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079: Why It Pays to Play with Darryl Edwards

October 13, 2020/
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Ever wonder why it pays to play? Darryl Edwards joins us to talk about this very topic on episode 79 of Awesome Health Podcast.

Darryl is a movement coach, author of the best-selling book “Animal Moves” and a leader in the area of creativity and innovation in fitness and health. He developed the Primal Play Method™ as a way to make physical activity both healthy and fun for people of all fitness levels and abilities.

Today he’ll explain what he means by movement as meditation and we will dive into evolutionary biology and why the gym is really an alien environment for humans. And that is where we start our show: the gym. Darryl says the gym is not a natural place for us and exercise doesn’t come naturally, but movement does. In fact, movement is built into our DNA and that movement should be a marriage of function, fun and usefulness. It’s about ensuring we are moving our bodies in a way that is fun for us and also will be therapeutic, help us live longer and fend off diseases along the way.

Darryl explains more about this, including why people as recently as the 1940s were walking an average of 10 miles a day and why that was so beneficial for their bodies and minds.

Also on today’s show, he shares his own journey that led him to this career path. Darryl had been working in the field of investment banking: he was a technologist who developed systems to help investment bankers make money. It is an intense field and not uncommon to work 110 hours a week. And it took its toll on Darryl: during one of his annual check-ups his doctor told him he was one marker away from being put on medication for Type II Diabetes. He also had a poor lipid profile, meaning he was at high risk of a stroke or heart attack within 5 to 10 years. He didn’t like the sound of any of that, nor did he like the sound of the side effects of the medications his doctor wanted him to take.

Darryl opted to try exercise instead, and asked his doctor to monitor his progress. At 30 days, 60 days and 90 days he had labs done and his markers continued to improve. They kept improving over time, he got better and he also got very interested in the links between fitness, movement and health.

That leads to an intriguing conversation about what Primal Play is and why he founded it. Join us to hear his insights on those areas and more on today’s Awesome Health Podcast!

Episode Resources:

Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade Lightheart: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. It's Wade T Lightheart with another episode of BiOptimizers Awesome Health Podcast. And today… I am so excited today. This is going to be so much fun and so interesting. We're going to talk about the benefits of play, and we have none other than Darryl Edwards, who is a movement coach and author of the bestselling book "Animal moves", love that title, and a thought leader in the area of creativity and innovation in fitness and health. Now Darryl developed the primal play method to inspire others to make physical activity fun, while getting healthier and more robust in the process. He's been featured on documentaries, TV, radio, podcasts, and international press. And he regularly presents as a keynote speaker at events worldwide. You want to check out his Ted talk "Why working out isn't working out", and that's now been viewed over 700,000 thousand times.

Wade Lightheart: We're going to talk about movement as meditation. We're going to talk about play. We're going to talk about evolutionary biology and primal place, specifically, is one of the things that he talks about. And I'm going to share just before we get started and bring Darryl in here to the conversation. I had an experience recently that really shocked me. And a lot of people don't like to go to the gym. They don't like to work out. It's not fun. And I like the gym, but not everybody does. It's a big challenge for a lot of people in the modern world. But recently I was at 40 Years of Zen and did this cerebellum potentiation training, which is activating the limbic system. And this was about, a little over a month ago actually. And I was walking down the beach with a friend of mine and suddenly I felt the urge to start running around like a predator, like I was a wolf or a tiger or something. I was on my toes and I was crouched, and my body was moving like an animal. And I was shocked, cause' I thought, you know, this is something I do when I was maybe like 4 or 5 or 6, or remember those martial arts movies back in the day and this is tiger, and this is dragon, and this is snake or monkey. And it got me thinking. And then it turns out we've got Darryl, who is an expert in this whole area on the podcast today. Darryl, welcome to the show.

Darryl Edwards: Thank you, Wade. What a great introduction. And certainly, your experience resonates with me, because the one thing about movement or physical activity is that the gym environment is alien to us as humans. It's not a natural environment to be in firstly. Secondly, exercise is not a part of our DNA, but movements certainly is. So we were designed, evolve to move, to move in a whole host of ways. And that's part of the challenge, because we have to get off the Savannah, so to speak, into a box temperature controlled room, lots of mechanical bits and pieces of equipment to encourage us to move in a particular way. Usually in a very rudimentary plain of motion. And then we have the ability that all of us have to move in a functional, helpful way and in some respects a way that is enjoyable and fruitful, and useful.

Darryl Edwards: And that's that I feel is the missing link, so to speak, between a lot of conventional fitness and what we're trying to achieve from fitness, and what our bodies are craving for. And once you marry those two aspects together, our requirement, our need for movement, and secondly, ensuring that we're getting the right type of response. So am I assisting with health and longevity? Am I preventing chronic lifestyle disease? Am I supporting in a therapeutic way? What's good for my mind and body? All those aspects being ticked and certainly your desire to move in this kind of animalistic way is just part of our nature. We are animals. And at some point in your ancestry, somebody would have been hunting in exactly that way as a predator, as a scavenger. Would be moving, not just by Peterlee, but they will be quite predator on all fours, very close to the ground, being very careful, being very silent.

Darryl Edwards: So this isn't just about what looks great in the martial arts movie, right? In mimicking, in terms of mimicking animals, the animal kingdom are certainly our reference point for movement. And most of that wonder is from envy. For example, I can't sprint as fast as a cheetah, no human can. You know, you saying Bolt as fast as he is? Camels can out sprint him. Wild sheep can out sprint Usain Bolt. He's very slow, is pedestrian when it comes to the sprint speed. We're not very strong as humans. So if we lift twice or three times our body weight, that's incredible. That's Olympic level right there, however, an ant can carry a hundred times, a thousand times it's body weight effortlessly and carry that for significant distances. So when we think of that, that's another level of I suppose, benchmark of achievements, of specialty of movements. And as generalists of movement as humans are, we should be absorbing as much information as possible as a reference.

Darryl Edwards: It's almost like a smorgasbord of movement opportunity. Then you will decide it's okay to crawl, but it is okay to move and kind of ambulate on all fours. And it is okay to balance and to focus on coordination, and to lift and carry and not just to pick something up, set it back down repetitively, but actually do something functional with that movement pattern and move in 3D and move with all different planes of motion and different intensities. So I just feel, almost looking at movement as a nutrient dense diet. And so our movement diet should be just as nutrient dense, which means you shouldn't be just doing one thing or just eating one thing. You shouldn't be moving in one particular way. You should have adequate rest and recovery. You should be getting all of the nutrients that you need to ensure you can continue to move, that you're developing movement skills, your developing movements and functional ability and let your maintain that ability for as long as possible. So, in a very long summation I really am astounded at how powerful movement is as medicine. And it's a great antidote to a lot of the ills of the modern era.

