The year is 3014 by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

I can’t STAND for this anymore by Tony Riddle



I have had a few comments on how extreme I can be, specially after sawing my sofa in two at home and throwing it away. I always have to explain that it is my choice and just because I am different, this doesn't make me extreme. 

You too might have a different opinion If you actually did your own research into the affects of seated posture and how detrimental it is to your movement system.



Imagine this scene:



The year is 3014 and you are at a seminar about mother natures amazing ability to heal and how Man potentially threatened their own existence.



You are in a completely clear glass room, yet can still take in the surrounding trees and beautifully natural scenery. You are able to absorb Vitamin D and smell nature, but yet protected from the harsher elements. There isn’t one chair in the room and all of the participants at the seminar are either kneeling, squatting, or striking thinking poses, it’s ground transition central.



The lecturer is presenting you with facts that Man became so obsessed by technological advances that they neglected their own complex design and threatened civilisation as we knew it..



He explains:


“There was once a time when humans were controlled and propaganda was rife. An uprising had occurred for returning us back to nature, but those involved were cast out for being too extreme. The organisation had threatened their world and the fear of loosing their comfort and their highly addictive food groups had created a huge emotional reaction. The organism had become weak and easily manipulated. They were addicted to a lifestyle that was creating sick victims and they were given false hope of magic cures.”


“Cancer was a very different disease back in 2014 and people didn’t understand that there was no cure as such. They piled money into charities, huge amounts of money, when all along those organisations knew that the only cure was prevention. They knew you had to return back to a natural lifestyle, start moving naturally, eating natural organic produce, sleeping correctly and have proper spiritual connection with our Mother.”

“Instead they carried on, compromising their organism, disrespecting themselves in a form of self hatred. Their most common form of surgery was the gastric band. The band was fitted so that they could keep eating their industrialised food groups. Some were so over weight that they had to use a form of transport to move 100m”.



The lecturer shoots a huge image of a chair into the sky with his 3d projector and the room gasps!


“ Yes this is a chair, along with the industrialised food groups these were the main culprits for of our demise”

“Today you can squat anywher and there are no chairs, but back then you didn’t even have an option, you had to sit. Even when studies showed how detrimental seated posture was to the health of the organism, you still didn’t get a choice. There wasn’t even an area to squat in! Before they took smoking out of restaurants you had an option to be on the smoking side or the non smoking side, but when sitting was compared to be the new smoking in terms of health issues. They still had no option, but to sit and frowned upon If you were to squat.”


“We had taken away all of what we are capable of today, the chair was creating a stagnant race. Our ankles, knees, lower backs and our posture were all affected by this beast. We had literally become sitting targets and it was of little wonder why we had become so threatened as a species. We had done to ourselves what no other species would have dreamed of doing. We had fed ourselves fake indigestible food groups that were unrecognisable by natures design and then taken away our amazing and unique ability to mimic movements of mother natures animals. Loosing site that no other animal can impersonate another the way we can.”

“We can become the Duck, the cheater, the lizard, the fish. A fish can only be a fish, a cat a cat, a lizard a lizard. Instead they would sit in a chair that had no overlapping advantages into any of our natural movement patterns.”

“Yes this is hard to believe my children, but it is true. We now take for granted our great movement equality, but believe me; most couldn’t even walk or run correctly and had to be coached in how to move and eat”

“When they finally invaded we didn’t stand much chance, with the inability to move or defend ourselves and the lack of basic survival skills we were sitting ducks.”


“Our only saviour was that small minority that hadn’t fallen for the Bull Shit and had chosen to move and eat how nature had intended. The very people that our anscestors had cast out for being extremist would come to our rescue. They were once looked at as if they were crazy for playing out in nature, whilst the other kids were locked in their cage like bedrooms, disconnected from one another. These uncompromised 'WARRIORS" were preparing themselves for an event such as this. You see they knew, if you take away mans ability to defend himself, or move then they are weak and vulnerable, this is how you bread a nation of worriers."

