I had heard about MovNat several months ago when it was referenced on one of Robb Wolf's podcasts. Eventually I came across this video and was immediately intrigued. MovNat combines several elements that I have had varying amounts of experience with and enjoy – gymnastics elements, Parkour-like movement, swimming and fighting – and you have to admit, MovNat's creator, Erwan Le Corre, makes it look pretty dang cool. When I became aware of a one-day workshop in the Chicago area, it was a no-brainer for me to sign up for it, especially given the reasonable price tag (a little above or below $300, depending on how early you sign up).

We couldn't have asked for a better day to do a workshop. It was sunny the whole day and the temperature was in the 70s. We also had a great location – Central Park in the Oak Brook neighborhood. The park is not only immaculately maintained, but devoid of the condoms and broken glass that apparently turned up in the park used for the preceding workshop in Philly. Amenities available for our training included a playground, baseball fences (capped with plastic tubing – no pokeys!), picnic tables (used for jumping drills), plenty of open space and some gradual slopes (that would come into play for crawling and rolling), not to mention some wooded areas for movement practice (think stepping over, ducking under or otherwise working your way around the natural flora). Driving into the area felt like driving into a private gated community. I'm surprised they let me park my car.

The workshop started off with some brief intros. Cliff Harski, a MovNat Master Trainer, ran the event. He holds certifications from CrossFit, RKC and ACE as well as a BS in Kinesiology. Normally Cliff asks people a little about their background, but because we had a large group and he wanted to maximize training time, he narrowed the discussion to existing injuries and to what the participants wanted to draw out of the workshop. Throughout the day he would come back and address each of the points that people had brought up and, in my opinion, had amazing recall of what people wanted covered and to their potentially inhibited conditions. In my case, this pertained to giving me occasional warnings before starting drills/exercises that might pose a hazard to my shoddy knees. I felt that the MovNat system more than adequately addresses the needs of people of varying fitness levels as variations of movement patterns played a common theme throughout the day's activities.

After the intros, Cliff explained some of the philosophy behind MovNat training. It's based around several principles – Primal, Universal, Intuitive, Vital, Practical and Adaptive. I won't go into the details of these, but, if you're interested, Erwan discusses them in his presentation at the Ancestral Health Symposium. Simply put, MovNat looks to use movements that have been around as long as humans. Think walk, run, jump, swim, balance, throw, catch, climb, attack, defend, lift, carry and crawl and you'll begin to get an understanding of what MovNat training is about. Cliff gave a humorous example, saying, "In a moment of crisis, you never hear someone say, 'Do yoga for your life!' but you might here people say, 'Run/climb/swim for your life!'" It is the contention of the MovNat trainers that by focusing on these essential activities, with the appropriate dosage of variety (often provided by the environment itself), we can develop a level of functional fitness beyond that attained by zeroing in on individual fitness traits and/or doing mindless repetitions of patterned calisthenics. Erwan talks about this concept in his speech, explaining how wild animals maintain optimal levels of fitness in their natural environments simply by moving the way they were intended/designed to.

After our discussion of these conceptual points, we spread ourselves out in a flat, grassy area of the park where we proceeded to cover posture. Cliff cued us on certain points to keep in mind to maintain optimal posture - retracted/depressed shoulders, abdominal activation, spinal lengthening, etc. and instructed us on the aspects and importance of maintaining certain levels of inner and outer of awareness ('mindfullness') when it came to this type of practice, not to mention some of the potential consequences of NOT doing so. Cliff also had us practice a partner drill that introduced us to the idea of selective tension, where part of the body is required to do work/maintain stabilization while we stayed relaxed with the rest of our body. For someone like myself, who focuses a good amount of time on maximal barbell lifts, this was a valuable point and activities where this concept applies (like climbing) are easily realized. We concluded the 'warm-up' with about two minutes of individualized free form movement with our eyes closed. We were encouraged to be creative with this and play with the transfer of balance from our hands and feet and from one side of our body to the other while resisting the urge to fall into pre-programmed patterns ('no sun salutations!'). I didn't peak to see what others were doing during this time period, but imagine that our movements might have looked like some weird combination of break dancing, Capoeira and gymnastics - all done at a very amateur level (at least in my case).



