Flow Running with Patton Gleason

The CrossFit Endurance run performance workshop earlier this year was fun and informative, and I also enjoyed the refresher on natural running technique at the recent MovNat Fundamentals session in Palo Alto. But it wasn't until today's Flow Running seminar that everything finally felt like it clicked into place for me.

The man behind Flow Running is Patton Gleason, an experienced ultra-marathoner and trail runner. (He's also the founder of the Natural Running Store, a fantastic source for CrossFitters and runners looking for Inov-8s, Altras, and Vivo Barefoots.) After getting acquainted with Patton on Twitter, I finally got to meet him a few months ago at the CrossFit Games; every time I passed his booth, I stopped to chat him up. Not only is Patton an expert in natural running techniques (and a Paleo eater!), he's a warm, funny and charismatic guy. It's impossible to not like him.

Patton traveled up to the Bay Area to lead a couple of two-hour Flow Running seminars at CrossFit Palo Alto this weekend, and I'm glad I got a chance to attend. The time flew by as we learned how to run efficiently and stay injury-free. I was amazed at the amount of information Patton was able to pack into just 120 minutes, but by putting us through a number of short running drills, he gave us a ton of firsthand experience that'll likely stick with us for a good, long while.

If you're familiar with minimalist running techniques (e.g., POSE, Chi, MovNat, CrossFit Endurance), Flow Running won't be foreign to you. Patton emphasizes many of the same foundations of running: proper posture, focusing on firing hamstrings rather than hip flexors, a quick stride with feet landing directly under the body, heels kissing the ground, leaning forward from the ankles to generate forward momentum.



But today, I also learned a bunch of new things that helped me tie all of these lessons together. Patton showed us the connection between jump-rope and running technique. He emphasized breathing techniques, and maintaining consistent inhalation and exhalation throughout a run. He explained the benefits of keeping one's center of gravity lower to the ground, and the importance of keeping our feet loose and relaxed. Patton taught us to focus on just one or two things that are within our control when we run, rather than struggling to keep everything picture-perfect.

And best of all, we learned by doing. Many of Patton's lessons were taught through easy, fun drills that reinforced the nuggets of wisdom he was imparting to us. After each running drill, we had opportunities to watch demos, ask questions, and soak in Patton's responses.

My favorite line of the day: "We are not broken." If we listen to our bodies and run in a way that's consistent with our physiology, we'll be just fine.

This Sucks

What luck.

It's taken over a week, but yesterday, my groin was feeling halfway decent again, so I joined M and the kids for an afternoon at the playground. We had lunch outside, swung around on the jungle gym, and found other ways to incorporate some MovNat into our play. While the kids ran around with a couple of their friends, I climbed poles and pulled myself up and over an 8-foot wall, and M worked on her jumping and balancing skills. We took turns scrambling up a big pine tree; I jumped off a high branch and landed unscathed, and helped M off the tree, too, by having her hop onto my shoulders. After a week of taking it easy, it felt good to feel healthy and capable again.

But a few hours later, as I was on my knees beside the tub giving one of my boys a bath, the other one executed a running jump into the bathroom and landed directly on my Achilles tendon. My left ankle rolled and twisted, and I hopped up in pain.

And now, I have a sprained ankle. It's not a major sprain, but I can't put weight on it without discomfort. I've been icing and elevating it intermittently today, and gobbling ibuprofen.

Whoever heard of getting injured giving a child a bath?

I hate this. A lot.

Reclaiming Play: One-Day MovNat Fundamentals Workshop

After eight hours of MovNat yesterday, I knew I was going to be a wreck this morning. And sure enough, I woke up with soreness in places I didn't even know existed. My upper arms and knees are covered with splotchy purple bruises, and my forearms are sunburnt and flecked with small scratches. My lower back is stiff, and my shoulders are sore. And to top it all off, the bottom of my left foot is still pulsing and swollen from a bee sting. (Note to self: It turns out that bees don't like being stepped on.)

But if I had to do it all over again, would I? Hell to the yes.



I first came across MovNat back in January of 2010, when -- in the same New York Times article that introduced me to Paleo eating -- I read about Erwan Le Corre and a physical fitness system he'd created called MovNat. MovNat is short for "Mouvement Naturel" or "natural movement." Inspired by Méthode Naturelle, an approach to survival fitness pioneered at the turn of the last century by Georges Hébert (a forefather of parkour and freerunning), Le Corre developed a program that re-trains people to move according to human nature. Simply put, MovNat is about moving your body as nature intended, and doing so as efficiently, safely and practically as possible.



For a good introduction to MovNat, check out Le Corre's 2009 profile in Men's Health magazine.

MovNat is founded on three "pillars" of movement: Natural, Evolutionary, and Situational. As such, it's a system that aims to respect the environment, align with our biological heritage, and have practical application to real-world challenges. Particularly with regard to its emphasis on situational adaptiveness, MovNat overlaps to a large degree with programs like CrossFit; both, after all, focus on developing well-rounded athletes who are ready at a moment's notice to tackle a broad spectrum of physical demands.

