Ambitious readers who aspire to bump from 95
percent of their genetic potential to 100 percent
should note that pursuing a more ambitious train-
ing regimen should still fall under the Primal Blue-
print Fitness parameters. Take longer hikes, but
keep them at a comfortable Primal pace. Make
your brief, intense PBF Five Essential Movements
workouts more difficult, but not more frequent. If
you start drifting toward a Chronic approach in
pursuit of peak performance (higher heart rates
on endurance sessions, more weekly workouts,
longer duration strength sessions, etc.), you run
a high risk of burnout, and consequently dropping
below 95 percent of your potential. This is the
moral of my personal story, where I essentially
sacrificed my health to try and improve my mara-
thon time by a few minutes. While I was temporar-
ily rewarded with occasional peak performances,
I backslid often by suffering from recurring illness,
injury and fatigue.
DOESN’T USE ISOLATION EXERCISES TO
PROMOTE PUFFY MUSCLES
Isolation exercises run counter to functional fitness.
If functional fitness refers to the natural interplay be-
tween corresponding joints, tendons, and muscles
as they are meant to be used in everyday move-
ments, isolation exercises ignore how the body is
designed to function. You can get bodybuilder-big
by doing five contrived isolation exercises for each
individual muscle, but it might not transfer over ef-
fectively into real life situations. You’ll look great at
the beach, but you may need a lithe lifeguard to
pull you out of a riptide if your overloaded muscu-
lature can’t fight through the waves.Primal Blueprint Fitness promotes functional
muscles. Strength, in my opinion, is not how much
you can bench press, or how many plates you can
stack on the leg extension machine; real strength
is revealed by real results. Can you climb a tree,
or hop a fence if someone’s chasing you? Pow-
erfully stroke to shore against that rip tide? Carry
your wife or husband from a burning house? You
may be able to shuffle through a half-marathon,
but how’re your hops? How about your 40 time?
Would you embarrass yourself (or pull something
unmentionable) on the court or field if your number
was called—even though you’re logging double-
digit training hours each week?13