How a Daring Band of Misfits Mastered the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Right now, let's talk about who's the greatest athlete in America. Is it LeBron James? Is it Manny Pacquiao? Who is it? Take any one of these dudes behind enemy lines of World War II and tell them, hey, go live off the land, invade 100,000 pissed off German soldiers, and meanwhile, try and blow up some tanks. There's almost no human I would put into any ring with almost any other animal where I would expect the human to win. We're just not naturally good fighters. We're good runners, fleers, avoiders, and climbers. When you actually dissect a human leg, there is more elastic recoil in our legs than in a kangaroo's leg. Komafatone perfected that adaptation and he can write the instructions out on like an index card. That's all you need to know. He can write out to you in about 30.

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. We provide you with everything you need to know for total performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, sleep, brain and hormone optimization. So whether you're an ironman triathlete or you just want to shed a few few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. And a couple of weeks ago I mentioned on the podcast that I was reading a book called Natural Born Heroes. How a Daring Band of misfits Mastered the Lost secrets of strength and endurance. Well, I've finished this book and I'll tell you right now that I consider it to be one of the best books that I've read in 2015. So first of all, read the book. But second, I actually have author Christopher McDougall on the call today, and he's the guy who you might recognize as the same author who wrote Born to Run. And in this new book, Natural Born Heroes, Chris actually travels to the Mediterranean where he discovers the secrets of ancient Greek heroes that are alive and well in the mountains on the island of Crete. And in the story, he goes into this really amazing true tale of this band of resistance fighters in World War II who plotted this daring abduction of a German general from the heart of the Nazi occupation. But even more interesting to me, beyond the historical warfare anecdotal, are all of the tools that these Cretan runners use, that these British special forces use, these skills like natural movement and their own fascia and endurance principles and nutrition principles that really are not only inspiring, but actually very, very useful if you yourself are an athlete or you want to enhance your movement, your coordination, your ability to kind of, kind of climb and swim and skip and throw and jump your way to your own heroic feats. This book is just jam packed with information. Now, Chris covered wars in Rwanda and Angola before he wrote Born to Run. He created the Outside magazine web series, Art of the Hero. Of course, he just finished writing this book, Natural Born Heroes. So the guy has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to just getting the most out of the human body and the adventures that we can go on with the human body. So, Chris, thanks for coming on, man.

Oh, Ben, I'm really delighted to be here.

So I'm curious, you know, a guy like you who freaking goes and runs with the Tamahar Indian tribe, who goes to this island of Crete, and your stories of climbing through these razor sharp mountains in Crete are amazing as well as all the things you had to do leading up to that point in preparation. But I'm curious how you got into all this. Were you just like a kid who always loved to write? Was this like an, an accidental foray into journalism or how did you get started with what you do now?

Writing has been my job for a good long time since, man, I'm trying to think. My first job probably was with like a free city weekly in Philadelphia back in like the 1980s or 90s. And then I got a really good job with the Associated Press. I was a foreign correspondent for the covering politics and sports and the rest in Europe before being stationed overseas in Angola and Rwanda covering civil wars there. So, yeah, my writing resume has been pretty much all bootstrapped. Starting with the simplest and easiest jobs to get and then working my way up through the more difficult assignments. Wow.

So do you just kind of like sit back and wait for people to call you and then go and immerse yourself in these adventures that inspire you to write these kind of books? Or are you going out and seeking this kind of stuff on your own after you find something that strikes your fancy?

Yeah. There's a word for writers who sit back and wait for people to call them. They're called waiters. They're the ones, they're actually. They're the ones bringing your food in the restaurants. No, man. One thing you learn even when you're on a staff job is it's like always be selling, always be pitching. So even when I was working for the ap, I was based in Portugal. That was my main port of call. I was a Portuguese car correspondent, but I covered all the former Portuguese colonies in Southern Sub Saharan Africa. So I was constantly pitching ideas to the home office in New York because I didn't want to be sitting in an office in Lisbon. I wanted to be out in the field. So you learn early on. The more, you know, you pitch 10 ideas, two of them might get a nibble, one of them gets a hook. And then when I left the AP and began freelance writing for magazines, it was the same thing. You're constantly chopping, churning through ideas. So even right now, I mean, right now I'm trying to take the summer off, but I've come up with three ideas for another book I'd like to write. And I'm just trying to figure out which one I'm going to go for next.

So when you're writing a book like this, let's take this most recent one, Natural Born Heroes, as an example. You obviously are having to go through a great deal of like, immersive journalism and travel to Crete and, you know, we'll get into it in a little bit. But like all the parkour training and the fight training and all these other things that you had to do in preparation for the book, are you just kind of like self funding all these projects? Projects yourself, or when you do a book like this, is a publisher just kind of like funding the, the entire project?

Well, that's lesson number two. You learn as a freelance writer. Number one, always be pitching. Number two, do nothing for free, do nothing for spec. So make sure everything is paid for in advance. So, yeah, I mean, I might criterion for taking an assignment is do I got somebody lined up that actually wants it before I spend two or three months working on it. But again, that's, that's kind of the stuff you learn with a couple of deep bone bruises. As a magazine freelancer, if you do anything on spec, you're gonna get screwed. So yeah, for these books, I get an idea. And also to tell you the truth, you know, the market has its value because if you can't get an editor or a publisher interested, then you're not gonna get readers interested. So your first way of stress testing an idea is to find out is anybody willing to invest some money in it.

Are you one of those guys who just writes anywhere? Or do you have like your own writing chamber set up somewhere, like in your home, like your own little habit place that you write at? Or are you one of those guys who just writes on airplanes, cars, wherever?

Yeah, I got places set up. But I don't know if it's attention deficiency or just like the kind of natural Restlessness of mankind. But I got a really cool little cabin behind the house that's nominally my office. But at this moment, I'm on a picnic table on the porch. I'll write on the kitchen table. So, yeah, sitting in any one place for more than an hour just feels uncomfortable.

Yeah. That's interesting. I can hear the birds singing behind you. And my wife and I had this discussion the other day because I do lots of writing. I have specific places in the house where my muse strikes, and I can sit and write for what seems like forever. And then other places, I just can't write at all. It's funny. Ironically, the kitchen table is one place where I get a ton of work done. No, I know.