Wade Lightheart: I got so many questions and, you know, I had always reflected. I was looking back in history to the Spartans, for example, and if you actually look at the gear that these individuals fought with, it was about 220 pounds that they were going into battle. So you're fighting to the death with another enemy and you're carrying 220… 220 pounds is a decent squat. That's a decent squat rate or a decent Detlev rate. And most people couldn't even come close to doing it. And these guys are fighting to the death, marching somewhere, carrying this equipment over, then fighting, then coming back wounded and stuff. Do you think that civilization has made humans even more frail and more weak over the centuries?

Darryl Edwards: No doubt. No doubt about that. And it's not even an opinion. There's anthropological evidence in relation to this. So I mean, Jared Diamond at " Guns, Germs, and Steel", fantastic book. He talks about the impact of the agricultural revolution. And one impact of that wasn't just a change in diet, but it was also a change in physical stature, because our bodies changed from what was competent for hunting and gathering to becoming more sedentary and changing the type of work we were doing. So, we lost several inches. We lost muscle mass. We suddenly lost height. We lost muscle mass, bone density. All of these things changed. And certainly when we fast forward on from the agricultural revolution to the industrial revolution and increase mechanical use of mechanical vehicles and transport into the electronic age, into the internet age where we are right now, we've outsourced.

Darryl Edwards: Much of what we need to do physically has been outsourced very efficiently, very effectively. It's certainly significant increased productivity, but it also drive down our need for movements and so we atrophy. And I'm not talking about atrophy in the sense of not utilizing one or two muscles, you know, that type of weakness. It's a whole body, whole mind atrophy. Our brain and muscles deteriorate significantly. And it's a little bit like a slow motion form of bedrest. If you have a significant period of time with bedrest, you lose muscleness, you lose bone density, you become frail, you become weak. It's difficult to even walk after just a few weeks of bed rest. It's like being in space. You in space and you don't have the impact of gravity. You get weaker, you lose muscle mass. This is what happens. And there's a significant amount of rehabilitation required for athletes, who come out of space stations, for several months, even though they're 'exercising'. They're still moving, but they're not getting the right force being applied to themselves physically.

Darryl Edwards: So, I would just say most of our lives on the planet today are space station living or bedrest at a much slower pace. And so we may not notice what's happening to ourselves and we will have periods of: Aw, I ran a 10km or I go to gym every once in a while, or I can achieve certain physical feats of wonder. But it's not sustained. It's not the day in, day out I have to do this, because I need to survive. That's the difference? So wherever you were Spartan, and whether you were just a hunter&gatherer, who didn't have to fight, you still had to do very physically demanding, a significant amount of exertion, in order to achieve your goals. Even, if we fast forward to the present day, I read about the average walking distance within the 20th century. Just within the 20th century.

Darryl Edwards: So in the 1940s here in the UK, the average distance walked was about 10 miles a day. And I'm like: wait what? What else are people doing back then for people to be walking that distance? I mean, that's a considerable distance to be walking. And then I read about Charles Dickens who used to walk 15 to 30 miles a day. So he used to write books in the morning. He used to live in the city, you know, work in the city, but live out in the country. And he used to walk for several hours a day and that wasn't seen as exceptional. He wasn't an athlete. He wasn't doing it to keep fit. It was just the fact that he didn't have access to transport that would have enabled him to get from A to B in 20 minutes.

Darryl Edwards: He used his legs for that type of transport and he recognized the benefits to his creativity of walking those length of big distances and the benefits to the brain. So yes, certainly we are far more fragile as a species. And it isn't just a physical frigidity. I think a mental fragility as well in terms of how resilient we are, because some of the adversities that our ancestors faced were physical. So by overcoming some of those physical adversities, you obviously have a knock on effect when it comes to mental resilience and wellbeing as well. So yeah, we have significantly deprived of movement and significantly deprived of acute stresses that are beneficial. And this leads to a chronic lack of ability of function, of increased morbidity, of certain an increase in chronic lifestyle disease. So we know being sedentary is linked to pretty much every physical ailment you can consider from musculoskeletal problems to heart disease, to cancer, to type two diabetes, to strokes, to dementia you know, to anxiety and depression, to osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune conditions, the list goes on. There was a strong association, significant, almost root causal, between being physically sedentary and juststation of chronic diseases and certain sustaining of those disease conditions if you have them.

Wade Lightheart: Quick question. I had actually saw a report from, I think it was the early 19 hundreds, I think it was World Health Institution or something of that equivalent that suggested 20 miles of walking a day to be healthy. And I was looking at this like, is this a typo? And what's the average person today walking just incidentally, do you know what that is? I know everybody's trying to get 10,000 steps, let alone 10 miles.

Darryl Edwards: Yes. I mean it can be between half a mile to a mile. That's the best averages that I've seen. And even if you're hitting a mile a day for some people that's ambitious target. So that's probably around 2000 steps, something like that. That's pretty ambitious for some people, because they literally, they get up, they hop into their car, go to work, sit down, come home, sit down, maybe going into the loo is a time where they actually spent a bit of time walking. So it seems, you know, this is part of the problem, because we no longer need to walk to achieve most basic functions today. It does seem incredible when somebody says: I've walked five miles a day.

Darryl Edwards: Like what the heck? But you've done your 10,000 steps, you know? Wow. That's wow. How did you find the time to do that in the first instance, how do you find the time? And let's remember, even if you achieve your 5,000, your 10,000 steps, walking is just one aspect of movement, which is beneficial. It's not going to give a significant strength gains. It's not going to significantly improve, you know, increase our muscle mass. It isn't going to be significant improving our cardiac respiratory ability and function, aerobic capacity. It's not doing any other things. Walking is just above idle. You know, it's just getting ourselves ticking over. And what's walking should be for most of us. Of course, if you're very deconditioned, really deconditioned, going for walk is a significant achievement. But for most of us walking, you know, it isn't…. Actually, let's bring it back down to the basics.

Darryl Edwards: If I'm sitting, if I go from sitting to standing, there's only about a 10% increase in metabolic rates required, go from sitting to standing. From standing to walking again, not much, another 10, 15%. So just a very slow walk doesn't do much in terms of calorie burn. Doesn't do much in terms of how much fire my body can generate. There's a lot that can happen from walking right through to say a maximum sprint or maximum lift, or running significant distance, or jumping, or climbing, or those types of efforts. So, now we talk about walking as if it's an exercise. I mean, that's the problem, in my opinion. Walking should not be mentioned as an exercise, unless you are significant deconditioned. For most people walking is the maintenance.