We finished our work in that part of the park with some basic movement drills, starting off with patterns that involved walking, bending over to pick something up and then scanning the area around us. Although I've recently practiced unilateral balancing drills I was surprised at how challenging a seemingly simple task was (but I managed to avoid falling over). Other progressions included practice moving over objects, under objects, passing through narrow openings and the 'cave drill' where we used a handful of movement patterns to move through an increasingly cramped imaginary space to get our 'reward' (in this case imaginary berries - a Snickers bar, I imagine, would have placed the drill out of the desired context) and then head back, reversing the order of the movements used.

Throughout these initial drills, Cliff conveyed the importance of actively imagining the obstacles we were working around, pointing out that children will naturally incorporate this concept into their play. It's also important because it will require us to more accurately execute the movement patterns involved. We finished this segment of the training by working our way through a bushy/wooded area of the park while trying to minimally disturb the environment as we did so. We were encouraged to take different paths and to not always opt for the easiest route, but to be creative and work a range of motions. At the conclusion of our first area of training I found myself thoroughly warmed up (dare I say worked?) especially through the legs and hips. A light sheen of sweat had begun to develop on my forehead. The short break we took while moving over to the playground area of the park was a welcome one.



When we arrived at the playground area, Cliff started covering some of the pole climbing techniques that included the use of all four limbs. The feet would form a base of support and a straight arm position would help to optimize opposing forces. It wasn't about using a death grip or muscling through the climb, but on find the appropriate levers and focusing on economy of movement. After scaling the vertical poles with varying levels of success, we moved to traversing a vertical bar while hanging from underneath it and then eventually to surmounting the bar through a variety of means (muscle-up, pull-over, hooked leg/swing maneuver and more). As in the climbing segment, the importance was stressed of utilizing leverage and of working with the whole body in order to accomplish the task at hand.

Balance drills were next. Close to the playground area of the park was a baseball field. The fence encircling the field was covered by plastic tubing, so we wouldn't cut our feet on the metal pokey thingies (that's a technical term), which is a good thing. That being said, the plastic tubing would shift and rotate a little while we walked on top of it, making it slightly unstable (for most of us, this probably wasn't a good thing). Cliff took steps to make sure that people were breaking off into to groups, only one person from the group was working on the skill at a time and that the spotters were there to assist. We practiced walking, squatting, pivoting, bear crawling, mounting, combo hand/foot balancing and transitioning. Towards the end of this segment of training, some authority figure (Parks Dept. maybe?) came up to us and informed us that we needed to stop standing on top of the fence. I don't know about the other participants, but the thought of an authority figure correcting our 'dangerous behavior' made me feel totally bad ass. (I'm kidding.)


Cliff demonstrates the forward roll after landing from a jump from a picnic table.

After the balancing part of the workshop, we worked on jumping and landing skills. Cliff put us through the paces by first explaining proper mechanics for a safe landing and different things we could do to maintain balance and control and finally adding in elements that would contribute to power generation. A lot is involved in jumping that people often take for granted. Coordinated movement of the hips, knees and arms all come in to play, not to mention proper sequencing when initiating the land. We started with some simple hopping, moved to broad jumping and eventually progressed to one leg skater-type drills. There was a strong focus on being able to control a single jump and to 'stick' a landing with control before we progressed to multiple hops strung together. Then it was onto to vertical jumping. We started off by practicing a static two-foot take off to the bench of a picnic table and worked from there to higher hops (for those of us who were ready for them) and to a couple of different lead up steps and also to one-legged vertical leaping. Cliff also had some great ideas for developing precision jumping, where a practitioner has to focus the landing on a limited surface area. At the most basic level, this could just be a piece of tape on the ground, or a series of bumper plates that a person has to target (think of hopping from rock to rock to cross a river).

