Where the mountains meet the sea.

saturday april 4th, 8.00am I woke to the sun shining and the birds singing.

A Praying Mantis slowly moved from the shadows and into the sunshine with leaf like movements.

Kaka's (big brown parrots with vivid red on the underside of their wings, and huge hooked beaks) fly out of the old oak tree for the days feeding.

I started off at the base of Mt manaia which stands 403 m above sea level.

barefoot, and with just my trusty shorts on, I proceeded up the steep incline of the old track which is closed to the public due to deterioration of the track. as I proceeded up the steep and winding track, I experimented with ways to move, running forwards and backwards, crawling forwards and backwards with arms 1st and then changing to feet 1st approximately 3/4 of the way up, then It was an uphill sprint on rocky terrain through dense bush with average of a 50 degree incline. hard work.

Once I reached the top I was greeted with the sunshine once again and a crisp ocean breeze, and not to mention a 360 degree panoramic view of Whangarei, and the surrounding poor knight and the hen and chicken islands in the distance.

after a few attempts to climb a crumbling cliff edge I started my decent back down the closed track, (the open track takes longer but is of less intensity) once I picked up pace the sharp rocks didnt bother me at all, it was almost as if i didnt give my feet "gound time" to feel the sharpness.

it took me approx 35 mins to get to the top, but a mere 15 mins to get back down.

Next was the beach.

A quick run up and over the dunes, and down to the rocks at the end of the bay.

The swell had reached its maximum with the windy weather that had hammered the coast the night before.

I swam out to a small isle of rocks in the middle of the surf.

the waves were bigger than last time so i had to be 100% certain of myself and the surrounding conditions so i wasnt putting myself in a situation that i couldnt recover from.

grasping a barnacle clad rock ledge I braced myself just as a 6 metre wave hit the rocks and proceeded to dump what felt like a few good cubic metres of water on top of me.

The impact was in three stages, the initial "hit" of the wave, then the ingoing surge trying to peel my grasp from the rocks, then the last outgoing swell, that wants to pull you into the deep blue.

I took 3 of these waves as they come in sets, and as soon as the last one hit and subsided, I caught a wave and surfed it back to the safe regions of the shoreline.

I was pretty tired by this time, but as i was joggin back I found a rock of about 50kg, shaped like a kidney bean. I couldnt resist. that rock was asking to be picked up. So I heaved it up in a cradle position and waded back into the surf up to my waist and went about 200 m along the coast.

Then I threw it out to sea of about 2 m depth, and tried retreiving from the bottom, whilst navigating the surf. in the end the rock was lost as the waves became too big to carry a rock of that size while trying to maintain balance.

So it was lost to the sea, but I have a rough idea where it is, and that will be part of my next training session.

Training in the wild.

Here is a brief outline to give readers an idea on a usual daily training session I undertake.
I will update this post regularly with experiences, results and findings of my training in the wild.
I have a firm interest In MN and MovNat and also Parkour plays a big part in my physical and mental development. Simply, these 3 activities are my staple way to my overall goal, to become a wild human.

Todays training: 21/march/2009. 3.00pm

I started off at the top of my local mountain Mt. Parahaki. it is a mix of up and downhill sections with many gravel logging tracks snaking there way through dense scrub, swamps, and pine forests/native bush.
Barefoot, and armed with only a pair of shorts for modesty, I decended into a valley carved out by recent heavy rainfall. I started off slowly progressing downwards until my momentum picked up to a run. around 2 mins later I was at the bottom of the mountain and had covered approx 1km down through scrub and uneven/slippery sufaces and prickly gorse infested sections.
Down the bottom of the mountain it opens up to swamp, So wading in waist deep mud, with eels squirming at my feet (thankfully they dont bite) i waded over to a fallen pine tree that acted as a bridge across the swamp.
I proceeded to pull myself out of the bog, while doing this I found the suction of the swamp so immense as I pulled myself out, I proceeded to do it another 10 times, as the resistance was ample for building upper body strength. it actually felt like i was doing pull ups with a weighted vest on! great!.
After that, it was straight back up the shingle ridden hill in a series of sprints and crawling back up to around the halfway mark.