Wade Lightheart: Beutifully said. I think that's a really, really important, I've seen so many people who engage in conditioning program and they say, well, I've walked today. And again, my mom would say that, she's like: well, I did my walk today. It's like, okay, but you know, you walk to the ice cream store and then came home and had bread and jam. So before we get into kind of the things that you're doing, how did, like, what was the epiphany for you to kind of start this whole journey? We have a terminology of BiOptimizers called the elusive obvious and some things… It takes real genius to point out the elusive obvious, like the accepted parameters, which a given society lives under just there's so many assumptions built into that.
Wade Lightheart: Fitness is one, social conditioning, communication, expectation, projection, all of these things kind of go. You know, you look at individual psychology, how it ties to your biology and we have this interesting component in humans, which is this desire to preserve energy and now which drove a lot of the technical innovation of the world. And now we are suffering the unintended consequences of technological innovation and humans. How were you able to kind of, as an expert in this field, like, what was the epiphany moment that said: Holy crap, we've got to address this and I need to dive deep, and then I'm going to come up with some sort of plan, or was it kind of an evolution? Can you share that with us? And then we'll get into the points.

Darryl Edwards: So basically my previous career was working within investing banking as a technologist. I was developing systems to help bankers make lots of money, pretty much.

Wade Lightheart: It's such an interesting dichotomy.

Darryl Edwards: Dichotomy, yeah. So I literally went from sedentary 16 to 20 hours a day sandwiched at the desk. I couldn't even walk through the ice cream store. You know, I was sitting down pretty much all day, being driven into work very early in the morning, work all day, come home, would often continue to work into the early hours. Sometimes oftentimes no sleep at all, because of working on problems.
Wade Lightheart: It's an insanely high pressure field guys working 100, 110, especially when they're starting hours per week is not uncommon.

Darryl Edwards: That's not uncommon. And because in the field that I was in, I was getting paid, you know, if I was getting a call out, I'm getting paid. If I'm up all night, I'm getting paid extra. So I'm like, I'd be the first one to say, yes, I'll do whatever it takes. I don't need sleep. I just want more cash. The downside, unfortunately was in my mid thirties having an annual health check and it was a very comprehensive health check. So lots of blood drawns ECD, stress tests, I mean, pretty comprehensive, cause' they don't want you to get sick at the end of the day. They want you to remain productive. So they want to give you an early warning when there's an issue.

Darryl Edwards: And my early warning was, I was one measurement away from full blown type two diabetes. That was the first. The second…

Wade Lightheart: You're a prediabetic essentially?
Darryl Edwards: I was pre-diabetic, yeah. I was literally one A1C measure away from type two.

Wade Lightheart: So they would have started putting you on insulin at that point?

Darryl Edwards: Yeah. It would have been Metformin. Thank goodness. It would have been Metformin. I had a really poor lipid profile, so they told me I had a very high risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke or heart attack would be within the next 5 to 10 years. That was the second problem. I had chronic stage two hypertension as it's termed here. So very high blood pressure. Literally it was like, okay, statins for your cholesterol problem and your triglyceride problem. Beta blockers for your blood pressure. And you need some Metformin for your blood glucose control. And that was just the start of the cocktail of recommendations, cause' there were a few other things as well, but those are the top three. Like, Oh my goodness, I'm too young. What are you talking about? These are old people's diseases, right? How long for, is it just a quick fix? No, not really. Darryl. You're gonna have to be on this until the end of your days. Like really?

Wade Lightheart: I love the fact that you started asking questions right there. And I think a lot of people just take the pill and don't ask questions. Beautiful that you ask the questions. Keep going.

Darryl Edwards: To be fair, I would have taken the pills. The reason why I asked the question was, because I was scared of the side effects. That was all. I wanted the quick fix. If they'd have said to me: take these pills, there's no real side effects and you'll be sorted, you'll be okay until you're an old man. I probably would have gone: that sounds like a pretty good deal to me. But because I asked a side effect question, my doctor said, well, because one, it was a time of taking the meds forever. So that's a long time when you're like mid thirties, right? I want to live. I want to live quite a long time. So taking meds until the end of my days at 35 36, that's a heck of a long time.

Darryl Edwards: Not interested. The second, what about the side effects? Oh, don't worry. Mr. Edwards, if you have a side effect, we can give you something else. You know, second line treatment, third line treatment. Oh my goodness. What, what? That sounds scary in itself. So I said: I know that exercise can help with my blood pressure. That was the only bit, I've been following about exercise was that it could help with blood pressure. I didn't want to do yoga or anything like that, but I knew that doing high intensity, which is what I kind of got into, doing high intensity, doing strength training could help with blood pressure. So I was like, I'm not doing either of those, let me give those a world. Within a month or two blood pressure came down. But not only that, my blood glucose started to normalize. So I was no longer on the danger list, I was no longer pre-diabetic actually, and my cholesterol profile improved. So my HDL was going up. My total cholesterol, my ratio has improved, all of the low level markers that they looked at were also better. So I was just like: this is really amazing.

Wade Lightheart: How much time had passed from that too? Like how much time was that?

Darryl Edwards: I got tested… My first test post exercise was 30 days. So I got tested at 30 days then at 60 days and at 90 days, because I wanted my doctor to keep a really close eye on me. I kind of said: look, doc, if I can even delay taking the meds, let me try this out first, but I want you to keep a close eye on me, because if you tell me it isn't working, give me the meds.

Wade Lightheart: What did your doc did? Did your doctor think that you were going to produce positive results or he said, there's nothing you can do?
Darryl Edwards: Well, no, he was full on exercise for blood pressure.

Wade Lightheart: Oh great. That's great. You got a good doctor.

Darryl Edwards: So I had a good doctor. He wasn't convinced that that'd be other benefits. So he didn't say to me: yeah, just exercise and everything will be fine. We didn't have a discussion about diets. He just said: yeah, try some exercise and regularly monitor it. You've got a blood pressure monitor, use it and let's see how it happens on a go. And fortunately, when I was retested and I got the blood drawns, the numbers were improving and I was like: is this an anomaly? Is this like, are we going to retest, is a fault with the lab? And he's like: no, these are looking pretty good. And what was the clincher for me, was my doctor was about to go, he took an up a drawer and he was about to go on holiday to the Maldives.

Darryl Edwards: So that gives you an idea of how much money he was making. So he's like, you know, I'm off to the Maldives for three weeks. And he said: I will give you a call if there's a problem with these blood test results. Right? I'm happy to give you a call whilst I'm away. And normally he's like: don't even think about, I'm gone speak to my secretary, whatever, but he was like: you know what, I'm kind of really invested in this. If there's any problems, I'll give you a call myself. I was like: wow, thank you so much. About 10 days into the holiday, I get a phone call. And I'm like: Oh my goodness, what the heck? What is this? And he was like: Darryl, I'm so amazed at your results. Are you taking any medications from anyone else?