I think it is, man. I think you want to be in the heart of the action. When you're actually off by yourself, you start to, you know, your head starts to swivel, like, what's going on?

That's exactly what it is. Yeah. And for me, a coffee shop is too much. Right. Like, the buzz of a coffee shop is too much. But just like being at the kitchen table and kind of occasionally having the door swing open and someone come in or one of my kids run by, that's like, a perfect place for me because I'm mildly distracted. Of course, the only issue there is it's very close to the refrigerator.

Well, I was gonna say, to me, that's an added benefit, you know, that I'm actually covering less real estate in order to snack.

Exactly. So do you have a family at home as well that you have to leave when you go and do these crazy adventures?

Yeah. Not only do I have a family, but actually, they're listening on this conversation as we speak. So I'm actually, if I sound really, like, conservative and cool, because I'm not trying not to show off in front of my family. Yeah, Yeah. I got away from two little girls and a buttload of animals. We've got sheep and goats and cats and stuff. So every time I leave the house, I feel like I'm abandoning lots of hungry mouths.

Yeah. And are you traveling quite a bit? Like, when you write these books, do you disappear for a long period of time and come back home, or are these, like, brief weekend forays?

It's all ebb and flow. It's a lot of time at home followed by uncomfortably long stretches away. But again, you pay the price for the kind of life you have. The fact I can be here 247 for months at a time. Every once in a while, I got to Pay the price and be gone for a month.

Got it. And you obviously have a bent towards riding about action, about fitness, about running. Is your sport of choice endurance? Or are you like a crossfitter? Are you now just purely parkour based on this most recent book, or what's your workout routine look like?

That's a funny thing because I didn't even notice this trend until my agent, my literary agent a few years ago. He was looking through a bunch of magazine stories I'd done over the years and for all kinds of different places for like, Philadelphia Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, Runner's World, a total grab bag of different media outlets. And he said, you know, there's a theme running through all your stories. It's always about endurance. It's always about someone trying to tough something out. And I hadn't even noticed that trend. But once he said it, it really crystallized my thinking. And that actually led to Born to Run. That was kind of the catalyst. I thought, yeah, let's. Let's try and find a really extreme case of endurance and follow it back to its first principles.

Yeah. And so at that point, were you doing like a lot of your own marathoning, running, cycling, that type of thing?

Yeah. Here's the funny thing about it though was at that time I was on the injured reserve list. The difficulty was I was trying to do that stuff and kept getting injured. And that really became the launching point for boring to run, because I wanted to run. I'd been a rower in college. And then you get out of college and you basically just start to wander around trying to find something to keep you slightly less fat. So I went through, I think, the same evolution everybody else does. You know, you start to run and you get hurt. So you go to the gym, but the gym sucks. And you ride a bike, the bike's boring, you know, and you're just trying to find that home. And that's what really sort of led me to the Copper Canyons was, you know, I wanted to run, but I'm 6 foot 4, 220 pounds at the time. And I kept getting injured. And doctors said, well, of course you're injured, dude. You're the size of a fridge. You know, guys, your size shouldn't be running. And I wanted to figure out, why is it that some people can run super long distances and never get hurt and the rest of us are constantly on the DL? So that was it. And since then, really, I don't think I sort of have a sport of choice. I'm hopefully maybe Migrating back to our sort of hunter gatherer ancestors. And I'm just doing a ton of stuff all the time. I'm just on the move. So climbing trees, climbing roasts, cutting wood, going for runs, riding a bike, whatever strikes my, you know, my interest.

Nice. Have you built up like a little obstacle course there, there at your house? Is it like a farm that you live on now or.

Yeah, I'm not sure what you'd call it. It's a little chunk of land out here in Lancaster County. It's surrounded by farms. So it's sort of a natural, sort of nature made obstacle course. I think the one thing I did was build fences, put up some gates and put up a 30 foot climbing. But what's really cool is, and this is where parkour has been really invaluable because once you start to see the world through the eyes of a parkour dude, you suddenly see the obstacles that are already there. So you don't need to even create them. So if you got a shed, well, that shed's got a roof. And if you got a fence, well, that fence has a gate that you can vault over. And almost anywhere on a run, I can find obstacles in every direction.

Yeah, I've spent a lot of time with a guy who calls himself the Fitness Explorer. His name is Darrell Edwards. And he runs these parkour like clinics over in London. And I spent almost six hours at one of his clinics in a park in London, literally just exploring the park. And was more sore the next day than I've ever been after an Ironman or a marathon. And yeah, it's amazing. Like ever since that course, when I'm taking a walk through an urban area or a stroll through my own little plot of forest here in Spokane, everything becomes some kind of an obstacle. Some kind of a place where you can throw in a fitness move or a twist or a turn or a jump. So it's a lot of fun.

You know what? I forgot you were in Spokane. One of the best events I ever had and one of the most surprisingly fervent running communities I've ever come across is in Spokane.

Who was that?

I was out there for the literary festival. And what's the name of that running? It's some kind of beer running group.

Okay, yeah, you know what I'm talking about the Get Lit Literature festival. And then the running group is, they meet up at this little bar called the Elks. I believe is that one. And yeah, they're like a. What do you call the hash run.

I think it was Harriers. There's another group. And again, I should have boned up.

I should have been. I know what you're talking about, though. They run and they come back and they drink beer at the Elk Public House.

That was it. So wait, no, I was out there for the Get Lit Festival. And the plan was. Because it was a joint affair between. And what's the big race you guys have in May?

Blooms Day.

Exactly. So it was a joint affair between the Bloomsday race and the Get Lit Festival. The plan was to do a fun run, then do a book talk. But what I didn't realize, there was a part three, which is then go out and drink your faces off. So I had a blast. And to see that many runners packed into a bar was just a trip.

Yeah, it's a big running community. I actually, I have yet. Even having lived here nearly a decade, I have yet to run Bloomsday. The very first year that I lived up here, my rock band played it at about mile five of Blooms Day. And it was just wall to wall, people nearly walking because there were so many folks. And it never made me want to run Bloomsday. It just seemed like a giant traffic jam.

Yeah.

But I'm sure towards the front, if you're fast enough to run up with the canyons, you can probably have a good time.

