App INSIDER: How To Go "Fitness Exploring"

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. Welcome to this app insider interview with Darrel Edwards, the fitness explorer. You're really going to love this one. So sit back, listen in, and get ready to learn how to explore your fitness.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield and I got to tell you a little story. A couple of months ago, I was at this event called Paleo FX down in Austin, Texas. And during that event, they had some fitness activities that took place outdoors. And one of these activities in particular was called fitness exploring. And I had no clue what I was getting into, but I signed up for it and kind of wandered outside and there was this big fellow named Darrell Edwards standing there, built like a freaking tree. And he took a group of about a dozen of us and put through this workout. That was the best way I can describe. It was just. It was fun. Everyone was smiling the whole time. You never see that. It seems like when people are working out at gyms and we were out in nature and doing bunny hops and bear crawls and partner carries and all these games, I mean, the hour went by like it was 60 seconds long. And Darryl has actually written a book that's jam packed with a lot of the concepts that he taught us that day. He also runs the fitnessexplorer.com website that actually my kids and I have been visiting to do some of the workouts, you know, crocodile crawls and gorilla crawls and all this stuff he has on the website. And he has this new book, like I mentioned, called Paleo Fitness. And Darrel is right here on the call with me today. Darrel, you're calling in from the uk, right?

Yes, that's right. From good old London, England.

Fantastic.

Unfortunately, it's quite unusual, but it's raining at the moment.

Well, it's actually raining here, too, so I guess sitting indoors, podcasting is a good place for us to be.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

You didn't always kind of have a background in fitness, is that right?

That's right. I mean, outside of after I left school and kind of focused on what I was going to be doing academically, I kind of dropped out of playing any kind of sports and any kind of gym activity was really just about trying to look good for a couple of weeks in the summer. So there wasn't really any consistency there and there definitely wasn't any longevity. And I got progressively more unfit. Didn't worry too much about how I looked because I was always quite slim guy until I started getting into my 30s and really started to suffer from that lack of concern for my well being previously. So basically I worked in the IT industry. I worked in investment banking as a computer programmer and spending many, many hours.

Not a very active job, huh?

Not at all. So it was literally your activities just bashing the keyboard and drinking your next can of Coke and you're taking a slice of pizza as and when you can. And so yeah, I really suffered because of this type of lifestyle. And as I say, I wasn't too concerned about it because I didn't put on lots of weight. But it started to accumulate around the middle. I started getting fitness assessments and health assessments and fortunately I got quite an early warning sign. And that was everything from really poor cholesterol profile, very high body fat percentage. So I was kind of a skinny fat individual, 26% body fat, but looked as if I had 10% body fat. But obviously internally I was just had very high internal levels of body fat and visceral fat. There were other markers of health that were quite shocking for somebody in their mid-30s. So fortunately at that time I decided I need to do something quite radical to see if I can reverse the trend and not rely on medication that the doctors were already telling me. I was only a year or two away from starting a nice cocktail of medication. So that definitely wasn't on the cards for me or I didn't want that kind of vision of the future. And so it was at that point I took an active interest in fitness and also started looking at nutrition because I kind of realized both of those are kind of equally important when it comes to health. And so I really wanted to make sure I was covering both bases. And then once I transformed my own life, I decided I wanted to do this and to help others. Others too. So the transformation was pretty remarkable within a very short space of time. Not that it was an easy journey, but it was one that was achievable and one that I'm still maintaining now several years later.

So how did this concept of fitness exploring get developed? Because in my opinion, it's super unique. It's like playing for your workout. And I gotta tell you, by the way, three times a week, my kids and I go out and I just. I set the watch for anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes and we literally fitness explore. We've been doing it since I got back from Paleo fx and it's one of the highlights of their week. So kudos for inventing it, so to speak. But can you describe how you came about kind of putting it together?