Darryl Edwards: No. Well, your inflammation has come down, your everything, blood glucose is optimal, your cholesterol profile really improved, you know, are you sure you're not taking any meds? No. I'm so interested in what's happened to you. So he started to send me research, cause' he started to research himself. He's like: I don't really understand this. I want to know what's happening here and I don't want to recommend this to my other patients, because it may just be you, you know? He was like: let me look into this. And then I said: Oh, please send me the information. I don't understand the science, but I would love to have a look at it. So that started my interest in the research and into that area. And I said to him: can you keep monitoring me on a regular basis? And that continued for about 18 months of regular monitoring and then probably annually for a few years until I was satisfied. Things are still taking over quite nicely. I might as well continue doing this and that's pretty much what my doctor said. He said: just continue doing what you're doing, because everything is good at the moment and just stay on the same course. So that message made me realize maybe I should be doing something different for myself.

Wade Lightheart: Power of testing. Power of testing, and having outside influence, I think are two key elements. So one of the things that we suggest and at BiOptimizers for people in our 12 weeks, optional health course is assembling a Jedi council, getting some experts outside of yourself that can run the specific tests, so that you can monitor what you're doing is creating results. And in this case, you're creating. First, you start off with negative information, but you find out you is where you is as I like to say. Then you engaged, you had two options, essentially, I'm going to try this or go down this medical route. You're then continually monitoring with this person until that person becomes, Hey, there's something going on here and then the snowball begins to kind of roll downhill if you will. So then, I mean… That's a long way from Primal Movement though. So, what happened here?

Darryl Edwards: So basically I joined an exclusive gym. Lots of fluffy towels and whatever else I was doing. And I was on the leader board started to get into the sport of fitness, really, you know, lifting heavy, sprinting, doing all this and doing really well. And for someone who was pretty much a bonafide geek for most of their adult life to start doing anything remotely approaching athleticism was incredible. So I was disliked.

Wade Lightheart: Yeah. What did that feel like? What did that feel like going from kind of having a self view that this is not something that you do go to a medical thing, start seeing improvement, and then you're moving into this kind of world of fitness? Like what was the transformation that you started to notice in your kind of self-awareness, own psychology? Can you remember exactly?

Darryl Edwards: Yeah. I felt as if I was fulfilling my potential, my movement potential. For the first time in my life I felt physically strong. And I never felt that in my late teens, twenties into my thirties. I never felt that way. I envied anyone who had any physical, you know, it was like: Oh my goodness, I wish I could do that. I wish I could carry my part and not be like, I'm struggling. I wish, I wish, I wish. I wish I could be like my dad used to be, or actually like my dad still is now. It wasn't even how it used to be when I was a kid, I was like, actually, you know, even now he could floor me with his strength. Like I should be in my prime right now.

Darryl Edwards: Right? What's happening? So that attention on myself and my ability, and recognizing I am now my own superhero. You know, I might not only look like Clark Kent with the glasses, I can be. Well, giving you Clark Kent, he's just as strong as Superman, which people don't realize. So I was Clark Kent without the superhero gifts and I transformed myself into Clark Kent with some of those superhero gifts. So I'm like, this is pretty incredible. I had no idea that I could do these things. Most of the reason I couldn't do them was, because I just didn't. I was never given the opportunity to test myself, to push myself, again, to overcome the physical efforts required. You know, I was like: no, no, it's all, books, computers.

Darryl Edwards: Yeah. I'm good at that. That's what I can focus on. That's hard work, that's right. So, you know, I can pay somebody to help do the heavy lifting for me. That was my way of thinking. So once I realized that, no, I do have the mind, the body are one and being physically literate is just as important as mental literacy, as cognitive literacy. Once I realized that I did everything I could to try to build and fulfill my physical potential. The turning point, however, was when I realized everything was great. When I was beating everyone on the leaderboard, when I was seeing significant gains, so, you know, when I was literally like: Oh, my dead lift is a hundred pounds. My first ever deadlift. Wow. That's pretty impressive. Oh my goodness.

Darryl Edwards: Now it's 200. Oh, now it's 300. Now it's 400. Now it's 450. Oh my goodness. Now it's four or five one. Now it's four five, five. You know, the small gains that you had when you reaching your limit, that they really, excuse my language, they pissed me off. I was just like, what the heck? You know, so frustrated. Then I was getting more injuries when I was pretty pushing myself. I'm getting injured. Now I can't train. That's a problem. And finally, I didn't enjoy the process. I only enjoyed the end result.

Wade Lightheart: How far along would you say in your journey that you..? Cause' you kind of got addicted to the progress component, you're getting the dopamine hit, the reaffirmation cycle, you're getting this stuff. And then that keeps dwindling as you hit that quote unquote plateau that everybody hits as you start reading the upper limits and this is why coaches come out and training parameters, and periodization, and concepts in. The whole fitness world is all about how do I get that same dopamine hit of the reaffirmation of progress?

Darryl Edwards: Yes.

Wade Lightheart: So when did that happen and what did you do about it?

Darryl Edwards: So that was a several years, a good few years after my first moment of: ah, no pills, let me try exercise . So the second one was, why am I not enjoying this? Why am I avoiding my gym sessions? Even though I know how amazing this is, you know, what it's done for me is incredible. Why do I want to turn my back on this? And I realized I wasn't enjoying the process. And as a goal setting person, which I obviously had to be within my career, the process, wasn't that important. Just get it done. That's all that matters. As long as you get it done, we don't care how you get there. Just get it done within this timeframe. Just get it. Do it, do it, do it, do it. Doesn't matter who you harm, who gets in the way, just get it done.

Darryl Edwards: Okay, fine. I had similar mindset when it came to fitness. Just get it done. Great, but what if I can't get it done? What, are you a loser? That's problematic. So that was a problem, because I didn't want to fail at anything that I did. And of course I am going to fail at certain things. I can't be a perfect or rounder. That was a problem for me. Oh my goodness. I'm so whatever, I'm so weak. Hold on a second, Darryl, you can do something you've never been able to do in your entire life and you're still complaining about how weak you are? Really? Yeah. I'm so weak. Now I'm injured, I'm now even weaker. All I'm seeing is kryptonite around me, talking about superheroes again, kryptonite everywhere. So my Eureka moments was recognizing the last time I enjoyed movement, was as a kid. Was when it was all about joy.

