeah so it's it's certainly part of who we are in part of your research you raced a

00:25:12.400 horse in a long distance or a bunch of horses in a long distance yeah that wasn't so much for

00:25:15.980 research that was kind of my money where my mouth was because you know i've been writing about

00:25:19.420 persistence hunting and and you know i'm not going to you know try to run a kudu down in the kalahari

00:25:24.940 that's actually illegal so i thought what i would do is try to join one of these men against horse

00:25:30.600 races so i ran one in in prescott arizona a few years ago and i had a blast it was a lot of fun

00:25:35.960 and you beat some horses yeah it was actually not too bad i mean look i'm a middle-aged professor

00:25:41.560 i'm not a super fast runner by any stretch of the imagination and there were i think 40

00:25:47.360 41 runners and 53 horses i think that year i can't remember the exact numbers and i beat

00:25:54.060 all but 13 of the horses so i beat like 40 horses and and the horses by the way get a veterinary

00:25:59.220 checkup which the which is subtracted from their time which the runners don't get so uh so uh you

00:26:04.660 know we had a kind of a horses had like a handicap so another idea that is out there because of

00:26:11.220 this athletic savage myth is that hunter-gatherer answers are caveman ancestors what do you want

00:26:17.020 to say they were a lot stronger than we are today uh what is your research found about that

00:26:22.880 well they're not i mean and and and it's actually kind of easy to explain why i mean look if you spend

00:26:29.000 time with with forages there's they're certainly strong i mean they're not weaklings by any stretch

00:26:32.640 of the imagination and and they're also kind of thin too so their muscles kind of really pop out too

00:26:37.140 so but but but they're not jacked up you know they're not like like weightlifters and in fact

00:26:42.080 it would be problematic for them to do that because because muscle's really expensive if you

00:26:46.820 you know anybody who's gone on a on a serious um you know weightlifting regime and really trying to

00:26:52.100 bulk up you know you know you have to eat a lot more because muscles are very expensive they're costly

00:26:56.600 tissues and so extra muscle the reason we have this kind of use it lose it kind of biology is that

00:27:02.180 you know you want to put on muscle when you need it but you don't want any extra muscle for when

00:27:05.820 because otherwise you have to you know you need x you need hundreds of extra calories every day to

00:27:09.940 pay for that all that muscle mass right and if you're struggling to get enough calories you know

00:27:14.740 too much muscle is just not a good thing and and the kinds of tasks that our ancestors did you know

00:27:19.620 required some degree of strength but not a huge amount of strength so so you know hunter-gatherers are

00:27:24.400 you know they're moderately strong they're like you know grip strength tests suggest they're about you

00:27:29.580 know 75th percentile for for standard americans or brits or something like that but the key thing

00:27:35.760 is that as they age they they remain relatively strong right because they're still using their

00:27:40.960 bodies as they get older whereas a lot of americans for example as we get older we um we end up getting

00:27:47.000 a disease called sarcopenia where we get wasting of our muscles and and that is a really serious thing

00:27:53.060 because that kind of frailty leads to a vicious circle right you know we've all seen elderly people 1.00

00:27:58.640 who have trouble getting out of chairs and they end up walking really slowly and you know tasks become

00:28:03.140 become more difficult they become compromised in their ability to to function and when that happens

00:28:08.680 then you become less physically active which keeps driving that cycle forward right and so as we get

00:28:14.200 older it's exercise is not less important exercise becomes more important and and that's one of the

00:28:20.000 reasons why it's so critical as we get older in this modern world where we've got machines do everything

00:28:24.860 for us that we that we but we do weights right you know it's good to do you know at least two bouts of

00:28:29.860 resistance training a week as you get older in kind of western environments like ours because

00:28:34.420 it prevents that kind of muscle wasting it's really critical now this chapter resonated with me because

00:28:39.660 i'm a i lift weights that's my chosen modality of physical fitness and yeah like muscle is clerical

00:28:46.680 like the worst part of like i do power lifting the worst part is often the eating part because you

00:28:50.540 just like eat all and you're like i don't want to eat this like i don't want to eat this but you

00:28:55.000 if you want to and then also in my coach my barbell coach makes this point about when it comes to

00:28:59.420 strength training he says with strength training there's like a meter like you there's you'll reach

00:29:03.660 a point where okay exercise you need to do strength changes for general health right if you want if

00:29:07.040 you're older person so you can get up off the floor get up off the toilet you know avoid that

00:29:11.580 what you talked about the degradation of muscle but then he says if you there's a point where strength

00:29:16.360 training becomes unhealthy and you're you're basically training for competition you know you don't

00:29:21.720 you don't need to deadlift 600 pounds but if you want to you have to understand like there are risks

00:29:26.600 of going after that goal and of course i went after the goal and i did it was i mean i look at my what

00:29:31.520 i'm doing i'm like i could not do this if i lived in 1700s this would not be possible because i wouldn't

00:29:37.160 have won the food to be able to do it and i just wouldn't have the time it's kind of it's a luxury

00:29:41.120 when you step back and think about it yeah absolutely yeah and you know it's it's as strange as you

