the exercise show I didn't know I needed - Ancient Workouts with Omar
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This Trainer’s Workout Inspiration? History's Strongest Warriors.
Gladiators trained for survival, not swimsuit season. ‘Ancient Workouts’ host Omar Isuf explains why he's taking fitness back to basics.
BY PHILIP ELLIS
JAN 18, 2022
history, history channel, ancient workouts with omar, omar isufHISTORY
It's not uncommon for people to turn to old-school experts and methods for insight and advice on getting fitter and stronger, like veteran Mr. Olympia champions Frank Zane and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Fitness author and content creator Omar Isuf is taking things even older school—by a couple of thousand years.
The new History Channel series Ancient Workouts with Omar on YouTube shows viewers the exercise regimes of some of history's greatest fitness influencers, like Roman gladiators and Spartan soldiers. (A companion series, Ancient Recipes, hosted by Sohla El-Waylly, similarly explores and recreates the diet and nutrition aspects of life in Ancient Rome and beyond.) At a time when viral workout challenges and fad diet hacks are everywhere, Isuf believes we can learn a lot by taking things back to basics.
"In the fitness industry where everyone's trying to stand out, it's predicated sort of on gimmicks over the fundamentals," he tells Men's Health. "But exercise science has not really changed over the last 30 or 40 years... and the key principles have been around even longer. Thousands of years ago, we have a primary source from the Greek writer Philostraphus who talked about a regimented tetrad system of training, a four-day system which today we'd describe as daily undulating periodization (DUP). They were already doing concepts that still apply today, they just didn't use the same terms, but they were hitting on the same things, they understood there are certain requisites you need to do to provoke the body to change, and a lot of that stuff was passed down throughout time. We actually have archaeological evidence as it relates to gladiators that they were, indeed, jacked: they had a larger amount of muscle than the average person at that time. So clearly they were doing something right."
It's not just Rome. The series, which debuts new episodes each Saturday, digs into the training regimes of multiple different warrior cultures, including ninjas, apaches, and medieval knights. In each instance, their workouts were geared towards specific goals: Genghis Khan's Mongol army needed strong adductors for riding on horseback, while the seafaring Vikings had specific practices for building strength so they could lift their boats' heavy oars. In that regard, Isuf doesn't think much has changed over the last thousand years.
"In the modern context, everyone wants to optimize everything," he says. "If you're bodybuilding, you want to get as big as possible, if you're powerlifting, you want to get as strong as possible. And these modern considerations do require modern practices to get to that. But the fundamentals are still there. There's an apocryphal account of Milo of Croton who got stronger by buying a calf and carrying it on his back every single day, and as the cow got bigger, the weight would become more challenging for him. That is implicitly progressive overload, lifting heavier over time."
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Prior to hosting the show, Isuf already had an interest in antiquity, having done his own reading up on generals like Hannibal Barca, Pyrrhus, and Alexander the Great. Making Ancient Workouts has only deepened his curiosity, particularly when it comes to historical cultures that have been misrepresented, and he is eager to use this particular niche subject to help challenge stereotypes.
"There's still so much to uncover when we talk about meso-American culture, because so much was lost due to colonialism, and the historian we had on to talk about the Aztecs was able to dispel a lot of misinformation that has been perpetuated," he says. "That whole process of discovering new things and learning the truth behind popular myths has been fascinating."
It can't be denied that Hollywood has influenced our cultural consciousness when it comes to certain historical periods, like the "CGI bodies" of the Spartan army in Zack Snyder's 300. An upcoming episode, based on the real warriors of Ancient Sparta. might disappoint fans of that particular movie. "I think we do a good job of resetting expectations," he says. "These guys were in warfare; they weren't eating three square meals a day, they were walking for 16 hours at a time with 30 pounds on their back. They would have been losing muscle, if anything, while at the same time probably being fitter than the average individual."
He acknowledges that there's a key difference between the grit, determination and mental fortitude required of ancient soldiers who faced the constant threat of death every day, and people doing 3 sets of 10 in the gym today. But while it's certainly true that nobody is staring down certain doom when they step up to the bench or rack, Isuf is aware that certain elements of fitness culture can take a very different kind of mental toll if you're not careful.
"There's so much social pressure on us to look a certain way, and there are all these modern considerations, like, oh it's Spring, I've gotta get lean and work on my abs," he says. "In antiquity, being jacked and strong was more about, I mean I hate the term 'functional', but there was a deliberate approach and purpose to what they were doing."
Ideally, he sees the perfect workout as landing somewhere between these two extremes, where neither body dysmorphia nor bodily dismemberment are a part of the equation, and people can focus on pursuing their goal free of distractions. "The concepts of self betterment and physical prowess are things that we can all aspire towards, and maybe lose some of that modern context that really drags down the conversation," he says. "If we can update that, and combine it with our modern knowledge, I think you get something cool."
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