There, I found an old pine tree, about 10 feet in lentgh and clear of its limbs. This was a perfect piece of training equipment.
End over end up the hill went the log, around 10 to 15 times, I didnt really count as i was after the distance more than how many times I had done it.
Now for the run back up. this was a steady but continual pace, up along the old logging track.
10 mins later, i was almost back up the top, and found a log that had been put across the track.
I picked this up, hoisted it onto my back and took it up the remainder of the hill. approx 500m.
by the time I had completed this training session, an hour had gone by. An hour of constant motion.
once i reached the top, I raised the log in a final effort and threw it down the side of the gorge.
it landed half way down, stuck on an old tree leaning out of the cliff.
Perfect, I thought. a good start for my next training tomorrow.

Interveiw with Erwan Le corre

1 Who is Erwan Le Corre? Can you give us some idea of your background in sports / fitnessMy first "personal trainer" was my dad. Though he had never really practiced any specialized sport himself, as a kid his favourite activity was one of frequent and instinctive physical expression found in exploring his surroundings. Then as a young father he naturally thought it was important to pass on this simple way to me. In his mind, an essential aspect of his role was to have me toughen up physically and mentally, that's why he frequently had me following him for hours through the woods from a very young age, whatever the season. He would push me to climb trees or boulders and sometimes reach impressive heights for a young boy. He would ask me to control my fear and trust his guidance. In the summer, we would train distance jumps, drops in the sand, swimming and also holding breath and lots of other natural games and challenges of this kind.I believe that's where everything starts. It wasn't sport, it wasn't fitness, but it was real education. Apart from judo and some collective sports at school I went on knowing almost no other physical activity than that until I was 15.Now later on, and without giving too many details, the significant experiences in my sport background includes mainly judo, karate, rock climbing, Olympic weightlifting, Brazilian jiu-jitsu and long distance triathlon, each of them bringing their share of benefits to my overall experience and knowledge. I have tried many other things, too many to mention, but didn't really like them.I practiced a training and philosophy called "Combat Vital" for 7 years in Paris, which had many similarities with the Methode Naturelle. That's when I started training barefoot. We would train most of the time at night so as not to be seen, climbing bridges, balancing on the top of scaffoldings, kicking walls to toughen our bare feet, moving on all fours, swimming in the river even in the freezing cold of the winter...some kind of "Fight Club" of natural movement if you will! They are unbelievable memories: quite a conventional-wisdom-defying kind of philosophy and practice.When I discovered Methode Naturelle just at the end of my triathlon period, it felt very logical to me that I had to finally go back to my initial natural approach and fully embrace it again - this time for good and with the clear intent to spread the word in a constructive manner.2 How did this background bring you to your current philosophy and approach to exercise?As I mentioned my childhood movement and nature exploration is the first most significant influence behind my current approach.Then my background in Combat Vital, which was more specifically a holistic philosophy and lifestyle addressing the issue of the modern, domesticated human condition, though Combat Vital has never become a formal method.Then my study and experience of Methode Naturelle.Then to a lesser extent my personal background in other physical activities and research about other training or conditioning concepts.The more I was thought about it, the more I thought that while the core of the 100 years old method was excellent, an update of the pedagogy and methodology of Methode Naturelle was needed; it also became clearer that my personal approach couldn't and wouldn't avoid addressing the zoo human predicament and the many issues modern humans have to deal with regarding their body and mind's health and quality of life.My recent and catalytic encountering with Lee Saxby confirmed this ultimate intuition. He has recently joined me with his scientific background and expertise in the field of gait analysis, nutrition and evolutionary biology and we're now working together on the elaboration of a certification system with this unique approach of rehabilitating the zoo human and based on natural principles and backed up with science.So despite the core practice being natural movement skills, MovNat is not only an approach of exercise but also a more holistic education system. Not a guideline, certainly not a set of morals, but both an experiential and conceptual knowledge: an array of solutions and alternatives people can learn and apply to an extent that is entirely up to them.3 Your website talks about us being "zoo humans" – far from our natural habitat and lifestyle. How do we start to escape from the zoo – what might be the first steps in this approach?The first step is a change of perception. It is becoming