I think events like that, you gotta look at them as a celebration, as a party, not even a run. Just a nice, you know, happy shuffle.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So this book, you know, I definitely don't want to have you on the podcast to try and retell the entire story of the book, because, frankly, the book is an amazing tale and I think everyone should go out and just listen to it on audible or put it on the Kindle or grab it. It's available pretty much anywhere. But in terms of the island of Crete and why that was such an important place for this book to take place. Without giving away the whole story, can you explain why that was such an important component of World War II?

You know, when I did Born to Run, the central question was, why is it the model that can run 200 miles at age like 80 and I can't? So what do these guys know that I don't know? And then while I was researching Born to Run, I was just chucking the net as wide as I could. Any kind of reference to archival running knowledge. I wanted to know what it was. So one of the things I came across were these references to a guy called the Cretan Runner. And I assumed this was some kind of, you know, Greek marathoner. But then when I started to look into it, what I discovered is, no, he was actually a different kind of runner. He was a foot messenger During World War II, running messages back and forth through the mountains to different resistance groups. So I was kind of intrigued, but it didn't really fit the framework of boring the Run. So I just back burnered it, put it aside. Then after I finished Born the Run, I thought, you know, it's kind of intriguing because I didn't really know anything about these foot messengers. So I went back into that research and what I found really kind of blew my mind because, you know, right now there's talk about who's the greatest athlete in America. Is it LeBron James? Is it like Manny Pacquiao? Who is it? And I thought, take any one of these dudes, drop them behind enemy lines during World War II and tell them, hey, go live off the lands, invade 100,000 pissed off German soldiers and meanwhile, try and blow up some tanks. See how long any one of these guys survives, and then start thinking about who the world's greatest athlete is. And that's essentially what was going on during World War II. They were taking civilians and telling them, man, go out there and go fight the Germans. And to survive that way for four years. That to me was a real physiological mystery and that became the basis of this next book.

So one of the things that you get into in the book is this concept of natural movement for you. Was that something new? Had you been exposed to things like Parkour or Irwin LaCour or any of these folks that were out just basically exercising with nature? Or was that something that was a novel concept to you that you discovered while writing the book?

I think one of the beneficial aspects of the books I've been able to do is that I came into them as pretty serious, as a pretty serious skeptic. So when I was working on Born to Run, I was in no way convinced of the whole barefoot running theory. The only barefoot runner I knew when I was researching Born to Run was Barefoot Ted. And I was like the last guy I was going to listen to. So I think it really helped the book that I wasn't completely sold on the principles that I was exploring at the time. So when I portrayed them, I'm basically my hands are in the air saying, look, you know what, here's the evidence. Make your own choice. It was only subsequently that I really came around and became a hard hearted convert. And it was similar with Natural Born Heroes. So my Question was, how is it that these guys are running through the mountains for months at a time living off a weeds and physically how are they sustaining a kind of caloric intensity? And to me the only answer was natural movement. But I really didn't know much about what natural movement was. And so that's how I basically became exposed to parkour. Because parkour is based on not muscular strength, but free elastic recoil strength. Now, Erwin La Cour is a different story. I actually met him because of Barefoot Ted. I was at Barefoot with Ted's house in Burbank when I was researching Born to Run. And that same day he got an email from Erewhon because Erewhon was interested in Barefoot Ted's running research. So Ted said to me, hey, look at this dude, man. He's kind of a crazy French guy down in Brazil. You should get in touch with him. And I did. And that's how I ended up down in Brazil with Erewhon.

So how would you define natural movement, man?

You know something, it's the simplest questions are always the ones you trip over. Natural movement. I think the best definition of natural movement is any energy efficient motion which serves a practical purpose.

It's interesting. See, I always thought natural movement was, and correct me if I'm wrong, I always thought it was just like going out and doing physical activity outdoors and using things like lunging and twisting and pulling and climbing and pushing and crawling and ambulating, using like the world as your resistance. Right, like nature as your resistance. But it sounds like you're saying that it's more about moving in a way that is natural for the human body in terms of like using your, your own fascia and the joint ranges of motion to achieve as natural a movement pattern as possible.

Well, those two things go hand in hand. So the very motions you're talking about, lunging, twisting, ambulating, absolutely correct. Those are all practical applications of natural movement. But my sort of more, I don't know, wonky notion of energy efficient movement that serves a practical purpose. The reason why is because you're trying to stress test any activity against our sort of ancestral imperatives. To give you a concrete example, if you talk to guys like Erwan, they will just tee off on yoga. And the reason why this is no living creature would ever stand immobile in one spot and stress a muscle to the point of tearing. It serves no practical purpose. No animal would ever do that. And therefore that is not natural movement. But climbing, crawling, swimming, lifting, throwing, these were all movements that human animals depended upon for survival for 2 million years. And so basically what we get into is, and this is sort of the kind of the watershed moment in fitness history is right now we're looking back, there's the stuff we invented and the stuff we've always done, and a lot of the stuff we've invented doesn't work. Like machine based fitness doesn't work. Yet natural movement, which we've done for 2 million years, is much more effective in terms of overall fitness.

I want to ask you in a second about some examples of the cretins and how they trained and what some examples of natural movement in the book are. But you mentioned how Erwin has this opinion of yoga. Do you, do you have the same opinion of yoga?

Yeah, I do, but the thing about it is I try to keep my own opinions in check as much as I can because I've become aware that like my own tastes really affect my opinions or my judgments. So I don't dig yoga, but I also don't dig school. And yoga to me is a little bit too much like school. I don't have enough of attention span to like do something for 90 seconds. That's why I try to keep myself add a debate a little bit. Because Erewhon's is based on knowledge, mine's based on just personal taste.

Yeah. My opinion of yoga, basically, and I do yoga almost every morning for about 10 to 15 minutes, is for me, it forces me to slow down, it forces me to breathe through complex movement patterns. And to me it's like dance in terms of body awareness. And I would argue that we see elements of dance in just about every culture as a form of natural movement. And sure, maybe going and doing like a 60 minute yoga class in your tighty tight pants at the local health club is, is not necessarily something very ancestral or natural. But I tell you what, when I wake up and I do like 10, 15 minutes of yoga standing literally barefoot in my underwear out in the forest here in the mornings, it really does help ground me for the day. But then again, so does a nature walk, so does a swim, so does balancing on the logs or climbing my little walls out here.

