By far this post will not be the definitive work on movement that the subject in fact demands…or rather perhaps should demand. CrossFit Williamsville and MovNat Buffalo has been running as one in the same for 18months now and I can say that I have learned so much.  So much.  18 months ago when I spoke on the subject of movement, or programming, or nutrition, or how to inspire someone to change their lives, or how to push someone to become better….back then I was standing on the shoulders of giants and hoping that the way I combined proven methods would ultimately work.  I knew in my heart that what I was doing worked.  I had read accounts (numerous accounts) of similar methods working…..and above all I had a belief that I could make it work.  Moving my body through space has always made sense to me.  Always.  I was fortunate  to have at my disposal access to wooded areas, and even when my  family moved to Ohio, and I was even farther away from my Grandparents Farm, I was fortunate to have grown up long enough ago that as an 8 year old I rode my bike far enough away from the neighborhoods of Troy Ohio, and found my own wooded playgrounds.  To this day there is no time that I feel more free than when I am running through the woods..playing to my hearts content..

..So  after 18months of teaching and coaching people how to move better..how would I describe what I do?

The answer is so much easier or rather simpler than some might expect.  I don’t really “do” anything.  It’s what I undo that makes the difference.  It is in fact the single most important thing I can give to my members.  I  strive to undo the years of eating badly, the hours of chronic sitting……I undo the stress of paying the bills….I undo the negativity that has been force fed to them their whole lives.  Imagine an environment built on solid principles…an environment that is encouraging, enlightening, and is one in which you are not judged by what you do….but how you do it, and ultimately as long as you try your best in this environment then success is the only possible outcome.   Can you imagine what that looks like.  Can you imagine how good it would feel to be there, to train there, to hang out with people that came there for darn near the same reasons that you walked in the door.   I can imagine it.  In fact I need not imagine it.  It has been created.  I coach there almost every day.

What is fitness?  To Crossfit fitness is measurable, trackable, and through this science of fitness you can gain fitness, and ultimately use it to destroy your opponents in a given show of fitness. ( one in which the parameters are unknown, thus keeping you on your toes and proving how complete someone’s fitness regimen is).   I understand completely the idea of  Increasing one’s work capacity over broad time and modal domains, and agree that this could be a measure of their fitness.  But I wonder how efficient this is in terms of long term work capacity.   What I am saying is that if you work so diligently hard at increasing your fitness to the caliber of top level Games athletes, or Olympic Athletes, or NFL stars…..is that really the proper way to ensure that 25 years from now you will be able to run around in the yard with your grandkids?

I think not.

I think what works for the long term is moving our bodies as often as possible.  Having a very real awareness that never sitting in a chair again could be one of the healthiest decisions you could ever make.  I think that learning how our body should move, then learning how it can move, and the pushing it to move faster, stronger, more flexible, longer…etc can be fantastic.  But it is all rooted in the first part.  We have to relearn how our body should move.  Watch a 3 year old run jump and immerse herself in play and tell me that there is not a part you (perhaps a big part) that envies her movement.  We have to reconnect with how we first moved.  How we crawled, ran, jumped, climbed, carried things…these basic, even primal movement patterns are what created this amazing human animal that we have hiding inside us.  We just have to let it out.

…..I think for right now I will leave this here with more to reflect on..and much more to write.  For now I hope this gave a little window into how I feel about movement…

think of this as a movement thought snack……

stay class buffalo