aware of this predicament, because you can never change something you deny or for which you take no personal responsibility. Understanding what our true nature is from a biological and evolutionary perspective and understanding the workings of the zoo is the first step.The zoo is not just an environment, it is a phenomenon, a process, which is designed to keep you a captive of both external and internal cages. It is something that conditions many of your behaviours: clearly it is to me a domestication system, no less. The zoo impairs our ability to experience our true nature which is to be strong, healthy, happy and free.We're not born to be weak, sick, depressed and enslaved and, more than that, we should never accept this becoming the norm or a "fatality" (our fate). So the first step is a reaction and a form of resistance, it is a life-affirming reawakening. Once your perception is changed and that which is commonly regarded as "normal" is not acceptable to you anymore, it is time to look for rational alternatives, to find ways to apply them in order improve your own experience of life.It requires critical thinking, knowledge, time, commitment and - depending on individuals - a tremendous courage.So first step? I would say that being ready to defy conventional wisdom is a fundamental start.4 "Evolutionary Fitness" has gained some popularity recently, but somehow the prescription often leads us back into the gym, lifting weights, using machines or sprinting to fixed intervals. This seems a long way from nature. Should we abandon the gym and go to the playground?Look for movements that are most relevant to our evolutionary bio-mechanics or to the practical needs of real-life situations; you want to perform truly natural movements and efforts. If your starting point is an evolutionary fitness theory but you end up seated on a machine counting reps and getting bored, it's not that the evolutionary theory is wrong, but that the application of the theory lacks naturalness. Usually, true evolutionary action is enjoyable simply because it feels very natural and this natural feeling is precisely what the wild human animal inside of us is willing to experience.Personally, I have in fact an inversed/inverted approach. I mean that my starting point is instinct, experience of the practical and observation. My training principles don't stem from theory and while theory may validate my training, my training is certainly not an attempt to validate any theory or conform to any of them. In the end what matters most to me is the practical outcome, the situational perspective MovNat stands for.So it is not the gym per se that is a problem to me, but what you're going to perform in a gym. Bringing a leg extension machine into the woods won't make your training more natural, but crawl on the floor of a gym and there you'll start to unleash your inner animal. Ideally of course, you want to be in touch with nature, breath good air, expose your skin to natural light, capture the energies of the vegetation around, well, spend as much time outdoors as you can. Thing is, it would be really difficult to recreate natural conditions in a gym, such as mud, wet surfaces, unpredictable dangers etc...which are also essential parameters that require specific adaptation.That's the difference between capability and adaptability. The more your movement skills are adaptive, the more you'll expand your comfort zone in dealing with a variety of real-world circumstances. So the more varied is the environment where you train, the more you'll increase your movement adaptability.Now because of modern lifestyle, or because of really bad weather conditions or simply if you don't have access to a suitable outdoors area, it is sometimes more convenient to train in a gym, and it can be actually a great place for a safe transition from domestic physical apathy to wild training outdoors.I think gyms will evolve more and more anyways, which they already have started to do. I see them become more minimalist and less sophisticated. I predict an increasingly sharp difference in the fitness industry between "zoo-oriented" gyms and "natural movement oriented" gyms focusing on natural, evolutionary and practical movement. In the first kind you'll find people exercising on machines and just thinking their sophisticated program is a boring chore but that is their only hope to get the physical appearance they are dreaming of; in the second you'll find gyms without mirrors or machines and filled with exuberant people that have truly fallen in love with movement again in a quest to unleash their wild human animal inside and recover their evolutionary birthright of natural movement skills and vitality.I see this split coming: a so-called "upstream" but in fact downstream, super zoo approach of fitness going on on the one hand, then the come back of an upstream, though so far too often seen as backward, wilder and healthier fitness orientation on the second hand, that will produce new generations of amazing natural athletes or if you will of strong, healthy, happy and free individuals. No doubt. To me, the revolutionary is now in the evolutionary.Remember, we're all born to be wild!5 I've seen your ideas presented as an updating of the "Methode Naturelle" of Georges Hébert. From what I've read, his philosophy is holistic – much broader than exercise. Can you indicate some