00:29:47.300 know my running five miles this morning for no reason at all right except my running five miles this

00:29:51.500 morning was probably a little bit on the healthier side than you're trying to deadlift i don't know

00:29:54.940 how many hundred pounds 600 pounds yeah that's uh that's impressive yeah not not not something i

00:30:00.820 ever want to do yeah i have to say i struggle to do weights uh but okay but the idea though we do

00:30:05.560 need strength training because especially as you get older because you want to avoid that muscle

00:30:09.840 degradation it's critical yeah we all need to be like ruth bader ginsburg and and the good news is

00:30:15.180 really cool evidence is that as you get older right you know you're it's it's inevitable that you

00:30:20.920 won't stay as strong but it's there are studies showing like an 80 year old people 90 year old

00:30:26.500 people when they do strength training they still get the benefits right they can still put on muscle

00:30:30.680 you know you can't put on as much muscle in your 80s as you can in your 20s but you can you can still

00:30:36.380 recruit you know the the stem cells to add muscle mass so there's it's never too late to to try to do

00:30:42.400 this let's talk about this other idea that you explore in the book that was always interesting so

00:30:46.760 we got two i think people have heard two conflicting messages about exercising from the popular health

00:30:52.800 press one is you need exercise to lose weight because it burns calories then they also see

00:30:57.920 research saying well actually no exercise doesn't do much for weight loss it's all diet and so they're

00:31:03.380 like what do i what do i do like should i exercise so which one is it yeah that's a that's a perfect

00:31:10.260 example of how exercise we are about exercise and how we get fed these little kind of sound bites you

00:31:15.280 know this one study comes out this other study comes out people just get whiplash and they get

00:31:19.020 confused and they have no idea how to interpret what's going on and so and weight loss is nothing

00:31:24.900 nothing seems to top weight loss in terms of this regard so so it is true if you're trying to lose

00:31:29.440 weight you are way better off dieting than exercising because you know like for example i went for a five

00:31:35.780 mile run this morning i burned 500 calories but if i had just basically you know not eaten a few slices of

00:31:41.380 bacon i could easily have not had those 500 calories right so it's just way easier to go into what we

00:31:46.720 call negative energy balance through dieting than exercise so that's kind of where a lot of the don't

00:31:52.620 bother exercising to lose weight idea comes the other of course the issue is that when you exercise you

00:31:57.500 get hungry and so you make up some of those those calories that you you otherwise um spent which is

00:32:03.800 also true but it turns out that a lot of the experiments that have been done have been done on really

00:32:08.660 kind of modest levels of exercise remember the the kind of minimum that everybody recommends is 150

00:32:13.520 minutes a week that's what the world health organization says every human being should do so

00:32:17.280 a lot of the studies look at just 150 minutes a week of sort of moderate physical activity that's

00:32:22.460 like 21 minutes a day of going for a brisk walk right which burns like you know it burns like like 50

00:32:28.280 calories it's not a lot of a lot of energy right and so surprise surprise people who do that kind of

00:32:33.440 very short you know those modest levels of physical activity which is good for them they're not

00:32:38.280 losing weight or they're not losing very much weight but but studies that look at more exercise

00:32:43.180 i do find that it actually is effective for losing weight and even more importantly but you're not

00:32:48.980 going to lose a lot of it you know or really rapidly so if you're really trying to lose a lot of pounds

00:32:53.020 you know exercise is just not going to do for it but you but you can lose weight slowly and

00:32:57.160 gradually by exercising but more importantly exercise has been shown physical activity has been shown

00:33:02.940 to help us prevent weight gain or weight regain so a lot of people on diets they lose the weight

00:33:07.540 and then it comes crashing back again after the diet is over right but physical activity has been

00:33:12.820 shown to help us not gain weight in the first place but also to help not regain weight once

00:33:17.840 you've lost it and there are lots of studies a good one one i cite in the book for example is one that

00:33:22.480 was done here in boston on policemen so they had a bunch of policemen who were you know overweight

00:33:26.780 and they had had them go on a serious diet and some went on a diet and exercise and some just died

00:33:31.860 alone and then after that they all lost you know tons of weight they all lost a lot of pounds i can't

00:33:36.860 remember exactly and then after the diet was over the ones who continued to exercise kept the weight

00:33:41.680 off and the ones who didn't continue to exercise just they went right back up to their original weight

00:33:46.080 that's one of just many many many studies so so you know let's not exaggerate the benefits of

00:33:52.040 exercise for weight loss but let's also not completely discount them and i think pretty much

00:33:56.420 everybody kind of knows that intuitively too right i think so too so i mean i think what you're trying

00:34:01.800 to do in this book and you kind of in this in your book talking about this is that you get it going you

00:34:05.720 don't want people to be exercised or like frustrated or whatever about exercise and we saw like a lot of

00:34:10.940 these myths that we have about exercise in the popular culture you know our hunter-gatherer ancestors

00:34:14.940 like they they ran all the time yeah they sometimes they ran long distance but most of the time they

00:34:19.620 sat around just like us sitting isn't bad for you don't feel bad about that you know endurance yes we

