Teaching old dogs new tricks by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

by Tony Riddle, Gloves Club founder

I once took a course with the ABA ASDAN award, when the course was set up to offer local kids the opportunity to acquire credits towards their GCSE in boxing. It was a great incentive for young kids who were having trouble with their education to gain an extra qualification. 

The ABA course tutor was called Quiton Shillingford (Managing Director Boxing Awards), Q for short. Q is a well respected individual with a great teaching method and with all courses you hope to come away with a real pearl of wisdom on how to improve. On this occasion I was not disappointed - the pearl was something very valuable indeed as importantly, I learnt what not to do.

You see, Q had a great story of his first experience with boxing. Q began to explain that he was a real Jack the lad, always in out and of trouble, and so on this particular occasion Q and his three friends decided they should take up boxing and pay a visit to their local boxing club. They got as far as the door and bailed out, ran away and hid behind a wall. Q, bold as brass, decides it's his moment and poking his head in the door, he approached the owner.  “Excuse me Mister”, Q begins to say, and it was at this point that stupidity and big testicles won the day. Q found himself thrown in the ring, with absolutely no understanding of boxing, and it was obvious what the outcome would be. Q wasn’t to win and it was only stupidity that allowed him to go back again and again.

Gloves members sparring under the watchful eye of Coach Tony

This lesson that stuck with me and it is one of the reasons at Gloves we have a system in place that will ensure you will never have to go through that initial humiliation/annihilation that so many have had to endure when being educated in the sweet science. 

The method of chucking someone in the ring with your best middleweight is great for assessing raw talent and humiliating the poor not-so-talented contender, but think of how much talent is being missed and where we would be if we were all coached in the fundamentals of movement at grass roots. For me 80% of boxing is footwork, then you have to learn to throw the ten punches, move in four directions and then finally the defence of those ten punches before you enter the ring. For some this journey will seem like an eternity, but for me it is essential. When in fight or flight mode you will be amazed what knee jerk reactions can and will be applied.

My memory of learning the ten punches meant a jolly to Pasedena Texas with my cousin, Lee Saxby, to train with the great Kenny Weldon. Kenny, the world's best balance and technique coach, had a great system in his gym - a huge warehouse where you would carry out drills for days on end until he felt you were ready to even hit hand pads. The hierarchy for Kenny was footwork and being a purist he knew his stuff. Some of the terminology was a little strange, but as it turned out, we all spoke the same language. 

I remember a conversation I had with Lee whilst walking back from Kenny's about predictability and it is something that stuck with me. If you had an apple on a table and you pick that apple up, your mind will have made a picture, a mental map. If you were to keep placing the apple in what you perceive as the same area and keep repeating the process, your mind will have already predicated its next move, based on the preservation of energy and minimising the risk of injury. There would be tiny little adjustments that you would have no idea had even occurred. If you then add a lion into the equation (Roar!), the movement pattern would be grossly affected, unless of course someone had coached in the fundamental movement patterns on how to slay the ferocious beast. It’s a very simple process - if you haven’t been given the tools to deal with the job in hand, you are being dealt a handicap and I don’t know about you, but I would much prefer to learn how to slay than be slayed.

Kenny teaching boxing fundamentals

This is what we shall refer to as our default and a default is something you will keep drawing upon unless it has been thoroughly coached out. If Q for instance became the guy cowering in the corner, then that would have been his first memory of the sweet - or in this case - not so sweet science. His survival brain would have made a mental picture of that event and the moment that he stepped into the ring again, he would expect to have a rise in blood pressure, heart rate, tension and unfortunately the same knee jerk cowering. If we had nurtured Q from an early age, made every experience a positive and gave him the footwork, the arsenal of weapons and more importantly, the defence to deal with his slayer he would have a completely different default to fall back on.