of the wider consequences of the motto - - Être fort pour être utile"--"Being strong to be useful."Methode Naturelle was not only a physical but a moral education based on altruism, hence the motto "to be strong to be useful". But I personally have a problem with morals or ethics when it comes to deciding what is good or what is not good for me, what is done and what's not, what I should do or what society expects me to do or would like to impose to me as some form of duty.After all, a tool is useful, a cog in the machine is useful right? I accept no institutional duty. Free will is the most precious thing in my eyes. If I choose to be helpful to others, which I in fact often do because I tend to like others, it is because I decide so and not because I have to. The problem is, many people often think of altruism as sacrificing oneself or one's resources unconditionally for others, even for those that are total strangers to you or even if it's going to be seriously detrimental to yourself. I prefer to impose no moral code in MovNat and leave it up to each individual to decide for themselves what is best when it comes to investing their energy or risking their physical integrity for others, because each situation is different. MovNat training will greatly increase your preparedness so that, in time of need, you have the ability to respond efficiently to practical challenges. Now if your goal is to save lives it's best to consider becoming a firefighter for instance. These guys save lots of lives!MovNat stands for a different motto which is "Explore your true nature". First, people undergoing the zoo syndrome shouldn't think of helping others first but make sure they're recovering their own strength and vitality before anything. They want to rehabilitate themselves and get stronger and healthier before anything and this should be their absolute priority. They need a training and education that is liberating and empowering.Again, I am convinced that our true nature is not only to be strong but also healthy, happy and free. If you become such an individual, then there's many ways you can help others, if such is your intention. It's entirely up to you.6.What implications does your particular philosophy have in terms of diet? Sleep? Posture?Evolutionary biology but also experience makes it clear we should go for a diet that is as close as possible to the one of our ancestors before the rise of civilization, agriculture, and more recently industrially processed food. Mostly raw, made of lots of vegetables, fruits, meat, fish, eggs, nuts and containing no grains and no dairies. Recovering true, natural taste and smell and the ability to fast sometimes.Sleeping enough, resting frequently, going to bed early, leave a window open to make sure air is renewed, avoiding synthetic fabrics.I personally like to sleep on the floor, not in a bed, not even on a real mattress. To me it's more comfortable this way, and this way I can sleep about anywhere without experiencing discomfort whenever I'm travelling.Avoid staying still for too long, check body tensions frequently and relax, breathing well, slowly and deeply.That's a few insights, though in my opinion no personal lifestyle should ever become an obsessive application of overly strict rules. It's all a matter of paying attention, of awareness, and when for some reason you know you're not really respecting the needs of your true biological nature, make sure you'll re-establish balance very soon.7 One of the movement patterns that you recommend is "defence" – grappling / boxing etc. I've recently begun to train in Krav Maga and am really enjoying it for the coordinated /useful movements. But the social side is great too – supporting and helping each other in class. Is there a social side to movement that we also need to recover?Obviously yes.I believe the self-obsessed, cosmetics-driven fitness practitioner is missing an important point among others, which is a healthy, cooperative interaction with others. The result in thinking isolation is that in addition to isolating your muscles, you tend to isolate yourself. Is there any fitness machine designed for two people to work out cooperatively and coordinate their movements? Now imagine yourself as part of a small tribe 100,000 years ago, would you spend your time figuring out the most efficient strategy to build big guns fast? Or the latest scientific discovery that will allow you to get six-pack abs in no time?No, you would rather find ways to work cooperatively with other members of the tribe and would expect all tribe members to do so!It would be a matter of survival at individual and collective level. A lack of cooperation could have you banned from the band .......and an isolated individual would have been so much more vulnerable. Not the smartest type of behaviour.So any intelligently designed training program should go beyond the only individual and integrate interaction between individuals.In MovNat, there's drills that are cooperative so you have to pay attention to others in order to coordinate your efforts with them and to be efficient as a group and successful in performing a task collectively. You learn about reciprocal altruism too. You get to know if or when you can trust in someone else and reciprocally, which with respect and satisfaction makes the equation behind any healthy relationship between human beings.

