Movement Training Explained: Ido Portal, Animal Flow, and Primal Workouts

chances are if you're a regular viewer of youtube fitness you'll have encountered people crawling around the floor like monkeys or throwing themselves in the air in what they call movement flows you may have come across the likes of eido portal animal flow gmb or vava fitness and maybe you thought it looked awesome maybe thought it looked ridiculous but the question is whether it has something to contribute to a holistic health and fitness approach and how you can get started so let's take a look so i'm here in beautiful brill in oxfordshire to practice some movement

training movement flows but i just want to put it out there that i am by no means an expert i'm very much still learning i've gone through the different courses from gmb vava fitness and animal flow so i've got an idea but i just dabble in this stuff as a supplement to my training which is what i recommend for everyone so this can look a whole lot better but with that said even just occasionally doing this stuff i've seen some real improvements in various aspects of my fitness and performance for instance my straight arm handstand

which was always a bit ugly due to some poor shoulder mobility still has a long way to go but it's definitely improved a lot and that's just from doing some back bridges some tabletops some crab crawls barely doing it much at all but just every now and then and i've seen real improvements so yeah i highly recommend that you give this stuff a go unfortunately i've not been able to do much about the infamous british weather but at least it's authentic huh so the idea of movement training is simple that we should train for movement

rather than for strength mobility or endurance that is to say that all those things should be in service of strong graceful movement patterns we're merely changing the emphasis edo patal is considered a movement guru and was one of the first to begin advocating this kind of approach to training what he calls movement culture he describes how rather than building big biceps and lats he's more interested in collecting moves whether that's a maltese a planche or an albertido either is known to many as the guy who has been training conor mcgregor and there are plenty of

videos of the two of them training in unique and interesting ways floating around the web he's also known for his florio sessions that involve him moving gracefully from one position to another along the ground edo hasn't really published any specific guides to his training the edo portal method can be learned through direct training via one of his retreats via fairly expensive online shootlege or picked up in snippets from his interviews and blog posts from what we can glean we know that edo uses a three-stage process to acquire new movements and feed them into his flow

isolation integration improvisation he believes that the most value a new movement or exercise has is to be gained from that initial uncomfortable learning stage so we should keep learning and adding new movements edo's own movement is inspired heavily by his background in capoeira a common theme among movement practitioners but it also incorporates ideas from dance other martial arts gymnastics yoga and much more but he's also meticulous in his approach ido is keen to emphasize the importance of both pulling and pushing movements with heavy use of rings and radiation this is something that's missing from a

lot of other movement training practices and even things like yoga if all you're doing is pushing and crawling then you're only developing those pushing muscles and not the lats or the traps which you need to balance everything out ido is also slow to introduce new movement patterns and begins training new practitioners by getting them to start spending time in a resting squat and a dead hang to build up their mobility then you have animal flow created by mike fitch this meanwhile looks very similar to edo's method at a glance it likewise involves moving gracefully from

one position to another but is much more structured as a system i bought the program to give it a go myself and learned a number of moves that could be chained together into flows these include many ground-based locomotion movements like bear crawls called beast in animal flow ape crab under switch over switch and crab reach many of these are travelling form this training lacks a hanging element and likely won't develop that much hypertrophy there isn't a whole lot to be found for legs either but as a supplement to other forms of training it's immensely beneficial

there are many other forms of movement training that fall broadly into this category as mentioned both gmb and viva fitness have their own approaches similar to animal flow i've tried them both too and found that they each had something interesting to offer vava fitness in particular emphasizes the importance of finding your own style and provides a wide archive of different movements to choose from more than that meanwhile is another offshoot that emphasizes the need for training outdoors and teaches practitioners to climb crags balance along beams swim and lift logs this introduces the unpredictability and chaos

that comes from the wild teaching us to be more hardy and adaptable i've talked a little about this in the past but performing a pull-up from a tree branch for instance is infinitely richer in stimulus as compared with a bar every single branch is different in thickness bends differently and places your hands in different relative positions you're forced to grip and to brace the core to compensate and the same holds true for trail running scrambling or lifting logs over your head here's the big difference when you're lifting weights in the gym you're encouraged to use

as identical a form as possible every time you repeat that movement on the other hand with movement training and particularly things like mod nat every single time you practice a movement is going to be slightly different keeping you supple adaptable and versatile a good example that demonstrates just how much we need movement in our lives is a proprioceptive illusion that you've probably experienced so say you're walking down some stairs and you expect there to be another step only to find you're actually at the bottom you don't fall but your body has this horrible shock this

kind of judder the reason for that is that your body is preparing in advance for what it thinks is going to be your next movement this shows just how much goes into something as simple as walking down steps but it also demonstrates just how much information we're cutting off from ourselves by wearing thick shoes and by walking on pavements all the time when you walk on a flat tarmac floor in thick shoes all the time you can literally switch off from that sense just as you might tune out the ticking of a clock in the

background and over time those sensors become duller so practicing moving in different ways even if you're not going to become a barefoot trail runner it's just so extremely beneficial for you was created by irwin lacour who was an early practitioner of parkour parkour free running can themselves be considered as examples of movement training and they have their roots in the ideas of georges hebert who introduced the world to the natural method or le method naturale and began the trend of using assault courses to train military personnel georges is the real granddaddy of both parkour and

