You're Not Broken, Fitness Is (what actually builds healthy, strong bodies)

In the last post I talked about why mainstream fitness is broken. It's not that workouts are evil, or that moving in a gym is something to be demonized.The problem is this: we can't make up for 6 million years of human evolution moving all day in infinitely complex ways with a 45 minute workout.You wouldn't drink a green smoothie, and expect that to make up for eating fast food the rest of the day. So why do we expect this to work with our movement?The underlying culture of modern life is the problem. In order to build a naturally strong, capable body, we need more than just workouts and supplements.

Compartmentalizing fitness doesn't work, but there is something that does

It's obviously not practical to try to go back to a hunter-gatherer way of life in our modern world. We've got to find a way forward, not back.Compartmentalizing and shaming don't work either. We must start integrating and embedding movement into our lives, in a more natural way, without needing more time.The idea isn't to "train" for 12 hours a day, but slowly change our lifestyle to one that has us moving, all the time, even while sitting or doing work that would otherwise keep us still.If you're really serious about building a body capable of moving in any situation, without fear of getting injured, you need an approach that addresses your whole life.

There are five major shifts we must make to rebuild naturally strong, unbreakable bodies

These are the missing links in the mainstream fitness approach.

1. We must go from having separate fitness time, to creating sustainable habits of moving that can be integrated into our lives, without needing more time.
2. We must stop working out, trying to do things with perfect form and judgment, and start playing and exploring our bodies and environments in a curious way.
3. We must move beyond fitness being a separate thing we do, and get clear on what kind of lifestyle we want to create, and let that guide the choices we make with our bodies.
4. We must stop seeing gyms as the only places we move, and redesign our homes and workspaces to build healthier movement environments.
5. We must stop seeing the practice as a thing we only do part of the day, and instead examine how we're moving and not moving all day. This is the only way that we can better understand how we can return to a healthy, structurally sound body.

Yes, it's more work to look at your body and the results you're getting in a whole life way. But it's the only solution for creating a robust, adaptable, and strong body, ready for any situation. It's the only way to live without pain and fear of injuring yourself when you want to move.

Now, I could just say "do these five things" but that wouldn't be very useful

Because let's be honest, this is a radical transformation of the way fitness has been done up until this point. There's no clear blueprint out there to follow for how to live in harmony with your biology while living in a very unnatural world.It's taken me the last 10 years of investigating, researching and experimenting to come up with a natural approach to fitness in modern life.The good news is that you don't have to spend your whole life figuring this out. I've developed a structure that guides people through making these changes in a few weeks, not years.

So, I'm considering doing something that might seem crazy...

I'm thinking about building a whole life course on natural movement, one that is able to be integrated into a modern life in the city, in your job, in your home.This course won't be for everyone. In fact, it's only for those that are fed up and tired of doing it the old way. It's for people that have seen and felt the limited benefits of crossfit, yoga, or whatever movement discipline they might have been trying.If I build this whole life fitness course, it will address a lot of the missing links, such as:

• How to build strong movement habits that become automatic
• Your home and how it's affecting whether you're moving or not
• Increasing your body awareness and confidence in your ability to move
• The mindset and beliefs that are undermining your ability to move beyond injury and pain
• The specific primal movements and exercises we're not getting enough of in fitness culture, and how to integrate them into your day
• How to begin rehabbing your body from years of neglect, and holding static postures
• And more

This course will obviously take a lot of work to build, and it won't be for people that just want "a simple workout you can do anywhere!" that solves all your problems.Right now I'm just thinking about building this. I only want to create it if enough of you are interested in it.

So, is a Whole Life Fitness approach something you're potentially interested in?

If so, please enter your name and email below.If enough people are interested, I'll move forward with building the program.Sign up below and I'll follow up with you with updates about how the program is developing, and some free strategies you can implement immediately, even if you don't buy the course.I Want More From My Body - Send Me Updates

Why You Should Never Work Out Again (and what you should do instead)

Ah, working out.Why do we have such a love/hate relationship with it?Have you ever thought about why this is?Fitness used to mean being fit for your environment. It used to mean being hard to kill — being strong and adaptable, ready for any situation that life might present you with.How did we get so far away from that?How did we end up with this model of fitness that's divorced from real life?And why is it that fitness these days seems more designed to run your body down, leaving you feeling more broken than before, filled with shame and guilt for not "doing it right" or "training hard enough"?Well, to understand this strange predicament of compartmentalized fitness we find ourselves in, we need to zoom out a bit.To understand why "working out" comes with so much baggage, we need to look at our roots as humans.

