Imagine being alive 50,000 years ago. While we don’t know exactly what life was like back then, chances are pretty good that you engaged in these types of activities on a fairly regular basis:
– Building simple shelters
– Foraging for fruits, nuts, and tubers
– Walking for long distances while carrying food, tools, and weapons
– Scaling up and down hilly, rocky terrain
– Cautiously navigating steep trails and strong river currents
– Quietly sneaking up on prey
– Chasing down, grappling with, and killing wild game
– Lifting, carrying, or dragging animal carcasses back to your shelter
– Jumping up and climbing into trees to escape predators
– Leaping back from a predator, a cornered prey, or a venomous reptile
– Defending yourself and your resources from rival humans
– Collecting wood and building fires
– Sleeping very lightly in a pitch dark environment
The only way you’d be able to survive in this setting would be to develop very versatile physical capabilities combined with enhanced spatial awareness and quick reaction times.
The key is, when you limit your physical activity to repetitive, uni-directional activities such as aerobics and running, you train your muscles to operate within a very narrow and predictable range of physical mobility. This means that you compromise your ability to react quickly and effectively to both threats and opportunities that come at you from all angles.
Bottom line – you dull your reflexes.
Remember, you’re built for quick and versatile movement in any direction. Make sure that you’re training to enhance this – and not to detriment it.