Natural Born Heroes: How a Daring Band of Misfits Mastered the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance

by Christopher McDougall

  Despite Erwan’s rat-a-tat-tat attack, it’s obvious he wants to win Sandra over, not beat her down. That’s enough to make her step once more into the buzz saw.

  You’re forgetting flexibility, she offers. Yoga makes you more limber.

  “If your muscles resist a movement, it’s because the movement is unnatural. So why change the muscle? Change the movement!” Erwan drops down in the sand and juts a leg out in a hurdler’s pose. “If your hamstring won’t let you stretch like this,” he says, bending forward with his head over his knee “then move like this.” Swiftly, he jackknifes the leg back so it folds under his butt. He’s able to reach much farther forward, and he’s much better balanced.

  “Now, which one is a real mind-body connection?”

  —

  “I think he’s really onto something,” says Lee Saxby, a physical therapist and technical director of Wildfitness, a London-based exercise program built around an evolutionary model of human performance. Saxby is convinced that true human health has nothing to do with exercise machines and everything do to with hunter-gatherer movements, and when he stumbled across a remarkable video by Erwan, he found Exhibit A in the flesh.

  As declarations of war go, it’s unique: in a magical three and a half minutes called “The Workout the World Forgot,” Erwan makes a devastating case for ancestral fitness—and he does it without saying a single word. It opens with Erwan carrying a log across a tumbling river, then rockets along as he charges across a savage landscape, instantly molding his body under and around everything in his path. He sprints straight at a stone tower…crashing waves…a breathtakingly high ledge…a mixed martial-arts fighter who appears out of nowhere…and Erwan never slows, instead twisting, sprinting, swimming, climbing, fighting, and vaulting past them all. He’s utterly serene and terribly powerful, a human animal in command of his body and everything it meets.

  “What impresses me most about that video is his athleticism,” Saxby says. “It drives me crazy that women think being in shape is being skinny and men think it’s being big. But the best athletes don’t look like models or bodybuilders. They’re lean and quick and mobile. That’s what I like about Erwan’s video. It’s a demonstration of real functional fitness, the opposite of the bulking-up stuff they teach you in the gym.”

  Erwan, in fact, could be one of the best living examples of what our bodies were originally designed to do. “Versatility was absolutely the key to survival, because early humans had to be ready for anything at any time,” explains E. Paul Zehr, Ph.D., a neuroscience and kinesiology professor at the University of Victoria who examined human biomechanical potential in his book Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero. “When early Homo sapiens set off in the morning, he never knew what he’d encounter. If your daily life is hunting and being hunted, at a moment’s notice you might have to sprint, jog, throw a spear, scramble up a tree, hunker down and dig. The specialization we enjoy today, be it as a marathoner, tennis player, even a triathlete, is a luxury of modern society. It doesn’t have great survival value for Homo sapiens in the wild.”

  But Erwan’s most important throwback could be the way he’s welded purpose and playfulness, function and fun. When he jumps and tumbles and chucks stuff around, he looks just like a kid goofing around in the backyard, which Dr. Zehr believes could be our true ancestral workout. “You never see your dog running nonstop around and around in a circle for an hour,” Zehr points out. “If he did, you’d think there’s something really wrong with him. Instead, he’ll chase something, roll around, sprint, rest, mix things up. Animal play has a purpose, and it’s not hard to surmise that human play should as well.”

  “Most people see exercise as punishment for being fat,” adds Saxby. “So instead of being a release for stress, it’s one more mental burden. That’s why I think what this guy Erwan is up to is bang on. If you can reverse the idea that exercise is punishment, that’s a great gift.”

  Reverse the idea…maybe by creating giant adult playgrounds? With mud pits and flaming straw bales and wacky electrical shock hazards that look like jellyfish tentacles? In 2010, one of the least likely voices in fitness (a Harvard Business School student) traveled to the least likely place to launch a trend (Allentown, Pennsylvania) and rigged together some big-kid toys on a backwater ski resort. Five years later, “Tough Mudders” and other obstacle-course challenges, like Warrior Dashes and Spartan Races, are sonic-booming. Jogging is even in danger of losing its crown as Most Popular Participation Sport, because this year more people are likely to splash through a freezing pond en route to a wall climb than run a half-marathon. Granted, these mass muck-athons are more about thrills than skills; few Spartan Racers do anything more to prepare for the cargo-net scrambles and water-tower leaps than paint their faces and pay the fee. Still, there’s a good bit about these events that would warm Georges Hébert’s heart. Tough Mudder has no winners or finishing times, focusing instead on camaraderie over competition. And all of them at least champion the idea of functional fitness: by the time you finish, you’ll know lots about what you can’t do. As far as doing it, that’s where the Box comes in.

