CATEGORY: training/anaerobic
TECHNICAL: *
SUMMARY:
This short note summarizes a thing known as "evolutionary
fitness" which is a strategy designed by Arthur De Vany to promote
health and longevity via diet and exercise. The main crux of
his work was to define a training program to take advantage of
the way we evloved. To a degree, I believe he's done that.
In fact, I agree mostly with his suggestions. I have another
article that goes into greater detail about his plan. For now,
I just send this note. In a short while I will post my complete
training program to the list and show you how it is very similar
to his. He focuses on intensity and variety, and that is a key
to any successfull program.
The program I have to offer uses something similar but
defines itself in more specific terms. You will hear things like
"progressive overload", "holistic training", and "periodization".
Those 3 things have combined to help me surpass my wildest
expectations in the gym, and they will help you too.
Suffice it to say that, if you train scientifically,
strength plateaus will be a thing of the past..

-------------------------------------------------------------

Arthur De Vany's EVOLUTIONARY FITNESS
Copyright © 1995 by Arthur De Vany.

This is a brief description of my in-progress book on the
evolutionary diet and physical fitness program. You may download this for
personal reading but may not redistribute or archive without permission.
The book should be published in 1998.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Introduction

Evolutionary Fitness is a result of my personal and scientific quest
to stay fit and young. It combines my experience as a professional and
amateur athlete, and as someone who has spent more than 40 years
exercising, with my scientific interests in evolution and complex adaptive
systems. It begins with the premise that our bodies and minds are adapted
to an ancient environment that passed more than 10,000 years ago. We
evolved as hunter-gatherers over at least three million years and that
lifeway shapes our attributes, behaviors, and capabilities as human
beings. It is by understanding the hunter-gatherer adaptation and
incorporating the activity and eating patterns of our ancestral lifeway
that we can live a natural and healthy life in a modern world that is very
different from the one in which human beings evolved.

Darwin and Fitness

In developing this idea, I take the Darwinian approach that has been
so successful in the new fields of evolutionary psychology and medicine
and apply it to physical fitness. But, I integrate a Darwinian perspective
with the theory of chaos and complex systems. A deeper look at the
evolutionary record, the new revelations in the biological sciences, my
scientific work in complex systems, and my own personal experience as a
life-long student of fitness tell me that the right model for
understanding health and fitness must combine insights from evolution and
chaos.

Non Linear Systems

When the body is viewed as a complex adaptive system exploiting
evolved mechanisms, it becomes clear that conventional thinking about
diets and obesity is wrong. The human organism is an open energy system,
operating far from equilibrium. Diet and exercise programs that are mired
in linear thinking are completely inappropriate for understanding human
energy metabolism.

The primary objectives for any exercise and diet program must be to
counter hyperinsulemia (chronically elevated insulin) and hypoexertion
(wasting the body's lean mass through inactivity)---these are the number
one health risks according to the National Institutes of Health. A natural
diet, based on the evolutionary record effectively counters
hyperinsulemia. Intermittent, intense exercise in brief spurts promotes
hormone drives that quench hyperinsulemia and build muscle and bone
density that keep you young and lean.

Ancestral Dynamic Patterns

Intermittent, intense, and playful exercise mimics the activity
patterns that were essential to the emergence and evolution of the human
species. High intensity, intermittent and brief training mixed with power
walking and play is closer than aerobic exercise, high volume weight
training, or sedentism to how our ancestors lived. We are hunter-gatherers
and have been for all of human and pre-human history. Only 15,000 years
have passed since the last Ice Age, not long enough for bodies suited for
the sedentary modern age to have evolved. If such bodies ever do evolve
they cannot have our minds, for the human mind evolved to live in a brain
adapted to an energetic, versatile and dynamic body.

Fitness from Chaos

In the book, I present new technology for exercise --- power law
training --- that is, in reality, as ancient as life itself. Power law
training is the technology consistent with the chaotic natural dynamics
that science finds in all living things; it matches the rhythm of life
itself and is found in the movements of wild animals, healthy heart beats,
neuronal dynamics in the brain, and the music of Bach.

Mind-Body Integration

Our brains and bodies are dynamic objects that thrive on challenge
and movement; intermittent intensity brings key adaptations in hormone
drives, neurological function, and body composition. The mixture of
variety, intermittent intensity, and play bind perception and kinesthetics
to create a dynamic and positive self image which is the reference point
on which our knowledge and living are organized. Movement and play build
muscle and cognitive maps in the brain and repair the mind/body continuum.

The Big Idea

Your brain and body are evolved for life in 40,000 BC; take care of
the hunter gatherer body and mind that you carry in that pin-striped suit.

Outline of the Book

Figuring out how our ancestors lived occupies the first part of the
book. Understanding what these ancestral living patterns mean in terms of
body/mind processes is the challenge I tackle in the second part of the
book. The disease that results from adaptations to modern living patterns
is the puzzle I investigate in the third part of the book. Learning to
live and eat like it is 40,000 BC while living in this modern world and
enjoying what it has to offer is the challenge I take up in the last part
of the book.

The Author

I am not a "trainer to the stars" or a reformed overeater (the most
common types of authors in this genre), but I am a scientist and athlete
and a successful example of what I preach. At 60 years of age, I look
like a Cro-Magnon ancestor from the Paleolithic: 6' 1", 205 pounds with a
dense and athletic musculature and less than 8% body fat.

Based on body composition, strength, flexibility, reaction time, and
blood profile, a research institute rates my biological age at 32. Not so
remarkable when you understand that what we call aging in this modern
world really is the accumulated damage of inactivity and dietary abuse.
Hunter gatherers don't age like Westerners do.

Art De Vany, age 60, September 1997

------------------------------------------------------------------------

:cool: TJ :cool: