Movement Culture
Based on the idea that learning and practicing new movements throughout our lifetimes is not only optimal for maintaining our health and fitness levels, but is also necessary for creating new neural pathways and connections in our brains, movement culture is a relatively recent phenomenon that encourages people to incorporate new and varied movements into their daily lives and daily spaces.
As we approach the new year, I have been thinking a lot about how best to continue the physical conditioning that I began in January of this year, and I have decided that what I really want to do is increase my strength, my balance, my flexibility, and my range of motion. I have long been attracted to difficult yoga balancing poses, capoeira, and gymnastics, and I think delving into movement culture will help me to pursue these goals.
One of the central figures to this movement is Ido Portal. He is a mixed martial artist/break dancer/parkour practitioner/deep thinker on movement and the origins of the human body. You will find him in the video below demonstrating in three stages how to do a rotational push-up.
My challenge to any of you who would like to join me on this journey is to do 10 step one rotational push-ups (five on each side) every day this week.
From my first attempt at them, I will tell you that they are harder to do than they look. The key is to really rotate your hips so that the outside of your thigh touches the inside of your elbow. This will give you balance and not overload your shoulder.
Best of luck, and please leave links to your posts or comments about your experiences below.
As an aside, one of Ido Portal’s theories is that we should balance and challenge ourselves by maintaining and practicing an even number of skills or movements that we have mastered, have become somewhat good at performing, and are just beginning. The above video has three steps to it. As these challenges continue, I would like to use this philosophy to guide the types of movements and number of movements that I/we practice.