Darryl Edwards: All the decisions made about movement for me, myself and my friends when I was a kid into my early teens, the only decision was, are we going to have fun? Yes or no? Yes. Is there going to be an element of risk? Yes. Would adults complain if we were doing it? Yes. Okay, that's what we're going to do. And within that timeframe, I did all my superhero stuff. Piggyback carried people. We went biking for miles. We jumped on our bike. I mean, we did incredible stuff. I pretended to be the best football player in the world, but then I was Pele or whatever, playing soccer, I suppose I should say. Like you become all of these people. And you fulfill your potential. So as a kid, I felt I fulfilled my potential, what I was good at, what I really enjoyed, what I enjoyed with my friends.

Darryl Edwards: And that's what I needed as an adult. I wanted an adult version of that. Not the kind of dumbed down version, you know, not a child dispersion, but I kind of a childlike innocence and explorative curious nature from childhood. I needed that in adult form. And to finish that part off, once I hit that, once I found that, I realized there was no such thing as a plateau, actually. Plateaus don't exist. What exists is the limitations that you place on yourself. So I'll give you a practical example. I remember when I was in the work mode, in the goal setting mode, one rep max deadlifts were my thing. I was like, I'm not really built for the deadlift, but I want to lift as heavy as I can. That's the pinnacle of lifs, the deadlift, right?

Darryl Edwards: I remember working at one at Maxis and I got to about 480 pounds. It's about 195 kilos, right?

Wade Lightheart: Good lift, man. That's a lot of weight.

Darryl Edwards: 480, right? Practicing, practicing, practicing, put the fractional plates on, you know, getting there, getting there, did it, periodization did the whole works, you know, linear and nonlinear, like did it, did it, did it all right? And I remember when I started getting to this plateaus stuff, I stopped going to the gym. I stopped at impact lifting. I started climbing trees and lifting up rocks and boulders, and jumping over benches and firemen carrying people, and sprinting in the park and chasing, chase the joggers as we call it, you know, sprinting after the bus, whatever. I just doing all this crazy stuff, crawling on the ground.

Darryl Edwards: I remember giving a workshop in a gym a few years later and one of the gym members challenged me and they said: oh, we've seen you doing that crazy stuff, but now you're in our territory, now you're in our manner so to speak. Let's see what you can do. And so I said: okay, what would you like me to do? And they ran through a few different things. How many pull ups can you do? How many pushups, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they whittled it down to back squat or deadlift. And I say: well, back squat, I'm not bending my back for anyone. I went deadlift. If you really want to choose something, just let's go for the deadlift, right? So I felt pretty confident. I was like, I haven't done it for a few years, but you know, I reckon I'll be okay. So this guy who pit it against me built like twice as big as me, built like Dwayne, The Rock, Johnson. Like, Oh my goodness.

Darryl Edwards: So he was just like, he started piling on the plates, seven foot Olympic bar, like regulation. And I remember saying to myself: I don't want to know how much you're lifting. So I said: you just do whatever you need to do, go for that lift and you know, be happy that's your maximum lift, right? And then I'll go to. There's no warmups or anything. It was just like go lift it. I was like, I'm not gonna look at the bar. I'm looking at all those plates and I remember saying to myself: yeah, you know what, whatever it is, I'm just gonna give it a go. If I don't lift it, who cares? So when I came to lift, I said: Oh, just put a few more plates on until there's nothing left, right? And part of that was again, it's a little bit of ego, but some of it was like, again, it doesn't matter if I lifted or not. For him, it's all, it's everything to him.

Darryl Edwards: For me, it's just a play, I'm playing. So anyway, I got to the bar, I'm picking it up and I'm like, Oh, this isn't too bad. And I lift it. And I remember looking at him and I lowered it really gently so I didn't drop it. I was like, you know what, if you're going to pick something up, you should have to set it down, and I popped it back down. And I went about for my previous one rep max, when I was training that on a regular basis, I went about in kilos. It was about 45 kilos. So about another hundred plus pounds, my previous one rep max without doing any deadlifts. And part of that was certainly mindset. But part of it was also the fact that I was doing more functional training, you know, by lifting rocks and boulders and carrying people, and going for a run, and being more function capable men.
Darryl Edwards: When I went to the bar that was fairly evenly distributed. And I had some good technique, because I practiced many years before, but I nailed it. And that made me realize how powerful removing that ceiling that we all place in ourselves is. And the age limits that we place on ourselves. So I'm 50, now my 50th year and I remember setting goals, what I wanted to achieve when I was 50 and what I wanted to achieve at 40. And fortunately, most of the things that I wanted to do at 50 I'm better than when I was 40 years old. And so biologically that shouldn't be the case for sure. From a fitness point of view, that shouldn't be the case, but it's because I'm just thinking about it differently. And I'm not so upset about the areas that I know I can't maintain, because I'm just going to do the best that I can and maintaining what I can.

Darryl Edwards: And I'm still going to do crazy things that I shouldn't be doing for a man of my age. That's also part of the problem. I just want to enjoy, I want to enjoy what I do. And so that fun element was what I needed for myself personally and then I recognized there were other people who felt the same way as me. They wanted to have fun with fitness. They wanted to explore what their body could do rather than thinking, what can I do? And so if you do that, you realize that all of us are superheroes. All of us have something significantly wonderful about our physical selves. It's like watching the Paralympics. If you've ever seen the Paralympic games and I'm more blown away in many respects at what Paralympians do than fully able body athletes, because some of their backstories, some of the things that they've had to fight to be able to do what they do. They weren't just great at what they did all the way through their life.

Darryl Edwards: Excelled, trained hard, became the best in the world. Some of these people literally started from ground zero. You know, I was in the army, legs blown off, I have no idea what I'm gonna do with my life. I know, I'm going to do wheelchair racing and I'm going to become the best in the world, even though I've never done anything like that before. That is incredible. I feel a lot of affinity and a lot of that message resonates with me, because I feel I was a very weak, fragile individual both from a health point of view, but also from a physical function point of view, and from a punishing myself to get stronger points of view, now I've got stronger, more physical capable, but I'm having so much fun doing it. It seems like criminal to say it like, you know, how can you achieve all of these things, but have a smile on your face for a lot of it. Something doesn't quite add up. And that's what I wanted to achieve with the Primal Play method.

Wade Lightheart: I love it. Last week I was spending time with another movement specialist, Paul Chek, I was down at his new home in the Rainbow and he's a brilliant guy and he has this fantastic gym. And he understands movement at very, very high level. He's influenced countless experts around the world. And in the middle, we were doing interviews and we were doing all this sort of stuff, but one of the things that he does every day and I joined him on, I've gone a few times. As we go out, he has a rock place and we get up and we literally lift rocks and pile them up and create. And the thing at the top, you're kind of balancing and it's all this sort of stuff. Now, Paul is a physical specimen. He's I think, close to 60 years old, he's incredible condition. He understands exercise and stuff, but he incorporates walking around on his property every day. He incorporates lifting rocks. He incorporates these animalistic movements.

