Saturday, January 29, 2011

movnat... eatnat... lovnat...


PARKOUR [French] = PARK YOUR FACE ON THE GROUND [j/k]



George Hébert 'Being strong to be useful...'

Young Erwan Le Corre was inspired by George Hébert before taking his parkour urban skills and Ironman talents out to structured workshops focused on training and teaching others the lifestyle he put together. Approximately 100 years ago, Hébert's training manual Methode Naturelle was published and can be seen HERE (picture above courtesy Hawaii Parkour/Hébert; last photo credits to Diablo Crossfit my playground). A big fan of 'natural' movements by indigenous and African cultures, Hébert was one of the first advocates for obstacle-course form of physical training and embracing a melding of mind, spirit and body with nature.

Nick Heil of Outside magazine attended one of the Re-Awakening MovNat workshops (along with bloggers Melissa McEwen and David Csonka), survived, and wrote up the experience in a moving essay.

Richard Nikoley attended one of the advanced Expansion workshops which I very very briefly considered. Read FTA for highlights and vids HERE. Bummer. Should've gone *sigh regret*. Playing and hanging out with buff, half-nekkid, hot gals and guys for 5 days and nights... what was I thinking?? Who's going to Thailand?

Functional usefulness from Crossfit... YEAH BABY.

Recently I successfully climbed up and broke into a 2nd story apartment.

Had to be done. Accidentally we locked ourselves out and the 3 year old was cold and hungry. After doing a half-split on the outside stairway to reach the balcony, without clumsiness, I snookered up, scaled around the balcony where it was covered by a bamboo fence, then hoisted over with a light landing in front of the sliding door I'd left open earlier while I was sunning myself reading 'My Dirty Life: On Farming, Food and Love.' Multiple warnings were issued to the pre-teens (my kids and the older nieces) -- DO NOT DO THIS AT HOME. *haa ah* Naturally they'll ignore since I let them climb the toolshed at home. I think functional exercises are excellent because never know when you'll need them, and falling or breaking my leg would've been awfully horrible and traumatic for the children...




MovNat featured in Outside Magazine Jan 2011 article by Paleo-virgin Nick Heil

Click above for full article with pictures from the 5-day Re-Awakening Workshop and several extra features (collage pictures, demos -- kids please do this at home!)

Heil wrote about the final day's activities which included a gauntlet of physical challenges in the fasted stated, "Wearing only shorts and a dark-green bandanna, and streaked with mud as if someone had outlined his muscles with a black magic marker, he [Erwan Le Corre] looked downright feral. 'Adaptability is the holy grail of MovNat,' he told us. 'This is what we have done throughout human history. But we have lost touch with the world that created us.' "


Functionality=Flexibility=Strength

All the best athletes I have come across are extremely limber and flexible as felines. Personally my best athletic performances are when I am doing yoga and more endurance type challenges. If one notices in Methode Naturelle, many of the stretches are inherent to yoga. They translate to fluid and cat-like grace.

Strength benchmarks aren't my forte but I looked at Erwan's expectations and they were all do-able.

Benchmarks for Functional Fitness: Prequisites for the Expansion Workshop

Can you do the below?

Self-assessment criteria for this course:
o You are comfortable barefoot or with minimal shoes. --YES
o You can run 10 kilometers (a 10k) in under 50 minutes easily (an 8minute mile pace) --NO but d*mn good 9-10min mile easily
o You can easily perform 10 explosive pull-ups in a row --NO I SUCK.
o You have some powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting experience and can at least deadlift and squat your own bodyweight and clean and jerk half your body weight --YEEESSSSSSSS!!! 120-125lbs baby...
o You can hold a well-aligned plank pose for at least a minute, you can do 20 successive walking lunges while maintaining your stability, and you can at least vertical jump up to your knee-level and long jump half your height from a static posture then stabilize your body easily. --NOOO PROBLEMO
o You can comfortably swim freestyle and backstroke. --YES
o You can hold your breath at least one minute and 30 seconds. --OF COURSE
o You have no serious health issues that prevent you from performing optimally including injuries that you must work around. --CHOCOLATE, CAFFEINE AND ALCOHOL WITHDRAWAL SYNDROMES???! DTs?



8 comments:

Anonymous said...

haha i love it! i can dead lift and squat over my body weight, limbeR TOO. LOVE YOUR BLOG, I ALWAYS GIGGLE...when i read you broke into the apartment lol i thought there was a goos story, but, the 3yr old must be fed haha

Dr. B G said...

Hey uber-tastic hotness,

You ROCK :) If the 3yo had to pee, would've been a different story (we Asians let them squat behind the tree 'fertilizer'). *h aaH*

-G

gilliebean said...

I love that!! I've already dreamed of needing to do that (break into my own apartment); but I never have... really.

Interesting that the mov-nat includes the need to run 6 miles in less than 50 minutes. I think 6 miles would take me about 66 minutes... Hrmmm...

Dr. B G said...

S*xxxy primal grrrrl!

Didn't I read you did triathlons too? MovNat would be CAKE FOR YOU :)

If I was barefoot, my time would probably be like 72 min!!!

-G

Unknown said...

I keep forgetting to comment on these pictures of you about how AMAZING you look! Superheroine.

Dr. B G said...

Hey Gorgeous MILF/MD!

It's the hair... it provides super powers *hee* (and I have a delilah who often wants to chop it).

Thank you for the kind comment!
G

Neonomide said...

Hi Gha!

Movnatists & parkhourists ROCK! I miss the childhood days when I had the monkey instinct and did not only conquer trees, but room furniture as well and walked like a crab everywhere. Years later we had GREAT teachers at taekwondo classes and had a lot of different free movements and such. I long those days a lot.

(well I guess I'm young enough 2 still remember those days!)

Back in Uni library last summer, a parkour group actually was climbing the Foundation stones opposite the windows there. Seeing that made me feel like a dustheavy chamber book worm. Luckily they missed the police there!

Some cool, super insane movnat is perfectly possible here still. Finnish dig big trench systems in case of russian invasion during WWII (did never reach quite here). Some running videos would be cool if I get some barefoot people in!

Here's some methode naturelle/pre-parkour coolness from 1930's!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3FheeVpFYo&


Millions of tons of dirty snow everywhere here right now (sigh!). I wish the forests would be worth crossrunning and cross-monkeying before mid-May, in the best case scenario!

Bring on the global warming, at least here!!! :-)

Dr. B G said...

Neo

So good to hear from you! 'bookworm'!!! We're just all geek-a-zoids...!!!

The parkour vid was out of sight! Thanks for the link. Climbing the stairs is parkour enough for me sometimes!

We've had unrelenting RAIN AND MISERY on/off for the last 2 months... *sigh* I long too for sunnier days but I should SHUT UP being from california. Emily Deans posted on Finlandia (a capella) in January and it was so ironic; I thought of you then 1hr later I took my kids, my nieces and the dog (we were dogsitting) to the park and met the most fantastic family from FINLAND. I've never met anyone from Finland (other than you). * ahaa haaaa!*

You will not believe this. His wife is from actually China (here family were ex-pats in Finland) and they are from the same 'clan' as my family Hakka (also known as Han Taiwanese, part of the original Chinese first descendants).

All the kids at the park were part Hakka...and Finnish and Scottish (my nieces) I realized. It was just WILD!!!!! indeed what a small interconnected world

G