A wild workout for the real world

A WILD WORKOUT FOR THE REAL WORLD

For the first time, I see doubt creep into Zuqueto's eyes and freeze his feet. Zuqueto is a two-time world champion jujitsu fighter and a professional free diver who needs only a knife and a lungful of air to battle sharks. I've watched him scramble 40 feet up a coconut tree faster than I can run the same distance. I've also seen him lift a man twice his size and slam him down like a sack of cement. But now Zuqueto is on the verge of being defeated by a wooden pole lashed between two trees in the Brazilian rain forest.The pole, as thick as his arm, parallels the ground at roughly eye level. A man is standing on it, balancing like a tightrope walker, hopping from one bare foot to the other to amuse himself while Zuqueto sweats his options. He's been chasing this man for 20 minutes, sprinting around trees, leaping off boulders, and once even vaulting through the front window of a hut and back out through the rear without breaking stride."What are you waiting for?" asks the man on the pole. Before "you" leaves his lips, Zuqueto is flying straight at him, grabbing the pole with two meaty fists, pivoting a foot up and...losing his balance and falling back to the ground.Zuqueto leaps again, and again, while the guy on the pole looks down with the thinnest of smiles. I've got you, big boy, that smile is saying. I've found your weak spot. Now I'm going to rip it wide open.Then he winks at me, as if to say, And you're next, bud.When Zuqueto finally steps back, thick fists on his hips, chest heaving in fatigue and frustration, the man hops down from the pole. His name is Erwan Le Corre, a 37-year-old Frenchman who may rank as one of the most all-around physically fit men on the planet. His last name sounds exactly like the French phrase for "the body" -- le corps -- and his appearance lives up to the advance billing: If he grew out his sun-bleached hair and traded the board shorts for a loincloth, he'd be a perfect twin for Tarzan. Le Corre isn't just strong and fast and explosive and nimble; he's an athlete whose opponents are everything he sees and whose arena is anywhere he happens to be standing.I've just arrived at Le Corre's training base in the Brazilian rain forest. For the next 3 days, he'll be teaching me one of humankind's oldest, trickiest, and most indispensable physical disciplines. Le Corre calls it "Natural Movement" -- or "MovNat" in its French abbreviation -- and to explain what it is, he points at Zuqueto."This guy is in amazing shape," Le Corre says, speaking Brazilian Portuguese with an almost native accent. "He's strong and he has great endurance. But what happened here? All he had to do was get on top of this pole, and he couldn't. I can do it. Zuqueto's great-great grandfather could probably do it. At one point in time, just about every man alive could do it. But Zuqueto can't. And why? Because his body isn't smart enough."A smart body, he explains, knows how to convert force and speed into an almost endless menu of practical movements. Hoisting yourself onto a pole may seem as trivial as a circus stunt, but if you're ever caught in a flood or fleeing an attacking dog, elevating your body 5 feet off the ground could mean the difference between safety and sorrow.And with that one word -- "practical" -- Le Corre exposes a key weakness in modern exercise: Our workouts are domesticated, while the world out there is still plenty wild. In a pinch, can a man put gym-generated biceps and tank-tread abs to any real use? Could it be that our treadmill-running, elliptical-gliding, well-oiled Cybex world has turned us into show dogs who can't hold our own in the hunt?"I meet men all the time who can bench 400 pounds but can't climb up through a window to pull someone from a burning building," Le Corre says. "I know guys who can run marathons but can't sprint to anyone's rescue unless they put their shoes on first. Lots of swimmers do laps every day but can't dive deep enough to save a friend, or know how to carry him over rocks and out of the surf."Le Corre could rattle off dozens of other disaster and heroism scenarios, but standing still for 5 minutes has left him itchy. He interrupts his own speech to demonstrate what a smart body looks like in action. Launching himself into the air, he swings up onto the pole that stymied Zuqueto, and then twists his knees and swiftly rises like a surfer catching a wave. Then he proceeds to jump down, light as a cat, and mount the pole two...three...six more times, in each instance using his elbows, ankles, shoulders, and neck to create new climbing combinations."Being fit isn't about being able to lift a steel bar or finish an Ironman," Le Corre says, watching with satisfaction as Zuqueto finally makes it onto the pole and pumps a fist in the air like he's won his third world championship. "It's about rediscovering our biological nature and releasing the wild human animal inside."The best place to retrain that inner animal, Le Corre decided, is Itacare, a tiny village squeezed between the rain forest and the Atlantic Ocean. He wandered here from his home near Paris more than a year ago and instantly recognized two things: Itacare had everything he would need to teach MovNat and everything that the Master -- Georges Hebert -- would have loved.In 1902, Georges Hebert was a 27-year-old French naval officer stationed on the Caribbean island of Martinique. On May 8 of that year, he was aboard a ship off the coast when an ominous plume began rising from Mont Pelee, the