Urban movement

Returning to the basics in a goal-oriented culture

Whether you’re into yoga, Crossfit, kettlebells or just experiencing less discomfort as you move through your day, re-learning basic movement patterns will help you move well in all situations, both habitual and unexpected. Picture an infant squatting to examine the texture of a rock. It’s an effortless descent into a restful, compressed position, and the child essentially floats back into the standing position to carry on. Now, picture the average American adult emerging from a driver’s seat or getting up to leave a movie theater. It’s an inefficient struggle at best. This awkwardness is simple to address, but fitness seekers usually want an intensive training regimen—even if they haven’t revisited the fundamentals of human movement since childhood.

In April, local instructors from nearly every fitness denomination gathered at DEEPmovement Studio to look through an unfamiliar lens with the founders of Urban Movement, a Parkour/movement school in Houston.

The collective included a modern dance director, a chiropractic duo, a professional strong man, a Crossfit gym owner, multiple yogis, a tantra instructor, a body worker, a martial artist, personal trainers and instructors in kettlebells and MovNat. It sounds like an intimidating group, but it quickly became apparent that everyone was beyond excited to collaborate.

Urban Movement founders Cameron Pratto and Wes Hamner focused the workshop on practical sequences and refining the basic skills behind complex movements. Pratto said some approaches to fitness aren’t as useful as people like to think. 

“I train for life,” he said. “You can dead lift 300 pounds for reps all day, you can have a chiropractor adjust your back after sitting at a desk all week, you can do a yoga routine for an hour at a time—but when do we train for real-life situations? Where is the adaptability, and how does this influence our ability to move through a lifetime?”

We started with the most basic and necessary movement of all: getting down to the ground and back up, efficiently. We played with different ways of moving from sitting to standing without using our hands. Give it a try; if you haven’t been coached to make this simple transition with integrity, it can be extremely challenging. After we each made an attempt, Pratto showed us how to move through the progressions with ease. We also learned how to precision jump, crawl under obstacles and explore the vastly dynamic hip joint. These skills carry over into our daily activities and help integrate our floppy modern bodies.

  To an outsider, the workshop probably looked like a bunch of oversized children learning how to move their bodies for the first time. But regardless of conditioning level, everyone was exhausted after an hour. It was a thing of beauty to see so many fitness experts thinking about their bodies in a new way. We learned that owning baseline movements gives us the freedom to pursue specialized movements, such as heavy lifts or contortions on the mat.

“Why focus on lifting weights if you can’t even get off the floor without using your hands?” Pratto said. 

There’s a superficial polarity among fitness enthusiasts—Crossfitters Crossfit, Yogis stretch and flow, weightlifters max out—but wellness goes deeper than that. We all want to feel limber when we get out of the bed in the morning. And as instructors, we all want to support this ability in our clients. Building a movement-conscious community will help us evolve as individuals and improve the quality of fitness instruction—and overall health and wellness—in our city. 

[Editor’s note: Zac King is a natural movement instructor at DEEPmovement Studio.]

For more on the art of wellness, check out our Q&A with local yoga and meditation instructor Tom Tobias