We took a break for lunch at this point. Some of the group hung around and chatted with Cliff. From the sound of it, the MovNat movement (is that redundant?) is gaining steam. He informed us, among other new developments, that MovNat certifications are in the pipeline as well as specialized MovNat workshops that could potentially emphasize different aspects of the training whether it be fighting or survival skills.

When we reconvened from lunch, Cliff took us through a variety of movements to get from varied seated positions to standing. Each new movement incorporated various elements of flexibility, coordination and balance. What was interesting for me was that, depending on the move, I was reminded of drills I had done for either Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Japanese swordsmanship or gymnastics, as well as Turkish get-ups. I'll touch more on this concept later.

The drills that we practiced from the ground did wonders as far as loosening up the legs and hips, which would come in handy as we addressed rolling next. Anyone familiar with Aikido (or Judo, or BJJ, or Parkour, for that matter) would recognize the shoulder roll taught. Cliff instructed us to minimize spinal contact on the ground and taught us how to position the head and arms correctly to ensure the smoothest, safest roll possible. We started with little to no momentum before being shown variations that included starting from a squat, then a stand, to eventually how to jump from an elevation and transition properly into the landing and roll. Backward and sideways rolls were incorporated, as were drills that taught us how to focus on using appropriate parts of the body to initiate movement. We were also taught how to use the environment and incorporate it into our scaling attempts (partly via rolling uphill or downhill, depending on our intent to increase or decrease the difficulty level).

The last part of the day was a bit of a blur for me. I didn't prepare adequately for the lunch break and we had been moving around and performing drills for almost an entire day. I remember having some time devoted to crawling drills – bear crawls, army crawls, alligator crawls and crab walks were part of the material, as was working uphill and downhill. From crawling, we went to running. Anyone familiar with minimalist running mechanics will recognize the techniques being used, with cautions against the heel strike, use of a forward body lean, impacting the ball/mid portion of the foot before making brief contact with the heel, etc. We also played some running games – tag – with groups of 4-5 people confined to pre-designated areas. The running game was fun, as was a partner game of chase that worked on lateral foot movement being transferred to an all out sprint.

The last section of the day was spent on handling objects, in our case medicine balls, kettlebells and sandbags. Clifton did a great job of conveying the basic mechanics involved in proper lifting form. Outside of elementary lifts, we worked on techniques that a trainee might not see in conventional gym settings, like fireman carries and buddy drags. We wrapped things up with some partner/team medicine ball drills.



Overall, the one-day MovNat workshop doesn't go into extreme technical level for the subject areas covered, but, as is made very clear at the beginning of the workshop, that wasn't the intent. What it did do was give a very good foundation off of which further exploration and study can be based. Enough drills are conveyed to take home to practice, but there's not enough time to go into great depth on any one area, which, at least for me, left me hungry for more.

The other thing about the MovNat skill set is that practically ALL of what we learned could be applied in real life setting. You can learn a decent shoulder roll without having to wear pajamas or having to 'BOW TO YOUR SENSEI.' You can pick up some jumping and vaulting abilities without having to hang around skinny teenagers and potentially be chased by police. You can learn some solid running mechanics without (God forbid) going to a full day's worth of endurance-based training. Perhaps most importantly (at least from my perspective), you can experience movement outside the confines of the reps/set/time structure common to many workouts.

All of these aspects appeal to a fitness generalist like myself. Despite having moved almost the entire day in varying patterns, the day after the workshop, I didn't feel sore, but energized and my mood was noticeably brighter than usual. Maybe it was finding solace in being able to shut down my 'trainer's mind' and simply enjoying the experience of having someone lead me through exercise for a change. Maybe it was the vitamin D from all of the sun exposure that day. Perhaps it was from hanging out with a pretty cool group of people all day long. Maybe the exhilaration came from the experience of being back in a natural setting, moving in a somewhat playful manner without some super concrete goal and just enjoying the experience of finding some sort of human 'root' experience. In any case, I found the event to be an extremely rewarding experience and look forward to my next training opportunity with the MovNat community.