You don’t want your initial reaction when under pressure to be to wave your arms around like a human windmill or to cower in the corner. It is the survival brain that will be making all the decisions at this stage and it is my belief that neither are good skills to draw upon in the ring. You need to remain calm under pressure; trembling in your boots or turning into a bag of rage are not the best attributes a boxer can obtain. You might have heard of the term you can’t teach an old dog new tricks...For me it is simply a default model that has become a mental map of the past and will have an astounding influence on the predictability of any future movements. It is the same with the selection of the strength and conditioning exercises you prescribe which should overlap into the discipline, the same care and time conditioning should be coached for the emotional experience.


Slay or be slayed!

Paleo-lympics by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

The most successful Olympian?

by Tony Riddle, Gloves Club founder

Those that have been reading the Gloves blog will know that we apply the natural laws as our filter; thereby cutting out the BS that has plagued our movement brains for far too long.

It is for this reason we apply this same filter to the Olympics.

The debate is strong; is Phelps the most successful Olympic athlete of all time or simply the most successful Olympic swimmer of all time? In our opinion - and as this is our blog that we write - we're going to decide. You, dear reader, can of course can decide for yourself.

Michael Phelps, an undeniably
awesome athlete

Imagine if I were to bring up a large "Minority Report" screen in front of me, where I can grab images, move them around and add overlaying screens. If I were to then create screens for the ten fundamental natural movements of man, swimming, just like running, would only be one tenth of what humans can and should achieve. To be a really, truthfully skilled all round athlete with the accolade of the most successful Olympian, surely you would have to apply a higher number of these fundamental movements? Of course this isn't to say that Phelps hasn't used other forms of exercise in his training, but his actual discipline (swimming) is only performed in the pool.

Daley Thompson, all round
athletic prowress

I coach fell runners and they should be recognised as being far more skilful than track or road running athletes. But why? Well to run the London Marathon, you have to just run. But to run Snowdon you need to walk, run, jump and offer quadrupedal movement. To win a race you have to be skilful at all these elements, and without that skill your success would be limited. When I look at the Olympics with this filter; for me it is the decathlon, pentathlon, steeplechase and gymnastics events that deserve the best accolades of all.

Gymnastics offers running, jumping, quadrupedal movement and throwing. As a coach I would have to develop each one of these systems individually before putting them together. The previous most successful athlete of all time was actually a gymnast and rightly so. Huge amounts of conditioning different systems has gone in to the successful gymnast and they are deserving of this title.

For me personally though our very own Daley Thompson was the greatest of all and I have nothing but admiration for his achievements; the closest I could get to even feeling that level is the Tough Mudder competition I intend on conquering in November. This to me is going to be my Paleo games; something that I can really apply all the training too.

Join the Gloves Team!

We want to build our Gloves team for this and if you too want to feel you have stimulated your movement brain in 2012, this is your chance! We are recruiting now for Tough Mudder and we need to know who is willing to join us by the 7th September to secure the Gloves team so let us know now by emailing or calling 020 7624 5850!

One Paleo Toe in the Canadian Olympic Lifting Grave by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

by Tony Riddle, Gloves Club founder

Wow, what an interesting week for me at Gloves Boxing Club, and it all started with Batman!

After sitting through 2hrs 40mins of special affects and my senses becoming over stimulated beyond belief, who should be waiting to greet me at the office? Nope not the Joker, but it may as well have been...It was the female Canadian Olympic lifting coach.

I had been looking forward to this moment for quite some time, thinking that I might be inspired and have the chance to trade some knowledge with an actual Olympic coach. To make me even more excited, there had also been some talk of a possible foot in the door with NIKE!

The meeting didn’t take long...and by not long, I mean the time it took for me to agree for the coach to look at my Olympic lift and for me to repay her with the kind offer of a barefoot session. As soon as I mentioned “barefoot” the room went dead and the only lifting I got to see was from her Canadian brow! Had I known this was going to be smugly shrugged off with “I don’t think so” I would have spent more time digesting the Dark Knight Rises.

Arguments in bare feet

The most amazing thing about the coach's visit was the unwillingness to accept anything beyond her own knowledge/experiences. We basically got to a point in a discussion where the temperature rose uncomfortably and unfortunately, acceptance did not rise with the challenge. Instead a huge wall built, one that seemed too high to hurdle.

