The Five Essential Movements
The Primal Blueprint Fitness Lift Heavy Things
protocol is simple, intuitive and focuses on just
“Five Essential Movements” to get the job done.
Essential movements are those actions for which
our bodies are designed to execute without injury
and on a daily, near-constant basis. These move-
ments were essential to our survival for two million
years. Men and women couldn’t go about procur-
ing food, defending themselves, foraging, carry-
ing heavy loads, or building domiciles without also
performing these five movements:
PUSHUP (VIDEO)
Probably the single greatest muscle-building ex-
ercise of all, pushups deserve more respect than
they get from the strength community. Yeah, the
bench press is sexy, but it can lead to rotator cuff
injuries, and it neglects the core-stabilizing as-
pects of the pushup. The pushup also allows for
full scapular range of motion, whereas the bench
press requires you to retract the scapulae for the
duration in order to preserve your shoulders. If
pushups get too easy, you can always increase
the load or switch your hand position.
PULLUP (VIDEO)
Climbing a tree to escape a predator, pursue prey,
or reach the heights of a particularly bountiful fruit
tree; scaling a cliff to nab a nest full of fatty, nutri-
ent-dense bird’s eggs; driving a herd of bison into
a ravine to their death and hauling the choicest re-
mains up twenty feet by way of sturdy vines laced
together, ropelike, using only Paleolithic elbow
grease—these situations called for well-developed
“pulling muscles.” Grok wasn’t doing strict mili-
tary pullups, but he was using the corresponding
muscles on a near-daily basis. Your average couch
potato can barely do a single pullup, if that. That has
to change, and training the pullup can be achieved
almost anywhere—using a bit of ingenuity.32