So, yeah, just here's the thing, Ben. Here's where I think all these conversations always go off the rails, is that everybody wants to be their own Game of Thrones, Everybody wants to defend their own kingdom and say everybody else deserves to die. But the reality is exactly right, man. The smartest thing that anyone told me was when I was training for the race for Born to Run, and my coach then Eric Orton said, you know, don't be confused by the Tarahumara. They're not great runners, they're great athletes. These dudes are not going out and doing track workouts. They're picking up logs and they're carrying them back and they're building a hut and they're digging for roots and they're swimming for fish. These guys are doing a bunch of everything all the time, and that's why they don't get hurt. So what you just said right there is the big difference. If a guy is doing a 90 minute Bikram class and then walking out dusting his palms, okay, that's it. I'm done. I'm fit. That guy's making a mistake. And likewise, you know, the guy who's doing kettlebells all the time and is not dealing with his mobility and flexibility, that dude's not fit. So, you know, again, it's just a little bit of everything is the answer.

So you talked about parkour a little bit and how that would fall into the category of natural movement when you decided that you wanted to yourself look into parkour and learn a little bit. And I definitely do want to hear how that went for you because I recently had Tim Ferriss on the show and he just about destroyed himself learning parkour. Why would something like parkour, freerunning natural movement, be crucial in the life of a Cretan trying to defend a tiny island from Nazi Germany?

I'm just focusing on Tim Ferriss doing parkour. And that is a video I want to see. That's the problem with that dude is like everything he does, he does to the point of destroying himself.

There's videos on itunes. It's called. It's called the Tim Ferriss experiment. And he has one, he goes around doing jiu jitsu and three gun shooting. And parkour is one of the episodes. And he, yeah, he messes himself up, that's the thing.

Because he's trying to do like, you know, back flips off a garage roof, I'm sure, right from the get go. Here's the deal with parkour. Honestly, I think it's the perfect sport. It's almost in a lot of ways, you can abolish everything else and just be left with parkour. And here's the reason why. You know, I've got this idea that the sports that humans are naturally really good at are the sports where the differences between men and women are pretty minimal. And it's the shit we made up for ourselves. That's basically by guys for Guys like football, baseball, basketball, those are just activities that guys invented which really demonstrate male upper body strength. But those activities in the wild are useless. And humans, when it comes to using those attributes of like male upper body strength and explosive power in the wild, again, are not particularly strong. As animals, we're not particularly fast. But where, you know, human animals really excel have to do with adaptability, flexibility, resourcefulness, agility, our ability to get up and over obstacles. We're really, really good at that. And that's what parkour is all about. And what's really cool about that is when you watch a bunch of parkour people in action, you can't tell who's male and who's female. The ability levels are almost the same. There's almost nothing that a male parkour guy can do that a woman can't do. Which again, I think is really cool because it's the logic of the species. Why would you want a species that is that divided by a billing? It makes no sense where one half the species is really strong, the other half is really weak. That makes no sense because essentially you have half the species always at risk of dying off. It's wicked cool to see. You see it with endurance sports as well. You get into triathlon, long distance swimming, long distance running. The differences between men and women just start to diminish when you get into these natural human endeavors.

What about fighting though? What about like hand to hand combat? Because just playing devil's advocate, it seems like men would typically if you put like a top, whatever, ultimate fighter in a cage with a woman, that the man would win out.

Yeah, but you know, ultimate fighting is good. It's a totally phony way of fighting. You look at all the list of rules that have an ultimate fighting, we think it's ultimate fighting. There's a ton of shit you just cannot do. You even have to. Even the rules of ultimate fighting say you have to be tidy in appearance. Think about that. Clean and tidy in appearance. That's how regimented ultimate fighting is. So a couple things about that. Number one, humans as fighters. There's almost no human I would put into any ring with almost any other animal where I would expect the human to win. We're just not naturally good fighters. We're good runners, fleers, avoiders and climbers. But stick a bear, a bull, a snake, anything will ring. The animal wins, the human loses. So again, as fighters, we're not that good. But secondly, the kind of fighting we've created, it's all kind of phony. Look at boxing if you're in a fighting competition, why would you ever extend an arm toward another creature's head? The creature will bite your arm off. But the one form of fighting that actually is extraordinarily effective was, according to myth, created by a woman, that's Wing Chuns, the art of evasion and using fascia movements.

How'd you pronounce that?

I pronounce it Wing Chun.

Wing Chun. Okay, so how's it work?

You know who the most famous practitioner of wing chun is right now? It used to be Bruce Lee. But right Now, Robert Downey Jr. Is Iron Man. Yeah, man. Iron man is all about wing chun. He developed into a wing chun disciple back when he was trying to get sober and he couldn't get a role in any movie. But he became a student of wing chun, and apparently it disciplined him enough and centered him enough where it vaulted him to superstardom.

So what is it?

So what Wing chun is, you know, it's similar to Gracie Jiu jitsu in the sense that every action has a countervailing reaction. The patriarch of Gracie jiu jitsu once defined his art as saying, if you do this, I'll do that forever. And all, whatever you do to me, I'll twist it back on you, and I'll constantly come up with an opposing movement, and that will never end until you give up. And essentially, wing chun is the same thing. There's a basic principle called sticky hands, where you stand centered, your two hands are in front of you in an X shape. And if you take a swing at me, I would just deflect your hand, and you take another swing, I will deflect that hand. And it's constant evasion and deflection where you're exerting highly calorically dense muscular activity. And now I'm using almost zero calories. Fascia evasion.

Do you know how to do this?

It's like all things I know enough to say I know it, but actually, you put a real Wing Chun in there. He destroyed me in 10 seconds. So I'm a journalist. I dip in, say I know it, and get the hell back out again.

How do you spell that? The Wing Chun do you know?

So Wing W I N G, and then Chun C H U N. Okay, cool.

I'm going to link to that. If you're listening in, by the way, all of Chris's books, the things we talk about in today's episode, etcetera, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Heroes. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com H E R O E S Heroes if I pop in one second.