The zoo foot: image of a "shod"
foot from a 1905 study

To start with the mention of barefoot provoked a bizarre reaction that it was only about feet and how if you have a misshapen zoo foot with a short Achilles heel then you can’t barefoot run. Not a mention of why the Achilles might be short or how it became misshapen. Yes - one could say because of the title Barefoot running, an uneducated coach might be forgiven for making that statement. But for someone that had been apparently working with the guys at Nike on the Nike free shoe, it's inexcusable to have no understanding that the shape of the foot and the load of the foot are bi-products of a compromised organism.

When I first mention that posture is at the top of the hierarchy in movement and say "surely you must understand that from an Olympic lifting perspective", I get hit with a big fat "No it's all about your feet."

To which I reply, "Your base of support is important, but if all your segments are out then this is going to alter the areas of your feet you choose to load thus affecting the resulting technique."

This gets rubbished by another "Nope it's all to do with the feet," and "We are never going to agree on this."

Morton's Toe

I begin to explain that feet - of course - play a role in this, in that it is a relationship between posture and the foot. Seated posture affects our upright posture and our natural bipedal state. Dudley Morton in 1936 introduced us to Morton's toe: a great discovery that essentially helps us understand that the human foot has a loading element and a balance element. The big toe and ball of foot are there to deal with the load whilst the lateral part of the foot is there to take care of balance. 

Image of habitually bare feet taken
from a study performed almost 100years ago,
published 1905 in the American Journal of Orthopedic Surgery

It is important as a skilled biped to not mix the two - unskilled bipeds are primates, they are quadrupeds and gain support from the outside  of their feet. They don't recognise their big toe as we recognise ours. The big toe of the primate is medial (towards the midline of the body). As an unskilled biped we too will spend time supporting from the outside of our feet. This is called supra-nation: when in locomotion, this creates supranation then pronation. The more this occurs the less support I can find from my big toe and over time my foot mechanics will change. Combine this with modern zoo footwear and hey presto - the zoo foot!

Most clients I see have the first signs of bunion growth, but why?

The bunion is essentially the unskilled biped looking for the gorilla toe and the role of devolution having its way.

If I lock my foot in a shoe, that shoe will mould my foot. It will change the shape of my foot, until it no longer looks or operates in a way a natural foot should. If I then sit down all day and get locked in the hip or the thoracic spine, my segments will no longer be aligned. The more my head drops forward of my hip, the more my foot will land ahead of me, changing my loading time. This will result in my base of support changing to one that would better suit the quadrupedal posture of a primate.

This is why footwear is not the answer, it is simply a piece of the puzzle. This is also why I founded PilatesRunning, because we can coach in movements that return you back to being and operating as nature intended - an upright biped.

Despite what the conventional model tells us, foot mechanics and posture can be corrected

We can change and with that change we can Barefoot walk, Barefoot run, Barefoot lift, Barefoot swim, Barefoot carry, Barefoot throw, Barefoot jump, Barefoot climb, Barefoot defend and Barefoot quarapedal move to our heart's content. All of the above are skills, but skills that have to be coached.

So to all those budding new Olympians and for the Canadian Olympic lifting team: with the correct posture and the realignment of the all important Paleo Toe, you too can be a barefoot athlete!

Zoe Smith and female Olympic lifting by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

Abbye Stockton (1917-2006),
professional strongwoman
who trained Marilyn Monroe.
Could lift more weight than most men.

 by Tony Riddle, Gloves Club founder

To those not in the know, Olympic lifting requires a huge amount of skill - skill that is often overlooked as “just lifting a weight above your head”.

The power needed in the two main lifts – the Snatch and the Clean and Jerk – require explosive action in the legs, bum and arms from a deep squat position. This is no sport for posers, nor does it require the focus on crazy reps and little technique like a Cross Fit round. It demands flexibility, technique, coordination, strength and fluidity - a great all round athletic discipline, one that is not to be confused with bodybuilding. In my opinion body building creates false tempos, faulty movement patterns and excessive levers to develop inefficient and injury prone athletes.