"It had taken us a long time for us to make the change, but once the big ego's finally put their hands up admitted they were wrong it was a inevitable that the change had to occur. We soon realised that we had become both the slave and the slave master. The New Nature Order hadn't wanted us to revert right back to hunter gatherer roots and forget all about the things we had been successful with, they just wanted to drop all the things that were draining our planet, both spiritually and weakening our our defences. They had given us the true meaning of a "SELF DEFENCE" and that is when it dawned on us, that the "Creating Warriors not Worrier" approach wasn't about creating an attacking army".


"If anything, we have learnt that it is O.K to make technological advances, but we must maintain our connection with nature. Nature really does have the answers. We are smart, but only when we are nature smart"!

Tony Riddle  A.K.A @theprepdoctor

Gatekeepers, Code Breakers and Deconstruction. by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

by Tony Riddle A.K.A, The Prep Doctor

Coach Ben Medder and I were out doing our usual walk to hunt for food today and were discussing what it is that we do. I'd said that I had hit a bit of a cross roads of late as my coaching method is forever evolving and new techniques are developing, but I always revert back to my filter. Pick up a new training method, learn it, have an affair with it, some sordid, some not so sordid and then return back to my wife for a strong maintenance level,  incorporating my prep and mobility system to make it more refined.

That's enough about me, but how about the client? My conclusion is that I am having to break the code to each individual I see. To be able to coach them out of the containerised zoo and unlock the gates to give them freedom of movement and freedom of mind before they become a specialist or generalist.

The average Joe has spent most of their lives being told, "Don't do that, be careful of this, oh that's too dangerous," and for their first years of their lives carried around in a car seat like they are the latest fashion accessory. Locked in a cage when underneath it all,  they have a very sophisticated movement system crying to get out. We are designed in our earliest years to shuffle, roll, crawl, grab, kick, reach and extend. This is then carried into later years with sitting for prolonged periods of time, locked in another posture in yet another container preventing them from carrying out what they are designed to do: squat, crawl, balance, stand, walk, jump, climb, swing, run, carry, throw, fight. It is of little wonder why people have such difficulty moving. To do something you have been prevented from doing for so long is bound to stimulate the internal lion. Weight loss is no different on the emotional spectrum. "Oh you fell over, poor you, boo hooh, have a chocolate bar, "and bam, your cuddle that you needed at an early age became a chocolate bar and for the rest of your life the moment you need a hug you reach for the Snickers!

So what is it that I actually do?

It's great to be able to perform handstands, ring muscle ups, Olympic lift, fight,  barefoot run, crawl around mimicking various animals and turn paleo, this has been the easiest part and without blowing my own trumpet, it comes 'naturally' to me. The hardest thing in the world can be taking the most compromised and containerised clients and converting them into the great movers and eaters that Mother Nature had first designed them to be.

Yep, you have to walk your talk, whether you are a generalist or a specialist, but what's the point if you are a coach and can't find the right code to release the human from the cage to convert 'them' into the generalist or specialist? Aren't you simply adding to the problem, don't we want to actually heal people and get them out of the zoo? It comes with a huge responsibility to get it right, to use the right filter and select the right cues, this shouldn't just be guess work, you're playing with someone's life you selfish fuck!

Most that come to see me fit into one or more of these categories: Injured, have niggles, are over weight or are generally fearful of movement. Well, no shit Sherlock, what a surprise. A life of being told "not to" and then we come along and say "do". Without the right information it would be virtually impossible to get them to bust moves like a couple of my own movement influences Erwan Le corre and Ido Portal without emotional turmoil.

 Broken

This applies to all, not just those that are already broken:

Cross fitters

Barefoot runners

Boxers

Fighters

Climbers

Dancers

The list is endless, but with each of the above you have to consider how long you will get away with what you are doing before someone comes a knocking at the injury door. I have coached lifters, barefoot runners, cross fitters, and all with terrible mechanics but sadly they only come to me when they are broken. Wouldn't it be better to serve your apprenticeship and get the tools to prep correctly and teach yourself and then others before you and the discipline you teach gets a bad rep? Or are you too impatient to get it right?
Unless of course you were lucky enough to grow up in a barefoot climbing colony and have the fundamentals already!