Ben too. So, you know, Wing Chun has some really interesting origins stories.

Well, that's what I wanted to ask you about. Where does this tie into the whole Cretan thing? Yeah.

So the creation myth of Wing Chun is. It is an Asian martial art and the only one created by a woman. And it was back when one of the Chinese dynasties was invading a monastery, and all the male monks were killed. But one woman, a priestess, escaped into the woods. And there in the woods, she learned from the animals, and she realized that most animals aren't going against each other like a pair of grizzlies. What they're doing is using their opponent's strength against him. So there in the woods, you know, it's kind of like a Tarzan thing. She learned this martial art and became the basis of Wing Chun. And again, the identifying principle was that all you need to do is constantly use fascia elastic recoil, and you can constantly turn your opponent's strength against him. But here's the deal. Like most creationists, that was all maple leaf. The real origins of Wing Chun have to do with an ancient Greek wrestling form known as pankration, which is a P a n k r a t I o n. That began where else? On the Greek island of Crete in the ancient Minoan culture. You heard about King Minos and the Minotaur. Those are all true stories. There actually was a King Minos, and he did have some crazy bull ritual. And the way you could actually survive in the ring with a bull was by using this art known as pankration. Well, pankration was such a deadly fighting art that it was banned in the ancient Greek Olympics. After a couple years, they tried it for a couple years. The only ones who liked it were Spartans. Everybody else was freaked out by this thing because you could gouge eyeballs out, you could bend fingers back, you could go after testicles all you wanted. It was no rules. Real no rules. And that's why the sport was kind of lost. It was just considered too savage for modern sports.

Interesting. So that's Wing chun. What would happen if you put a wing chun practitioner into, like, a cage with a UFC fighter?

My guess would be that you'd lose all your television viewers because the Wing Chun person would just not move and just very effortlessly make a fool out of this guy. I'll tell you what. You want to see wing chun? Check out that first Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr. There's a beautiful demonstration of Wing Chu. I remember that he's just toying around, toying around until suddenly there's a little bit of time pressure and he kicks the crap out of the guy in 30 seconds and he's gone.

That's. Is there a big difference between that and aikido?

The only difference is aikido is like going on the ground. And wing chun believes don't go on the ground. They believe you go on the ground, you're in trouble. Aikido and Gracie Jiu Jitsu believes the ground is the place to go. But with a wing chun person, you'll see them almost always stay on their feet.

Interesting. You mentioned something during your description of wing chun about fascia and using your own fascia intelligently for you. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Yeah, this is kind of an interesting thing too. And this was an eye opener for me because it really went against my own understanding of what fitness was all about. So, you know, I, I came of age in the 70s when the greatest revolution was the nautilus machine. Like those first nautilus machines were rolled out and this was the secret of getting strong. But what I didn't understand was that these machines and even weight based exercise was a brand new innovation. That was not the way people got fit for most of human existence. Again, our understanding of what fitness came about had to do with pumping iron. Pumping iron came out in the 1970s and suddenly you saw men who were bigger than any men had ever been in history before. And the way they were doing this was by injecting themselves with steroids and then sitting down in a machine and stressing individual body parts until that body part became torn and filled with blood and expanded. That became the notion of what fitness and strength was all about, was being about as big and muscle bound as you could possibly be. But then I started to research a little bit deeper and realized, you know, until the 1970s, gyms were kind of like CrossFit boxes. They were big open spaces full of medicine balls and Indian clubs and these great things called strength rings. Like, Teddy Roosevelt was a master of the strength rings. And these are just two iron rings that two guys would hold in each hand and your goal was to try and yank the other guy off balance. But here's the problem. Those kind of movement based exercises, the kind of things that use a lot of fascia and not a lot of muscle, they're not profitable because you can't fit a lot of people into a gym like that. But the muscle based model that became extremely Profitable. And that's why exercise and fitness shifted away from emphasizing fascia and more toward emphasizing muscle.

Interesting. So in terms of fascia, like, as far as how that actually works, what I understand, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that by tightening up fascia in one area of the body, you can essentially spring load another area of the body. So, like, if I was gonna. I think one of the examples that you use in the book. Right. If I was gonna punch you and I wanted to do as much damage as possible, I would bring my fists in very close to my face or to my body so that I've got a very short lever arm, and I would twist my hips to throw my body. And specifically the fascia that kind of forms the X pattern across the body, I would twist my hips to force that fascia into its spring, like, tension and then release. And if I wanted to enhance that even more, and I think you talk about this in the book as well, you can actually turn your fist into more of a deadly weapon by holding a cell phone or a matchbox or something like that inside the fist so that you provide, like, a back support for all those bones. And so once you wind up the fascia and you release your fist that way. Was that a goat, by the way?

Yeah, it's one of our sheep. One of the moms escaped, and the baby's out there screaming, nice.

So would that be a correct understanding of how you would use the fascia in something like a fighting situation?

Yeah, that was exactly it. So what Bruce Lee demonstrated was, again, Bruce Lee was a little dude. He was, you know, he got a little bit ripped, but essentially, he's a small guy, and he had a thing he called the one inch punch. And that was his way of demonstrating how powerful fascia was. He could stand right in front of you, put his fist one inch away from your chest, and then make it explode and knock you flying across the room. And I've actually had this done to me. I had a guy stand right in front of me an inch from my chest. I had a telephone book in front of my rib cage in order to protect my ribs, and this dude blasted me across the room from one inch away. And the reason why is because of all that elastic recall. Essentially, what Bruce Lee said was that when you're punching with your right fist, the punch begins with your left toe, and you're torquing your body like a corkscrew and bow and then letting all that power explode.

So how would you use something like that in. Let's just say, like, a less violent situation such as running. How would these principles apply there?