Zoe Smith, recently selected to represent Great Britain in Olympic lifting, has certainly put the hours in and has already been involved in many a photo shoot for sponsors. She's also been subjected to a barrage of abuse from cyber bullies, calling her a "butch dyke" that looks like man, and that she'll never get a boyfriend. Nothing could be further from the truth, and she’s trying to raise the profile of the sport by changing the perception of the sport that it is something only men should be doing, or that women who do it are somehow not feminine. She added: "We're getting weightlifting out there and drawing attention to the fact that we're not all actually big. We're making it a normal sport rather the manly thing as people often perceive it.”

Chemical cost = metabolic cost = burn fat, burn and hey presto, strong is the new skinny!

It didn't exactly do
Marilyn Monroe any harm!

For those that have any misconceptions, Olympic lifting is a great athletic conditioning sport; it's great for the all important athletic figure, hitting all the areas that women spend hours trying to tone in the latest glorified Bums and Tums class, or on the latest fad diet. It won’t “bulk” you up, or make you look like a man.

As there is a huge chemical cost in lifting that weight at such great speed and accuracy, it’s the best way to target your legs and bum in a way an aerobics class could only ever dream to do!

So come on ladies. Support Zoe Smith and all the other women getting into lifting, and while you’re at it, why not give it a try yourselves. If it’s good enough for Marilyn Monroe, it's good enough for you….

To be paleo or not to be paleo - that is the question by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

by Tony Riddle, Gloves Club founder

Oh we do love a reductionist! Or do we? Sitting having a burger, without the bun, with a huge plate of veg and some might say "Paleo". And from a dietary perspective, yes they would be correct, that's as close to paleo as one gets to appease the reductionist as the bigger picture or larger pill is too big for most to swallow. Even if they know better, most would agree. But if it were really paleo I certainly wouldn't be sitting on my arse at a table with EM waves washing over me, no natural light, not absorbing the food properly due to the lack of stomach acid and suffering chronic stress from my life in the human zoo.

The subject of paleo is vast due to the paleo "diet" that has filtered into the mainstream, but unfortunately the bigger picture is much, much bigger than the average biped can handle. Paleo diet books, paleo supplements and paleo greens are all flying off the shelves like hot paleo cakes by the uneducated consumer.

The bigger picture!

If the organism is stressed, it simply won't absorb food groups so you can forget your paleo diet if your digestive system is compromised - you won't be absorbing any nutrients. But what is stress?

Most people perceive stress as psychological and do not consider all elements such as: processed foods, inappropriate movement, electromagnetic waves, lack of natural light, correct sleep wake cycles and social disconnection.

All of the above are stresses, stresses that were not Paleolithic stresses. Paleolithic man had acute stress to deal with unlike the chronic stress of today's not so healthy biped. Acute stress response is designed to deal with the immediate threat: I will call this the lion in the room. If the lion is in the room with you, your survival brain will make one of two decisions:

1) fight
2) flight

I'm going to choose number 2 and I really do mean number 2 as that's exactly what would happen! I will mess my paleo loin cloth and my gut will stop producing stomach acid. No point in digesting anything as digestion uses up a huge amount of energy and that needs to be fed to my legs to get my paleo arse out of here. Then my gonads would shrivel up as there's no need for them as reproduction is definitely out of the equation, not the appropriate time to bring Bam Bam into the world! And finally my immune system will shut down...no point in fighting off a cold while the lion's breathing down my neck.

The same can be said for most species when in the acute phase of stress. But what if the lion is constantly in the room with us? Well simple -  this is chronic stress!

The zoo we're in

Take an animal from its natural surroundings and place it into captivity - it will first have an acute stress response but sadly this will stay switched on and on and on and soon it will become chronically stressed. Its natural habitat no longer exists, its world is now shattered and the animal will develop auto immune disorders, psychological disorders, obesity, diabetes, reproductive issues and finally die off from cancer.

Sound familiar? Yes that's life in the zoo; take Paleolithic man/woman and stick them in the zoo and they too will suffer. Just because this has happened over 10,000 years doesn't mean our hardwiring has changed so remarkably.

