Master Your Movement
The future of functional fitness is an evolution into functional movement. We see this already in the explosion of more complex movement practices like parkour happening all over the world and being adopted slowly by the mainstream fitness world. Organisms are not machines, and the era of training them like machines will give way to an age of treating them like organisms, leading to longer healthspans, fewer injuries and even greater potential
We all harbour immense potential for extraordinary activity. We all possess the innate ability to move with the seemingly superhuman attributes that parkour develops. The truth is, of course, that there is nothing superhuman about these activities – and there are no secrets either. Diligent, intelligent practice and focused, regular training will bring about the realisation of this potential.
Stretching yourself is vital. Not the yoga kind, though – here I’m referring to stretching your abilities in movement and
Complex movement is not just a physical exercise, but a cognitive one.
Motivating yourself is easy at the start, or when you are in phases of obvious progress: the process in itself is the reward at such times. But it won’t always be this way. ..
Understand that true mastery can only come from deep immersion within a practice. It has to become part of who you are…
It asks you difficult questions; probes your weak spots; identifies the parts that are broken. Then it demands that you fix them..
the greatest practices humans have yet created are those which train the entire individual, not just the athlete in us.
An inevitability of positive, intentional adaptation is that you will not initially see what the solution to a problem will be. If you could, the adaptive principle would not be necessary…
Too often we are taught to break apart the body and look at it as a series of problems; to fragment it in order to make the complexity of human movement more manageable, and injuries more fixable. But we pay a hidden and enormous price for this…
The floor is a hard, unforgiving taskmaster. But the floor never hits you – you hit the floor: so learn to control the contact and it will soften dramatically.
The best training programmes must be tailored for the recipient, and the best coaches will make sure this happens…
An absolute unexpected honour to be featured in the Independent and Lucozade Sport’s Top Ten ‘Mover’s List’ for individuals making a contribution to getting the UK population active and moving.
Is your own training defeating you? Growing up in the martial arts, I encountered so many teachers who were broken.
Had a great chat with Michael Boll of 21st Century Learning about why parkour is the perfect antidote to inactivity
Dan Edwardes 