We didn't used to workout in boxes to stay healthy

This may seem obvious to some of you, but depending on your education of anthropology, you might not realize that fitness didn't always work the way it does now.Fitness wasn't something we did to "stay healthy."We used to be fit simply by being alive.That is to say, our lives as hunter-gatherers, living in direct relationship with nature required strong bodies. Our daily tasks demanded strength, stamina, and most importantly, adaptability. As wild humans, we had no other choice but to be fit and adapted to our landscape, or we simply didn't survive.As we "progressed" (if you want to call it that) to agriculture, industrialization, and most recently, the age of the screen, we've become increasingly specialized.

How we began to compartmentalize, and distort fitness

The specialization of humans and our progressive outsourcing of movement follows a sad pattern that looks something like this:

• Hunter-gatherer life (millions of years). Robust, well-adapted to the environment. Every day is a new movement challenge. Only the strong survive.
• Farmer life (the past 10,000 years). Still lots of movement, but more specialized and repetitive. Our bodies become more rigid and susceptible to imbalances.
• Industrialized life (past 300 years). Not nearly as much movement, and it's grown even more specialized and repetitive. More time than ever is spent indoors in artificial environments. Less exposure to the sun and the elements to keep us strong and healthy.
• Modern, technological life (last 50 years). With our ability to temperature control indoor environments, the desire to stay inside increases. The rise in computer work and screens to entertain us causes us to spend even more time indoors.

As you can see, it doesn't look very good for us. What we call "progress" as a species is actually making us weaker and weaker.We've outsourced the need to move to get food machines and farmers. We've outsourced the need to protect ourselves to police. We're engineered discomfort out of our lives through temperature-controlled environments. But in this relatively short period in history—in the last 10,000 years or so—our biology hasn't changed much. That is to say, our bodies still need movement, still need to feel competent, and we still need connection with nature to feel at peace.We've tried to give our enough doses of movement to keep from falling apart by going to gyms, but it's clearly not enough.Besides, most people hate going to the gym, because doing workouts divorced from any practical purpose just feels like work.

How to find a motivation beyond shame and guilt

Without a reason to move to live, fitness becomes obscure. We do it to "stay healthy" or to "get stronger," but rarely do we ever have a clear idea of what health and strength actually is.Why do more reps? Why lift more weight or run longer?Is it just to be able to train more, and guilt your way into showing up, because you're a bad person if you don't?If you want to move beyond the mainstream fitness paradigm, ask yourself these two questions:

1. How do you really want to feel in your body?
2. What do you really want to be able to do with your body?

I encourage you to really sit with these questions and ask yourself why you want what you want.The clearer you get, the more you'll be able to create a body grounded in something deeper than shame and guilt.But that still leaves the stagnant environment we're in.How do we build a more integrated approach to fitness, in a world that seems designed to keep us from moving?

In the next post, I'll share with you the answer...

In the meantime, I want to hear from YOU.Are you absolutely done with forcing yourself to do workouts you don't care about? Why?Share your thoughts in the movement lifestyle group.

What is Animal Flow and Who Is it For? Here's the Breakdown

When I first discovered Animal Flow I was intrigued, but I'll admit, I rolled my eyes a bit at first.No, there's no "accessing your inner tiger" or weird growling noises involved.It is a bit weird, though. Good thing I happen to like weird.As you might know by now, I'm a big fan of natural movement. (No big shocker there.) I also know that crawling around and moving on the ground is a big piece of primal movement most of us aren't getting enough of.As I said, at first, I was a bit skeptical. The animal style movement thing clearly resonates with people tired of doing boring, gym-style workouts. But the way it's presented can often be a little cheesy or over the top.I mean, scorpions, crabs and beasts put into a yoga-like flow? That can easily veer into gimmick territory.But, since I was curious, I decided to put aside my biases and try it out. I started with the online training program they offer, which is great for doing at home, or in a park. I started by going through all of the movements one-by-one.Some of them were familiar, like the quadruped crawl or crab crawl, which Animal Flow refers to as the "traveling beast" and "traveling crab." Some were new to me, like the scorpion reach which is a 360° movement, and the beast wave, a really great spinal movement.Novelty is one of the big things I'm always talking about that we need more of. So this scored some points for me. Bonus points for lots of spinal movement, which we almost never do, except for hunching over at the computer, which as you know, isn't the best.I also like that it includes a good amount of deep squatting, another foundational movement I think everyone could use more of.