Obesity, chronic pain, IBS, polycystic ovaries, endometriosis, infertility, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol - a long list of conditions that the modern human has to contend with, and they tell us that something is very wrong and has been very wrong for a long time. Is it that we have not had long enough to cope with the extremes of the modern world or is that we just haven't valued our paleo past? Of course, it's impossible to return to Paleolithic times, but not so impossible to get your fundamental needs met on a spiritual,  mental,  psycho, social and physical level.

What does it mean to become a movement coach? - by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

Most days of the week, I find myself presenting on the subject of injury free movement, motor skill milestones, and the 10 natural movements of man to coaches, clients and the members within our club (Gloves Boxing Club).  Personally, I see this as an education that is valuable to all humans - not just the people who practice - as these subjects are of course all entwined. In fact all movement is, it just depends on how it is performed.

Without the understanding of the fundamentals of human movement you are simply teaching movement for movement’s sake - great for the T-shirt muscles and mirror performers, but completely useless for strong, fit and healthy athletic individuals.

For some reason the health and fitness industry went off on a bit of a tangent towards the use of seated equipment to train leverage into the system. To me this has always seemed absurd: sit down all day and then go to the gym and make yourself even stronger at being seated! But luckily we are starting to see a shift in that paradigm. I would say, and this is only my opinion, that the current education in the health industry, is more midstream than downstream.  Rightly so as only the dead fish go down stream!

No "workout of the day" here, with
Ben Medder

Movement has changed of late and we are now bombarded with terms like core stability, functional movement, kettle bells, Cross Fit, barefoot running and TRX, to name just a few. TRX for instance shows a real likeness to gymnastics, and even the Pilates tower. TRX has become a bridge or even a transition to understanding some of the natural movement we can offer, and helps you understand bodyweight, but still applies the unnecessary muscular action that we have been so indoctrinated with. Cross Fit workouts have high repetition/volume and “work out of the day” - great if your coach hasn’t his own mind and can’t configure a routine that is specific to your own requirements and needs. But don't get me wrong, if the TRX or the Cross Fit coach understands how to teach correct technique, these methods are certainly better than static seated machines and a "repetition counting" Personal Trainer.

Climbing - an essential movement,
with Ben Medder

 The problem is that these systems of movement are just part of an even larger system, the same as we are a system within an even larger system. The system I’m referring to is the 10 natural movements of man and the evolution of man and where that sits in our social system, ecosystem, solar system etc etc. We have a tendency as a species to apply reductionism to everything we can lay our intellectual minds on, but only nature has the answers and the knowledge of the Natural Laws in movement is essential for the modern day coach to learn to become an upstream thinker.

Barefoot running, a favourite of mine, has now been accepted by the performance market. But without coaching the individual back into becoming a barefoot runner and how nature had intended with the correct posture, rhythm and technical ability, the participant usually gains an injury along the way. This can be said for all movement. If you look at the discipline you are looking to coach and have the knowledge of the natural laws as your filter to analyze and prescribe, you will create a skilled being. 

The hierarchy in all movement is posture and the understanding of this is fundamental for the coach. You will understand how to make movement efficient and injury free for your client. Most clients will come to you with the desire to lose weight and get fit/fitter, but without the fundamentals in place, you heighten the risk of your client picking up an injury and with the injury comes the inability to train or the fear of movement. Not quite the desired effect the client was looking for!

If your client doesn’t look good, you won’t look good, and believe me this isn’t the best way to build a business within a very competitive market.

It can a sneeze to create an avalanche by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

It Can Take a Sneeze to Create an Avalanche

by Tony Riddle, Gloves Club Founder, with contributions by Ben Medder

Tony Riddle, Gloves Club Coach

Having been a movement specialist for 15 years, I have seen some great and sometimes bizarre developments within the industry, but nothing can compare to the huge shift in paradigms that barefoot running created. 