  In the early 2000s, word began to spread among California police officers and local Navy SEALs that the best place to find a real-world workout was the vacant lot behind a FedEx depot in Santa Cruz. There, a former competitive gymnast named Greg Glassman was leading the faithful through sprints, dead lifts, and his holy trinity of functional fitness: squats, pull-ups, and burpees (a push-up that explodes into a hop). Those three maneuvers—getting up off your butt, up off your belly, and up off the ground—are basic for animal survival, yet Glassman found that many people couldn’t handle them. And isn’t that the whole point of exercise, just mastering your body weight? He called his approach CrossFit, and the cops he trained said it felt less like a conventional workout and more like “a foot race that turns into a fight.” CrossFit remains so wedded to pure and simple movement that if Teddy Roosevelt were to rise from the dead, the one place he’d feel at home after ninety-six years would be a CrossFit “Box” (so dubbed because an early training facility was a storage unit in a San Francisco parking lot).

  But on Crete, there weren’t any boxes. For Xan and Paddy to survive, they’d have to rely on something even more urgent and ancestral, something that could prepare them for a fugitive’s life in the mountains. Something like what Erwan is getting up to in the branches overhead.

  —

  “Ready?” Erwan asks from his perch twenty feet up in a tree.

  “Sure you are,” he answers himself before we can speak. “Let’s do it!”

  After three days of double-sessions training, it’s time for my combination going-away present/final exam. Erwan has fashioned an obstacle course that will both test my jungle-man skills and give me a model to reconstruct back home in Pennsylvania. In keeping with his gospel of group dynamics, he asked Zuqueto and Fábio, another Brazilian fighter, to join me.

  “The test,” Erwan says, “is to finish the course twice in less than twenty minutes.” He drops his hand—GO!—and we’re off, chasing hard on each other’s heels. Erwan’s course has about twelve stations, all of them sequenced into a natural flow through the forest. We’re springing up into trees, contorting through the branches, and shinnying down fifteen-foot poles. He has us hoisting heavy curdurú logs up on an end and flipping them, bottom over top, up a hill. Then we’re crawling around stakes in the ground and snaking on our bellies through an overturned dugout canoe mounted a few inches off the ground. Even a small cabin comes into play: we’re vaulting through one window and out the other.

  The most ingenious thing about Erwan’s course, I realize as I finish the first lap, is how universal it is. Sure, it’s a blast to horse around in trees in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest, but there isn’t anything here that can’t be duplicated in a suburban backyard—or even a suburban street, if you’re blessed with Erwan’s total disregard for arched eyebrows. The day before, I’d watched him s
troll down Itacaré’s main street and treat it like his personal rec center. He monkey-walked up a staircase on all fours, tightrope-walked along a railing, and vaulted back and forth down the length of a fence. By the time we’d walked five blocks, he’d knocked out a healthy workout and was ready for pizza.

  I have three minutes left and only two obstacles to go—a leap from the porch, then a quick climb up a twenty-foot pole braced between the ground and a branch high in a tree. I’m trying not to show it, but through the sweat and grime on my face, I’m beaming. Two days ago, my heart was in my throat before every jump. Now, after just seventy-two hours, I feel unstoppable. All I need to do is push a little harder and I’ll be right on Fábio’s heels.

  Naturally, that’s when disaster strikes.

  When I stick the landing off the porch, a red-hot knife jabs me in the spine. My back is seizing so badly, I can’t even stand up straight. I should have known I was pushing my luck—fourteen-hour plane trips always leave me tight as a banjo string. So that’s it, I’m done. Until I remember Erwan’s motto.

  Smart body, I remind myself. Use your smart body.

