Rewinding back to our Paleolithic ancestors is a buzz at the moment in the fitness industry especially since the rising popularity of the ‘Paleo’ Diet where we try and mimic eating like we did in the caveman times.

Another aspect to look at during this era is how we moved.

The notion of primal patterns is the essential movement patterns required for survival in our habitat.

Essentially, if we could not perform these specific patterns then we would severely limit our chance of survival. After all, it is all about survival of the fittest!

I have been training primal patterns with my clients for many years with fantastic results. The body only knows movements not muscles so isolating muscles is a waste of time, unless you’re a bodybuilder!

We need to train the nervous system in a way it is designed.

Primal pattern training reduces risk of injury, improves co-ordination, strength, balance, speed and power.

Our Palaeolithic ancestors certainly didn’t find a tree branch to perform a few Bicep curls!

We’re an exact expression of what our ancestors were over 100,000 years ago.

As it’s believed it takes 100,000 years for 0.001% of a genome to change, we are then essentially the same as Primal Man.

Humans are hunters and gatherers and our bodies are designed to be able to carry out this function.

Nowadays, we just pop down to the grocery store to get our prey! We’ve become sedentary and do not move nearly as often as we should.

There are seven primal patterns that have been identified: Squatting, Bending, Lunging, Pushing, Pulling, Twisting and Gait – consisting of walking, jogging and running.

Every exercise we perform should comprise of one or more of these movements, which mean the seated Hip Adduction machine is out!

The truth is, most resistance machines in the gym are not ideal as you are limited to the number of patterns you can integrate together.

This leads me to training outdoors.

If you are one of those gym users who are bored of exercising indoors in a gym, staring at the calorie count on the treadmill or changing pins on the weight stack of a fixed machine then I encourage you to start exercising outside!

You can easily perform all these primal patterns in the great outdoors with little or no equipment more effectively than any machine-based workout stuck in the gym.