Yeah, well, I suppose I've encountered quite a lot of influences when it comes to fitness. Prior to kind of almost vegetating behind a computer for many years, I was very active as a child. I competed in martial arts, played a lot of sports, and actually kind of played a lot. The most interesting aspects of my childhood in terms of activity wasn't actually when I was trying to excel at sport, which I didn't excel at sport. I was kind of the average Joe across the board. But I remember the times fondly of just playing, no real goals, just having fun and having fun with others. And I realized whenever I encountered any type of fitness paradigm as an adult, it was really about the punishing, grueling, kind of, you know, not enjoying the moment, but just focusing on the result type of work ethic. And I kind of thought, well, I've kind of got. I've had enough of this work ethic and I actually want to start enjoying life again from a fitness point of view. So this kind of primal play and primality, which is the concept that I devised, is really a way of taking all of these diverse influences and saying, you know what? I enjoy from all of those, mixing those together, having quite a diverse range of activities and making it fun. And I think people often use the word fun or play almost very superficially, almost. Whatever you do as an adult, you go, oh, yeah, I'm having a great time, I'm having fun, I'm playing. But the essence of play really isn't there, I find, for most people because we just can't shed the association of play with it being kind of just stupid or foolhardy or not being serious.

Versus actually making you strong and fast.

Yes, exactly. I mean, all the things you see that occur naturally in children. When children are active, they're naturally strong, their power to weight ratio is phenomenal. They're naturally flexible, mobile, and they enjoy movement. They love to watch movement and they love to engage in movement. And it's only when adults tend to dampen their enthusiasm where you see that enthusiasm starts to wane. But I wanted to basically rediscover that passion that I had for movement as a child. That was really my goal. And Once I kind of cracked that and put a kind of a system behind that, I realized I could then also introduce this to others. And once people, you can read about this, but once you kind of experience this kind of type of movement, I think there's no going back. I mean, it's not a replacement. I can't say it's a replacement for any activity, but it's definitely something that you want to explore and to experience a lot more of in your life.

Right. Can you give us an example? Obviously there were like 50 different moves that we did that day when we were working out in the park and a bunch of stuff on your website. But for somebody who has no clue what we're talking about, walk us through what a workout would look like. A fitness exploring kind of workout that kind of flies above and beyond the traditional kind of gym workout or even boot camp type workout that you might see.

Yeah, well, I suppose the one aspect of it is you try and introduce some practicality in the play that you're doing. So it can either be very, very imaginative and just almost kind of a very dynamic and inventing on the fly type of game, or of play where you're literally kind of almost inventing the rules as you go along, or it can be very specific. So you may say, you know what, I actually want to get stronger. And in the kind of gym sense, it tends to be very one dimensional. I have to use an Olympic bar or machinery in a particular way. I'm going to build muscles in a particular way, and that's really my objective. Whereas the example I like to use is the deadlift exercise. So I have a pretty good deadlift, about 210 kilos, which I don't know, I think it's about 520 pounds, just a little bit deadlift. So it's a pretty good deadlift. I test that every once every six months or so to see if I can maintain that. And the first time I actually tried to deadlift a human being who was about 90 kilos, about 180 pounds, 190 pounds individual. I couldn't lift this person off the ground. And it kind of struck a chord. I was like, hold on a second. I can deadlift an Olympic bar more than twice your body weight. But you as a dead weight on the ground, I can't pick you up in a deadlift motion. So there's a disconnect here. I'm strong with an Olympic bar, but I'm not strong in carrying you as a human being. So to test my Strength, just trying to carry a human being in a whole repertoire of ways requires a significant amount of strength. Whether that's from a piggyback carry, it's very true.