The flow in Animal Flow

The novelty of the movements, and the ability to put them into flows I found to be the coolest part. While I was used to a good amount of the movements, but I hadn't thought about stringing them together into fluid movements where one links into another.Check out this video of the founder, Mike Fitch doing some of the movements. I have to admit, it's pretty epic and gets you excited about mastering the movements.

What's inside the Animal Flow program

First, let's talk about what exactly it is.Animal Flow is a structured series of animal-style movements that can be linked together to form flows (similar to yoga). It's good for building mobility, strength and developing motor control (something many programs are missing).The way I like to think about it is similar to learning chords or riffs on a guitar. Once you learn enough of the notes (movements), so you can string them together and play fun, interesting songs (or flows with your body).Let's look at the components that lead you into being able to flow.The Animal Flow system is broken down into a few distinct categories:

• Wrist Mobility Drills. These are movements that help strengthen the wrists and prepare you for moving on the ground. Since most folks aren't used to crawling on the ground and putting weight on their wrists these help a lot with preparing your body for the movements ahead.
• Form Specific Stretches. These are mobility drills that help you own the positions you'll be using in the flows. They're great for stretching out tight areas, like the front of the body, and strengthening weak areas, which is typically the back of the body for most people.
• Traveling Forms. This is where the movements start getting put into motion. They consist of the traveling Ape, Beast and Crab, which make up the "ABCs" of Animal Flow. I have to admit, the ABC thing is pretty clever. It certainly make it easier to learn the basic movements when you might be overwhelmed by all that you're getting into.
• Switches and Transitions. These are the movements that help you transition from one position to another, and begin to create a flow. Without the switches, you'd just end up with a bunch of isolated movement patterns. This is where Animal Flow really shines over other bodyweight training programs.
• Flows. These are pre-made flows that combine the Ape, Beast, Crab and other movements, like the Scorpion and Side Kickthrough. A ton of pre-built flows are included in the online training program, but the goal is to eventually get creative and starting making your own flows.

Side note: For those of you not familiar with the "beast," this is pretty much a bear crawl. I'm not sure why they decided to rename it to beast, since it kind of confuses people, and it wouldn't break the "ABC" structure. The "ape" is essentially a deep, flat-footed squat. 

What makes Animal Flow really shine

The thing I found most unique about the Animal Flow system is that it encourages flow and creativity. The goal isn't to do the movements as fast as possible and simply tire yourself out. While that's not a bad thing necessarily, you want to own each of the positions before you try to speed them up.At the teacher training workshop I attended our instructor Clif kept telling us "slow and own" before you try to speed them up.I like this approach a lot, and it's something I teach in my own classes. I want my students to be able to do something very slowly, to totally own the position before they try adding speed or changing tempo.This also makes the program very accessible to beginners. If you are having trouble with the moves, you can always try to do them slower and with more control to find the edge you need to work at.

My favorite part? The crawling patterns

Personally, I love the crawling/traveling movements most in Animal Flow. These are basic developmental positions that we learn as babies to develop motor control and the ability to coordinate our bodies in a fluid way.Going back to these movements is a great way to heal your body and correct imbalances you might have developed over the years (which we all get!).I've spent a lot of time in quadruped positions (beast and crab as they call them in AF) to help me rehab my shoulder and hip injuries, after years of trying to do crazy gymnastics moves I wasn't ready for.Let's just be honest, if you don't have enough stability to control your body on the ground without tipping over, you probably have no business doing muscle-ups and planches. Not that I would know anything about that... ;)Bottom line: the focus on developing motor control and full-body joint stability is what makes Animal Flow different than a lot of bodyweight programs out there.

An Animal Flow inspired routine for beginners

I created this routine to show you a bit of what you can expect with Animal Flow, and the types of movements you'll find in it.This is a good routine to do as a movement break during work. If you're willing to look a little weird in the conference room, that is. Remember, the ones not moving are the weirdos.

Who is Animal Flow for?

