Category Archives: wrestling

Complete your session

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This is one of those philosophical statements with layers of meaning.

The obvious one can be “finish your workout”, or finish what you started, even if not in fitness.

The more subtle one has to do with The Natural Method and what Hébert calls a complete session, a session that addresses fundamental movements as well as functional exercises. Mobility, strength, cardiovascular endurance, flexibility, agility, coordination, dexterity, harmonious and balanced muscular development, as well as breath work.

Even if they were included in the Functional Exercises portion of his book, and the reason I chose to release those chapters as standalone books, swimming and combative techniques (self-defense, boxing, wrestling) are complete sessions.

By issuing a call to action to “complete”  session, I invite you to explore how you can make a training session include all of the elements to, well, make it “complete” (forgive the redundancy).

A good example because I intend on expanding the work to other disciplines or activities, can be surfing.

It’s not hard to break down the activity and see that it is a complete sport, and see how obvious it is:

  1. Balance stimulation (vestibular and visual systems).
  2. Aquatic training.
  3. Environmental resilience.
  4. Fundamental arm positions.
  5. Fundamental leg positions.
  6. Strength training.
  7. Support work.
  8. Core work.
  9. Agility.
  10. Rescue ability (you are connected to a floatation device that can served to aid you or someone in distress).
  11. Cardiovascular endurance.
  12. Speed.
  13. Power.
  14. Multiplanar movement.
  15. Harmonious development of the muscles.
  16. Corrective exercise elements.
  17. (BONUS): developing the skill of reading elements like water movements (waves, tides, currents), wind patterns and how to adapt to a constantly shifting environment.

One could argue that there is nothing natural about surfing: we do not possess the appendages to glide standing up on the surface of water, and have to resort to man-made devices which also are shaped out of various materials to fulfill the ability to, well, surf the waves, and paddle into them before that. By the way, all those points above can be chapters for The Natural Method: Surfing. And it doesn’t have to stop here, obviously. I’ll go as far as I can with what I know, but I also am recruiting others to complete the collection for the aspects I don’t know.

But so is weight training: we use tools to improve what we have.

So, we use the laws of Nature, physics, our physiology and we don’t even think about how all those systems interconnect: the visual, vestibular, muscular etc. Our reflexes are constantly stimulated and repetition is what makes us better and we get to play and have fun.

Natural, in the end, to me at least, means: what comes naturally over time. Key is in the last 2 words: what may not seem natural at first will with rote. So, cross your right middle finger over your index and slap it on your left palm and go do that. Then, once you’re up on that board and riding that wave, close your fist, extend your thumb and pinky, and do a little propeller move with your wrist.

Weaving the layers

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From the Fundamental Exercises to the Functional Exercises, and in this case, the Self-Defense Techniques, borrowing Pavel Tsatsouline’s concept of “linkage vs leakage”, it is easy to see how and why arm, leg and trunk movements serve more than a warm-up for the muscles or exercises for joint mobility.

All the stances covered in chapters 4, 5, 7 and 10 of the second Natural Method book are revisited in Chapter 8 in the standalone book on self-defense techniques.

As the saying goes, pictures being worth a thousand words, let’s explore how these arm, leg and trunk movements are applied for both functional and fundamental exercises.

In the picture below, we see the Forward Slit™ with various arm positions. That stance is akin to what I call “power stance” in my Ninjutsu training, and Zen-kutsu from my Shotokan Karate days.

Photo from The Natural Method: Fundamental Exercises (Book 2) translate by Philippe Til

To illustrate that last point, here’s what it looks like for throwing a punch: below, person on the right in the picture.

IMG_20150706_0014

 

Now, let’s look at the following carryover of the Backwards Slit™ operating as a weaving maneuver to avoid a punch (of which the person on the left in the picture does a variation of).

Photo from The Natural Method: Fundamental Exercises (Book 2) translate by Philippe Til

 

The Balancing exercises covered in Chapter of the second book also can double up for kicking exercises (front kicks, hook kicks), as illustrated in the pictures below.

Photo from The Natural Method: Fundamental Exercises (Book 2) translate by Philippe TilPhoto from The Natural Method: Fundamental Exercises (Book 2) translate by Philippe TilIMG_20150706_0006IMG_20150706_0011

Even the ground fighting work has its roots in the bridging exercises or trunk movement fundamentals.

Photo from The Natural Method: Fundamental Exercises (Book 2) translate by Philippe TilIMG_20150706_0049

Once again, nothing is new, everything has been pretty much covered and it is indeed in the quality of the teaching, the execution of the basics, the development of the skills where the strength of an individual’s results lie. While many things have evolved since the creation of systems, at this point centuries old, if not millennia, History is there for a reason. I believe in adaptations rather than updates, as well as modern context and cultural preferences. The framework doesn’t change all that much.