Workshop review: Mobility Conditioning with Steve Maxwell

Workshop Review:

 Mobility Conditioning Seminar with Steve Maxwell (1 Day)

Yesterday I had great privilege of attending Steve Maxwell's Mobility Conditioning Seminar, hosted by my Jiu Jitsu Instructor (Felipe Grez) at Jiu Jitsu Kingdom, Sydney.   

I love Steve's work and am a big fan of his practical methods.  I have followed him on the Internet for a long time, and was lucky enough to meet, train and hang out with him last year.  As he says in his introduction to most workshops; he's been in the game for 50 years(!), and has been continually experimenting and refining his unique methods over this time.  He has an amazing wealth of information and experience. 

This seminar focused on what Steve calls 'mobility conditioning' which combines active flexibility,  joint mobility and movement pattern work with strength, 'baby training' neural re-patterning, breathing and tension-releasing exercises - it's quite an exceptional combination.  There's methods from all over the globe featured.  

Today (and yesterday post-seminar) my body is feeling fantastic and sore in some areas that do not normally get sore.  Steve is easily able to provide exercise progressions for every skill level present at his workshops, and though a number of the exercises are grappling specific (one of Steve's specialties), they provide mobility-conditioning, active flexibility and resilience to anyone who plays contact sports (martial arts; football and rugby codes, even basketball) or has the potential to fall during their activities (cyclists; trail runners; etc).

For me, I am really excited by blending and experimentation that I am doing with Steve's methods; Stretch Therapy and qi gong.  The blending and distillation of these three modalities is a very large part of what will make up the Physical Alchemy method I am creating (after suitable experimentation and refinement).  

Steve is putting on at least one more Mobility Conditioning seminar in Sydney (this Sunday 9th March, 2014), and one in Melbourne (the following week) - maybe two more if the one this Sunday reaches capacity (which it is close to doing).  If you are in either of these great Australian cities and are interested in all things physical cultivation and health, do not miss out on this opportunity:  

http://maxwellsc.com/events.cfm

Steve is a super generous dude, too.  He has gone over-time in every single workshop and training session I have ever done with him.  Yesterday he went over by 30 minutes and shortened lunch by half an hour - because people were so keen to learn, and he loves to get his methods across to people.   He has even given me two pairs or shoes (New Balance minimus!); five pairs of shorts(!); two belts and a rain jacket (Steve and I are similar builds, and he sheds gear he cannot take with him on his travels - as he packs light and agile when travelling). 

Dave Wardman (Physical Alchemy)

p.s I learned so much yesterday that I am doing the same seminar again next week!   :)  

Cat Crawl and Push-up Postition Foot Figure 8's

HERE's TWO joint mobility and foot/ankle awareness exercises that get into the posterior compartment and deep posterior compartment of the lower leg nicely.  One is from a cat crawl beginning position, the other from the top position of a push-up. 

You can get some novel contractions of the calf muscles if you focus on the sensory awareness of the muscles (as well as the spatial awareness required for doing the figure 8's). 

Try to keep you've got good spinal alignment during them for bonus points. 

Enjoy! And may the Calf-growing Force be with you! 

Prototype '5 necks' workout

I previously mentioned  a comment that Kit had once made about the '3 necks' of Chinese Medicine (neck; wrist and ankle). After discussing with Simon, we figured that '5 necks' (neck; wrist x 2 and ankle x 2) sounded way cooler.

Last night I played around with a new type of workout (a strength-control and Natural Movement emphasis one), that I am going to add into my current program.  Basically I will do different types of crawls (lizard; cat; bear; etc); handstands and agility drills, mixed in with specific mobility and weighted mobility drills for neck, forearm/wrist/hand and lower leg/ankle/foot.  Lots of spirals and figure 8 patterns. 

I think it should fit in well with my current strength circuit workout.  Should be fun getting back into some basic gymnastics holds, too. 

Monkey Gym Workshop Day 2

Cool; my internet device seems to work whilst going 100km/hr on the bus from Canberra back to Sydney!

Today we started off with Simon's movement patterning and mobility session - which rocked!  Broken into two parts (which were filmed by Kit, so hopefully will appear sometime); one was a utilization of the stretch reflex to increase movement range and power via elastic recoil (in 3 planes of motion).
 The second segment, which was cut a bit short, was a totally cool movement exploration of figure 8's; spirals and 4 leaf clover's with the sacrum/coccyx - again, in a number of planes.  These movements feel so goodly.  Great when slowed right down.

