Health buffs are trading fancy gear and expensive classes for more analog exercises that combat the wear-and-tear of modern living.
There’s a new “It” fitness regimen in town, and this time, it has nothing to do with three-digit-priced athleisure sets or the type of overcrowded workout class that costs exactly $38. What if I told you the latest wellness phase sweeping the fashion crowd and social media requires no stuff, no money or — get this — no actual need to leave your own home? That’s because the trend du jour isn’t at all focused on the physical and financial extremes upon which the fitness industry has been mostly built, but rather, and much more simply, on getting back to the roots of what we already have.
Enter “primal movement,” a burgeoning wellness practice that seeks to bring our bodies back to the analog days. Joe Holder, a GQ fitness and wellness columnist and Nike Master Trainer, defines it as a form of fitness in which participants look at the movement patterns of animals, or utilize the built and natural world — i.e., human-made surroundings that provide the setting for societal activity, from buildings to parks — to combat the wear-and-tear of modern life.
“Primal movement is the result of individuals that are more into the ‘natural’ side of fitness and want something that’s a little more raw,” explains Holder. “This is a ‘return to nature’ movement that’s taking hold in wellness. You likely see people doing this who are also railing against ‘seed oils’ or are into Paleo.”
Yet, recent data suggests the anti-tech workout is crossing over into something more mainstream, at least for certain age demographics. On Pinterest, for starters, searches for “primal movement” grew 120% in 2022, particularly among millennials and Gen X-ers reportedly seeking out a slower, more intentional lifestyle.
Related searches for mobility exercises (which aren’t explicitly “primal” by definition, reminds Holder) have spiked, too: 140% for “mobility stretches,” 135% for “knee mobility exercises,” 100% for “hip mobility exercises.” Over on TikTok, it’s more of the same: Videos for “#neckhump” — a result of “tech neck” or “kyphosis,” and a bodily expression of the ways in which our bodies have regressed due to digital ways of life — have amassed more than 628 million views.
All of this is rife with irony, of course: A wellness movement gaining momentum for its analog benefits could only do so on the same types of technology it’s looking to counter. Still, experts agree that such primal exercises offer tangible, long-term benefits to overall health, regardless of whether or not you actually put down your phone while doing them.
But what makes a workout “primal,” exactly?
“Primal exercises help us move in multiple planes of motion and also help protect us from some of the negative aspects of modern living, like sitting a lot or sedentary activity,” explains Holder. “They’re important to do so the brain also remembers how to work through movements we no longer spend much time doing, even if our primal body can.”
From there, Holder says, mobility exercises — i.e., dynamic stretches that gently improve flexibility and range of motion — can help reduce or manage pain from the negative impact sitting might have on our bodies. Though mobility work has always been a focus among groups like athletes, our now-decreased range of motion has put a new focus on drills that help restore the body to the ability level it once had, or was made to have.
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“We’re seeing a shift towards prioritizing mobility work because these exercises are essential to overall wellbeing,” says Kate Glavan, a full-time content creator and Hoka Global Athlete Ambassador, who took up running after quitting college volleyball at NYU. “If you aren’t capable of moving your joints through a full range of motion, you’re much more likely to get injured.”
This is true whether you’re consistently working out or not. But research has found that we are, generally speaking, working out more, particularly since the onset of the pandemic. According to a 2020 study conducted by RunRepeat, a company that reviews running shoes, a majority of the people surveyed in 139 countries reported exercising more often in the weeks immediately following lockdown. A separate study out of the U.K., meanwhile, found that once stay-at-home orders were lifted, most people began adopting new forms of movement even more frequently, perhaps to their own detriment.
“People want to run fast and lift heavy and push themselves hard, so that tends to be everyone’s first focus,” says Glavan. “But if you don’t do mobility work after pushing yourself for a long time, your body will catch up and tell you that you need to do it, often in the form of minor injuries.”
This is especially true among millennials and Gen X-ers, who are, ultimately, the first generations in human history to experience the natural effects of aging while also being chronically online. Swasti Sarna, the global director of data insights at Pinterest, finds that the rise of working from home helped a lot of people — the aforementioned generations in particular — evaluate how best to spend their time and move their bodies.
“On Pinterest, we see millennials and Gen X driving these trends, which are all about acting with intention — doing things at the right speed and doing them better, but not faster,” says Sarna. “Primal movement is a great example of intentional movement, at the right speed.”
Now, primal exercises and mobility work are not just activities you can do from the comfort of your own home, at your desk in the middle of your workday. Naturally, this is the appeal, but the fitness and wellness industries are of course also beginning to cash in, capitalizing on this more mindful pace.
In recent years, even pre-pandemic, “functional” movement classes have started to crop up across the country in the form of glossy, high-end wellness experiences. Per 2017 data from fitness booking app ClassPass, stretching and other recovery classes have seen a 16% increase in reservations, making it one of the fastest-growing trends across the platform.
Take StretchLab, a boutique fitness center that became one of the first places to offer one-on-one assisted stretch sessions. For $105, a certified “flexologist” (a StretchLab-branded term for a trainer) will spend 50 minutes targeting muscle groups or problem areas the company says you aren’t able to hit on your own. Equinox offers its own take with Best Stretch Ever, a class that uses a specialized “Mobility Stick” to prioritize movement like joint mobilization, strength training and deep stretching exercises.
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Such is to be expected, Glavan says: “In my opinion, the fitness and wellness industries will focus on anything it can make profit from.” Rather than paying a premium at the start, Glavan recommends getting started on TikTok, where just one search for “hip mobility exercises” (the search page for which has racked up 110 million views) can send you off to the races.
“Another one of my favorite affordable things is simple: a tennis ball,” says Glavan. “Use the tennis ball on muscle knots and places where you feel lactic acid build up. Getting out the knots will help improve your range of motion before you get moving, so you’re less likely to get injured. It hurts a lot, so beware!”
Should you be looking for even more structure without the confines (or expenses) of a traditional fitness class, Holder, the Nike Master Trainer, created an open source library on Instagram, called Exercise Snacks, that promotes the benefits of incorporating consistent, bite-sized activity throughout your day, rather than relegating movement to the gym.
“But the easiest way [to incorporate primal movement into your exercise regimen] is to do five-to-10 minutes of exercise in the morning to help get you primed for the day, and five-to-10 minutes after a long day to offset some of the negative effects,” he explains.
An example, he says, would be to briefly focus on core and glute exercises before your workday, since those areas get “turned off” by excess sitting. At the end of the day can come a focus on light hamstring work, which impacts muscle groups that have been in the flexed position for more hours than our bodies are equipped to handle at any one time.
Still, Holder finds that the “primal” element behind such restorative wellness may be more niche than the mainstream fitness category is ready to accept.
“In all honesty, primal movement has a little bit of a weird halo around it,” he says. “I don’t see this taking hold, but I do think some of the core principles within primal movement will trickle their way into the industry, but just won’t be marketed as such.”
And maybe that’s whole the point. Anti-tech workouts existed before the dawn of the TikTok algorithm and will presumably exist long after us all, once we’ve evolved past the need for an eight-hour workday and have returned to our primal roots, becoming one with moss pillows and foraged fruits. For now, daily, five-minute tech-neck exercises will have to suffice.
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Source: Fashionista.com
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