Homo Erectus

Human Devolution

HOMO ERECTUS - Upright Man dates back 2 million to 70,000 years ago. Homo Erectus was one of the first to run down its food in packs. A pack of humans can out run an animal. Homo Erectus figured this out.

Unlike runners today, Homo Erectus stood up straight when he ran. The Modern World has us seated. We travel in motorized seats. We eat seated. We work seated. We watch hours of TV seated. Some folks gather seated (the things my kids like to ride at Publix). 

We spend so much time seated, we are stuck that way. Remember when you made a face and your Mom said your face was going to stick like that? Well, its true. If you hold a position all day every day, your body is going to adapt and form around that position. When you stand up and run, it looks like you are still seated. The average runner today is bent at the waist with his/her ass sticking out. 

When we are bent over while running, we are off balance. In order to re-balance, most folks compound their problem by over-striding. We stick our front foot way out in front of us to catch us before we fall. 

Over-striding is the primary cause of back injury, knee injury and calf injury. Front loading our weight and beating it into the ground over and over again is a sure way to wear out our God given equipment.

The solution dates back a million plus year. Be Homo Erectus! Stand straight up and shorten our stride. A pretty runner is tall in her carriage with tiny steps. Over-striding makes a pretty runner look like an Ape. 

10 Days...before Peachtree

It takes 10 days to realize the benefits of a workout. Every new participant is told the same thing. It takes TEN Days before we start feeling better in the workout. 10 days is the magic number.

Its also works for race planning. There is no workout we can do 10 days before a race to improve our performance. All we can do is keep moving, keeps the efforts easy and medium, and get more rest (better sleep).

Doing a hard workout less than 10 days before a major race will only take away from the race effort.

Thousands of people will run hard down Peachtree Road this weekend in preparation of the 4th of July Peachtree Road Race. A hard run after Wednesday, June 24th will make them slower at the Peachtree Road Race.

Skinny Hot

There are a variety of body styles that are all popular these days. Big is beautiful. Cross Fit has made muscle super cool. Yoga shape is softly sexy.

Peachtree Road Boot Camp strives for Skinny Hot. We have developed a formula that combines running with body weight exercise. Each morning, we run around town in a group. During the run, we stop often for body weight basic training exercise. We stop about every 300 meters (3 football fields). On each stop, we perform 40 repetitions of various exercises. We vary the exercise daily depending on the body part we are working that day. Over an hour, we cover about 3 miles and perform 600 repetitions of exercise. During exercise, our heart rate stays the same as our running heart rate. Since our heart rate never drops to rest, we burn 600-800 calories in the hour and another 200 while our bodies are cooling down after the workout.

Running for cardiovascular fitness beats all other forms of cardio. Doing it every day will burn the pudding off. The body weight exercise produces lean muscle and an athletic build. The combination is Skinny Hot, which never goes out of style!

obedience and suffering

America is the land of pleasure. We seek comfort. America has always set a high standard for luxury and high living.

In the last two decades, we have spent a little too much time indulging ourselves in the things that give us pleasure and comfort. Two thirds of America is overweight and half of those are obese. It is not all our fault. Pretty much anything we eat or drink from a can, box or bag is making us fat. As a country, we are addicted to sugar.

How do we live in America and not be a Fat American? It ain't easy. It requires obedience and suffering. Obedience and suffering sucks! Yea, well diabetes sucks too.

Obedience:

• When the alarm goes off, we get out of bed and get dressed
• The next morning when the alarm goes off, we get out of bed and get dressed
• We choose to satisfy a sweet tooth with fruit rather than ice cream, cake, pie or chocolate

Suffering:

• The final twenty minutes of the workout is designed to take us slightly out of the comfort zone
• Those of us who are not suffering in the workout, congratulations! You are in a workout! You are still doing more than 6 million people still sleeping in the Atlanta Metro area.
• When the cookies come out for everyone else to enjoy and we choose an apple, suffering. This type of suffering is pretty small in the history of suffering. Two Thousand years ago, the Carpenter had it worse. It has been said, For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Did The Carpenter want to give up and quit? So they say. On Gethsemane, they say he asked if he could get off the hook. He also said "Thy will be done." Does that work for us? Yep. Late in a race or workout, our brain will tell us to quit. We have experience that suggest that saying "Thy will be done" during suffering produces enough physical power to prevent us from quitting. Sound hoaky, far fetched and a little weird? Try it.

Train Like an Animal

Wolves live and hunt in packs.They are territorial and cooperatively, RUN down game before tearing it apart. The pups run with their parents in the pack. They care for each other and defend their territory together.

With the "Social Predator", all the individuals in the group contribute to the hunt. Cooperative hunting is when meat eating animals hunt together in groups that contain both division of labor and role specialization. Cooperative hunting has been linked to the social organization of animal species and the evolution of society. Humans fall into this category with other animals.

In our workouts, blood shed is always accidental. We do not aim to kill. We do rely on each other for support and encouragement. Each one of us links ourselves to the others around us and creates a pack that works and moves together. Every single person in the pack is important to the others. We all serve each other by making each other better in the workout.

next level

In video games, it is required to live in order to achieve the next level. In fitness training and in particular, RUNNING, it is required to die to get to the next level.

Moving from base fitness to a higher level is a CHANGE.

1) Change your MIND, think differently, kill the old way of thinking - Change occurs first in our heads. There is a thought. "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

2) Change your Actions, become a new person. Do it differently. Kill the old person who is stuck. - Nothing changes if nothing changes. If exercising two days a week is producing unsatisfactory fitness, the first action should be to exercise three days a week.

3) Change your wardrobe! In Fitness, if there is a change in thought followed by new actions, there is the inevitable change in form or "shape."  Please beware, if the old way of thinking and acting has been completely killed, and the new thoughts and actions are still fairly new, there will be a knee jerk reaction to buy a new pair of jeans. Unless there is a 90 day return policy, don't do it! There is an even smaller size jeans that will fit better. Be patient and continue to wear your too large clothes for a little longer.