I mean, I don't know how many people out there try to pick up human beings on a regular basis or sandbags or whatever. But you're right, it's a lot different than a barbell.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. It's a different kind of test. And I think the fact that you are actually testing your strength, but not in a kind of quantifiable way. You're not looking at how many plates you're putting on the bar. You're not focusing on impressing those around you. You're just actually having fun. So instead of just carrying or lifting something and dropping it back down, you have to consider how you're actually going to safely descend with this weight on your back that is a human being. You would probably carry that weight rather than just kind of moving vertically up and down. So you cover quite a wide repertoire of movements and movement patterns. Just carrying someone, just putting somebody on your back, you're going for quite a wide range of movements. And I think this is kind of the principle whereby you realize even when you're playing, you're covering so many movement capabilities that you just wouldn't have kind of considered at the outset of the movement. So in terms of carrying, you know, there's piggyback carries, there's your fireman carries. But I also do things like a Dracula carry, which, again, looks very simple. If you ever watch those movies from the 40s and 50s, the kind of Hammer House of horror movies and the Dracula movies. And I remembered, I mean, this character could carry his victims very, very easily in both arms, like kind of carrying your wife over the threshold type of carry. When I first attempted this, I mean, it was absolutely a pathetic response. I mean, it was just like, why do I feel so weak carrying someone in this position? And you realize it's a very challenging movement to walk with control, to be able to support somebody in this way. And so you can see very easily you can expand your range of carries with a human being or with a sack of potatoes or a sandbag or a different object and still wrap it in the canvas of play.

Got it. And so then you're stringing that together with other moves, like in addition to partner carries and partner pickups, you're doing crawls and hops and climbing up objects and stuff like that.

Yeah. So the transition is quite important. So again, when you watch Children play, they never focus on the same activity for very long. You won't see kids deciding to go for a six mile run because it's just something to do. It just won't happen. They'll run, they'll stop, they'll have a look around, they'll decide that this is far more interesting to climb this tree. You know, they'll probably start jumping around. You know, they'll kind of, they'll crawl a bit, they'll play tag.

You know what's interesting though is like, and sorry to interrupt, but I got to say this, while it's on my mind, my kids will go out and they'll run to exhaustion. Like put them on a trail or in a park or whatever and they will run and run and run, but they run fast. Like they're not doing like, you know, jogging with poor movement patterns and drop tips, like arm swinging, dead on sprint. And they'll just go around and around and around until they just kind of collapse in a heap.

Until they collapse. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's fantastic. I think it's fantastic to watch. And I think, as you say, you know, this kind of very low, steady state conservation of energy, children don't have this kind of the intellectual capacity to consider, oh, you know what, I need to really conserve my energy. I need to be really, really efficient and I need to be able to do this forever. They just want to do it forever. So they will run flat out, they'll get a bit of a breather, but that won't be the end of their day. They'll go, right, I've had a breather, I may need to slow down and do something else because I can't wait to run again, I can't wait to sprint again, I can't wait to do something very explosive again. And yeah, I take, you know, you kind of take some cues from childhood. And I wrap it under the kind of the precepts of actually having a fitness background now, so having an exercise science background, having some biomechanics. So trying to combine the two, where you go, right, I do want to add a bit of structure and sort of formality to it, but I still want to ensure that people enjoy what they do. So my tagline is fitness for those who hate to exercise. And I want to encourage as many people as possible to explore this way of movement. And I want to challenge those who are very strong, like yourself for example, Ben, very fit guy, very strong. And I remember a lot of people are very skeptical when they take my workshop because they go, you know, it's with us, when you're messing around and playing, it's not going to challenge me at all. And I remember seeing some of the guys at the workshop who probably felt after a minute or two into the session that how are they going to survive for the remaining 60 minutes or so of that workshop? Because you are pushing yourself, but you kind of don't realize it until you're within that kind of, how can I put it? Your mindset changes and as you say, you start pushing yourself beyond your limits naturally, rather than because you actually want to beat a particular goal that you.

Have in mind right now. I want to kind of ask you about people like triathletes, marathoners. We do get a lot of those kind of folks listening into the show. They're not kids anymore. They've kind of gotten to the stage where maybe they've signed up for a marathon or a triathlon for personal fulfillment or to beat the other guy to do one of those things that we may not think about when we're, when we're kids and they are doing the endurance type of motions, or even people out there doing CrossFit or something like that, which may not be entirely natural, but is still their outlet for fulfillment and competition and stuff like that. If somebody wanted to start to do some of these workout concepts and just train that way, or have some of these workouts as part of their workout routine. Have you ever seen something like that be successful or implemented in like an endurance training program or the program of any athlete or something like that?

