http://www.menshealth.com…1eac____&page=0
Richard first introduced me to MovNat in his post titled We live in a Zoo. Here’s the MovNat website. And be sure to watch the video here: YouTube – click “HD.”
What is MovNat? From the website:
We live in a zoo.
The “zoo” is a modern, global and growing phenomenon generated by the powerful combination of social conventions, technological environment and commercial pressures. Increasingly disconnected from the natural world and their true nature, zoo humans are suffering physically, mentally and spiritually.
Are you experiencing chronic pains, are you overweight, do you often feel depressed or do you suffer from frequent illnesses and general lack of vitality?
These symptoms indicate that you are experiencing the zoo human syndrome. Modern society conditions us to think that this is normal and unavoidable.
We don’t think so. Our true nature is to be strong, healthy, happy and free.
Beyond all of that source material, there is a great article on Erwan Le Corre’s MovNat in MensHealth (H/T again to Richard). It is well worth the read — follow the link above and click on the print icon to get it all on one page.
Some quotes:
“I meet men all the time who can bench 400 pounds but can’t climb up through a window to pull someone from a burning building,” Le Corre says. “I know guys who can run marathons but can’t sprint to anyone’s rescue unless they put their shoes on first. Lots of swimmers do laps every day but can’t dive deep enough to save a friend, or know how to carry him over rocks and out of the surf.” . . .
“Being fit isn’t about being able to lift a steel bar or finish an Ironman,” Le Corre says, watching with satisfaction as Zuqueto finally makes it onto the pole and pumps a fist in the air like he’s won his third world championship. “It’s about rediscovering our biological nature and releasing the wild human animal inside.” . . .
Hebert [A French Navyman who created the predecessor to MovNat, Methode Naturelle] was celebrated as a hero, but he couldn’t help focusing on all of those who’d been lost. When he returned home to France, he looked around and was dismayed to see how many of his country-people reminded him of the victims he’d watched die in Saint-Pierre. How many of these Parisians, he wondered, would be able to carry a child on their backs? Or trust themselves to leap over a 3-foot gap? Or take an elbow to the face but manage to keep their balance and continue running for their lives?
The modern world, Hebert believed, was producing hollow men who focused on appearance and forgot about function. At the same time, they stopped exercising with the wildness of kids and instead insulated themselves from risk. The cost, he felt, was far more destructive than they might think. . . .
“This guy is really onto something,” says Lee Saxby, P.T., a London-based physical therapist and the technical director of Wildfitness, an exercise program built around an evolutionary model of human performance. For years, Saxby had been teaching his clients that the key to overall health is a workout system that mimics the diversity of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. When Saxby stumbled across a YouTube video of Le Corre (MensHealth.com/LeCorre), he’d found Exhibit A in the flesh.
“What impresses me most about that video is Le Corre’s athleticism,” Saxby says. “It drives me crazy that men think being in shape means being big. But the best athletes don’t look like bodybuilders. They’re lean and quick and mobile. Le Corre demonstrates real functional fitness — the opposite of what they teach you in the gym.” . . .
You won’t have a spotter to ease the bar off your chest, no volunteer handing you water at the 20-mile mark. A group dynamic may be our natural impulse, but in a pinch, count on being alone. The only thing you can rely on is the ingenuity programmed into your system by 2 million years of hope and fear. . . .
“Ah, you learned my secret!” Le Corre calls from down below. “The best secret of all — your body always has another trick up its sleeve.”