movement training and i find it fascinating watch the evolution of movement training starting from that thread we can view parkour and free running as different styles of movement training just as we see different styles in martial arts mauve nap branches off slightly sooner whilst the ideas of mike fitch and edo portal offer a unique spin on george's even functional training has its roots in the natural method and one of the most amazing things about movement training in general is the way that it can borrow the most beneficial movements and patterns and stances that we see

cropping up time and time again across different disciplines yoga dance martial arts and more these movements repeat themselves throughout history because they're the ones that work for the human body because they're strong powerful or challenging but there's no right way to train movement the key is simply to move and to practice learning new movements rather than focusing purely on getting stronger in a handful of movements that you chose years ago the idea is to express yourself and to find your own movement style but whatever form of movement training you pick whichever movements you gravitate towards

this will have tremendous benefits for you the fact of the matter is that what we do in the gym often fails to mimic the way we use our bodies in the real world while being able to squat to bench and deadlift big numbers is impressive in its own right and has a lot of benefits it still involves moving through that constrained controlled and predictable movement pattern meanwhile in sports and in life we're required to leap off of one foot change direction quickly stoop to catch a ball or contort our bodies in the transverse plane to

resist at an attempted grapple we carry our children on our backs up steep hills we lift prams into boots in short real life is unpredictable and so we need to learn to move outside of repetitive predictable movement patterns straight line patterns this is why the emphasis in movement training is so often not just the movements themselves but the transitions between them that's where the flow happens and it's why positions like the lizard crawl that are extremely compound and require strength and proprioception in unusual places from the multifidus that we talked about recently to the obliques

and transverse abdomini are so valuable the benefits here are similar to those found in a kettlebell flow for example once again you're strengthening the positions in between that often get overlooked thus becoming more adaptable to any scenario what's more is that the very process of learning movements changes the way that we approach training and forces a more cohesive approach for example in order to learn to planche we must also learn to control scapular protraction and retraction we must learn to hold the core in that rigid position and we need to develop a lot of wrist

mobility that's another great thing about practicing these movements they include inherent mobility this means that you don't need to actively stretch in order to develop and maintain a greater range of motion you're simply maintaining that limbo ability to move by constantly requiring yourself to do so it's an ideal antidote to a mostly seated lifestyle by making your movements as varied and complex as possible you avoid losing range of motion as much as possible and it's much more fun than just stretching it's also possible that all this multi-planar movement is really good for your fascia but

that's something that's a a bit contentious because there's still a lot of research that needs to be done into fascia and b something i'm going to address in more detail in future videos so stay tuned for that finally learning new movements itself has tremendous benefits for the brain the process of learning movements especially complex ones triggers the release of bdnf brain derived neurotrophic factor and other plasticity stimulating chemicals learning a new movement is an extremely immersive form of learning as you must consider input from all your senses whilst training new neural pathways this very process

of learning helps to keep the brain young and plastic it may even help to develop the cerebellum which we use in all kinds of higher order cognitive processes something to keep in mind is that although there is a set way to perform animal flow or gmb for instance there's no set or correct way to perform movement training all movement training really means is that you're continuously adding movements to your repertoire you're experimenting and learning with movement and you see people with completely different movement styles and i find that so inspiring so don't be necessarily led

by someone you like try and adapt what you see into something that's unique to you [Applause] [Music] don't totally copy me you should copy a little bit me then more create yourself they'll be coming your way and it's most important is not the best you have to be yourself and this has so many benefits from bdnf and plasticity to body awareness and proprioception and to building those small supporting muscles and a powerful core that it's really hard to argue with that that said i certainly view this type of training as a supplement or addition to

a well-rounded program i don't think your workout should be made from 90 cartwheels and downward dog i recommend adding movement training as a way to improve mobility proprioception and control while using other modalities to develop your speed explosiveness max strength etc it works particularly well as a warm up or a cool down or something you can do on your rest days so that's a basic introduction to movement training what it can do for you now i know that many of you might be wondering how you can get started with this type of training it's actually

very difficult because there's a lot of conflicting views and very few actual guidelines or instructions that you can follow online and because that's something that i found myself when trying to learn i compiled a list of the most common movements that you see used by a lot of people when practicing movement flows i'll put a link to that in the description down below and it'll take you to the bioneer website we can see all the moves laid out with descriptions plus a bunch of tips that you can use to start seeing results much sooner if

you want to learn how to combine this kind of dynamic movement into a fully integrated multimodal program for body and mind then be sure to check out my ebook and training program super functional training that's a huge pdf that combines everything i talk about on this channel and goes into even greater depth resulting in a program designed to develop every aspect of your performance there's a link to that in the description as well and there's a discount on right now while we're all dealing with this coven thing so thanks to time for watching this one

guys i hope you found it useful and interesting if you did then please leave a like and share around that helps me out immensely i massively appreciate all of your support subscribe if you want to see more like this and of course i'll see you next time bye for now i put my hand in a poo pretty sure