Book Review – ‘Exercised – the Science of Physical Activity, Rest and Health’ by Daniel Lieberman.

This myth busting book will overturn everything you thought you knew about exercise and the body.

I know that in an earlier book review I raved about Bill Bryson’s, ‘The Body – A Guide for Occupants’. An excellent work that I still stand by, but this book by Lieberman is in a league of its own.

Daniel Lieberman is a paleoanthropologist at Harvard University, where he is the Edwin M Lerner II Professor of Biological Sciences, and Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology.

I first saw him interviewed on Steven Bartlett’s ‘Diary of a CEO’ podcast and straight away I was sitting up and paying attention. Link.

With someone of professor Lieberman’s credentials, you know you are not going get some quackery. This wasn’t the amateur-hour that you often get with books and articles on health and exercise.

Prof Lieberman is not a closeted academic – here is a guy who has done his time in the field and experienced directly the things he has made reference to in the book. He has spent time with the remaining hunter-gatherers; hunted with them and observed and tested them very closely; because it is the hunter-gatherers who are the closest to the early humans we are all descended from. They are living examples of what our bodies are designed for.

I am reminded of the quote by Edward O. Wilson, “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous..”

But it’s our Palaeolithic bodies that are also super interesting.

I don’t want to issue spoilers in this review, but there are many surprising things in the book. Lieberman forces us to confront facts about ourselves that are shocking and embarrassing at the same time. For example; the concept of forcing ourselves to exercise is alien to our whole make-up that when looked at from the point of view of the hunter gatherers it’s ridiculously comical; even our recent agricultural ancestors would find it either headscratchingly bonkers or just plain laughable. Their own physical activities were way beyond what we do, but out of the necessity of survival. When given the choice, the hunter gatherers and farmers default programming told them to just sit down and rest.

In a way it chimed with something that always puzzled me with its irony.

I remember when I was a factory worker doing very physical work and part of my job was to hunker down and use all my strength to push multiple huge racks across the factory floor. The wheels were either inadequate or knackered, which meant I had to use more muscle than I really wanted to. At the end of a twelve hour shift I was physically wiped out. In the current age I watch in wonderment films on Instagram of modern gym bunnies paying good money to artificially push weighted sledges along the length of the gym, with no practical reason behind the activity. I understand it, but it just makes me laugh.

Lieberman is not against exercise – the complete opposite. He makes the case with so many examples that it is basically ‘exercise or die’. He goes well beyond the simple idea of ‘use it or lose it’. Exercise is the most potent medicine we have.

In terms of ageing, he says that ageing is inevitable but clinical senescence isn’t (this is the decline and rot that can occur with older people; heart disease, cancer, inflammation, arthritis etc.), but also senescence (like type 2 diabetes) can be reversable, not through medical intervention, but through exercise and diet – but specifically exercise.

Lieberman’s chapter on human combat, the comparison with the great apes and hunter gatherers makes for interesting reading for martial artists (as part of his research he went to MMA contests). Again, it’s myth-busting stuff.

With information like this, questions I always ask myself are:

·       Have I found it useful?

·       Has it prompted me to make any permanent and lasting changes?

The answers to both questions are a resounding ‘Yes’.