I think Animal Flow is a good fit for anyone looking to have spice up their training and create more control in their movements.It's also very scalable for all fitness levels. So whether you're just getting back into training, or have been moving for a long time, you'll find something interesting in it for you.Once you get past the silliness of the names, the system is really quite great. You can tell by the way it's structured that a lot of time and thought went into developing the program. I mean, why not aim for something more than just being able to do harder variations of pushups?My final call: I recommend Animal Flow for anyone wanting to have more fun and creativity in their training.Check out Animal Flow here and see if it's right for youFull disclosure: If you click on the link above and purchase Animal Flow, I will get a cut. This helps me make more awesome videos and tutorials for you. I only promote products I've personally used and tested, so you can be sure they're top notch. Thanks for helping out!

A Simple Flexibility Routine for Fixing Your Deep Squat

The deep, flat-footed squat is one of the top three movements we all don't get enough of in our culture.It's one of the first diagnostic movements I have my students do in my private sessions and group classes.It tells me a lot about their limitations and what injuries they might be susceptible to.Why is this movement so important?Getting comfortable in the deep resting squat can help you:

• Gain more flexibility in your hips, ankles and spine
• Relieve lower back pain from chronic sitting posture
• Learn to move with control on the ground
• Look like a weirdo squatting in public

Just kidding. The people just sitting there are the real weirdos.The best part is once you own this position, it can help you move more freely on the ground, with less pain and discomfort.Access the Free Squat Mobility Routine

Here's an example of how mastering the squat can open more movement freedom:

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 I didn't start here though! I used to fall over when squatting, and my legs burned like crazy. It's been hard work, but the time I've put in mastering this position has paid off.I no longer have lower back pain, and I feel much more comfortable sitting on the ground than I used to. I feel much more comfortable working in the garden, and crawling around on the ground. It's even helped my tree and rock climbing.

The squat is more than a static position, it can open many movement doors

Mastering the deep squat has many applications, it can help open doors with:

• Crawling and ground based locomotion patterns
• Comfort foraging plants or working in the garden
• Getting up and down from the ground with ease
• Playing with your kids or dog
• And a whole lot more

"But Jonathan, I can't squat without feeling like my legs are going to fall off"

Or maybe when you try to squat you have pain, or just fall backwards.I totally get it! That's why I created a simple mobility routine you can do anywhere in 10 minutes or less.It's not enough to just "squat more" or "try harder." You need doable progressions that will guide you back to restoring the squat pattern you naturally learned as a baby.All you need is a little determination, and a bit of space on the floor.Access it totally free. Just click the button and tell me where to send your routine.Access the Squat Flexibility Routine

A Stretching Technique to Get Flexible Faster

Have you ever thought "I'm just a stiff person"?

For most of my life, that's what I believed about myself. I just wasn't naturally flexible; I wasn't blessed to be bendy like some people. (Then I proved everyone wrong, including myself.)

I'm 31 now, but it wasn't until the last few years that I was able to even touch my toes or raise my arms directly overhead.

Because flexibility didn't seem to come easily to me, I focused on strength training. I was comfortable there. For the most part, I ignored flexibility training, except for the occasional half-assed quad stretches or a few mindless arm circles.

I'm sure you've seen the type of stretching I did. It's common in any Globo Gym warm-up.

We're told to stretch because it's a "good warm-up," but mainstream fitness culture doesn't teach us much about how to improve our flexibility.

It seems like you're either born flexible, or you're just screwed.But that's not true.

In this guide I'm going to show you how to get more flexible, even if you're currently as stiff as a 2x4.

But first, we need to address one thing.

The Myth of "Flexible People"

Because I wasn't naturally good at flexibility, I told myself I wasn't a "flexible person." Rather than actively working on my flexibility, I let myself off the hook with an excuse. It wasn't in my "genetics," whatever that means.Now, there might have been some truth to that. Maybe it didn't come as easy to me as some, but it didn't mean it was something I couldn't improve on with time and effort.If you're struggling with your flexibility, the first thing I want you to do is reframe the way you look at it.

Instead of telling yourself, "I'm not naturally flexible" shift your mindset to "I'm always working on becoming more mobile and free in my body."

It might seem simple or hokey, but I've found that our bodies are all bound up with our beliefs when it comes to not just our strength and coordination, but also our flexibility. After all, your brain is a part of your body, isn't it? It's just as important to train as your muscles. It's important to address the mental side just as much as the physical. Otherwise, you're unlikely to stay motivated to follow through on your training.

This is a shift from a belief where you have no control over your genetics, to one where you have control, since you can get results when you show up and put in the work.

