Sprinting Towards The Divine

You, like me, want a strong, athletic, lean, good looking body. Everywhere, people are telling you how to achieve this. You have an idea. But what are the principles that underlie all of the correct advice you are getting?

To get to the principles we need to compare wild humans and lions.

Before we get to that, let me share a short story.

Back in 2019 my dad tricked me into endurance training. At the time I was bulking, doing crossfit and powerlifting. I was as FAT as I have ever been.

He told me I could be a semi pro athlete. He would fly me around the world to do races with him. He wanted a partner to try to qualify for the Swimrun World Champs with. Naturally I said yes.

I went into research mode with Goggins as my drill sergeant. I read Primal Endurance. Went keto, started running and swimming. After 10-months I had lost 10kg and was a skinny runner.

If I had implemented what I'm about to tell you I would not have lost 10kg (mostly muscle).

I would not have injured myself at four different times, eventually forcing me to retire from the sport.

On top of that it would've saved me a stupid amount of time not being in the dreaded pain zone of cardio.

So, here is how to get what you want from how you move.

Ancestral humans spend most of their day either at rest or low intensity movement, think walking. On average they spend 75min per day doing somewhat hard movement. And then a couple of times a week they do all out sprints during hunts for around 20s each (multiple reps).

Lions rest for 20h a day, then move across large distances at slow walking speeds around 3-4km/h. When the hunt begins they can do mutiple all out sprints reaching up to 60km/h (50% faster than Usain Bolt's top speed) for 100-200m at a time.

When humans or lions go hard they go hard for specific reasons. It's to run from a predator, to hund down prey, or to fight.

In both cases, almost no time is spent in the suffer-zone where most casual cardio fans spend all of their time doing cardio. It's either low effort or max effort.

The reason I have italized cardio is because we are going to redefine it in your heads. Cardio has gotten its name from the idea that it is good for our hearts, or cardiovascular health.

It's hard to remove the word from your heads so instead we are going to change what you associate with it. Forget about heart health. Forget about huffing and puffing while running or biking.

Old Cardio: Long slow distance training with an intensity that makes it suck.

New Cardio: Accumulated time spent moving + running for your life.

Both science and obsessed people in the health space are starting to figure out the same thing. To be healthy we need more low-effort movement accumulated across time.

Gardening, walking, dancing, and playing.

But we can't forget about running for our lives. This is all about short bursts at maximal effort. Also known as sprinting.

Sprinting stimulates growth and metabolism. Meaning we burn more calories and grow more muscle. Which in turn burns even more calories (muscles run hot).

Long slow distance training (old cardio) literally eats muscle. On top of that it is stressful for the body, both of which will decrease our metabolic rate.

Not good if you want to be jacked and lean.

Why are sprinters jacked and marathon runners scrawny? They both train hard in the gym, and they both eat a lot. One is a hunter and the other is prey.

Now this is where we get practical. New cardio included running for your life, remember. This is maximal physical effort for short periods of time.

What does that remind you of?

A hard f*ucking set in the gym.

Dr. Schoenfeld is the guy when it comes to the science of strength and muscle building. His research has concluded, building muscle mainly comes down to volume and intensity.

That is good for us.

Neither lions nor humans sprinted often.

It seems as if we only need 5 reps per week running for our lives to elicit a strong response. Meaning growth.

100% effort sprints can only be done for 10-20s. Let's say 15s. 5 x 15 = 75s. That is 75 seconds. 75 seconds of work per week to get an enormous effect. We can easily build up to more.

Apply this to training. We need to do 5 sets per week (per muscle group), close to failure, to gain muscle.

One really hard set of push-ups and pull-ups per day is enough... Imagine that. If everyone in the world just did that, would we all be chads walking around? Maybe.

This is where 99% of people fail. Intensity, intensity, intensity. Intensity is the applied effort in relation to our maximal output.

I wasted 3 years going to the gym for 2h+ without any impressive gains because I had not figured this out.

Most of us never sprint or lift heavy weights close to maximal effort (failure).

Fuck the grey zone. Be a lion.

This is the baseline. Anything else you do is on top of this. Gym, jiu-jitsu, climbing, running, cycling. It takes no time and the ROI is insane.

Be a lion.

- MJ