00:34:24.640 evolved to run long distance doesn't doesn't necessarily mean you have to do that and but i

00:34:29.240 think you what you're i think your goal here is you want people to not feel frustrated or flush about

00:34:32.900 exercise and you know the exercise is good for them you want people to exercise but like just don't

00:34:37.980 beat yourself up about what type of exercise or how much you do yeah i mean look i mean the way in the

00:34:43.880 modern world what we've done with exercise we've we've done with exercise what we've done with so many

00:34:47.840 other things we've commodified it we've industrialized it we've commercialized it we've medicalized it

00:34:53.920 right we prescribe it um and you know there's nothing wrong with any of those things i mean i

00:34:58.480 i i like to buy fancy schmancy things and i you know i talk to there's you know medical exercise

00:35:04.260 is healthy right so it's doctors shouldn't tell their patients to to be physically active but it

00:35:09.720 doesn't work for everybody right and medicalizing and prescribing things is is just clearly not

00:35:14.260 enough and it confuses people and it makes people irritated and pissed off sometimes you know people

00:35:19.360 nag and brag about exercising and you know i call those folks exorcists so really the argument of 0.96

00:35:24.900 the book is to is to let's step away from this industrialized commercialized commodified medicalized

00:35:30.400 view of exercise and let's use the lenses of anthropology and evolution to think about it when you do that

00:35:36.260 you know a lot of these myths just disappear and a lot of these things that are so confusing and

00:35:41.980 complicated to sort of disappear because it's you know we evolved to be physically active but we also

00:35:47.080 didn't evolve to to run marathons and to you know and to you know do crazy stuff and we never evolved

00:35:52.720 to sit around all day long and and you know we evolved to basically move when it was necessary

00:35:56.740 and fun so the simple the simple solution is to is to make moving necessary and fun in this strange

00:36:03.680 world we live in where we now we have to choose to be physically active instead of have to be

00:36:07.780 physically active and and we just made it needlessly you know confusing and complicated yeah i think

00:36:12.740 that's the biggest takeaway that we can learn from our ancestors if we want to start exercising

00:36:16.860 regularly we just got to figure out how to make exercise necessary and fun and with the fun part

00:36:23.500 we've had a sexual psychologist on the podcast talking about that and she just says yeah do

00:36:28.120 something that you enjoy but the way you figure out what you enjoy is you have to try a bunch of

00:36:31.720 different stuff and maybe you figure out that you like running maybe you like weightlifting maybe

00:36:36.060 it's yoga tennis whatever but with the necessary part of the equation how do you make something

00:36:42.080 that's unnecessary necessary without infringing on somebody's autonomy yeah well i had fun going to

00:36:50.380 the bjorn board company which actually requires all its workers to exercise but you know i think the way

00:36:54.960 to tell people do that is to make it social right for most people right the things that are most fun

00:37:00.200 or that's one of the things that's been problematic with this pandemic is we don't see each other

00:37:03.800 anymore right but being social is is is is a fantastic way to be physically active so like

00:37:09.680 this morning was a perfect example for me every thursday morning i go running with some friends

00:37:13.760 we do track workouts and i didn't want to go this morning you know it was it's kind of cold here and

00:37:18.680 it's kind of gray and you know it's like but i have to be out there and and i went out there and

00:37:23.480 we were all like pushing each other and helping each other do intervals and and it was a lot of fun

00:37:27.840 and i'm really glad i went right and if i hadn't you know we hadn't emailed each other the night

00:37:31.820 before saying hey we're gonna meet this morning at eight o'clock i probably wouldn't have been out

00:37:35.100 there but i'm really glad i did it because that kind of forced me to go and then when i was there

00:37:40.020 it gave me all the feedback and encouragement that i needed to kind of you know haul my body around the

00:37:45.400 around the track and and it was a good thing and you know there's lots of ways to do that go dancing or

00:37:50.720 you know meet a friend for a walk or or or you know a game of soccer or whatever it is that you like

00:37:56.240 to do there's tons of ways to do it but but making it social is one of many ways but i think it's the

00:38:01.620 most basic simple and fundamental way to to help make exercise both necessary and fun yeah never

00:38:07.940 underestimate peer pressure absolutely use it for good but use it for positive stuff all right well

00:38:14.800 daniel this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book and your

00:38:17.700 work well so we have a website if you just kind of google me you can find me quickly my lab has a

00:38:22.920 website with lots of information and and penguin random house is a website for the book and yeah it

00:38:28.260 shouldn't be too hard to to find me and find more information but of course it's all in the book

00:38:32.440 fantastic well daniel lieberman thanks for your time it's been a pleasure oh it's been my pleasure

00:38:35.860 thanks for asking me my guest today was daniel lieberman he's the author of the book exercised

00:38:41.000 it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can check out our show notes at

00:38:44.480 aom.is slash exercised where you find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:38:48.900 well that wraps up another edition of the a1 podcast check out our website at art of manliness.com

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00:39:29.120 this is brett mckay reminding you not to listen to the a1 podcast but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - March 10, 2021

What You Can (Really) Learn About Exercise from Your Human Ancestors

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