Wade Lightheart: So it's interesting that there is quote unquote movement, I think, amongst the most elite minds in the physical sciences world or physical exercise, our educators world that is talking about this. And I want to talk about specifically, what is Primal Play and why you developed this style? And we've talked about the benefits. We talked about the etymology of how you got there and then how you kind of… What is this all about? And then how do you kind of step in in people's lives that: hey, I don't like going to the gym, I'm bored in plateaued, working out isn't fun anymore, it's become this monotonous boring, ridiculous thing that I don't want to do anymore? So where does Darryl come in now at this point, how does this all come together?

Darryl Edwards: The Primal Play method is basically a system which takes evolutionary biology, so all of our history in relation to movement, as humans. It takes all of that. What we should be doing? How often we should be doing it? Why we should be doing it? Takes all of that. The what, the why, the how, the when - all of that. Uses play psychology to make all of that sustainable and inherently motivational. And it also uses, which I feel is that probably the most important aspect of this is, our inner nature, our animal selves to express movement. And as soon as we do that, not only we have some fun, not only will be expressing ourselves in terms of what we should be capable of doing, we will also ensure that we take part in all of the discrete factors of movement that we need to be doing.

Darryl Edwards: So, you know, from the very slow controlled, almost isometric, really slow and controlled movement patterns, right through to the most exuberant and vigorous of activities to sprinting, to have that sort of discreet control right through to the maximum efforts, maximum jumps, you know, one rep max efforts and so on. There's all of this flavor things that we need to be engaging in and that's what I wanted to explore, and that's what I wanted to offer as a system. So even though it's a system, it's not a closed system, I suppose, it's not like a black box where you come in and like: Hey, this is all nicely packaged for you. And don't mention the claim effort if you involved the claim effort. It's a very open system, because of course that's what humanity is all about.

Darryl Edwards: There are always things to be inspired by and to be influenced by, but at the essence of the core is our humanity. And so all of us have this DNA, which is expressed for movements, whatever limitations, whatever mobility issues, whatever injuries, whatever our physical condition may be, we still all have this ability to move in some way, shape or form. And that's what we can express. And in terms of those who like: Oh, well, you know, I don't like the gym or I don't like exercise. That's not just what the primal method is for. It's for those who still want to challenge themselves, I suppose, who may be, who may love the gym, who may have a fantastic workout regimen, but they still recognize that there's something missing from their experience, that they are not enjoying the process, but they're not fully exploring what the plateaus would be for them.

Darryl Edwards: So it's not replacing what they do and what gets them by. It's just kind of, I suppose, filling in the gaps for those individuals. And for those who hate the gym, hate working out, hate programs and systems and everything else, it's giving those people something that they can do, but all they're focusing on is the fun, right? Because for me, if it's just fun, doesn't matter. It has to be fun, but functional. It has to be satisfying, the physiological requirements of movement. I want to lower my resting heart rate. That's one of the things that I want from fitness. I do want to improve my VO2 max and aerobic capacity. I want that. I do want to improve my speed and power generation and anaerobic threshold and that threshold and all of the things that my science geeky mind, I want to see those ticks. I want to satisfy those. I don't just want to roll through the grass going: Hey, you don't understand how much fun you're missing guys.

Darryl Edwards: I'm playing all day and it's like, yeah, but you're not getting stronger or fitter, or faster, healthy by doing that. You're just having some fun. That's not enough, especially when we're thinking about longevity, right? And maintaining, you know, reduce some sarcopenia, reducing, the effects of the andropause and all the things that happen to us. I want to maintain good health, human growth hormone generation and testosterone levels through natural expression. And movement is one of the best ways of ensuring that that happens. So before I start looking for other sources to fill that gap, I need to make sure that I'm fully maximizing what I can do for movement first. I know you wanted a short answer, Wade, but I couldn't give you a short answer on that one, mate.

Wade Lightheart: No, I think one of the reasons we do podcasts is, because it's not soundbite it out. It's about how did you come to these things and one of the questions that I think that kind of comes up for me is, and I've been experiencing this myself so recently, because of the gym closures and can't have workout, I decided to build a gym on the roof of my building here. I have a four story thing, we call it bio home at BiOptimizers, and I have an open gym and up there now I've got all this equipment and it reminded me when I was 15 years old, I was living in the woods, living a very primal lifestyle with my family. I was lifting boulders and cutting trees, and running around the lake, and playing ice hockey. And I got into weight training and I had to build my own weight set in a barn.

Wade Lightheart: And that was using very rudimentary, like two wheelers under tractor tires and saw horses, and pulleys that I would hook on T bars, and the thing would smack me in the head, and very crude type things, but a lot of physical movements. And what was interesting is even though I was smaller than the kids I played hockey with, I was far stronger than any of my contemporaries living in the city who might have been physically bigger or longer, or whatever. It was easy for me to hold up people, because of all these movements, but over the years, I had been living a business lifestyle, executing the podcast, doing more sedentary things. And I was reflecting on this as I was building my gym and I'm creating these different movements and I'm activating my creativity and I was going back to this.

Wade Lightheart: And then I had this potentiation training that was going on. Now I started going down the beach and feeling this whole thing and it was really fun and exciting. I've got a friend, she's teaching me jujitsu moves that I never learned before. She's a world champion in jujitsu and she's like, you know, put me in this and do this. And all of a sudden, your body starts to respond in ways that you don't inside a physical gym. My question is… All that to lead to this question. So how do you modulate the return to play? So let's say I'm sitting here, I'm an executivesitting in my white color higher than the sky desk, looking out the window and reflecting on the days when I used to play football or soccer, or ice hockey, or whatever that sport. God, I remember when I was that athlete in that feeling in that run, I want to get back to that. You run out and start playing and you blow a hamstring or tear your calf, you know what I mean? Like, how do you modulate, you say: you know what, Darryl, I'm excited about this, I want to bring play back into my life. I want to have fun in my life. I want to get out of the rigid, structured programs. How do I progressively return back to the playful primal movement, if you will?

Darryl Edwards: That's a really good, I mean, that's a fantastic question. And what I would say is, one, nostalgia is very beautiful thing. It's very helpful. And there are lots of benefits just being nostalgic.

Wade Lightheart: Gary Vaynerchuk says that he wishes he could bottle nostalgia and sell it.