Barefoot running, once seen as a weird cult of long haired tree huggers has been flipped and has stamped it’s presence on the industry. It’s the new trend, bizarrely a new trend that has of course been around since the days of persistence hunting, but a trend all the same. I’d like to thank Chris McDougal for this shift.  His book ‘Born to Run’ has put the running back into jogging.

Lydiard would be proud, although he is, of course, the father of jogging, which for those that are not “in the know” originally meant slow running. This means the same running technique and cadence, but at a slower speed, un-recognisable from today’s hybrid movement known as jogging, which we can thank Mr Bowerman (ed: Bill Bowerman, founder of Nike) and the first conventional running shoe for. To be honest he is not entirely to blame, foot wear is just a small piece of the puzzle, unlike what Chris McDougal’s picture has lead us to believe.

It is actually a romantic idea to think you can kick off your shoes and run barefoot. The running posture that old-school legendary coaches such as Lydiard and Percy Cerutty had the experience of coaching, can only been seen in the Kenyan runners today and yes, that is what I would put their great success down to.  The Kenyans are not being subjected to 80% of their day confined to a desk or slumped on the sofa yet even conditioned athletes in the West are compromised by the devil’s work. But yet barefoot running is just just a small portion of  of man’s movement birthright. We are ‘Born to Run’, but we are born to do so much more. There are in fact 13 natural movements, that man/woman should be able to carry out and when I say carry out, I mean how nature had intended you to, with the correct posture, allowing you to apply the laws of nature and remain injury free.  I would now like to introduce you to what is known as ‘natural movement’ and for some, this is where you might experience the same emotional response that others before you experienced with the barefoot running brigade, but please take the time to read on.

What is natural movement?

It has been well discussed by many, particularly in evolutionary medicine, that our genetic makeup is still that of the hunter-gatherer. Our current “software” or way of thinking that has led to many modern inventions is still housed in our Paleolithic “hardware”. To cut a long story short – in prehistory, most humans knew how to move well through their environments naturally. Only the most agile and strong humans could catch their prey, or escape from predators – it was essential to have certain human movement capacities to survive. Our ancestors were strong, agile, coordinated and had good spatial awareness, flexibility etc. These attributes can still be seen in surviving indigenous tribes today with not a yoga/Pilates studio in sight. Many practitioners from the past and present recognised the physical prowess of the hunter gatherer, but some, can and should be recognised as the grandfathers of natural movement; Georges Hébert is one of those grandfathers

Georges Hébert creater of "the natural method"

Georges Hébert was an officer in the French navy, who served all over the world prior to World War I and later became a teacher of physical education. Travelling the world, he became particularly inspired by the natural athleticism of indigenous peoples in Africa and elsewhere – “Their bodies were splendid, flexible, nimble, skilful, enduring, and resistant and yet they had no other tutor in gymnastics but their lives in Nature.” Whilst stationed on a Caribbean island in 1902, Hébert coordinated the rescue of island natives from a devastating volcanic eruption. Despite saving hundreds, many still perished due to being unable to save themselves. He came to the conclusion that the average human of the time, was ill equipped to survive such catastrophes. They had become detached from their roots as hunter-gatherers, from a time when humans were strong, capable and able to help themselves, and most importantly others, if the need arose.

He realised the weight training regime used by the military was building muscle for muscles sake, (similar to body building movements of the present day) without promoting dexterity and speed and essentially had little ‘real world’ usefulness. In its place he developed ‘Le Méthode Naturelle, or “the Natural Method.”

The 10 fundamental movements of man

The essence of Herbet’s Method Naturelle is to teach 10 fundamental movements that humans should posses and was essential to a hunter-gatherer’s survival.  They are: walking, running, jumping, quadrupedal movement (crawling), climbing, balancing, throwing, lifting, defending and swimming.
To return man to his birthright, as Georges had intended, requires a skill, and each one of the 10 movements is a skill in itself. Just as we have now discovered with running, these need to be coached back in to make the necessary change: we have the hardware to execute the 10 movements; we just need to change the software. If you like, we can refer to all 10 movements as “the macro skill” and each one component as “the micro skill”. If we could perform all 10 movements, we would be connected on a physiological and psychological level, true mind and body. We can see Georges Hebert’s work in modern day Parkour, Freerunning, MovNat.