volcano looming over Saint-Pierre, Martinique's largest city. Sometime around 8 a.m., Pelee erupted, raining hot ash and sizzling rocks on the horrified population. Molten lava gushed down the slope and spread through the streets in fiery streams, igniting everything in its path. Swarms of pit vipers poured off the mountain to flee the searing heat, tangling in the feet of fleeing people and biting at their legs. In minutes, the Paris of the Caribbean had turned into an absolute hell. Into this inferno plunged Hebert. Leading his troops ashore, he scouted out viable escape routes and waded into the panicky crowds, trying to shepherd them to safety. By the time the eruptions ceased, fewer than 700 people had survived, many thanks to Hebert's improvised rescue operation. Hebert was celebrated as a hero, but he couldn't help focusing on all of those who'd been lost. When he returned home to France, he looked around and was dismayed to see how many of his country-people reminded him of the victims he'd watched die in Saint-Pierre. How many of these Parisians, he wondered, would be able to carry a child on their backs? Or trust themselves to leap over a 3-foot gap? Or take an elbow to the face but manage to keep their balance and continue running for their lives? The modern world, Hebert believed, was producing hollow men who focused on appearance and forgot about function. At the same time, they stopped exercising with the wildness of kids and instead insulated themselves from risk. The cost, he felt, was far more destructive than they might think. Motivated to do what he could to realign our fitness philosophy, Hebert convinced the French navy to put him in charge of conditioning for a class of its recruits. Using the recruits as guinea pigs, he incubated a system he called Methode Naturelle -- the Natural Method. Hebert preached a simple philosophy -- "Be strong to be useful" -- and focused on 10 essential skills: walking, running, jumping, walking on all fours, climbing, balancing, throwing, lifting, defending, and swimming. Next, Hebert set to work on an outdoor training facility. He designed it to look like a giant playground, equipping it with climbing towers, vaulting horses, sandpits, and ponds. Scattered about were rocks and logs and long poles to be used for throwing, or balancing, or passing hand-to-hand while running, or anything else an athlete dreamed up at the moment. Hebert had only one firm rule: No competing. When you try to beat the other guy, he believed, you test the other man's weaknesses and not your own.Within a few years, Hebert's "Be Useful" system was adopted by the entire French navy. In 1913, speaking before the French Physical Education Congress, he astounded them with the results of tests he'd performed on 350 navy recruits. On a rating system that scored performance according to strength, speed, agility, and endurance, French sailors ranked with world-class decathletes.The time had come to take Methode Naturelle to the world. Hebert handpicked an elite team of trainers and prepared them to spread the word throughout Europe, Asia, and America. But before they scattered, the First World War erupted. Because of their superb physical conditioning and dedication to service, the men of Methode Naturelle were deployed in frontline positions against German troops armed with machine guns and poison gas. By the end of the war, the trainers were all dead or maimed. Hebert was heartbroken, but not surprised. Methode Naturelle was never about trying to live forever -- it was about trying to make a difference before you died. Hebert himself barely survived his wounds and struggled to regain the use of one arm. When he sank into paralysis after the war, Methode Naturelle was all but forgotten, swept away by a world that wanted to pretend that danger was gone forever. "This guy is really onto something," says Lee Saxby, P.T., a London-based physical therapist and the technical director of Wildfitness, an exercise program built around an evolutionary model of human performance. For years, Saxby had been teaching his clients that the key to overall health is a workout system that mimics the diversity of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. When Saxby stumbled across a YouTube video of Le Corre (MensHealth.com/LeCorre), he'd found Exhibit A in the flesh. "What impresses me most about that video is Le Corre's athleticism," Saxby says. "It drives me crazy that men think being in shape means being big. But the best athletes don't look like bodybuilders. They're lean and quick and mobile. Le Corre demonstrates real functional fitness -- the opposite of what they teach you in the gym."Le Corre, in fact, could be one of the best living examples of what our bodies were originally designed to do. "Versatility was the key to survival, because early humans had to be ready for anything at any time," says E. Paul Zehr, Ph.D., a kinesiology professor at the University of Victoria and the author of Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero. "If your daily life is hunting and being hunted, at a moment's notice you might have to sprint, jog, throw a spear, scramble up a tree, hunker down, and dig. The specialization we enjoy today, be it as a marathoner or a tennis player -- even a triathlete -- is a luxury of modern society. It doesn't have great survival value for Homo sapiens in the wild."Neither does a lonely lunch-hour jog on a treadmill. "We evolved to value the group dynamic, which is why it's far more beneficial to exercise as a team," says Frank