Yeah, I mean, I train a wide repertoire of individuals, including athletes, including kind of weekend warriors. And what you find is that, yeah, for most people their specialty, they have those bases covered, but they either are not doing kind of supporting activity to support their main thrust of whatever that may be, or they are constantly in that state of recovering from injury. So there's that constant battle with, okay, I need to perform, I need to perform those particular tasks that are important to me. However, I'm constantly getting injured. And the balance, getting that kind of balance without sacrificing performance is difficult for some people. I believe that this type of activity, this kind of primal way of movement, is pre habilitative. So you are strengthening in areas that support any form of activity that you're likely to encounter. That's the way that I look at it. You're looking at basically putting in a safety harness where you're saying, right, you know what? I'm deciding to endure an ultra endurance event. And this is what I need to excel in. However, my body needs to be able to function outside of this event. And if I want that to happen, if I want to recover from injury, if I want to basically be able to function on a day to day basis and to be able to perform other tasks not associated with my discipline, core discipline, then this is an approach that people need to kind of COVID off. Because I'm definitely a movement generalist and I believe humans thrive as generalists. That's my personal belief. And so if you are choosing to specialize either because it's fun or because it's competitive, you don't want to sacrifice all of those other areas of movement capability at the expense of just that level of performance. I mean, that's my. Again, that's my opinion. But I've seen success with those who want performance but still want to have a well rounded level of fitness elsewhere. So, I mean, again, somebody like yourself, Ben, even though you are a triathlete, you're aware of the benefits of covering other aspects of fitness that aren't directly associated with your triathlete competition. And so I totally buy into that concept myself. I am a far fitter individual, far stronger, faster, better cardiovascular capability by having this approach than anything that I was doing before as a structured, a very structured protocol. So, yeah, I mean, it's worth exploring. Boring. It's worth challenging yourself, actually, against some of these. Okay, I'll give you another example. When I was in Texas, I went to the University of Texas in Austin and I did a VO2 max test.

Was that this last time that you were here?

Yes, the last time I was there. So for somebody who doesn't do much in endurance capacity at all, I was expecting quite a poor result. The, the professor taking my test also expected the same when he asked what activities I took part in. And when I told him that my only kind of cardio activity was kind of crawling and kind of pottering around and stuff like this, he just said, well, you're just not going to excel at this. I ended up with a VO2 max approaching 50. So I think it's about upper 90% quartile, you know, 90% quartile of people of my age. So it was. He kind of challenged his beliefs. It kind of definitely challenged mine. And it made me realize that you can cover off some of that specialty that you're looking for with a well rounded program. So, yeah, it was very surprising. My resting heart rate's very low. It's about 38 resting heart rate and none of this is natural, it's not genetic. This has basically evolved since I've changed my approach to fitness because I was a very unfit individual several years ago. So I feel now that I'm actually fulfilling my potential by using this approach.

Right. You obviously talk about a lot of other things in your book. Paleo Fitness. You get into, you get into diet, you have a bunch of pictures in here, you even have a sample program in here. And you know what's interesting, Darrell, as I was reading through your program, especially like the initial part of your program that you call level one, where you might go out on a Monday and do what you call the Paleo circuit, where you're doing a crab walk, a duck walk, a bear crawl, a jumping pull up and a barefoot walk drill, and then there's kind of like a short Tabata set on Tuesday and, you know, just an easy walk on Wednesday. You know, there's a lot of people that I think are really, you know, especially the type of people listening into this program, they aren't couch potatoes. They're. They're not, they're not starting from sedentary. They're starting from beat up. Right? They're, they've beat up their bodies with CrossFit or with triathlon or with marathoning. And I was looking through this program and I thought, gosh, this would be a great, you know, even this level one, this would be a great program program to give to somebody who is kind of in the off season and just need a little bit of activity so they didn't go insane, but need to learn how to move functionally again or even, like, you know, like a, like an easy day kind of workout, you know, and I'm talking specifically at level one because once you get to your level three stuff, it looks like it starts to get a little more intense. But yeah, you know, it just seems like some of this stuff is perfect for the person who maybe just needs to dial things back a little bit and learn how to move again.

