Written by Philip Walter on Apr 20 at 9:47 pm.
Photo courtesy of
black dog photo productions
First off, a quick apology for letting nearly two weeks go by without a post. I have been earnestly training for this race, as well as getting together material for a string of features over the next couple of weeks. There’s a new episode of BrickhouseBodymindTV going live tomorrow, followed closely by a long article on using the yogic bandhas to enhance core strength and ensure proper alignment in all you do, then I’ll be releasing the BrickhouseBodymind Blueprints for effective warmups and cooldowns that go along with the intelligent stretching articles. So again, sorry for the lengthy absence.
That said, the OT50 is actually two races, one that is 50 km (approximately 31 miles) and another that is 50 miles, both of which started at Maumelle Park just outside Little Rock at 6:00 a.m. on April 19, 2008. The bulk of the distance in both races ran along the Ouachita Trail from its trailhead at Pinnacle Mountain State Park and followed it around the north side of Lake Maumelle. The outbound leg included a jaunt up the east side of Pinnacle Mountain, which is a steep climb from about 400 feet above sea level to the summit at 1011 feet. Here’s a map of the course with landmarks and mile markers, or you can download this kmz file to scope out the Ouachita Trail 50k course for 2008 in Google Earth.
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Written by Philip Walter on Apr 8 at 5:36 pm.
Editor’s Note – What follows are my personal impressions and interpretations of Scott Sonnon’s latest book, Prasara Yoga: Flow Beyond Thought. My use of the term “integral,” both in the title of this article and throughout the body of it, to describe Coach Sonnon’s work is not meant in any way to confuse it with nor to marginalize Sri Swami Satchidinanda’s Integral Yoga Hatha or Sri Aurobindo’s The Integral Yoga, both of which stand on their own as seminal works. I only mean to indicate how Scott’s approach employs the primary integral strategy (which produces the All-Quadrant integral model described in my article on Integral Fitness) of assimilating truths from all sources available, whether ancient, modern, or somewhere in between, in order to present the most complete picture of human development possible.
Photo courtesy of
the flow academy
I’d like to start by thanking one of my readers, Duff (of fallingfruit.tv and precisionchange.com), for turning me on to the work of martial arts champion and Circular Strength Training® developer Scott Sonnon. For a voracious seeker of light like myself, personal development can be charted along a path upon which the most significant twists and turns are tied to landmarks such as the reading of a specific book or the discovery of a specific writer or teacher.
At age 29, my own path has several of these major landmarks – Roshi Philip Kapleau’s The Three Pillar’s of Zen; the wonderful fiction of Tom Robbins, which led me to Alan Watt’s The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are; my first yoga teacher, Matt Krepps, who pointed me toward Godfrey Devereux’s Dynamic Yoga, and the work of Jed McKenna; the fiercely voluminous library of Ken Wilber; and now Scott Sonnon, who has empowered me to take yet another turn in my personal journey.
What Scott Sonnon presents in his latest book, Prasara Yoga: Flow Beyond Thought, is a digitally digestible, postmodern path to enlightenment. With the human body as the vehicle, it is an exquisitely sophisticated, integral approach to Hatha Yoga.
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Written by Philip Walter on Apr 5 at 5:51 pm.
Photo courtesy of
hisashi_0822
So in Part One we learned about proprioception and how the myotatic stretch reflex helps us do a great number of things. We also learned that most muscle and tissue tear injuries (including strains and sprains) occur not as the result of a singular stretch beyond maximum threshold, but because of a combination of extreme stretch on one hand and sudden contraction due to the stretch reflex on the other hand. Finally, we discovered that the sensitivity of the stretch reflex varies according to several factors that affect its “gain.” In this part of the discussion we will establish the basic tenets of intelligent stretching in a practical setting.
The Aspects of Intelligent Stretching
An intelligent stretch accomplishes four main things: 1) it reduces the likelihood of injury, 2) it mitigates residual tension and pain by reducing compression in the various joints of the body and decreasing myofascial density, 3) it gives us access to a greater range of motion, and 4) it increases our neuromuscular connections. All of these things are accomplished by remaining active throughout the stretch.
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Written by Philip Walter on Mar 18 at 12:44 am.
Photo courtesy of j / f / photos
Okay, I have been reading a lot lately in physical fitness literature about how stretching is not as fantastic for your body as once thought. When I took basic health in college, static stretching was taught as an integral part of a complete physical fitness plan. Not sure what that curriculum looks like today, but a greater understanding of the stretching phenomenon has forced me over the years to rethink how it fits into my workouts.
I know what you’re thinking – But Philip, you do a lot of yoga … and “flexible” is part of your blog’s tag line, for cyrin’ out loud. Surely you’re not about to talk smack about stretching, are you?!
Well, yes I am, but it’s not because all forms of stretching are inherently bad for your body, it’s because the efficacy and proper methodology of stretching are so widely misunderstood, especially when it comes to yoga posture practice.
In Part One of this two-part series, I want to introduce you to the stretch reflex and debunk one of the biggest myths about stretching. I’ll warn you up front, this one does get a little technical, but if you stick with it, I guarantee you’ll be a smarter stretcher for it.
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Written by Philip Walter on Mar 12 at 10:59 pm.
Photo of Rafa Nadal, courtesy of the ATP Masters Series online. Note the difference in size between biceps. (He’s a lefty).
In what became just one more in a long line of NPR driveway moments, I caught myself lurking longer than necessary in my car outside the grocery store, captivated by a story on the show, The Infinite Mind. The name of the episode was “Handedness,” and as you could probably guess, it centered on the phenomenon of left- or right-handedness.
The most interesting part to me was about the human being’s tendency toward right-handedness. As a species we are about 85-90 percent right-handed. According to a guest on The Infinite Mind, other species show no signs of such a skew. Research shows that animals do tend to have some paw, leg, appendage dominance that is analogous to handedness in humans, but that the split between right and left lateralization is pretty much even. So what gives?
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