Darryl Edwards: Oh yeah. Just quickly to mention nostalgia, there's some research, which became a documentary here in the UK and the BBC where they took 60, 70, 80 year olds who weren't their best in terms of health, put them into a home where they had to be independent, but part of that was they would had to dress in the clothing they wore in their teams, hairstyles of their teams, if they were able to. And they watched over the TV or listening to the radio. And it was songs that they listened to back when they were a teenager, posters on the wall of their idols or pinups or whatever. And literally, I mean, people would walk in like so, within a few weeks back straight, nice and tall like performing all these activities that previously carers would have to do for them.

Darryl Edwards: And they reversed some of the cognitive decline that they were having. Like rolled back. Incredible. Just the power of nostalgia alone, it's amazing what that can do. So one, I think having nostalgia as part of your life, I think is very good. It's how do you act on it? So this is a problem. The problem is if we go back to when we were in our teens or twenties, we thought: Oh yeah, I could do all of those things. If you go back even younger as a kid… Kids are very malleable, they can fall over, they regenerate very quickly, heal very quickly, bounce back from those physical shocks very easily, right? And most of us are still dealing with some of that, because we didn't really deal with it back then. We just: Oh yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.

Darryl Edwards: I think we have to go through a process of relearning. That physical literacy I spoke about is something that's even more important as we get older, because unfortunately we have to be doing even more. Like for me to get the same strength response that I would have got very easy 20 years ago, I'll do more work. I've got to push even harder to be able to elicit a similar response. However, that increases the likelihood of injury, that increases, liked you said, the hamstring tear and all those other problems that can occur. But if I take a step back and say: okay, if I want to jump really high, cause' I like doing tuck jumps or something like that, you know, I need to be focusing just as much on the landing, controlled landing, soft landing, and land, which isn't going to be ruining my joints.

Darryl Edwards: So those are the things you don't think about when you're young. All you think about is how high, how explosive can I jump? You don't think about how soft you land, how you land, because the consequences… Yeah. I'll just strap. The minimal, yeah. I'll strap it up. I'll be fine. For people who are older the consequences are, Oh my gosh, it could be a fracture, it could be osteoarthritis, it could be, I'm never walking again. You know what I mean? That's the problem. Or even I won't even try doing it again, because that was so uncomfortable. Forget about nostalgia. So I went for a process, and suppose I still do this, of trying to find the basic fundamental movement options available to me. So that when I am performing maximum effort, like a sprint, like a jump that I focus on, not just the sprint, but also deceleration, not just a sprint on a flat surface, but how can I sprint on uneven surface?

Darryl Edwards: How can I protect my soft tissue and the ligaments, rather than them just blowing out or me getting strains or sprains? That is what we need an equal measure and so for me now, if I jump quite high, my objective now is to land like a cat. So when a cat jumps out of a tree, you don't hear a huge thud on the ground like an elephant has landed. They land softly, and even a big cat will do the same thing, so it's not about body weight. A big cat will jump out of a tree land really softly, you wouldn't hear a freaking sound, right? We should be able to do the same thing. We should be able to run without leaving footprints. We should be able to land softly from a jump. We should be able to perform a lift with really good mind, body engagement, because if we just do, oh yeah, I can just do this.

Darryl Edwards: We're going to pull, our backs going to go. We're going to pull something. But if we're completely engaged, that would enable us to lift something heavy. And like I said before, about the deadlift, being able to set it back down. We didn't have to carry stuff in the old days, just carry it, because we had to. We had to take it from A to B, to set it back down somewhere, but we just go, it's all about the lift, you know? And then we focus on that and we're weak when it comes to setting things down. So when you're tying your shoe lace, your back goes, even though you're doing all this heavy lifting, because you're not strong at the opposite, kind of partner based motion. I hope that makes sense. If you focus on learning or relearning, learning how do these fundamental movement skills, that better prepares you, almost insulates you from the hamstring tear, insulates you from twisting your ankle when you kind of speed up on that run, or you're playing football.

Darryl Edwards: And you're like: Oh, we're just messing around. But, Oh my gosh, I've just done. My knees gone. Oh, you know what the heck. That's what we need to do and it's humbling. It really is humbling, but it doesn't mean we have to patronize ourselves and say, we can't do that. It just means we have to dial it back a bit until we rebuild our physical confidence. We regained an ability we've never had to have, because we didn't have to think about it back then, but now we do and plays an important part of that. Because if you really in an element of play, you would use the likelihood of repetitive stress, because hopefully you're doing lots of different things. Not trying to do the same thing over and over and over again.

Darryl Edwards: So that's what I would also say. Don't just think about being the athlete you were, cause' the athlete you were was probably just doing one thing and that one thing is likely like a professional athlete does or recreational athlete does, it's likely to lead to one thing which is injury. Which is, I can't do this any longer because I overdid it. If you're a generalist, you've got some more things to play with. You're less likely to overdo one thing. You're more likely to maintaining the integrity of your joints and soft tissue, less like to pull and tear muscle, more likely to get overall general preparedness stronger, more functioning stronger than just one dimensional strength. So, I think even for myself, that's a lesson that I'm constantly challenging myself with. You know, when I'm like: I'm sure I could have done that better before, you know, feeling my age now.

Darryl Edwards: And I know some of it is just because it's a zero in my age. I know it's just that, you know, like a day before, a day before my 50th, I was fine. That wasn't the problem. As soon as I hit 50 I'm: Oh my goodness. Wow. I can feel a bit more, few more aches and pains. Of course that's just what's happening here, but certainly what I'm more attuned to now is, it's even more important to how I land from the jump, because I do want to climb trees still. I do want to be able to jump out of a tree. I'm not cool for someone to help me down, that's, you know: Oh, Hey, I can climb. Look how strong my upper body is. Oh, sugar. I can't get down. Somebody's get a net, but what if I need to get down quickly? What then? If I need to get down quickly, I should be able to get that quickly, which means I might need to be able to jump. Can I jump and land softly and not break a bone? I need to be thinking of that just as importantly as my ability to get up there. Can I lift and set it down?