Well, think about Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali actually only became a great boxer when he became a bad fighter. When he started to get out of shape, that's when he became a really good boxer. So think about Muhammad Ali in his later fights. The dude never seemed to move. He was just. You watch him in the ring, bounce, bounce, bounce, leaning against the ropes. When you think about the Rumble in the Jungle with George Foreman, what Muhammad Ali was doing was not using fascia, but using the ring ropes as extensions of fascia. What he would do is lean back against the ropes. And essentially what your fascia is, it's all of that rubbery tendon and tissue inside your body, very similar to the ring ropes. So what Ali would do is lean against the ropes, and when Foreman would swing a punch, he would bounce off the ropes and use the spring from the ropes to heighten his own fascia. But what Ali was doing all the time was trying to get as much free energy as possible. So when you think about something like running, think about the guys in the front of the marathon, how they barely see me moving or even trying hard at all. And then you think about the guys in the back end of the marathon who are all huffing and puffing and straining. The guys in the front are all using free elastic recoil. Tiny, tiny, bouncing strides. The rest of us who are trying to lunge forward are using much less efficient, muscular strides.

Is that something that pairs well with the minimalist or the barefoot style approach with the shoes that you talk about in Born to Run?

Yeah. I mean, when you think about this, too, if you're trying to spring forward, you don't want a bunch of mush under your foot. Right. Like, if you're trying to run fast, you don't want to do it on soft sand. You want to get down on the hard sand toward the water. And it's the same thing with running. If you're trying to run fast and efficiently, you don't want a bunch of gunk. You want to actually have contact with the ground so your tendons can load up and spring forward. So a great way to begin any kind of a run, I believe. Just like, even if you don't want to run barefoot, begin your run with your shoes in your hand, stand out on the sidewalk, and just bounce up and down a few times. Little tight, easy bounces like you're jumping rope, and then just spring forward a few strides and then put your shoes back on and you're going to feel the real difference between what it feels like to use your elastic recoil and what it feels like to have all that elastic recoil absorbed into the mush of running shoes.

So in terms of the cretins, they were using these type of principles to run across the island, like to deliver messages and to evade the German invaders. They were using their fascia, they were using short strides, they were using minimalist footwear. All these principles that you're talking about?

Yeah, absolutely. I'd read a lot of incidents of people referring to something they called the Cretan bounce. And I saw this in different Travelers accounts dating back to the 1600s. It seemed like anybody time somebody went to Crete, they would always be struck by the fact that, man, these shepherds are like bouncing like kangaroos. And I saw it for myself the first time I went to Crete. We were on a cross country hike and we're up in the mountains and we're struggling up this hill, and I look across the hill next to us and there's some dude just literally bounding up the hill. He's on a pogo stick. And I realized what the guy was doing was the same principles that I was talking about with barefoot running. This guy was actually putting it into practice by using elastic recoil to ascend the steep mountainous climb.

And it all comes down to just short, choppy strides and minimizing ground contact time.

That's it. You know, when you actually dissect a human leg, there is more elastic recoil in our legs than are in a kangaroo's legs. So your legs are loaded up like golf balls. But the problem is, again, if you're trying to out think nature and muscularly push yourself, you're going to lose if you just shorten your stride, keep your posture erect and straight and give yourself some balance and then you'll fly.

That's why they say plyometrics are so good, like single leg hops and skips and bounds and leaps, because they actually increase tendon stiffness and they increase the spring recoil. Like, that's like when you look at all the studies done on how weight training helps athletes, especially for the better athletes, all of the studies that have shown the greatest efficacy are what are called low force high velocity training. Meaning, like, even if you're going to do squats, for example, you don't choose a heavy weight and lift it slow and controlled. You choose a lightweight and you lift it explosively to develop increased tendon stiffness.

Well, you know what the Russian sprinters used to do too is do box jumps before squats. But here's the other thing, too. You know, another word for plyometrics is parkour.

Yeah. Well, so did you take parkour lessons?

Oh, man. So here's. Here's my. Here's my parkour evolution. So again, trying to. To me, this was like, you know, I'd seen in good will hunting, where there's that weird, like, math equation on the board, and everyone walks by, and they have an opportunity to solve it. And finally, Matt Damon the janitor, figures it out. To me, that's what the Cretan resistance was all about. It was this weird math equation on the wall. My question was, all right, these guys are living in the mountains, weeds, and yet somehow, the Germans can't catch them. So physically, how are they pulling this? That, to me, was a math equation. And then one of the answers I believed had to be parkour. But I didn't know anything about parkour, and I didn't know how to know anything about parkour. I didn't. You know, I live in Lancaster. You heard the sheep outside, right? There's no parkour in Lancaster. And then one day, I happen to be in downtown Lancaster at the local rite aid pharmacy. I'm in the checkout line, and through the window, I just see these two guys just go sailing by the window. Like, they're like, you know, sprung out of the cannon. And this happened, like, three or four more times. They kept sailing back and forth. So I got hustled outside, and those dudes were doing parkour on, like, the handicap railings. So that became my intro. So I started doing some parkour with them, and they said, look, if you really want to get to the motherlode, you got to go to London to a place called parkour generation. It's the best teaching academy in the world.

Yeah, I actually know that. That's Dan Edwards place, right?

Exactly. Yeah.

I think he was on the spartan cruise.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We were there with. Man, that dude is Superman.

That's crazy.

I spent a lot of time with him. But here's what I did. First, I wanted to test this theory about men and women. So my first class was actually an all men's class, A Thursday night, all women's jam. And believe me, these girls beat the tar out of me. They were amazing parkour athletes.

Wow. So when you took this parkour class, what's an example? Like, what's a class actually look like?

So when I began, the first thing we started with was just precision jumps, because almost every movement you're going to land on your two feet on the ground. No matter what you're doing any kind of a jump or twist or vault, you're landing on the ground. So you begin with how to stick a jump and you start to do precision jumps. One of the things I love about parkour is no matter how small the movement is, you can find like, infinite interest and absorption just trying to master that one move. So a precision jump is just a crack in the sidewalk. You move two feet away and then you jump and you try to land on that crack as precisely and silently as possible. And you will never do it to your satisfaction. You'll always be a little bit louder than you want to be, a little bit off target. So you begin with precision jumps. Once you feel comfortable with those, you might move to a simple vault, like a step vault, where you just step up and over an obstacle and then land on the ground. But again, what I think about these is that they're not competitive based, they're not performance based, they're purely skill based. So you become your own harshest critic as you try to master these movements.

So do you think that going to a class is the best way to learn parkour versus, like getting some kind of a DVD or something like that?