It's all in the "HOW TO"

In fact for a large proportion of the zoo it's like an emotional bomb going off in their head to even think they could carry out what should be natural to them. Don't forget a lot of people have been containerised for so long it would be irresponsible to coach them without the correct prep work. They have lost the "HOW TO" but it doesn't mean they don't have the desire to, or the hardwiring (inherent knowledge). It is more the case that the only perception they have had of exercise is to sit in another container pushing levers like a chimp in an experimental lab. "Push this handle 15x and you will receive 1 muscle group and a protein bar."

Movement that should come naturally to us all

Climbing has been equally important in evolutionary terms as running and yet most can't hang off a bar for more than 20 seconds, and this is where reductionism has its place. You need to know the code to break the fear and build the layers and strip the movement right back. Look at the end result and be able to trace all the way back to where the individual is compromised, have the unique set of Liam Nielsen skills to select the 20% input towards the 80% of output, and not get caught up in selecting BS movements like the Lat Pull down that have no over lapping theory to that end result.

Climbing specifics:

Release the hand with specific prep drills as this is where you need to recognise bodyweight, educate the grip. Prep the shoulder and the scapula from its zoo cage so that the individual who can't lift his hand higher than his shoulder to change a light bulb can then hang, can then pull with a straight arm, then pull with a bent arm, can then muscle up, can then gymnastic ring pull up and finally can learn how to climb. Yeah, who would have guessed it,  hanging on a bar is actually a micro skill of the macro skill of climbing.

Flogging dead horses in search of the unicorn when all along the most prized Pegasus had been hiding underneath the invisibility cloak!

I agree as coaches we should all learn the macro skill to be able to demonstrate, but please ensure that you prioritise gaining the knowledge in learning the skill of how to break the code and deconstruct using the appropriate micro skill network; the gateway to real results and one that will keep clients moving for the long game, not the short quick response.

I will end with the words of  Liam Nielsen: "What I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you."

Domesticated Hunters, Zoo Humans and the Lab Brat! by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

By Tony Riddle, Gloves Club founder

200,000 years ago, Hunter Gatherers and our Natural Habitat.
10,000 years ago, Farming and the Domesticated Hunter.
250 Years ago, the Industrial Revolution and the Zoo Human.
113 years ago, the Pharmaceutical Century and development of the Lab Brat.
1900-2000 The Pharmaceutical Century.

The advances that were made in the 1900's when Karl Landsteiner discovered the first human blood groups O, A and B, and when nutrition and metabolism were experimented with, have turned us into Lab Brats.

Hunter Gatherer to what??!!

At present there's lots of talk out there about the Zoo Human. I too have used this phrase in my own practice, but on reflection we are far, far removed even from the Desmond Morris'  Human Zoo of 1969. At least zoo keepers (to varying degrees) try their best to replicate the habitat and food groups of the Zoo Animal. Animals that are kept in captivity, but used for scientific experiments such as food testing, skin testing and psychological experiment do not have the same luxury as a Zoo Animal.

The experiment starts for us from the moment we enter the birth canal. Childbirth that is meant to have a short transit time has turned into a pharmaceutical and surgical experiment. Women can be drugged up to the eyeballs, lying on their backs pushing up hill (thanks to Louis XIV) with green gowns surrounding them and for most of you this would have been your entry into the "lab" too. This isn't natural. Natural is a woman falling back from the tribe, squatting and returning back to the tribe all within a couple of hours, both mother and baby bonding with the tribe. Needs met on a spiritual, mental, social, physical and psycho-emotional level.

What has come from Lab experiments is that we can use this research and make comparisons between what is natural and what is not, but do we learn from it?

Let's take William F. Windle's primates that were  put through the same surgical and pharmaceutical experience as the St. John's wood house wife. He noted that the mother never connected with her young, she had missed the window to attach, the infant showed little recognition, had to be resuscitated and showed little movement for 2-3 weeks. The complete opposite can be said for the infant monkeys that were studied in nature. They showed huge capabilities and within a few hours could cling onto the mother.

