Circadian science is fast becoming the fitness flavour of the day. That it’s clocking in at half the usual latency behind Leftfield, is a further sign it’s become a topic of concern more generally.
Justifiably so. As the internal clocks that regulate nearly every process in our bodies including sleep, energy levels, hormone production, metabolism, and even immune function, our bodies operate optimally only when aligned with our circadian rhythms.
The biannual adjustment of daylight saving might seem innocuous but studies show that behind the scenes even this slight disruption comes with a long list of downsides and period of adjustment. But mere minutes or even hours off-kilter is but part of the problem for a body considerably more out of whack than that.
So chronobiology: studying these rhythms over longer timescales helps fill in the gaps, including seasonal shifts governed by changes in daylight duration, temperature, and environmental cues.
A broader perspective not yet broad enough. Not even close. Because we’re still out by something in the order of a couple of million years.
Only when we subsequently view these through the long lens of our evolutionary biology do we get close to a more complete and useful understanding: that little in your life is understood or even recognised by your biological makeup.
And that where body and mind are concerned you live on a hostile alien planet.
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.
― Edward O. Wilson
Our survival once depended on attunement to the environment but— made obvious by how we now seek to mitigate the problem with, for example, light boxes or blue-light blocking glasses — our solving for this temporal displacement is not through adapting or harmony with our artificial world but only, where possible, in our denial of it.
True to form, you’ll find us gripping the other end of the stick entirely.
EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!
You'll often hear it said— and with some justification— that exercise, certainly as we have come to know it, has no evolutionary analogue or basis.
With food scarce or unreliable and demanding great energy expenditure, our early ancestors moved only when they had to—for food, shelter, or safety. Correspondingly, they weren't doing any 'extra' activity in their downtime, much less running circuits of the savannah or repeatedly picking up the odd boulder for the hell of it.
An idea that might have us nodding sagely, and, in a moment of solidarity reaching across a millennia of millennia, feeling deeply connected to our ancestors, you know what that does make sense, because I don’t like to exercise either!
A conclusion that could hardly be more disconnected, more denying of our (still) primal self.
Unsurprising when you cherry-pick one fact from the argument, divorced of all context and reason, while glossing over the entire Darwinian motivation for doing so: survival.
Even then, it’s not like they were putting their feet up. Hunting wasn’t a quick trip to the fridge but could mean days of tracking prey, chasing it to exhaustion, and hauling it back to camp. Gathering wasn’t a casual stroll through the aisles but hours of foraging, climbing, digging, and carrying. Even rest wasn’t the lounge-on-the-couch kind—it was crouched by a fire, sleeping on uneven ground, or seated in positions demanding strength and mobility.
They practised skills and played games that developed coordination, strength, and strategy and built shelters and tools that required ingenuity and effort. They taught the next generation, modelling movements that would one day save their lives.
Practising a spear throw or climbing a tree for fun might not have had an immediate payoff, but it ensured readiness when survival depended on it. Not wasted or ‘extra’ effort; but preparation. A hedge against the unpredictable nature of their world.
By comparison to this fully embodied existence, exercise— as we have come to know it—may be unnatural but if we have to swim upstream against our evolutionary tendencies, swim we must. And we needn’t be too concerned about any ‘extra’ activity when we’re dying in droves from its opposite.
It is modern life and inactivity that is unprecedented and profoundly unnatural. Sedentary routines, artificial environments, and relentless demands on time and attention are misalignments causing a cascade of negative consequences.
This mismatch in time a problem only further compounded by the fact, that, in the here and now:
YOU JUST DON’T HAVE IT
Time, that is. The dictates of your physiology demand, in no particular order, resistance training, conditioning and mobility. If you have a lot of time, equipment, money etc. your lack of constraints affords you a veritable menu of potential paths in each of these departments.
Conversely, as we add constraints, the list gets correspondingly shorter. And under severe constraints —namely time— that list gets very short indeed.
Your options reduced to:
Do what you must— not what you like — and get what you want. Or don't.
It might look something like this:
5 x submax sets of KB swings. In your backyard. Whenever you get a chance.
That may not be what you want to do, much less where or when, but all are only denials of what is. That you'd prefer to be in a spin class 4 times a week is all very well and good. And beside the point. As soon as your lifestyle allows you to do that —balanced by additional physiological dictates— go for it, but in the meantime, you still have to get or stay fit.
And when you adjust to reality you’ll find there is always time to meet these physiological demands, which is just as well because you’ll be far better served by realising you no longer have time NOT to.
We like to imagine the window of opportunity will always be open. It won't be. Unless you exercised yesterday it is closing as you read this. Not that you won't be able to 'get fit' necessarily, but, that the fitness on offer—that you'll be able to achieve and maintain—is ever diminishing based on when you start. And keep going.
The fitness available to you in later life hinges entirely on how long you’ve had a fitness practice. And how well that practice came to reflect what you needed.
Again, it’s not that we can ever adjust to a modern artificial environment, we either suffer for it, or we do what we can to renew our primal existence, and why as much as we must come to accept our constraints, we must take advantage of our opportunities.
ZEITGEBERS
The ‘time-givers’ are environmental or otherwise external cues that entrain your biological rhythms to synchronise with the Earth's cycles.
Light— the most powerful.
Atmospheric conditions
Medication
Temperature
Social interactions
Exercise
Eating/drinking patterns
Where possible, wake and sleep, eat, and exercise, at the same time so these physiological punctuations serve as stable reference points. Get outside in the early morning sunlight. Throw some training into the mix. Go running in the rain. Eat food—not foodstuffs— and drink water, never to the exclusion of all else just most of the time. Enough of the time.
And you have everything pulling in the same direction. You’re Leftfield Training.
Look, if a gym with its fluorescent lights and breakfast television was the only way I could get exercise ticked off my to-do list that’s what I’d be doing—that too is a reality to be observed.
But the unfortunate fact is that many, many, many who could get up, outside and training a few mornings a week, don’t. Try it. If it doesn’t fall into the 'I can’t believe how great this is, I wish I'd always done this' column you can always go back to what you were doing, but two million years says it will.
You are finely tuned to the natural cycles of light, dark, and seasonal change. However, the modern world pulls us ever further from their natural cadence leaving us unmoored, lost somewhere between our biology and lifestyle. A mismatch that wreaks havoc: tired but unable to sleep, stiff but unable to stretch, fed but undernourished.
We are out of time, and by every possible interpretation of the phrase. The disconnect from the natural rhythms and environments that shaped human evolution leaves us estranged from our environment and ourselves: body and mind perpetually scrambled.
But when you’re wired for a lifestyle centred around physical movement, natural rhythms, and seasonal changes these offer the only solution.
Not just necessary countermeasures to the negatives but the doorway to a whole new way of being. One not limited to a body that feels, looks and performs better, a calmer, clearer mind, restful sleep and natural energy, rediscovered time and freedom and a deeper connection to the world.
All to be expected when, finally, you are speaking to your body and mind in the only language they understand. The only language they ever have.
Enjoy your weekend.
- OLI