Cut yourself some slack, our culture doesn't do us any favors

Remember to go easy on yourself. Our modern culture of stagnancy and prolonged sitting doesn't help us out much in the flexibility department. If you have a desk job, you may have to work a little harder.

Yes, moving more in nature will help. But we also need to address the lack of mobility to a certain degree in order to prevent injury.

Stretching and mobility work is not just a warmup

The main reason average folks don't improve their flexibility is because they consider stretching to be the warm-up, and weight lifting, bodyweight excises, or cardio to be the core focus of their workouts.

This is why you see people doing half-assed quad stretches.

It's also a myth. Improving your range of motion is something you need to work on just as seriously as strength or cardio training if you want to see results.

The missing element in stretching

Even if you do treat stretching as a serious component of your training, you are likely making a big mistake that the vast majority of people make: only doing passive stretching.

What is passive stretching? It's where an external force is assisting your body into reaching the position.

A good example of this is the pec stretch done against a doorway. You're using the door and the weight of your body, not your muscles, to get into the stretch.

The opposite would be actively using your back muscles to achieve the stretched position. Take a look at the difference, side-by-side:

This kind of stretching is great for relaxing, and it absolutely has its place, but it doesn't build much internal control over the range of motion.

An example of active flexibility, on the other hand, would be where you're using the muscles of your back to pull your arm and pec into a stretched position.

Unless we're actively engaging our muscles and sending neural drive to them, we won't be creating very useful flexibility.

A perfect example is a person that can do the splits on the floor. Sure, it looks like a nice photo for Instagram, but could they actually control that range of motion without assistance from the floor? Could they call on their flexibility to deliver a head kick? Probably not, because the passive flexibility needed for floor splits doesn't transfer to actively being able to control that flexibility while standing.

How to do active stretching to become more flexible, faster

If passive stretching is like breathing and relaxing into the positive, active stretching is the opposite. It's creating tension while you're in a stretched position.By sending neural drive (tension) into our tissues, we're asking our bodies to control the end range of motion. The more we prove to our body that we can control a position, the more range it opens and makes available to us.

Because we're working at end range, in a stretched position, we want to be careful not to tense up too hard, or too fast. And we definitely want to warm up before we work in this range. You should ramp up tension progressively. Aim for about 50-70% of your max effort. Always stop if you reach a point of pain. Pain is a signal that the body doesn't trust the movement, and you need to back off a bit. It could even be an indication that you need to rehab with gentle movement or seek help from a professional to release the tissues.

Here's a video demonstrating active stretching to open the shoulders. Once you understand the principle, you can find all sorts of ways to apply this concept.

Consistency is everything

I think that every day we should be doing things to maintain our flexibility. Bare minimum, we should move all our joints through their full range of motion each day.

That's your baseline, non-negotiable work if you want to maintain the ranges you currently have and not get any stiffer than you already are.

If you want to improve your active flexibility, I recommend training each joint you're wanting to work at least twice a week for 20-30 minutes. So if you want to improve you hip and shoulder flexibility, you could train flexibility for an hour every Tuesday and Thursday.

These sessions should feel like work. Cramping is to be expected. You'll likely be sore the next day. If not, you might not be working hard enough.

It may take some experimentation, so find what works for you. Personally I find doing a little bit every day to be the approach that helps me stick with it.

Flexibility is about expanding your freedom of movement

Use it or lose it is the way our body adapts to life. If we don't use our full range of motion, our bodies end up making those ranges stiff and unaccessible. The more we reclaim our flexibility, the more flexibility our body wants to give us. In can become an upward spiral of progress.One of the biggest barriers I see to people sticking with flexibility work as a consistent practice is that it can be very boring and tedious.

Holding a position for 2+ minutes, where you're flexing and cramping... it's not fun.

The solution I see to this is to keep remembering the freedom you are working toward. That's the ultimate goal of this type of training after all, expanding the movement possibilities you have available to you. It's about unlocking new ways you can play, explore your body, and find joy in movement, not just pain and tension.

The more range of motion you open up with your "boring" flexibility work, the more creative and free you'll become in your movement.

You'll be able to use your hips not just to get into a yoga position, but to climb better, dance more freely, or have more fun in the bedroom.

More active flexibility = more options in life and play.

Does it just feel like everything is tight, and you're not sure where to start?

Check out my free workshop on the foundations of physical freedom.