Monday, January 12, 2009

Real Evolutionary Fitness

A comment from Asclepius at Natural Messiah got me thinking about this.



He pointed me to MovNat which is an updating of Methode Naturelle. I'd come across MN a few years ago - in connection to Parkour or Free Running - but had forgotten about it. Wikipedia explains:

A (Natural Method) session is composed of exercises belonging to the ten fundamental groups: walking, running, jumping, quadrupedal movement, climbing, equilibrism (balancing), throwing, lifting, defending and swimming.

The more I think about it, the more that I like this approach.

There is a blog here by a guy working on this template.

2 comments:

Rannoch Donald said...

Hey Chris, good stuff as usual. there are so many similar movement based systems out there. You should check out Alvaro Romano's Ginastica Natural.http://www.ginasticanatural.com.br/ingles/

Scott Sonnon has some good stuff too. No to mention the well tested Yoga route. I really should get you down to one of Gillians classes in Marchmont.

The key here is unrestricted natural movement. Paul Cheks eat Move book has lots of good info.

the truth is, freedom of movement should be available to everyone. There is no secret to it. Mobility is mobility whether it's roots are in Tai chi, yoga, zdrovye or any other movement based discipline.

Use it!

Later

Rannoch

Chris said...

Erwan - the guy in that video emailed about this post. He has given me permission to post his email as a comment.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hi

I'm Erwan, founder of MovNat and the guy in both MN and MovNat video.
I want to react to the comment that was made:
"The key here is unrestricted natural movement (...) The truth is, freedom of movement should be available to everyone. There is no secret to it. Mobility is mobility whether it's roots are in Tai chi, yoga, zdrovye or any other movement based discipline."

Mobility doesn't have its roots in Tai Chi, Yoga or MovNat :). Mobility has its roots in the evolution of the human or hominid animal over the course of several million years.
Therefore, from a MovNat perspective, "natural movement" means evolutionary, i.e natural to the human animal to seize opportunities or escape threats.
It is not a traditional form, not a cultural expression, not an invention and not a free, creative expression.
There is a big difference between freedom of movement or creative movement, for instance dancing freely and performing any possible body move, and adaptive movement on the other hand.
Creative movement= any movement goes since there is no practical context or demand. Because it is not confronted to any practical demand, free movement doesn't have to be efficient but rather to conform to a conventional form or to look nice or to be enjoyable to do.
Adaptive movement= functional movement that has to be as efficient as possible in a given practical situation. It must adapt to what is at stake but doesn't need to look nice and is not necessarily enjoyable to do.
Therefore, true "natural movement" at least from my perspective is certainly not unrestricted. Not any movement goes, or else tango and salsa could be part of a natural movement training.
If it can't be justified by a practical situation and if the intention behind performing the move doesn't relate to any practical demand which makes the movement directly useful, then in my opinion is not natural. Though about any movement is good to contribute in maintaining health, without understanding this distinction "natural" would just be a meaningless label.


Best,

Erwan

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Explore your true nature!
www.movnat.com