MovNat has grown in the past couple of years, with Le Corre bringing a small handful of employees on board to teach seminars and to run much of the day-to-day operations of the business. Still, he continues to be MovNat's guru (and greatest marketing asset), and at the Ancestral Health Symposium a couple of weeks ago, he delivered a terrific presentation about the benefits of natural movement:



At the Symposium, I got the chance to meet Le Corre and his U.S.-based Master Trainer, Clifton Harski, and they encouraged me to join MovNat's one-day Fundamentals Workshop in Palo Alto. I'd been curious about MovNat for almost two years, and a "primal" fitness system sounds like something that's right up my alley, so I figured: Why not? Besides, M got invited by Clif to join, too -- and we live less than two miles from the neighborhood park where the Workshop was to be held.

Before showing up yesterday, my only in-person exposure to MovNat was at a brief movement session that Clif led at UCLA at the end of the Symposium. Out on a grassy field, we did some barefoot walking and crawling in the grass, and we practiced jumping. I found the emphasis on precision of movement to be challenging, but it's not like we ran across treetops or dangled from vines or anything. I didn't feel like a character in Avatar. "This stuff doesn't seem all that special," I thought.

I was wrong.

Almost as soon as we arrived yesterday, Clif had us dive right into climbing up poles at the park. "This isn't what we'd normally start with," he noted, "but we need to finish climbing before kids come take over the playground." (See? MovNat is adaptive!)

(Click any of the photos to enlarge)

Climbing, it turns out, is incredibly fun. Keeping our arms (relatively) relaxed, we braced ourselves against poles with our feet, walked up vertically until we were able to grab a horizontal beam, swung ourselves hand-over-hand to the other side, and then climbed back down another pole. Even if I'd walked away from the Workshop with nothing more than the personal satisfaction derived from scrambling up a pole, it would have been totally worth it. It's been years since I saw a pole and had any urge to climb it, but after yesterday, I'm not sure it'll be so easy to walk past one without pausing to consider going vertical.

Next, we invaded the kids' swing sets, taking turns to pull ourselves up and over the top beam using a series of progressions. Clif taught us to rest our forearms on the horizontal bar and then -- using rotational force -- screw our arms down and outward to engage our lats and propel ourselves up and forward.

It was kind of magical -- even though I sucked at it. Clif also showed us how to hook a leg over the bar and leverage the momentum generated by our other leg to flip over the bar. I was pretty terrible at that, too, but it was a blast.

More after the jump...

Stuff I Learned Today

M and I learned a ton from Clifton Harski at the one-day MovNat Fundamentals workshop in Palo Alto today. It was held at a park -- complete with kids' playground -- just a couple of miles from our house.

Among other things, I learned:

• To be more mindful and aware of my body and environment;

• To be more precise and efficient in my movements; 

• How to climb poles and traverse  horizontal bars by swinging hand-over-hand;

• How to pull myself up and over a bar (in this case, the top of a playground swing set); 

• That with the right technique, it's pretty easy to throw a guy onto your shoulders and carry him around while keeping an arm free so you can shoot an imaginary machine gun at people; and

• Most importantly, that accidentally stepping on a bee while walking barefoot in the grass can have painful consequences.

More on my MovNat experience shortly, but I really need to go conk out right now.

Greatest Hits

To kick off the weekend, check out this little video. It features a bunch of stuff we know and love: Paleo eating, Vibram FiveFingers, John Durant, MovNat, and Tough Mudder.

Paleo Fitness

Check out this article about Erwan Le Corre and MovNat in January's issue of Outside Magazine.

What's MovNat?

MovNat draws from some familiar sources -- CrossFit, low-carb diets, barefoot running, martial arts, mud wrestling, Quest for Fire, etc. -- but Le Corre's program occupies a space all its own. If anything, MovNat falls within the concept of "evolutionary fitness," an increasingly popular trend embraced by a loosely organized but fast-growing global community of health enthusiasts, medical professionals, and athletes. The movement is often lumped under the "paleo" rubric, but it's more than just a prehistoric way to eat and exercise.

I reallyreallyreally want to try this.

MovNat Reconsidered

I first wrote about Erwan Le Corre's MovNat a few months ago -- back before I began delving more seriously into paleo/primal concepts. I was kind of dismissive then, but am growing curiouser and curiouser about Le Corre's nature-centric philosophy of fitness and health.

I'd like to attend a MovNat workshop someday. Richard Nikoley just did it a week ago, and wrote all about it on Free the Animal. Melissa McEwen was there the week before. And Robb Wolf is just finishing up his 5 days of MovNat today, and also has great things to say about the experience.

MovNat looks fun -- and this is coming from a guy who hasn't been camping in years and thinks it's not worth trying to win $1 million on "Survivor" because it would mean going without a toilet for a month.