Upcoming Thread Movement Class

Upcoming 4 class series- Tuesdays, 7-7:40pm. Feb. 2,9,16, and 23 2016. See http://mtairylearningtree.org  for more details.

Thread Movement Upcoming Class

4 class series- Tuesdays, 7-7:40pm. Starts May 12, 2015 at the Church of Annunciation. 324 Carpenter Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19119. See Mt. Airy Learning Tree for more details. 

Thread Movement answers "Does exercise have to be challenging to be beneficial?"

Proem:

"Challenging"

Why does an exercise have to be challenging for the client to benefit?

Brushing your teeth isn't hard

But it yield benefits

Everybody is trying to get on the next level

But working out is not a video game

There are real consequences

To pushing it.

The bigger

The stronger

The faster

Needs to be challenged

Let's just get it in

Feel good

Feel clean

Be renewed

And mobile

Goals are great 

But the ultimate goal is

To keep it moving

Prose:

Just because an exercise is easy, doesn’t mean it hasn’t any value. We are so conditioned to apply the “harder, faster, stronger” motto to our physical training and while there’s room for that approach, it doesn’t have to be your only approach. The goal is a healthy, resilient body. Unless you are training for something beyond that specific goal (athletic performance, endurance racing, or professional dancing) you may be punishing yourself for no reason if you eliminate everything “easy” from your fitness repertoire.

You can do a workout that isn’t challenging and still have benefits. Just because something is physically easy doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. Cleaning your room is easy and still benefits you. (i.e. you know where things are, you know how things work, things are easier to get to, etc.)

1.     The value of easy for maintenance- if you include moves you consider easy, you will be more enabled to maintain a consistent exercise pattern which is by far the biggest predictor of success in training.

2.     “Easy” might mean enjoyable- make sure you aren’t cutting out exercises because you believe in the no-pain/no-gain theory. You may be eliminating things your body enjoys and would benefit progress in other areas of training.

3.     Breaking down things so they are “easy” allows for better focus and less frustration in the learning process. (See the post on agility to see how this applies to the simple two-step.) Doing this can actually shorten your learning curve in the long run

4.     If you allow some easy in your workout you build positive associations with exercise which makes you more inclined to do it consistently and provides less drain on your will-power so that when you are tired, or stressed you may consider turning to exercise to recharge your battery.

5.     Easy is healthy for the body- you reduce the potential risk of injury when you don’t tax your body every minute of your workout. It allows for active recovery. Incorporating some easy moves means your training session doesn’t continually tax your system into fatigue and set you up for a higher likelihood of injury.

6.     Easy is actually good for your nervous system- data to back this up

What could easy look like in your workout:

Thread footwork

Thread mods- standing and groundwork

Flow

Light/easy weight on reps

Learning Coordination with Thread Movement

One of Thread’s main purposes is learning to coordinate your body's movement. Coordination is an important skill people often overlook their potential to learn because of past experiences. It is often difficult because people are embarrassed to be out of coordination. They give themselves the label of “uncoordinated.” Yes, some people pick up coordination naturally, but almost everyone has the capability to develop the skill. Maybe people felt uncoordinated in a dance class, or were told this message in childhood: “you either "have it or you don't". This cliché is horribly destructive to the growth of a coordination learner. This statement doesn’t account for the learning curve in patterning and coordinating movement.

Perhaps you are a one of the many people who will step out on the dance floor offering the apology, "I am so uncoordinated," before you even take a step. Meanwhile, some of these same people will go back to work and type a perfect 80 words per minute (a coordination they learned and excel in!). My advice to is to try a few dance classes and put aside your discomfort. You have nothing to be embarrassed about. You are there to learn. If it doesn’t take then~ so what??!?!  If it is challenging at first, it doesn't mean you can't eventually coordinate the movements with elegance. It just means you learn differently. Your mind probably does not learn coordination simply by watching movements. You may understand movement on a different level. You may need to physically practice it. Give yourself time to learn.

I’ve been in the place of feeling uncoordinated so many times. I have had my awkward moments in dozens of dance classes. Hip hop, African, Tap. The vast majority of dance classes I have attended, I have faltered. Usually because there is too much information thrown at me at one time too fast and I don’t learn that way. When that happens, everything gets clogged up and it becomes hard for me to follow. However, usually I learn one or two moves I really like and this sustains my attention, and keeps me coming back.

Consider an area you excel in that you might not have previously realized could be coordination. Remember how you learned that skill—was it by watching someone, by practicing and getting it wrong until you got it right, through sheer repetition, or was it by learning the big picture (the “where am I supposed to go next” directives) that helped you master the given skill? Coordination could apply to typing, playing video games, playing an instrument, processing large quantities of data. If you learned those skills, you can most likely learn overall physical coordination.

Remember there is a difference between someone who can write well and someone who can type well. Coordination is the skill, dancing is the art. Why might you like to try to learn coordination as an adult—for the satisfaction of mastering a skill, because you are worried about your balance, or because you are an athlete who wants to improve your game?

I developed Thread as a way people could focus on the learning of coordination (to master the fluidity of the way the parts of the body can move together.) Thread's coordination runs on three axes to allow for different kinds of learners and to help expand people’s physical expression. If you have a hard time with coordination, you can enter learning Thread by choosing to focus on one axis at a time.

1. The first axis is the midline logic. In this axis, the limbs are either crossing the midline, parallel to the midline, or going away from the midline. That’s it. You are always aware of your midline and you move your limbs in one of the three mentioned directions. This logic is rather concrete and concrete thinkers will gravitate toward these concepts.

2. The second axis of coordination is feeling (or sensation.) Thread's postures create "rotational locks" in the body—natural stopping places in the body that occur when the joints rotate against each other. These locks create a solid sensation in the body and, this feeling of "locking" guides you in coordinating your movement. Understanding the body's sensation is crucial in learning coordination.

The integrative movements in Thread help you to understand the body’s internal feelings and cues. Through repetition the practitioner can judge from the internal guide how to further refine each posture’s coordination. This happens through comparing internal feelings to past internal feelings, imagery (locking/solidary), and overall proprioception (knowing where you are in space). This axis might most appeal to an intuitive mover.

3. The third axis of coordination is visual. A movement will obviously look a certain way. Some people are visual learners who can learn a movement by simply watching. Look-based coordination learners are often dancers. This axis of coordination learning serves to the minds that prefer visual and can easily learn physical movement.