Yeah, it's the best for a couple reasons. One is I think that by instinct, we are hunting pack animals. We really tend to thrive in a group, in a community. But secondly, this is something that I don't think people have really fully explored yet. But our talent as humans for mimicry is pretty powerful. We tend to naturally copy movements around us. And I've actually seen this in running classes where there's like a master runner in the middle and people are in a line next to them, and whoever's closest to the best runner will start to run better. And the people who are further away aren't running quite as quickly. So I think the reason why you'd really benefit from a class one's fun, number two, just being able to mimic someone else's movements, you're going to pick them up a lot faster.

Nice. I've already, I've already written notes to myself, by the way, to look into Spokane for parkour classes and also Wing chun classes.

So, you know, I'm sure, I'm sure that's the cool thing that's parkour is wherever you go is there is some, like, little community somewhere.

Yeah, I definitely want to make sure that we get a chance, chance to talk a little about the nutrition concepts in the book. And where nutrition fits in. Because I was amazed going through some of the stories as they're leading the general through the mountains and as Patty and Zan and some of these folks are running crazy amounts of miles, they've got very little food available to them. And in many cases, they're just harvesting a lot of these wild edibles, right, like nettles and mint and stuff like that.

What was their secret again? That was the thing that perplexed me because, you know, I go for a 10 mile run, I come back, I am ready to murder blt. I'm hungry. And how are these dudes doing this for months and months at a time with no opportunity to even stop and rest? You know, not only are they working harder, but they're doing it on much less food than I have available. And I think the answer really was revealed back in the 1990s, back when the first Ironman triathletes were struggling with the same problem. These people were trying to tackle an endurance challenge, which no one had ever done before. And the first mystery they had to crack was how do we actually fuel ourselves? And the answer for guys like Mark, Mike Pig was fat is fuel. And this was a real simple concept that the guy who became most famous for was what Maffetone realized was most of us are in this constant sugar cycle where we're burning sugar all the time and we're replenishing sugar. Right now, my body fat is probably something like, I don't know, 14%. That means you put me on a life raft in the Pacific and I'd be fine for three months without eating any food. What Maffetone realized is it's not that difficult to tap into those fat reserves and get yourself off the sugar cycle. And then at that point, you can fuel yourself for hours and days at a time.

We actually got a guy on the podcast named Barry Murray who works with a bunch of athletes, specifically who want to become fat adapted and want to go out and do these long fasted workouts. And we had a fascinating discussion for like an hour. And Phil Mathetone is a friend of mine as well. And we talk about all the different ways that you can get yourself into this state of fat adaptation. Some of the things that Barry talked about, for example, was doing intermittent fasting, long periods of time during the day that you go without eating, shifting your diet towards higher fat intake and lower carb intake, doing fasted morning workouts on an empty stomach, and even including things like more minerals and more electrolyte so that you can Maintain adequate blood pressure in the absence of of high amounts of carbohydrate intake. And I'm curious for you, Chris, in implementing these efficient nutrition principles or this concept of metabolic efficiency, have you found specific either dietary principles or foods or diets or supplements that you've turned to to help you to either accelerate the process or make it more comfortable?

Yeah, and here's the difficulty, I think with any revealed truth is the problem with revealed truths is that it's hard to make money off of them. I think one of the difficulties with barefoot running is it's very hard to monetize barefoot running. And so therefore it gets sort of washed away in the tsunami of marketing for running shoes. And I think it's very similar with fat adaptation. Phil Maffetone perfected fat adaptation and he could write the instructions out on like an index card. It's all you need to know. He can write out for you in about five. The difficulty with that is it's hard to make money off of it. And so it just becomes people try to overcomplicate it and over market all the peripheral shit you just don't need. So for me to become fat adapted, you basically follow Phil Moffetone's two step process. Number one, you do the two week test. Again, one thing I love about Maffetone is he realized that if it's complicated or if it's painful, people are not going to do it. So he tries to make things as simple and as instinctive as possible. So number one is a two week test. All you do on the two week test is you strip out all the high glycemic foods from your diet for just two weeks. At the end of two weeks you start to reintroduce some of those foods. You will feel the physical reaction that those foods have on you. And to me that is a pretty good indication of whether they are beneficial or not beneficial. So number one, step one, two week test, step two, put yourself on the 180 formula, which essentially is you find your aerobic threshold by subtracting your age from 180, find out what your maximum heart rate is and then start to train according to a heart rate that is below your anaerobic threshold. And that will stop you from pushing into a demand for high Sugar Foods. Those two steps, two week test, the 180 principle, and to me that's it. You are on your way to becoming fat adapted.

Yeah, I remember my very first exposure to this was way back in the day. Ironman champion Peter Reed was an Instructor at the same triathlon camp that I was teaching at down in Solvang, California. And Peter Reed was another kind of disciple of Phil Maffetone, along with another Ironman triathlete kind of legend down there named Chucky V. And they brought us out to the track and they had us run four laps while keeping our heart rate as low as possible. I remember it was like one of the most difficult four laps that I'd ever done because of the struggle to keep the heart rate within that 180 minus age range that you were just talking about. And at the end of it they told us about how a guy like Mark Allen would train and he'd be forced to walk the hills and, and go so slow running like a 7 and a half and 8 minute mile at his aerobic heart rate. And by the time Ironman rolled around, he was churning out like 5 1/2 ish minute miles at his aerobic heart rate just from frequently practicing at that heart rate. So it is pretty amazing this idea of metabolic efficiency.

And when you think about it though, Ben, it makes such logical sense. Maffeton's point was that if you can be energy efficient at 10 minutes a mile, well, eventually you're going to be energy efficient in nine minutes a mile, then 8th and 7, your body's going to adapt. And so what you're going to do is you're going to get stronger, but your heart rate's not going to go up. So just be patient and you will reap the benefits.

Yeah, does take time though, man. It takes time meaning that, that you gotta, you gotta put some volume in.

That thing about though, Ben. I think something I become frustrated with people is like whenever something is going to benefit them, the first question they'll always ask is, how long is it going to take? Like what is your marriage, dude? You know, honestly, I hear with barefoot running all the time you tell people, hey, here's a way you can learn to run where you'll enjoy it more and you won't get injured. Why is your question, how long is it going to take? What difference does it make? Dude, I just gave you the keys to the kingdom. You know why you got to be so quick to get to the finish line?