What would be the best foundation for life? Surely these experiments are in place for a reason, but why aren't they common knowledge? Why instead are you programmed to think it is perfectly acceptable to induce both the mother and the unborn baby, and be at the hands of the fear based regime? Well it's all in the memes. If you are told from the moment you open your eyes that childbirth is a two hour spiritual experience, then it will be. If you are told and programmed to think that you are going to be screaming for an epidural the moment you get in the car park and it will be like giving birth to a watermelon, then the chances are it will be.

Attachment and needs

The emotional brain is already evolving in the last three months in the womb. To think of it all starting in the womb, that environment has to be then free from chronic stress, toxic food choices and negativity too.  The mothers heart rhythms have to be calm, food groups selected natural, and sleep wake cycles adhered too. It's tough to achieve this in the Lab, but not impossible. You just need to remember the Lab Brat experiments and that you have a voice, common sense and the ability to sift through the BS and not get uploaded with the wrong programme like so many have before you.

Create a 'Warrior' not a 'Worrier' by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

by Tony Riddle, Gloves Club founder

After having children I have become really selective in the information or software that I choose to upload into their system. Yes that's right: I look at my children as a system and hopefully after you read this, you might do too!

Memes, or programmes that are uploaded into the mind can have positive or negative affects. Lets take books before bedtime as an example.

Zoo baby?

My wife loved a series of books, called The Large Family. The books looked great on the surface and feature a family of loving elephants, but scratch away at that surface and it's a feast of cake and inactive lifestyles that are corrupting the minds of my beautifully crafted natural eaters and movers. Had these books fed a positive message of the elephants returning back to what they do naturally then it wouldn't be such a catastrophe that has resulted in them entering "Room 101".

The message is one that tells my girls that it's too hard to work out or eat well, and work is stressful, and the parent elephants shouldn't be parents at all, that they are simply too selfish and uneducated for the needs of their children. Children don't need to know what a diet is - the term itself is a bad programme. Just because mummy elephant is troubled with her weight doesn't mean she needs to feed her child up to look the same. Surely she could look at how she got in that state and would see that this is exactly what not to do to her own.

One of the books shows how the mum is trying to loose weight and bans bad food. No cake or biscuits for anyone, but finds herself at midnight drawn to the fridge and caving into eating cake. When weakness calls she finds herself in the kitchen and the whole family are there devouring the cake too. The food groups that were bad are now proven to be desirable and you can't help but eat them. Great memes. Talk about a virus for the mind.

Exercise and diet haven't worked, it's too difficult, and it's OK to fail. Yes, great messages just before bed. It's of little wonder why I have such difficulty getting accurate food diaries out of my clients. How long have you been programmed into eating inflammatory foods and sugars?

Food choices - are you in control?

You have to understand that we have blank slates as children and you were once one too. These blank slates have hardwiring that has taken millions of years to sculpt, millions of years that have monumentally been destroyed and continue to be destroyed in a blink of an eye. The blank slate just keeps uploading our information. We are their tribal elders, they learn from us. Our movements, our foods, our conversations and we are products of our parents and schooling. We need to take responsibility not only for our actions, but for our parents actions too and look at the disastrous state of humanity.

"We did what we were born to do, what we were trained to do."

Spartans. "We did what we were born to do, what we were trained to do."

As a result of programming, these great warriors were able to overcome great and traumatic situations. The news that the current zoo human is incapable of carrying out a fundamental movement such as walking or running for a bus is an insult to what these great organisms produced but again, training the mind should take presidence. If we all had to undergo an education in the fundamental needs of the organism, maybe we would not see the pathologies that we do today.

Q: What are you trained to do?
A: Simply what you are programmed to do.

I'm not saying reenact the scenes from 300, but simply be mindful of what you're trying to achieve. If you put as much effort into the food groups and fundamental movement patterns and play as you do with your child's academic results then they will become a far more successful self.

Create a "warrior" not a "worrier".

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!

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.

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.