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Book review: Play as if Your Life Depends on It (Part 1 of 2)
by Frank Forencich, published by GoAnimal, Seattle 2003
Health is rarely absent from the media, politics or economics. Yet when we look more closely at
the substance, we see that the controversies generally focus on treating *illness* and *injury* and
paying for those treatments. *Good health* receives surprisingly little serious attention in the
media who treat it as a lifestyle option. Good health, most likely exceptionally good health and
extraordinary fitness, must have characterised the ancestors of everyone reading these words.
Today we have departments in every university training health workers and researching disease
treatments, we devote a substantial proportion of our national and personal budgets to 'health',
yet with all our science and all these dollars, health is declining in substantial proportions of our
population. In the US it is now expected that the current generation of young people will not live
as long as their parents.
This book takes a refreshing, even subversive, look at human health and well-being in an
explicitly evolutionary context. It is an application of Occam's Razor to our physical and mental
health and wellbeing today. The author, Frank Forencich makes the point, familiar to readers of
this journal, that "human physiology and biomechanics have been sculpted over the course of
millions of years to enhance our survival in a semi-wooded grassland environment". In the next
three hundred pages he explains how we can all mimic those challenges to improve our health,
fitness and overall wellbeing. Although this book follows in the tradition of The Paleolithic
Prescription [1], Neanderthin [2] and The TBK Fitness Program [3], it actually breaks significant
new ground, shifting the focus from reductionist physiology to how we can each apply the
principles of evolutionary health to our everyday lives not just our bodies through to old age
and really enjoy ourselves in the process.
The author acknowledges the unconventional nature of his recommendations: "When our world
becomes automated and sedentary living becomes the norm, deviance becomes a prerequisite for
health. If you want to be vigorous and fit, you're going to have to behave differently from the
people around you". He points us out of the gym, out of the special sports gear, away from
dependence on specialist advice and the expenditure of money. He calls on us to distinguish
fitness from sport and shows us how to enter the minds, lifeways and environment of our
evolutionary past. "We are animals and it's about time we got good at it". He says "we shouldn't
worry about what other people think; if they won't exercise in public, they're the ones who are
dysfunctional, not us." He even has a new twist to the customary warning on health and fitness
books: "Before beginning a program of physical inactivity, consult your physician."
Reading this book I was reminded of the time a personal trainer introduced a bewildered new
client to the vast range of specialised equipment at my gym. "Where do I begin?" she pleaded.
Meanwhile, her four-year-old daughter was scampering from one piece of equipment to the next,
trying them all out in her own way, clambering over them, swinging from them and ignoring those
that offered no immediate challenge. She knew exactly what to do: accept the new challenges and
have fun, without permission or guidance.
Forencich contrasts his approach to conventional fitness publications. Whereas they often
seriously describe some variation of the 'three pillars of fitness' such as aerobic capacity, strength
and flexibility, Forencich considers the environment and culture in which we live, and recommends
our three pillars of fitness be "mischief, deviance and rebellion".
Forencich has discovered independently the Evolutionary Health Principle [4]. We are essentially
hard-wired from millions of years of survival struggles on the savannah to prefer physical rest and
even idleness and this preference has driven the development of labour-saving devices, our
transport infrastructure and much else so that the ancestral imperative for movement has all but
disappeared as we set up our modern world to give us conveniently what we want. It becomes
obvious that to move in ways that are best for our health, we're going to have to do things that
feel wrong. We're going to have to go against our hard wiring. It's no wonder we ignore those who
advise us to be more active.
As well as physical fitness, Forencich deals with mental health and the individual's social health,
not as separate topics but as interdependent. He sees as suggestive the correlation between the
rise of depression and the decline in physical activity over the last hundred years: "Take any
animal, restrict its normal movement to a small fraction of its biological norm and you're bound to
see changes in its brain chemistry, disposition, outlook and other health consequences".
References
1. Eaton, S B, Shostak, M and Konner, M, The Paleolithic Prescription, 1988
2. Audette, R, Neanderthin, 1999
3. Katz, T B, The TBK Fitness Program, 2003
4. Boyden, S V, The Biology of Civilisation, 2004
[Continued and concluded in Part 2]
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The FAQ for Evolutionary Fitness is at http://www.evfit.com/faq.htm
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