Yeah. Well, I did the study at University of Connecticut with Jeff Volek where they took a group of athletes who followed a high fat diet and they found a correlation between the amount of time spent on the high fat diet and fat oxidized during exercise. And I personally found that it took nearly two years of Following a high fat diet and using these metabolic efficiency principles before, I really felt like I could do things like go an entire weekend without eating or go on a six hour bike ride with water and electrolytes and feel just fine. But yeah, most people, they go through that first two week period where they feel like crap and they throw up their hands in despair and assume that, you know, genetically they can't become fat adapted.

Well, that's the thing about that. And again, I'm sure there are things that I am impatient about, but when I hear this, you know, I just kind of mystified. You know, back when I was a collegiate rower, it was taken as a given that takes you seven years to perfect your rowing stroke. So if you want to do this sport, you're going to practice for seven years before you're any good. You want to play the violin? Well, you're going to practice for 12 years before you're any good. So two years in order to become fat adapted. To me, that's, that's a bargain. And secondly, why isn't Jeff Volek like, why isn't he like surgeon general? You know, this dude has been so important not just for performance athletics, but for overall human health. And besides me, you and Phil Monophotone, not many people have ever heard of him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's, he's a, he's a pretty cool dude. So I have, I have two more questions for you, Chris. The first is when I was reading your book, I was shocked when I got to the part about how far these like Greek running messengers actually ran. Because what people say is that the first guy who ran a marathon died and that this, what was his name?

Pheidippides.

Yeah, Pheidippides. That he actually died. And then you talk about how far these guys actually ran. It wasn't a marathon, was it?

Well, here's the thing about it was. So Phidippides, yeah, the guy who died at 26.2 miles, there actually was a real Pheidippides. And there's a possibility he might have actually been born on Crete. There was an entire elite corps of foot messengers called, which means all day runners. And these guys literally meant all day, like a 24 hour span. These would run. The real Thinipides didn't run 26.2 miles. He covered more than 300 miles in one weekend. He ran when during the battle of Marathon, he ran from Marathon to Sparta to ask for help. That's 152 miles. Sparta said, we'll be there but we can't be there until Monday. He turns around and ran all the way back to marathon, which is another 152 miles. And then because he was a warrior, chances are as soon as he got there, he grabbed his sword and plunged into the battle. So in his three day span, he covered 300 miles.

And these cretin runners in your book, they're doing very similar feats. These guys, it's crazy. You get to a part of the book and they need to go, for example, get a German uniform for one of the guys to change into. And it's like 10 hours away. And so George, one of the characters in the book, he just runs there and gets it and runs back. And these guys are just like doing stuff like that every day.

And that was it. That's what caught me was at first blush, you're blown away by the courage, by the recklessness. And then the second thing was just the practical concerns, like hold on a second, how the hell this guy go 10 hours through that mountain and then turn around and go back again? And that's where I was really intrigued. And the first thing was it was very easy to verify the facts that these things actually happened. So then the second thing became, okay, now as an athlete, what can I learn from these dudes?

Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. So the other question I want to ask you is based off what you learned in this book, if someone's listening in and they want to develop some of these same athletic skills that these Cretan runners and these Greek heroes have and display in the story, both physically and mentally, and they had all the resources in the world, if you were them, what would be some of the first things that you would do to become one of these Cretan super athletes?

That's the beautiful thing about it is you don't even need all the resources in the world. You don't need any resources. I think the things I would do first and foremost would be become fat adapted. I would get off the sugar cycle because so many other things change. Once you're off the sugar cycle, your energy level increases, your endurance increases, your strength increases. So just by changing your metabolism alone, in a couple of weeks, you're on your way to becoming a much better athlete. And then number two, I would go back to the whole parkour model and listen, if you're not in the parkour, Spartan races, tough mudders, CrossFit, these are all approximations of the same thing. But basically turn yourself into an all around body weight athlete, that's a Good point.

You could train for an obstacle race.

Yeah. I mean, essentially, these are all different approaches to the same truth. I mean, I think the fact that we see the sudden surge of three things simultaneously, obstacle course racing, fattest, fuel, and CrossFit, I think they're all testament to the same thing, that we're getting away from the gym sugar cycle, and we're getting into the body weight and fat adaptation cycle.

Interesting. So obstacle course style training, developing metabolic efficiency and the ability to use fat as a fuel, and then CrossFit style workouts in terms of some of those movement principles that rely upon all the body's different energy systems rather than just like one or two.

That's it. Honestly, I think CrossFit was on its way to becoming, in my eyes, like the perfect exercise system. Where I feel it missed the goal was when it became so competitive, you know, it became competition based. But the athletic principles are dead on the money. I think the execution, unfortunately, at times is lacking. But that's essentially it, man. It's about using body weight and efficient motion.

And then based on the book, plenty of wine and tea too. Right?

I see. I have to think about this guy, George. 50 miles through the mountains, show up in a cave, deliver message, and take like a big, long slugging moonshine before heading back out the door again.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But at that point, you're so fat adapted and insulin sensitive, it doesn't matter.

Right? You've earned it.

Yeah. Well, if you're listening into this interview, you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Heroes I've been taking lots of notes about everything from wing Chun to parkourgenerations.com to the podcast that I did with Barry Murray and Becoming Fat Adapted. And I've got Chris's Amazon page there, as well as his website, chrismcdougall.com and the link to his previous book, Born to Run, as well as this current book, Natural Born Heroes. And I know that if you're listening in, you know that I don't necessarily fall head over heels over every book that I read, but few and far between. I find some that I really feel extremely comfortable recommending and that I think are going to do you a great service. And this Natural Born Heroes is one of them. So, Chris, thanks for writing it and thanks also for your time today, Ben.

I had a blast, man. Now I want to write another book so I can go back on your podcast.

Awesome. All right, man. Well, maybe you can come out here to Spokane, Washington and write a book about my little 7 year old boys running through the trees and becoming little cretin runners out here in the backwoods of America.

I love it, man. Little Spokane Savages.

There you go. I love it. Spokane Savages. All right. Cool, man. Well, thanks for coming on. And again, if you're listening in, visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com heroes and have a wonderful week.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

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