After this Anthony did a sweet session of kettlebell basics, which was really excellent.  I got some new cuing tips for swings from it that I will definitely use. Nice!  

Next up was my segment on 'horizontal plane pushing and rowing whilst controlling the shape of the spine' - which complimented Simons' 'move the body and spine in all types of crazy and fun ways (with awareness)' section perfectly.  Two sides of the same coin...Monkey gym basics (3pt spinal alignment and control; addition of anti-rotation capacity against rotational vectors of different types; sensory cuing to enhance motor function; etc).

Great fun, and flowed nicely into John's session on Roman ring basics (Monkey Gym style) - with lots of great low ring variants. Merryn finished up with a great little body-weight circuit and some lying relaxation.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time presenting, assisting learning at the workshop; and had a great time returning to my home town, and catching up with some of my favorite people there.  The workshop had a really nice 'one door closes; another opens' feel to it!  It even felt like one door closing, many doors opening.  So cool to meet and train with so many excellent humans intent of spreading body-mindfulness and physical cultivation methods! 

Monkey Gym Workshop Day I

Today was the first day of a 4 day Monkey Gym workshop, in Canberra.  Very cool (and rare) to see, that pretty much the whole group had full, or almost, full range of motion in a full squat position.  Brought up in discussion was the cool idea (mentioned in THIS clip with Ido) that the squat position forms a position of rest in many parts of the world. 

Lucky everyone had a good squat, as first cab off the rank was Craig's - with a fantastic squatting and hip mobility play-session. This session was awesome(!), and very cool to see Craig (and others) interested in the physical cultivation aspects of movement, beyond the solely motor pattern and strength elements (which are cool to have, too).  A couple of drills here that I haven't seen, and will be keeping in my routine until they become smooth. Thank you Craig!

After lunch it was my turn, and I subjected the group to a foot and lower leg intensive session (after the morning's quite foot and leg intensive session) - will be interesting to see how/where people are sore tomorrow, after that much volume and 'novel' stimulus..   I debuted my 'Flamin' 8' deep posterior compartment exercise, with a few more additions I've been working on.  I will hopefully get these additions filmed and up in the next week, for people to play with. 

Kit and I then co-taught a section on lower limb alignment and glute activation and sequencing. A lot of the classic Monkey Gym stuff was taught, along with some recent additions, such as the Speed Skater Squat (which is Kit's latest favorite) - which is actually are really exceptional exercise, that I will practice and blog about later (if Kit doesn't get in first). 

It was fantastic to see, too, that so many people in the workshop are into body-mindfulness; sensory awareness coupled with motor performance, and increasing kinesthetic awareness and movement patterning for children in schools and classes.  So cool that people are really, truly wanting to get this stuff out there! 

Flamin' '8' Deep Posterior Compartment Exercise

Today, a practical post!  HERE and HERE is a video of an exercise I created (someone else probably does it, as always; but I didn't learn it off anybody) one day when I was exploring.. trying to get the deep posterior compartment of the lower leg working.  It makes use of the awesome figure 8 movement pattern that works so well in joint mobility exercises. 

This compartment contains Flexor Hallucis Longus; Tibialis Posterior and Flexor Digitorum Longus.  This hidden compartment often has a fair degree of 'sensori-motor amnesia', weakness and/or trigger points and fascial adhesions in it - hence the growing list of 'tibialus posterior' activation exercises, of varing degrees of effectiveness (and it is great to activate the tib post!).

These three muscles and their associated fascia are part of the Deep Front Line (DFL) of the Anatomy Trains myofascial meridians - and they are highly involved in healthy and strong foot, ankle, knee, hip movement. Having these muscles 'come back to life' feels really good; solid and grounded, yet lighter on ones' feet - plus it will improve the girth of the lower portion of the shin musculature (if you're into that type of thing..which I am). 

The exercise works best as a weighted joint mobility exercise on a 'light day'; as movement-play, or as part of a 'finisher' to a heavier workout.  Due to the balancing on the balls of the feet and the knee position; do not do the exercise if you have knee pain in it.  The exercise becomes suitably *intense* after about 30 seconds, but again, shouldn't be painful. 

Try it NOW (if you can safely do it)! Especially if you are in Australia in one of the colder cities.. It's called 'Flamin' 8' for a reason!