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Welcome to BrickhouseBodymind.com, the online home of Philip Walter (that's me) and the Brickhouse Bodymind Integral Fitness Lifestyle. I am an ISSA Certified Fitness Trainer and Level 1 Prasara Body-Flow™ yoga instructor currently living in the Little Rock area.

First, here's a bit about my training philosophy:

My strategy is first and foremost an integral strategy. As such, it is comprehensive and balanced – comprehensive in that it takes into account all effective strategies, regardless of their temporal or geographical origin, and balanced in that it refuses to leave behind any aspect of the individual (mind, body and spirit being the three major aspects).

From that foundation, I can employ a variety of techniques to improve your fitness and kick your personal performance to a new level.

Circular Strength Training© (CST)

CST is a comprehensive and groundbreaking system designed by international martial arts champion, Scott Sonnon. It consists of three components called wings. The three wings are 1) athletic weight-swinging using his patented Clubbells©, 2) compensatory movement through Prasara body-flow™ yoga, and 3) joint mobility training through his Intu-Flow© program. These three components work together to increase the strength and quality of your soft tissue, reduce compression in your joints, and eliminate the evils of residual muscle tension and sensory motor amnesia.

In addition to its three-winged structure, CST also introduces a new way of thinking about program design. By integrating and "waving" your workouts based on intensity level, you can maximize your body's ability to adapt and recover in ways you never thought possible. My knowledge as an ISSA Certified Fitness Trainer, Certified Prasara Yoga Instructor, and perpetual student of life allows me to insert many combinations of exercises and compensations into the basic CST formula to get the best results for you as a client.

Evolutionary Fitness

The Evolutionary Fitness model, pioneered by Art DeVany, PhD, also informs my training philosophy. In order to understand his point of view, it is important to understand what is known in genetics as the genotype-phenotype distinction. Basically, the genotype is an organism’s full hereditary information. It is a set of potentialities that will express themselves through morphology, development and behavior based upon the organism’s interaction with its environment. This ultimate expression of genotype is known as phenotype – the actual observed properties of the organism.

So the idea is that the human genotype adapted to thrive in an environment vastly different than the one in which we live today. The hunter-gatherer genotype that underlies our modern-day phenotypic forms was designed to express itself properly in the face of an abundant, sometimes difficult to obtain food supply characterized by low-glycemic and nutrient-rich foods. The activity level in this environment was unpredictable. Early humans traveled long distances by foot, spent lots of time lounging around the campfires, and intermittently engaged in short, intense expenditures of energy while fleeing predators or hunting prey – think of a lion on the plains of Africa.

The problem we have now is that the conditions surrounding modern man – increasingly sedentary occupations, a food supply high in refined sugars and low in nutrient density, and an ever-increasing access to convenience items that require less and less of us physically – lead to poor genetic expression in the human organism. Being aware of this allows a person to tweak his or her activity and diet to encourage more favorable gene expression.

The Science of Yoga

Everything I do is informed in some way by the Yogasutras of Patanjali. These are in essence the Bible of yoga practice. Please understand, however, yoga practice is not religion. It can be deeply personal and even profoundly spiritual, but know that any one of any faith can benefit from yoga practice. Yoga practice is so much more than stretching and chanting. It is a science – a technology of human transformation. It is a committed inquiry into your current condition, the ramifications of which cannot be overstated, in terms of personal development, self-confidence, injury prevention, and lifelong satisfaction.

Combining these principles with the elegant techniques of CST, my unique strength training repertoire, and the understanding of how one helps the human genotype express itself in healthy ways, we can consider your goals and your current condition to come up with a plan that will have you reaching, and surpassing your goals in ways not possible through conventional training regimens. Feel free to check out my blog for more on my training philosophy, or if you’re interested in working together, head over to my services/rates page to take the next step toward better health in 2008.