  I take hold of the long pole that extends on a forty-five-degree angle up into the tree. Gingerly, I hook one foot up, then the other, until I’m hanging upside down from the pole like a pig on a spit. I tighten my grip and wonder what the hell to do next.

  “Any ideas?” I ask Erwan.

  “Claro,” he responds. “Sure. Lots of them.” It’s an excellent teaching moment, the perfect opportunity to dig into his mental archives and pull out a few of the innovations he’s compiled over the years. I’ve seen them in his notes, pages and pages of stick-figure drawings dating back to Georges Hébert’s original field experiments. Erwan has a lot of wisdom to pass on—but instead he just stands there, arms folded across his chest. He doesn’t give me a clue, or even a smile.

  Neither do Zuqueto or Fábio. They’ve become hardcore converts to the essence of Erwan’s philosophy: when that volcano blows, you’ve got to be ready to go on your own. You won’t have any lifting partner to ease the bar off your chest, no volunteer handing you Gatorade at the twenty-mile mark. A group dynamic may be our natural impulse, but in a pinch, count on being a lonely man. The only thing you can always rely on is the ingenuity and raw mobility preprogrammed into your system by two million years of hope and fear.

  My hands are slick with sweat and starting to slip off the pole. Just to get a better grip till I can think of something, I slowly start swinging from side to side, building up momentum. At the top of every swing, my body is suspended for a sec in midair. That’s when I move my hands and feet farther up the pole, gliding higher and higher with almost no pain or effort.

  “Ahhh, you learned my secret!” Erwan calls from down below as I approach the top of the pole. “The best secret of all—your body always has another trick up its sleeve.”

  CHAPTER 29

  May God deliver you into the hands of the Greeks.

  —A CORSICAN CURSE PADDY LIKED TO QUOTE

  PADDY HAD A FEW TRICKS up his own sleeve. He had a pretty good notion of what to expect from the Butcher, and so he’d schemed accordingly. The Butcher was vicious but cautious, preferring to hit a target he knew wouldn’t hit back. He wouldn’t storm into the mountains after he discovered General Kreipe was missing; no, he’d make a move only when he knew what was going on. So first he’d fan out his spies and ransack the coastal villages, and that would lead him right to General Kreipe’s staff car, with the note inside and the phony British commando clues scattered around.

  And by that point, Paddy’s last two bits of Magic Gang trickery would be in play: as soon as SOE headquarters got word they’d made the snatch, BBC Radio would broadcast a news flash saying the general was off the island and en route to Cairo. At the same time, British planes would letter-bomb Crete with leaflets saying British commandos had delivered the general to Egypt.

  The Butcher would be furious, but he wasn’t crazy. With no blood on the ground, he wouldn’t launch a manhunt if there was no man to hunt. He’d probably triple-down his attempts to root out rebel nests, but those attacks would be localized and concentrated on specific targets; unless he absolutely had to, there’s no way he’d risk any more abductions by scattering his men across the mountains. That would take the heat off a little, giving Paddy and his gang enough breathing space to dart out in the open and get the general up and over stony Mount Ida and then down to the real embarkation point, on the southern coast.

  All around, it was a lovely plan. For about six hours.

  —

  Paddy had split his band into three teams. Billy was up front, leading the general to the first rendezvous point. Paddy was catching up from the west after ditching the car on the beach. Andoni Zoidakis and his crew were coming from the east with Alfred Fenske, the general’s driver. Fenske was really slowing them down; he was still so wobbly from that crack across the skull Billy Moss gave him that he could barely walk. With sunup approaching, Zoidakis decided to take cover and let Fenske rest until dark. They wouldn’t have to worry about search parties until noon, maybe midafter—

  Zoidakis froze. He poked his head out for a look, then yanked it back. Impossible. The Germans were on the hunt already? It was still night. How could they even know the general was gone? But there they were, fanned out in a search sweep just three hundred yards or so behind them. Zoidakis had to decide, fast, if they could slip away, with Fenske stumbling all over the place. Zoidakis must have looked worried, because the German driver got curious and stood up to see what was going on. Zoidakis slashed Fenske’s throat before he could open his mouth.

  Almost immediately, Zoidakis regretted it. Fenske hadn’t actually done anything wrong. And Paddy was going to be so upset….

  Which reminded him: they had to get word to Paddy right away. For some reason, the hunt was already on.

