A Transformational Health Solution

An enlightened revelation came to me a little over 15 years ago when I was presented with a situation where I had to introduce folks who've never lifted weights in their entire lives to my peculiar ways and methods. Working with clinically obese folks caused me to undertake an unexpected re-examination of my own Purposefully Primitive methods and procedures. 

How simple could I make the physical

renovation process without losing effectiveness?

Training Background

My back-to-basics immersion caused me to deeply reconsider procedures and philosophies done for so long and so regularly that, in some cases, I'd forgotten why I do things the way I do them. I've lifted weights since the age of 12 and at age 71, I've accumulated almost 60 years of hands-on, in-the-trenches experience. That's good and bad. Anytime a person does something for that long they tend to get pretty damned good at it.

When I started explaining to the stone-cold beginners why I wanted them to do things in a certain way, I noted that I could rattle off reasons and rationales like an auctioneer at a cattle sale. But it somehow seemed hollow to me. I was being superficial and rote. I said things without thinking and decided that I needed to reevaluate how and why. Dealing with total beginners, something I had never done, caused me to rethink much of what I'd taken for granted for so long.

It was as if someone had opened a window in a room full of stale cigar smoke and a fresh breeze had blown in: hard, cold, chilly and bracing. It felt good to reexamine my treasured orthodoxies. Normally I only work with elite weight trainers. These are very experienced athletes who without exception have a tremendous amount of progressive resistance training under their belts before they seek me out. I'm purposefully obscure, hard to find and off the beaten track. When an ardent lifter or athlete makes their way up to the mountains to see me, they are looking for fresh direction on a journey already long underway. I see these seekers for four or five hours then they head back to their world. I'm sort of a one-man Iron Finishing School: a guy who might be able to alert an elite athlete to some heretofore unconsidered offbeat angle or progress-stimulating approach.

This time it was different. This time I'd decided to work with complete beginners with zero fitness experience. These were local folks from right in my neighborhood. To compound complexity, I was looking to extract maximum results in a relatively short timeframe. I'd worked hard and diligently to remove myself from society. I purposefully constructed a rural, isolated lifestyle in order to get really good at my many solitary pursuits. Now life suddenly took a sharp left turn. Circumstance presented me with an opportunity to give something of value to folks who could really use some assistance. This required I reenter the societal world I purposefully left.

Fitness folks that come to me for advice are a savvy lot. I don't spend time going over why I do the things I do. Like a celebrity chef I have my particular style of cuisine and my very own repertoire of signature dishes. A certain segment of the public loves what I do. All was right with my relationship to the world insofar as maintaining my comfort groove.

Then along comes a gaggle of stone-cold beginners that have no freaking idea who I am; people that have never ever touched a weight; and now I'm put in charge of maximizing physical progress of a little gang of totally untrained regular people.

All of my beginners were clinically obese, i.e. carrying a 30% or greater body fat percentile. Some of my new clients had 50% body fat percentiles. My goal was to see if it was possible to spark a substantive physical makeover in obese individuals using minimalist methods. The process would take ninety days and I would stay true to my Purposeful Primitive philosophy. That these methods worked for elite athletes was beyond dispute; grounded in biology, the methodological effectiveness is rooted in scientific "cause and effect," do this and that must happen.

I believe in biological imperatives. Lift weights in the proscribed fashion and muscles are required to grow. Perform cardiovascular exercise as instructed and organ function and caloric oxidation must improve. Eat with precision and discipline and stored body fat must be preferentially oxidized. Put all three modes together and the human body must reconfigure itself. Subjected to proper procedures executed in the prescribed sequence the human body has no physiological choice other than to build muscle and oxidize excess body fat.

With six decades of empirical experience under my belt, I know what works. I also know what procedures are a waste of time. My self-imposed challenge was, could an already sparse methodology be pruned and pared, trimmed and reduced, without losing the essential essence? This was a challenge that excited me in a way that I hadn't been excited in a long time. It has proven to be a literal lifesaver for people whose bodyweight was jeopardizing their health and threatening to prematurely kill them.

The Self-Imposed Rules

I wanted to make my test as tough as possible. Again, how little could we do and still elicit results?

I broke this out into three weekly weight training sessions of 30 minutes each. Weight training would consist of three exercises done three times a week. Three sets of 10 reps in the squat, bench press and deadlift. Seven weekly cardiovascular sessions of 30 minute duration outside would be the sole aerobic activity. On the nutrition front food only came from the grocery with no supplementation. I showed them how to cook delicious lean protein dishes and fiber carb dishes. None of the participants had ever lifted weights or participated in serious fitness program. 

Results