3 Ways to Use Natural Movement to Boost Athleticism and Fitness
In this week’s episode, I’m going to teach you even more about how to use natural movement to build athleticism and fitness very, very quickly, and to gain coordination skills that will serve you well the rest of your life. If you want to be a modern-day athlete who can hone ancient skills to be ready for anything, then this episode is for you. Prepare to get inspired to leave the gym and take your fitness routine to nature—to climb, swim, skip, throw, and jump their way to your own heroic feats.
Ben Greenfield
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3 Ways to Use Natural Movement to Boost Athleticism and Fitness
I’ve recently been immersed in a bit of summer reading, specifically the book Natural Born Heroes: How a Daring Band of Misfits Mastered the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance. In the book, author Christopher McDougall (who you may recognize as the same author of Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen) travels to the Mediterranean to research the tale of a band of Resistance fighters in World War II who plotted the daring abduction of a German general from the heart of the Nazi occupation. While there, he discovers that the secrets of ancient Greek heroes are still alive and well in the razor-sharp mountains on the tiny island of Crete, and ready to be unleashed in the muscles and minds of casual athletes and aspiring heroes everywhere.
In the story, McDougall discovers and describes fitness skills, such as natural movement, efficient endurance, and fat-burning nutrition, skills that are still practiced in far-flung pockets throughout the world today but that we often don’t experience too much in our modern culture of health clubs, Nautilus machines, elliptical trainers and detox spas.
Now that I’m almost finished with the book, I’ve been researching this whole “natural movement” thing. In last week’s episode, “Why You Need To Exercise Outdoors,” I actually began to discuss a few of these natural movement principles such as Strongman training and farmer-style training, and why you may need to exercise in places other than a conventional, stale gym setting.
But in this week’s episode, I’m going to teach you even more about how to use natural movement to build athleticism and fitness quickly, and to gain coordination skills that will serve you well the rest of your life. If you want to be a modern-day athlete who can hone ancient skills to be ready for anything, then this episode is for you. Prepare to get inspired to leave the gym and take your fitness routine to nature—to climb, swim, skip, throw, and jump their way to your own heroic feats.
What Is Natural Movement?
The concept of using natural movement to get fit was pioneered by Georges Hébert, a French PE teacher and fitness instructor, way back in the early 1900s.
While an officer in the French Navy prior to World War I, Hébert was stationed in the town of St. Pierre in Martinique. In 1902, the town fell victim to a catastrophic volcanic eruption, and it was Hebert who coordinated the daring escape and rescue of nearly seven hundred people from this disaster. This experience had a profound effect on him, and inspired him to learn how to combine fitness and athletic skills with courage and altruism, eventually developing this into his personal motto, “Be strong to be useful.”
After this experience, Hébert traveled throughout the world studying the physical development and movement skills of indigenous peoples who moved naturally. In Africa, he found tribes who had amazing bodies and were flexible, nimble, skillful, enduring, resistant, but had no gyms or personal trainers—just gymnastics-like movements in nature, such as climbing trees, swimming, sprinting, throwing rocks, and wrestling.
When he eventually returned to France, Hébert became a physical instructor for the French marines, where he began to design his own system of physical education, which he called the “Natural Method,” a form of movement influenced by Greek gymnasia, German Prussian gymnastics, and even French dancing, and most importantly, a form of movement primarily executed in nature and surrounded by trees, rocks, water, logs, and other “obstacles” (sound like a Spartan race, anyone?).
The Natural Method promotes the physical qualities of natural, asymmetric forms of resistance, such as awkward rocks and logs, combined with muscular coordination and speed, being able to walk, run, jump, move on all fours front wards, backwards and sideways, and having the physical capability to climb, to keep balance, to throw, to defend yourself, and to swim. These skills are combined with the mental qualities of courage, coolness under pressure, respect, willpower, and the ability to overcome obstacles, such as the fear of falling, fear of jumping across distances, fear of plunging into cold water, fear of walking on an unstable surface, etc.
A typical Natural Method training session would be composed of exercises belonging to ten fundamental groups:
1. Walking
2. Running
3. Jumping
4. Quadrupedal movement (crawling)
5. Climbing
6. Equilibrium (balancing)
7. Throwing
8. Lifting
9. Defending (wrestling, boxing, etc.)
10. Swimming
So, a training session might consist of finding an outdoor park and walking, then jogging, then sprinting, then jumping, then crawling, then climbing on something like a park bench or playground equipment or a tree, balancing on a fence or swingset, picking up a rock and carrying the rock, tussling with a workout partner (or your dog), and if any water is around, swimming. During something like Parkour, a movement practice that I first described in “5 Ways To Get Smarter While You Exercise,” this might consist of doing everything spontaneously with a group of friends on some unspecified route through the park, forest trail, or even urban environment like a skateboard park. During an outdoor boot camp or nature workout, this might all be organized into a structured 20 to 60 minute workout. During an obstacle course race, it may even be a timed event that includes pre-built structures like balance beams, ladders, and rope swings.
How to Get Started With Natural Movement
Sounds like fun, eh? So, how can you get started with natural movement?
Here are a three Quick & Dirty Tips for joining the Natural Movement:
1) Build your own obstacle course
Over the past two years, I’ve transformed the nature trails around my home in Spokane by adding bungee chords for crawling under, cinder blocks that can be dragged by a chain, old tires to flip, vertical ropes hanging from the trees, horizontal ropes extended from tree to tree, a slack line for balancing, monkey bars, and even targets that can be used for spear throwing, bow shooting, or simply throwing rocks. Sure, you need a bit of space to build something like this, but even in my tiny ¼ acre rancher home that I lived in prior to moving to this larger space, my backyard was full of logs and rocks for lifting, an agility ladder for practicing fast foot movements, a pull-up bar, and much of the other equipment I describe in the episode, “How To Train Like An American Ninja Warrior”.
2) Join a class
At websites like AmericanParkour.com, 3run.co.uk, ParkourGenerations.com, and even by simply Googling the name of your city plus the word “Parkour,” you can find groups of athletes engaged in a form of natural movement that was all inspired by the work of Hebert. Expect to show up at a class with an instructor who can teach you basic moves, such as gracefully leaping over a park bench, all the way up to more advanced moves, such as scaling a 10 foot wall or quickly climbing up on top of a swingset and balancing in a squat pose. The sky’s the limit!
3) Develop courage
No discussion of Natural Movement would be complete without an emphasis on learning the mental principles, such as slight amounts of fearlessness (combined with respect and law-abiding, of course) and the willingness to suffer. There are simple things you can do each day to build courage, such as:
-Taking a cold shower or cold bath
-Saying hi to a complete stranger
-Going on a run or walk in a new area you’re not too familiar with (just be safe or take a buddy!)
-Learning to fight by taking a local grappling, MMA, or boxing class
-Signing up for an open mic night
-Going cliff jumping or even skydiving
-Riding your bike down a steep hill
You get the idea! There are plenty of ways to go outside your comfort zone and “live life on the edge.” While you should be smart and safe, you should also be willing to accept the fact that anytime you’re building courage, there can be a risk of getting hurt, getting embarrassed, getting lost, or getting uncomfortable. In our modern era of leather seats, climate control, a ho-hum daily routine, and comfortable, fabricated exercise machines at the gym, this may be just what we need every now and again. Wouldn’t you agree?
If you have your own Natural Movement thoughts to add, be sure to visit the Get-Fit Guy Facebook page and join the discussion there!
Young woman image courtesy of Shutterstock