Wildfitness

I recently spent nine days at Wildfitness at Malindi in Kenya.

The philosophy is to take you back to some degree towards our origin as hunter gatherers.

Our group assembled at a house on the coast where the Wildfitness team could control our diet and exercise regime. We slept in rooms with no curtains or glass in the windows so that we woke each day naturally at dawn, which was usually followed very shortly afterwards by some exercise such as a 10km run or a sea swim. There were a number of elements to the course:

The diet: As Luke, one of our trainers, kept stressing, you can’t out-train a bad diet. This meant nine days without any bread, pasta or rice or dairy products as none of these would have been available to our hunter gatherer forebears. And for most people no coffee and little or no booze. So it was meat, fish, salads and vegetables, and eggs and fruit for breakfast. I and some of the others developed a penchant for ginger tea.

Exercise: there were some one offs and some repeat exercises. The one offs included a 10km run through the bush at dawn. But it wasn’t just a 10km run. We were filmed in the final stages and then had our technique compared with footage of amongst others Haile Gebrselassie. I’d never been taught how to run before, but it’s clear that getting the heels up to the butt in order to engage the hamstrings and gluts is the key to running fast. If you don’t believe me, watch this footage of Gebrselassie in the Sydney Olympics 10000 metre final.

Another one off was the 4km sea swim. Yes, 4km is a long way to swim.

Then there was the jungle circuits of weights and running amongst the tropical plants and the shuttle runs at dawn on a local airstrip after we had waded through a mangrove swamp. All good character building stuff.

Regular events included boxing, kettle bell weight sessions and breathing exercises taken by Augusto, a Peruvian free diver, whose control of his anatomy whilst breathing looked like the scene from Alien in which John Hurt has the monster emerge from his abdomen. The breathing exercises were so effective that in the final session Augusto put the entire group to sleep.

And I shouldn’t omit to mention the emphasis on resting when we were not exercising as an essential part of the process.

What was the outcome? Well there were a couple of tests. On the first day we did a beach obstacle course which involved crawling, balancing, shuttle runs, tractor tyre flipping and shot putting. This was repeated on the final day. All times improved significantly, mine by about 30%. The instructors also took photos on the first day of each of us doing some basic exercises: picking up a weight, a press up, jumping over a bar, lifting a bar over our head and behind our back, and throwing a right cross. These were repeated and photographed on the final day in exactly the same spot and against the same background. When he reviewed my photos, Luke suggested that my younger leaner sibling had changed places with me during the course. Interestingly, no one was weighed during the course, and weight loss was not a stated objective, yet I lost 10 lb and it has stayed off since.

Would I recommend Wildfitness? Unequivocally. It’s a clever course and well run. And it wasn’t at all like boot camp. Here’s a photo taken on the final night of me and Ricky Groves, the former Eastenders actor who was there to train for the London Marathon doing some essential training:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hunter gatherers smoke Havanas!

Comments

[mark owen-ward]

Terry this was an interesting post. I've read about Wildfitness with interest and am a keen proponent of a more primal lifestyle. Good to read that effects are noticeable even from a relatively short experience. You mentioned that weight has stayed off - have you maintained a diet and lifestyle close to what you experienced in Kenya?

[Terry Smith]

Mark, I found it possible to maintain the diet and lifestyle after Kenya, partly I think because it wasn’t ridiculously onerous. Luke and Heidi’s philosophy was that you would and should go for a pizza and a beer from time to time and when you did, you should not beat yourself up about it, you should enjoy it. In fact, I have lost another 10lbs since Wildfitness by keeping to the diet and biking. One of my good friends and clients Si Wang is going to do the course in October, so I’m looking forward to hearing how he gets on.