Forencich, a trainer who studied hunter-gatherer tribes for his book, Exuberant Animal. "Among indigenous people, it's considered crazy to go off hunting by yourself. Working as a team is a way of protecting one another and trading hard-won knowledge. It's even become embedded in our DNA -- group activities have been shown to increase creativity and lower depression." But Le Corre's most important breakthrough might be the way he's welded purpose and playfulness. When he jumps and tumbles and chucks stuff around, he looks just like a kid mucking in the backyard. Zehr believes that could be the way we're hardwired to work out. "You never see your dog running nonstop around and around in a circle for an hour," he points out. "If he did, you'd think there was something wrong with him. Instead, he'll chase something, roll around, sprint, rest, mix things up. Animal play has a purpose, and it's not hard to surmise that human play should as well.""Most people see exercise as punishment for being fat," adds Saxby. "So instead of being a stress release, it's a mental burden. That's why I think what Le Corre is up to is bang on. If he can reverse the idea that exercise is punishment, it would be a great gift.""Ready?" Le Corre asks from his perch 20 feet up in a tree. Before we can speak, he answers for us. "Sure you are. Let's do it."After 3 days of double-sessions training, it's time for my going-away present/final exam. Le Corre has fashioned an obstacle course that will both test my jungle-man skills and give me a model for my own program back home. In keeping with his gospel of group dynamics, he has asked Zuqueto and another fighter, Fabio, to join me."The test," Le Corre says, "is to finish the course twice in less than 20 minutes." But it's not about speed, he stresses. Le Corre is convinced that 20 to 30 minutes a day is all anyone needs for a killer workout, as long as it's intelligently designed. By combining short, explosive bursts of running with lots of power work -- jumps, climbs, and deadlifts -- you can compress 2 hours of normal gym time into 20 minutes of constant motion.He drops his hand -- go! -- and we're off, chasing hard on each others' heels. The course has 12 stations, all of them sequenced into a natural flow through the forest. We're springing up into trees, contorting through the branches, and shinnying down 15-foot poles. He has us hoisting heavy logs on end and flipping them, top over bottom, up a hill. He has us crawling around stakes in the ground and snaking on our bellies beneath an overturned dugout canoe mounted a few inches off the ground. Even a small cabin comes into play: He has us vaulting through one window and out the other. The most ingenious thing about Le Corre's course, I realize as I finish the first lap, is how universal it is. Sure, it's a blast to horse around in trees in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest, but there isn't anything here that can't be approximated in a backyard or community park.As I approach the end of my second lap, I have only two obstacles left -- a leap from the porch and then a quick climb up a 20-foot pole braced between the ground and a branch high in a tree. I'm trying not to show it, but I'm on the verge of grinning with pride. Two days ago, my heart was in my throat before every jump. Now, after just 72 hours, I feel unstoppable.Naturally, that's when disaster strikes. When I stick the landing off the porch, a red-hot knife jabs into my spine. My back is seizing up so badly I can't even stand straight. I should have known I was pushing my luck -- 14-hour plane trips always leave me tight as a banjo string. So that's it, I'm done...until I remember Le Corre's motto."Smart body," I remind myself. "Use your smart body." I take hold of the long pole that extends on a 45-degree angle up into the tree. Gingerly, I hook one foot up, then the other, until I'm hanging upside down from the pole like a sloth. I tighten my grip and...wonder what the hell to do next."Any ideas?" I ask Le Corre."Claro," he responds. "Sure. Lots of them." It's an excellent teaching moment, the perfect opportunity for him to dig into his mental archives and pull out a few of the innovations he's compiled over the years. I've seen them in his notes, lots of stick-figure drawings dating back to Georges Hebert's original field experiments. Le Corre has a ton of wisdom to pass on -- but instead he just stands there, arms folded across his chest. He doesn't give me a clue...or even a smile. Neither do Zuqueto or Fabio. They've become converts to the essence of Le Corre's philosophy: When that volcano blows, you have to be ready to go on your own. You won't have a spotter to ease the bar off your chest, no volunteer handing you water at the 20-mile mark. A group dynamic may be our natural impulse, but in a pinch, count on being alone. The only thing you can rely on is the ingenuity programmed into your system by 2 million years of hope and fear. My hands are slick with sweat and starting to slip off the pole. Just to secure my grip till I can think of something, I slowly start swinging from side to side, building up momentum. At the top of every swing, my body is suspended for a second in midair. That's when I move my hands and feet farther up the pole, gliding higher and higher with almost no pain or effort."Ah, you learned my secret!" Le Corre calls from down below. "The best secret of all -- your body always has another trick up its sleeve." It's hard to tell from upside down at the top of a tree, but I think he's smiling.