Erwan le Corre, founder of MovNat

Erwan le Corre founder of MovNat has seen a huge explosion in interest for his method which has extensive likeness to Le Méthode Naturelle. The best way to describe Erwin’s method would be “wild uninhibited movement” and for some, it again stimulates the “tree-hugger response”.  I will always remember the time whilst on Primrose Hill with Erwan Le Corre.  There were about 10 of us carrying out some of the quadrupedal movements that Erwan had demonstrated to us.

The same sense of connection to the earth started to set in that I had first experienced with running truly barefoot, but unlike running, there’s is a real connection with the people with you as you start to work as a team/tribe.  It’s like a proprioceptive feedback mecca and for at least 10 minutes I had forgotten the restrictions of society until one voice shouted across the park: “look at those idiots!” The most amazing thing about this incident was that all the children wanted to join in, but the parents were too fearful to let them.  Those same parents probably participate in large classes of hot yoga, housed in poorly lit and confined rooms, but hey the animal in captivity has to be exercised some way or another.

“Old school” boxing and natural movement

I own a gym, Gloves Boxing Club, and some find it unusual that we coach natural movement at the club, but even the old school boxing coaches had a great understanding of the natural laws.
Movement coach Ben Medder has been at the helm of the introduction of natural movement to our bodyweight principle classes and it has now become the most popular class and it is easy to see why. The class starts to perform like a tribe, their inhibitions start to leave the room after a 2 minute warm-up and the gym takes on a whole new role, from boxing club to play ground.

Bernard Hopkins, a modern day natural mover,
so efficient he'll do push-ups between rounds!

Many old school (and some modern) boxers became world champions without ever using weights and certainly not isolated bodybuilding-type exercises. The use of bodybuilding was highly discouraged as old school coaches believed it made their fighters “slow”.  After all bodybuilding creates false tempos, long levers and develops injury prone athletes.

From boxers such as the great Sugar Ray Robinson to Mike Tyson, a modern boxer by “old school standards”, when he was in his prime, you see a trend that their training was simple, yet highly effective bodyweight exercises (or calisthenics as they were often referred to back then). There were no fancy gadgets or the promise of shortcuts, that’s so common throughout today’s health and fitness industry. The heavy influence of bodybuilding culture and doctrine – such as emphasis on isolation exercises and nutrition for extreme “mirror muscles” – had not yet taken effect. Functional strength, specific strength endurance, mobility and speed were the priority. The old school boxer could easily output multiple, high rep sets of bodyweight exercises, such as push-ups, pull-ups, deep knee bends (squats) and roll-ups.

An old school boxer was, and indeed needed to be, as naturally strong for his bodyweight as possible. Runners will recognise this ideal from the term “power to weight ratio”. Their muscles could be described as “whipcord” strong – flexible, fast and powerful. They could easily go 15 or more rounds, with a much higher punch volume and output than today’s bouts. Conversely big muscles are heavy, slow and require more oxygen and energy – both of which a boxer needs to preserve to remain effective in the ring, just as a long distance runner needs to maximise their oxygen efficiency and fuel stores.

How to apply natural movement to performance sports

So is boxing a natural movement? No, it is not, but the natural laws can be applied to it to make it efficient and reduce the risk of injury. In fact one of the 13 natural movements is defense so we could consider boxing natural, but it’s the movement patterns that were taught to the boxers of old that I would consider closest to natural movement principles. This generation of boxers used movement to develop the macro skill of boxing: running, throwing and the quadrupedal movement for the understanding of bodyweight in ones hands.

This is the same rule that in my opinion can and should be applied to most performance sports. Look at the result you want to achieve and look at how the 13 natural movements overlap into the one discipline you focus on. Mountain running for instance would require: running, jumping and quadrupedal movement for vaults and moments when descents and ascents are too hardy for the biped.

So the natural movements can really be considered as foundational for each individual discipline within running or within other sports and the skill is the application of each movement to the specific demands of the sport or discipline.