Yeah, that's a very good point. I mean, I can't say I set out with that objective, but I think anyone, regardless of ability or capability, will benefit from any of those levels. I mean, even myself. I went through kind of a road test of my level one, two and three, and I kind of prototyped it and gave it to individuals to try at all levels of fitness. And again, on paper, you look at some of that and you may actually go, this is going to be a piece of cake. Even the level ones, I had people who are pretty Fit individuals go, yeah, that's going to be a piece of cake. Oh, it's only going to take five minutes. Yeah, whatever. And reporting back going, oh my goodness, that's really tough. Because the main benefit is you start thinking about what you're doing. So again, that kind of mindlessness that many people have, because anything that you're good at, that you've done your kind of 10,000 hours to get that kind of level of expertise, you kind of learn how to just zone out, you learn to listen to your playlist on your ipod or just kind of do something else. Work through your shopping list whilst you're doing your run or your rowing or whatever you're doing, you're lifting. You know, it's difficult to stay in the moment unless you say competing, but when you're just kind of training, it's very difficult, I believe, to stay in the moment. Whereas some of these activities you're doing in my program, even at level one, I'm constantly telling you that you have to think about your movement, you have to think about your contact with the ground, you have to think about your posture, you have to think about the grace of movement, the fact that you want to be kind of animal like and supple and, and really take time to think about your movement. Some of it isn't about rushing, some of it is about taking time. And so, yeah, you'll learn a lot about yourself even at the very lowest levels of activity in that book, even going for a walk, which I kind of mandate on a Wednesday walk, Wednesday, not a power walk, not a hike, just walk very, very slow pace, take a look at what's around you just enjoy being in the moment. And you know, it's very difficult to do that nowadays just to kind of, you know, not to meditate in a dark room with lots of nice chilled out music, but just to kind of meditate whilst moving. Do you know what I mean? Just go for a walk, relax, think about your posture, breathing patterns, take time to experience the world. So I'm trying to explore some of these concepts or, or stimulate people's mindset to say, well, yeah, there is an alternative approach. And going for a walk, even that in itself is quite an important aspect of an important movement pattern that we just neglect or we take for granted.

Yeah, well, I want to kind of run something by you and kind of get your thoughts on this because I've been doing it. I used to run on Thursdays and I started to do my own version of fitness exploring by myself on Thursdays. Instead. So there's this park near to my home and it's basically almost like this lapped course around the park that I've invented. And it involves starting off with a light jog kind of through the woods and then I get to a certain tree and I do five handstand push ups against that tree. And then I run to these two picnic tables and I got a crawl, like a belly crawl, crocodile crawl all the way underneath and through the picnic tables.

Yeah.

And then I stand up and I sprint to the fence and I walk along the fence, balancing on top of the fence, jump down from the fence and do kind of like a somersault land when I, when I hit the ground. And I'm telling you all this just to kind of keep, kind of give the listeners to an idea of just creativity of how you could do this. And then I go and I jump up onto this big. It's like an electrical housing box, but it's big. It's like a full on, like a crossfit muscle up kind of that you got to do to get up on top of it. So I get way up on top of that, then jump off and run to a post and jump up onto this post, way up above my head and do five pull ups hanging onto that post. And then I do a crawl as fast as I can all the way back to the starting position. And it's a hilariously fun workout. And I get strange looks from people walking around the park, but I gotta tell you, man, it's a freaking blast.