MovNat (movement naturally)

MOVNAT is an outdoor functional training method designed to develop, maintain or restore the full range of natural human movement capacities such as walking, running, jumping, climbing, moving on all fours, balancing, lifting, carrying, throwing, catching, swimming and defending. Through practice, fundamental physical qualities such as speed, strength, endurance, coordination and flexibility are developed. Training also necessitates and promotes the growth of essential mental and moral qualities like self-control, courage, will, focus, alertness, and respectfulness, solidarity, cooperation, and reciprocal altruism. Last, just as MOVNAT promotes the return of the body’s natural physical capacities, it also encourages respect and concern for nature. We train to be able to move naturally, we train in nature, and we train to connect ourselves with the natural world and to care for it.

This only scratches the surface of MovNat and only with years of progressive and continious training, along with correct focus will one start to understand the true essence of not only movnat, but what is truely means to be part of the mighty animal kingdom.

www.movnat.com
"Explore your true nature"

Body, Mind and Spirit. Le Methode Naturelle

For the late French physical educator Georges Hébert (1875-1957), influenced by the "noble savage" teachings of philosopher and educationalist Jean-Jacques Rousseau,Hebert believed only the observation of nature could lead people to the true methods of physical development. He wrote:
"The final goal of physical education is to make strong beings. In the purely physical sense, the Natural Method promotes the qualities of organic resistance, muscularity and speed, towards being able to walk, run, jump, move quadrupedally, to climb, to walk in balance, to throw, lift, defend yourself and to swim."

An officer in the French Navy prior to the First World war, Hébert was stationed in the town of St. Pierre in Martinique. In 1902 the town fell victim to a catastrophic volcanic eruption and Hebert heroically co-ordinated the escape and rescue of some seven hundred people from this disaster. This experience had a profound effect on him, and reinforced his belief that athletic skill must be combined with courage and altruism. He eventually developed this ethos into his personal motto, "Être fort pour être utile"--"To be strong to be useful."
Hébert had travelled extensively throughout the world and was impressed by the physical development and movement skills of indigenous peoples in Africa and elsewhere:
Their bodies were splendid, flexible, nimble, skilful, enduring, resistant and yet they had no other tutor in Gymnastics but their lives in Nature.
While still at sea, Hébert began to systematise a method of physical culture training patterned on the abilities of the indigenous peoples he had encountered.

Methode Naturelle. (Natural Method)

A (Natural Method) session is composed of exercises belonging to the ten fundamental groups: walking, running, jumping, quadrupedal movement, climbing, equilibrism (balancing), throwing, lifting, defending and swimming.A training session consists, then, of exercises in an outdoor environment - a course of greater or lesser distance (a few hundred meters to several kilometers), during which, one walks, one runs, one jumps, one progresses quadrupedally, one climbs, one walks in unstable balance, one raises and one carries, one throws, one fights and one swims.This course can be carried out in 2 ways:1 - the natural or spontaneous way; i.e., on an unspecified route through the countryside.2 - within an especially designed environment.All of the exercises can be carried out while progressing through this environment.Finally, the session can last from 20 to 60 minutes.
Thus, Hébert was among the earliest proponents of the "parcours" or obstacle course form of physical training, which is now standard in the military and has led to the development of civilian fitness trails and confidence courses. In fact, woodland challenge courses comprising balance beams, ladders, rope swings and so-on are often still described as "Hebertism" or "Hebertisme" courses both in Europe and in North America. It may even be possible to trace modern adventure playground equipment back to Hébert's original designs in the early 1900s.

The true Natural Method, in its broadest sense, must be considered as the result of these three particular forces; it is a physical, virile and moral synthesis. It resides not only in the muscles and the breath, but above all in the "energy" which is used, the will which directs it and the feeling which guides it."The guiding principles and fundamental rules of the Natural method are:

1 the continuity of work.

2 work by contrary alternation of effort.

3 gradation of intensity of work.

4 initial Rust removal. (meaning, like a rusty hinge, the more you move it, the easier it becomes to move)

5 proportioning of the quantity of work, and individualization of this proportioning.6 adjustment of pace.

8 adjustments of the durations.

9 flexibility of work.

10 correct attitude and full breathing.

11 freedom supplements action of each participant, even in collective work.

12 work timed by the stopwatch

13 improvement of technical execution.

14 research and correction of the weak points.

15 work in a state of naturalness/nudity. Hardening with the bad weather.

16 free demonstrations of joy to be encouraged. To sing and to cry.

17 virilisation or the cultivation of energy.

18 moralisation or the cultivation of noble feelings.

19 emulation