Hi, I'm Kevin Don, the Get Fit Guy, and I'm back again with your weekly installment of fitness facts and fallacies.

So sit back, relax and enjoy as I explore what primal training is and reveal if I think you should be training like an early proto-human.

Now, if you're a regular listener of the show, you'll know that I'm a big fan of defining things by

etymology. For me, words have meanings. So what does primal mean? In terms of you may come across primal movement, primal strength, primal training, even primal diet or primal nutrition.

Well, the word primal comes from a Latin word primus, which means first.

Therefore, primal training would or should relate to the movement patterns and needs of the

first humans. Now, obviously, the needs of early man 200,000 years ago when Earth was shared with

larger, stronger, and more sturdy Neanderthals, who shared the same hunting grounds,

were very different. There was that physical competition for resources, and of course, the

resources themselves sometimes bit back, saber-toothed tigers being one example.

Now, with the advent of agriculture only being 12,000 years ago,

it's safe to say that primal man was therefore a hunter-gatherer

and that the functional needs of their survival would have involved running,

stalking prey, brachiating or climbing,

swimming, throwing, carrying, pushing, pooling. So on the surface,

so far, I really like the sound of this. Why wouldn't we want to train this way and respect that

underlying primate brain and its natural way of doing things? Well, because like all other types of training you can do,

this is going to be something that's taught by an instructor who's gone and done a certificate in

primal training. This means we're going to end up in a scenario where instructor bias comes in,

where the coach will teach either what they themselves can perform or what they enjoy.

But also, these training situations are going to be run in the most profitable way, and that's

as a class. So you'll find that primal training is actually going to be limited what you can do

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