Yeah, I mean, that's a perfect description of the kind of paleo circuit that I kind of suggest for Monday. You don't want to be immersed in activity for too long. You want to have a nice transition from one movement to the next. And you want to use your imagination even within the same environment, even though you're used to all of those activities and the objects that you can see, it's worthwhile saying, you know what, next time I'm not going to muscle up, I'm actually going to try. Maybe I'll try and crawl feet first and see if I can get it that way. Maybe I'll only use one arm. Maybe I'll actually try to use my forearm to kind of muscle my way up in this object. Maybe I'll push against a tree as if it's a moving object, as if I want to uproot the tree out of the ground. So there's. Even within that circuit, you can always add different activities and make it more interesting. Whilst you're doing the circuit. So I think the fact that you can adapt it on the fly, the fact that you're getting strange looks, I think is only a good thing because it isn't conventional. But I'm sure 50 years ago people would have been alarmed at somebody going for a jog.

Yes. Or riding their triathlon bike in the aero position through the park.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it just wouldn't have happened so, you know, unless you were a professional athlete.

Yeah.

So I think the fact that people are getting used to, I mean, especially where I live now, people have been seeing me doing this sort of stuff for a few years now. And you know, whenever I get asked a question like, what are you training for? That seems to be the number one question I get asked, what are you training for exactly? Why are you spending all that time on the ground? Why don't you mind getting dirty? All these type of questions and it's like, well, actually I'm training for every single eventuality I can think of in life. That's really what I'm training for. That's the objective. I want to move as well as I can for as long as I can and to be able to adapt on the fly. Because when it comes to life and death situations, you know, it's not about me being able to run for, I don't know, run for 10 miles. It's probably not going to save my life. What's going to save my life may be able to run flat out for 50 meters, to climb a wall, to jump out of a first floor of a building. You know, these are the activities that are not necessarily tested until you have to perform them. And so I want to add some of that practicality to fitness. So I do want to push a car every now and again just because the time that my car does break down, I want to feel confident that I can push it by myself to whatever distance that I need to without the help of any other individual. My partner breaks their ankle, I want to be able to pick them up safely and carry them to a place of safety. I want to be able to perform these activities and I shouldn't feel superhuman for doing so. It should be well within, well within our capabilities as humans. But sometimes you do something, people go, oh my goodness, you carried, oh wow, you're so strong. And I'm like, no, my dad did this and he wasn't even necessarily a really fit guy. He just did this when I was young as going about his day to day business and I remember just Thinking what a strong man. He was a superhero. And it was because he was just doing what men should be able to do. And what my mother did is a very strong woman. And they both continue to do because they want to be independent into their older years. So yeah, I ramble on a little bit. But as you can see, there's a lot of thought behind this and I think anyone and everyone can benefit. And the practicality of this is also really important. Look at how you can challenge yourself on a daily basis. Because if you only look at times, if you only look at reps and sets and volume and intensity, there comes a point in time when you are going to feel fatigued not by the activity so much but by the kind of humdrum punishment and onslaught of that activity. So kind of open, having a wider, wide angle lens view to fitness sometimes is better. I think in every sense it's better for you.

Well, I gotta thank you for reminding me about the car push. I had forgotten about that exercise and I think my kids will get a kick out of that one. I don't know if a dad and two 5 year old twin boys are going to get arrested pushing a car down the driveway, but we're gonna have to try that one out this week, see what happens.

And please send me a video, Ben. I'd love to see it.

Oh, my wife will record it. I'm actually writing a note to myself right now for our next fitness exploring adventure on Friday. We'll finish up with that and I'll send it over to you.

That sounds great.

Cool. The book for those of you listening in is Paleo Fitness and Darrell is a, is really a good wealth of knowledge and this book kind of opens your mind just to, you know, you don't have to be Paleo per se to get a lot out of this book. But it's just chock full of, you know, there's even recipes in there and you know, workouts, meal plans. He teaches you how to, I believe he calls it pandiculate. And to learn how to do that I'm just going to have to tell you, go buy the book. I'll put a link to it in the show notes and yeah, grab it, it's a great read. And Also check out thefitnessexplorer.com if you just want some done for you. Fitness Explorer Workout of the day style routines. Darrel, thank you so much for coming on the call today.

You're welcome Ben, it was my pleasure. And thanks so much for inviting me.

Alright folks, this is Ben and Darrel Edwards signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

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