  —

  Destination 1 was a cave just outside the village of Anogia. The closer Billy and his team got, the more trouble they had with the general. As soon as Kreipe felt confident he wouldn’t be executed, he slowed down to a grumbling trudge. He was thirsty and really hungry, he complained; they’d grabbed him on his way home for supper. And his leg was killing him. Why’d they have to drag him out of the car like that? And where was his Knight’s Cross? Had anyone seen his medal? Billy kept pushing him along, finally making it to the cave in a cliff face. They pushed the general up, one handhold at a time, then slipped inside and disguised the mouth with torn branches. One of the gang slipped off to Anogia to rustle up some food and ask around for news.

  Paddy and George Tyrakis weren’t far behind. But instead of going directly to the rendezvous, Paddy slipped into Anogia. He needed to get a messenger to Tom Dunbabin right away, and then sit tight for Tom’s reply. Tom was the last, crucial part of Paddy’s Magic Gang plan: Paddy was counting on him to make radio contact with Cairo and coordinate the letter bombing, the BBC broadcast, and the pickup boat.

  As Paddy and George entered Anogia, doors and windows slammed shut around them. “All talk and laughter died at the washing troughs, women turned their backs and thumped their laundry with noisy vehemence; cloaked shepherds, in answer to greeting, gazed past us in silence,” Paddy observed. “In a moment we could hear women’s voices wailing into the hills: ‘The black cattle have strayed into the wheat!’ and ‘Our in-laws have come!’ ”

  So this is what it’s like for the Germans, Paddy realized. Good! Many of the most effective Cretan freedom fighters—the andartes—were sons of Anogia. So deep was the villagers’ loathing for the Germans that even though Paddy was a well-known friend, all they could see was the uniform he was wearing. Even when he knocked up at the house of his good friend, the rebel priest Father Charetis, he wasn’t allowed through the door.

  “It’s me, Pappadia!” he whispered to the priest’s wife. He gave her his code name: “It’s me: Mihali!”

  “What Mihali?” she replied innocently. “I don’t know
any Mihali.” Then she took a closer look. Only when she recognized the familiar gap between Paddy’s teeth did she let him inside. Paddy didn’t explain what he was doing there or why he was dressed like a German corporal, and everyone knew better than to ask. Father Charetis simply sent a boy off with Paddy’s message to Tom Dunbabin, then laid out food.

  Paddy was still resting and waiting for Tom’s reply when leaflets began fluttering down over the village. Excellent! The runner must have made it to Tom’s hideout in record time. Paddy got one and read:

  TO ALL CRETANS:

  LAST NIGHT THE GERMAN GENERAL KREIPE WAS ABDUCTED BY BANDITS. HE IS NOW BEING CONCEALED IN THE CRETAN MOUNTAINS. HIS WHEREABOUTS CANNOT BE UNKNOWN TO THE POPULACE…

  Wait. What happened to Paddy’s leaflets?

  IF THE GENERAL IS NOT RETURNED WITHIN THREE DAYS, ALL VILLAGES IN THE HERAKLION DISTRICT WILL BE BURNED TO THE GROUND. THE SEVEREST MEASURES OF REPRISAL WILL BE BROUGHT TO BEAR ON THE CIVILIAN POPULATION.

  Damn. Either way you looked at it, it didn’t make sense. If the Germans had found the car already, how did they know the general was in the mountains and not on a boat? And if they hadn’t found the car, why were they searching?

  —

  Paddy’s calculations turned out to be very right and very wrong. As he expected, the Butcher didn’t tear off in a rage and start burning villages. He was taking his time, asking questions, and circling the trail. But instead of falling for Paddy’s ruse, the Butcher was getting dangerously close to the truth.

  The Butcher first became suspicious after one of the sentries radioed the fortress to ask about the general’s whereabouts. The Butcher always ranted that the Cretans were brutes and the Brits were harmless pests, but privately, he suspected there was a lot more going on in the mountains than he could see. Air convoys were swarmed within moments of leaving Crete, German sergeants left their rooms for an hour and returned to find them ransacked, an Italian general vanished from under the Butcher’s nose and popped up in Cairo…and now a commanding general goes on a nighttime joyride? No, something was up.