Wade Lightheart: I think it's, yeah, it's a really important thing in that progression is understanding. And you talk about this, I think, kind of issued you referred to an animal in the soft landing, which kind of is an outline, going to segue on, I know we're kind of pushing the timeline, but this is so interesting. Animal moves and seeing animals and reflecting, you know, how do you land? How do you move? And reactivating this. Can you talk briefly about this, your "Animal Moves" book, and then I'd like for you to kind of segue into where people can find you and how they can go forward and learn more about this? I think, I want to bring you back, because I think we're just getting into, and I want to be respectful of your time, but this is such a fascinating aspect because, I'm a guy, I'm a gym guy.
Wade Lightheart: I've been going to gyms forever and of course COVID changed everything. The gym's closed. I had to go outside. I had to develop an exercise. I went to the desert. I was hiking in the mountains and doing all these movements, which I found very invigorating. I did alternate day fasting for a period of time with a lot of success. I had some challenges. I had some failures in it as well. And then I started doing different exercises, cause' I didn't have access to the gym. Then I ended up building my own. And then now I started this primal movement after, like these kind of animalistic exercise. And then you shown up in my life. So tell me about your book "Animal Moves" and share with us, if people want to find you, and learn about how to reactivate the playful biological nature in life, how do they go about doing that and what's the process, and how do they reach you or maybe get some consulting or things like that?

Darryl Edwards: Yeah. So my book "Animal Moves" really discusses, again why humans were designed to move the way that we are able to move? Why we're not doing it? And pretty much most of that is because we're in a 21st century and don't have to. And thirdly, how ridiculously pathetic we are at movement in comparison to the best of the animal kingdom. We can't jump very well. We can't climb very well. We can't walk, you know, we can walk quite well. That's probably about it, right? We can't run very well. We can't sprint very fast. We can't lift very heavy. There's all these things that we try to do, that we not very good at, but we're unique in the animal kingdom. The fact that we can do all of them, we can do all of these things.
Darryl Edwards: We can crawl, we can walk, we can run, sprint, jump, lift, and carry. We can. We do have great coordination. We can do rhythmic patterns. We can do very, improvised, expressive type. All these things that we do. But in fitness, we tend to narrow it right down and just do one or two of those things. So I'm just gonna work on strength and I'm going to do three sets of 10, and I'm just going to work for hypertrophy, cause' I want bigger muscles, right? Or I want to be an athlete, power's important, I want to be able to dunk so I'm just going to do power stuff, that's it. Plyometrics, that's all I'm going to really focus on. I get breakfast walking the stairs, but at least I can dunk right? Check. You know what I mean? Or wow, you know what, ultra marathons is what I'm about.

Darryl Edwards: I'm just going to run until I can't run anymore. If it's not a hundred miles, it's a waste of time. But that person probably couldn't even do a single pushup. Couldn't maintain anything related to their body weight apart from running long distances. Right? So this is one of the side effects of the fitness industry, of just tailoring for experts in one or two areas. We are generalistic for movements. That's the animal that we are. My book takes us through all of the movement patterns, the intensities, different durations that we need to fully express that. So you will get stronger, you will get healthier. You will build your stamina in joints. You would improve your balance and coordination, and agility. You will improve your speed. You will improve all of those factors, you know proprioception, your ability to be more in tune with what your body's designed and able to do.

Darryl Edwards: You will be focusing on your land as well as your jump, right? You will be more expressive. You will move more like the animal you are. So that's what the book "Animal Moves" is really about. In terms of what I do. I do online courses, so I have an Animal Moves online course. I do have products like the Animal Moves Fitness decks. So here's another way of making it more playful. It's like a deck of cards of fitness cards, and you can decide how will do a movement snack. I've got two minutes, I'll pick a few cards, I'll do a few movements snacks. Chop. Job done. On my website, I have a lot of materials to satisfy cerebrally, you know, research, digging deep into evolutionary biology, into exercise science, into play psychology, why primal play method is designed the way it is. All of that information is there as well. So sample videos, lots of information, lots of citations, cause' I want my work to be evidence-based as best as possible. And of course I have a bit of philosophy and my fear is in my opinion, but I wanna make sure there's a good bedding of research that people can dive into to find out a little bit more about why I came up with a method that I have done.

Wade Lightheart: Super exciting, very interesting stuff. Where do people actually find you, reach you, connect with you? Give us all the data. We're going to put it in the show notes, but shout it out to us please.

Darryl Edwards: Okay. So my website is primalplay.com. My moniker on social media is the fitnessexplorer. So @fitnessexplorer on Twitter, Instagram, or just Google Darryl Edwards, D A R R Y L Edwards. And you can pretty much find out, not everything about me, but quite a bit about me online is all there for the reckoning. And certainly for those who really do want to access their inner child again, my talk, my Ted talk 'Why working out, isn't working out' that really encapsulates in 17 minutes or so, how you can access your inner child, how you can embrace your inner child and how you can feel okay about it. So talking, sticking with the animal metaphor for inclosing, if you see a big cat, a big tiger, and that big tiger was playing, they don't look like a cub.

Darryl Edwards: They look like a very expressive, graceful, powerful creature that they are, but they can still play. They're not mimicking what they did as a cub. They enhanced their capability as a cub into adult form. We as humans, when we play, many adults, how many times have you heard: squat like a kid, be like a kid, move in the way of a kid. No. You see a kid at five years old running, I don't want to run like that, arms kind of flailing. No, they haven't developed coordination or grace yet. That's not our limits. Our limits should be the powerful, graceful, capable, functional adults, human beings. That's what we should be when it comes to movements. So bear that in mind, when you are trying to harness your inner child, that you're expressing your outer adult. That's what's important. That's what's the most impressive aspect of moving capability is what you can express as an adult. Not as a child.

Wade Lightheart: I love it. This is an amazing interview. Folks, this is Darryl Edwards, and I really encourage you to check out his Ted talk 'Why working out isn't working out' and his book "Animal Moves". And of course, reach out to him, because in today's world, I think there's so much of us that have gotten addicted to comfort, have created this concept of security and protection, and we've taken the fun out of living. And if we can activate the fun in living through play, and activating kind of our primal animal nature, it just adds a certain vigor and things, an excitement to life that I think so many people have let go of. And I can share with you the tidbits that you shared with us today, brilliant stuff. I know we've only scratched the surface and I feel I'm doing a disservice to our group.

Wade Lightheart: We're going to get you back maybe and go deeper into these styles. But don't wait for that. Go to his site right now, activate this stuff. You deserve to play in your life. You deserve to have fun. And that's part of the message that we have at BiOptimizers is that you want to experience awesome health, you want to make your life feel awesome, that you feel great, that you feel functional, that you feel confident, and it's not about what your one rep max says or what your VO two max is. It is about the journey of expressing yourself as a human on the way to experiencing those things.

Darryl Edwards: You said it in such an eloquent way. It was a pleasure to hear that close, Wade, really really was.

Wade Lightheart: Thanks so much for joining us today, Darryl, and for all those who are listening, that's another episode of BiOptimizers Awesome Health podcasts. Please join us each and every week as we grab the latest and greatest experts in a variety of fields to help you improve your aesthetics performance and your health. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you on the next episode.
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