Chapter 21: Progressions - The Practice of Natural Movement

Progressions are the steps that take you from the basic level of practice to increasingly more challenging levels—so you can make progress. Progressions can refer to the learning and improvement process of a technique as well as the increase of volume, intensity, or environmental complexity of your training.

You can ensure progressions by feel, observation, and intuition without the need for detailed programming (which is a quantified, predesigned approach to training; read more in Chapter 23, “Programming”). This process is called autoregulation, and it enables you to modify the level of difficulty of your practice on the go during a session and from session to session, depending on how each specific performance and overall progress go.

The intuitive way has been working for humans since the dawn of mankind, whereas programming is a quite recent science that’s based on measurements and quantification and has a goal of helping you achieve very specific results. To most modern humans who have been disconnected from nature since birth and deprived from the healthy expression and development of their full Natural Movement behavior and potential, the intuitive way may not seem and feel that intuitive any longer.

It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.”

—W. Edwards Deming

 

The incredibly varied techniques, movements, and the diverse principles for efficient practice I’m sharing in this book should give you a solid basis for practicing on your own without an immediate need for programming. When you follow the instruction in this book, your practice of Natural Movement is not purely intuitive because it’s significantly influenced by all the information I provide as well as the sequence in which I deliver it, but we could call it “intuitive” in the sense that you will adjust your practice and progressions mostly or even entirely through feel and observation rather than through programming. Practicing that way doesn’t necessarily mean that what you’re doing lacks structure because you could structure your practice without feeling the need to detail and quantify every aspect of it.

Going through progressions based on natural feedback doesn’t mean that your practice is not effective and producing significant results. Conversely, just because your practice is entirely programmed and quantified doesn’t mean that it’s more effective because numbers on the paper make it look more rational or even “science based.” As a matter of fact, as a beginner, you might achieve tremendous progress by feel and observation—that is, through autoregulation—and through the synergy of highly diverse and unquantifiable neural and physiological adaptations than you would if you were attempting to quantify every aspect of your movement. An autoregulated and progressive practice of Natural Movement following the MovNat method is certain to make you achieve impressively broad and fast results. All you need to do is to make sure that your practice has enough variety, frequency, volume, intensity, and complexity; similar to a programmed approach to practice, intuitive practice is structured and based on consistency.

Progression and Scalability

 

Progression is the increased difficulty in level of practice to reach the superior performance for which you are aiming, whereas scalability is the level of difficulty at which you can afford to operate as you perform in real time. Progressions might aim at improving motor control (techniques, skills, efficiency) as well as physiological adaptations (strength, energy systems) by gradually increasing the levels of stress the body is subjected to (which is also called progressive overload).

In MovNat, progressions have first to do with the continuity of movement patterns and technique acquisition that follow a progressive sequence independent of environmental complexity, starting with fundamental positions and movements and evolving toward related yet increasingly more challenging techniques such as Dead Hang, Front Swing (hanging), Power Traverse, Pull-Up, High Hand-Reach Pull-Up, Forearm Pull-Up, Pop-Up, Push Power-Up. Obviously, if you can’t hang, you can’t pull up, and if you can’t Pull-Up, you can’t Push Power-Up! This is more a matter of progression than scalability, even though choosing movements that you can actually perform at a given stage of your progress is part of the scalability of your practice. Scalability, or scaling, is specifically the aspect of progression that has to do with ensuring a sustainable level of volume, intensity, and complexity (VIC) as you perform regardless of future performance or goals; indeed, if you can’t perform at a given level of difficulty today, tomorrow’s intended level is irrelevant. In MovNat, the method of teaching Natural Movement, we employ the use of intelligent progressions and a wide range of scalability variables to ensure our students make efficient and satisfying progress in their practice.

When the primary goal of movement practice is efficiency, the level of difficulty as you perform should never be too easy or too hard. Therefore, you should scale up or down at any time to keep your practice optimally challenging while remaining safe.

Achievable goals are the first step to self-improvement.”

—J. K. Rowling

 

Let’s say you are practicing several techniques mixed in a “combo” as part of a program you have designed. (You read more about combos in Chapter 23.) You have a certain number of repetitions you want to do for each movement at a certain level of intensity and complexity. However, what you have on paper and in mind is not necessarily what goes on. As you go through the combo, you might notice that the volume or intensity or complexity must be reduced if you want to be able to maintain efficiency.

You must trust what is going on in real time rather than what you programmed yourself to do. If doing fewer repetitions; reducing height, distance, speed, or weight; or simplifying surfaces is what is required for you to maintain quality movement, that’s what you need to do regardless of what your training plan says. Insisting on sticking to a program when reality is proving that you can’t do the plan efficiently will result in practice and memorization of inefficiencies, and it puts you at greater risk of injury.

However, scalability also means that you may increase the volume, intensity, and complexity if you feel particularly comfortable with challenging yourself more; you just must be able to preserve the same level of efficiency.

Adaptability in movement practice is not reserved only to environmental complexity; it has to do with all types of variables and how you physiologically and psychologically respond to diverse inputs. This means that a 100 percent success rate at doing a movement at a given level of intensity and complexity does not necessarily imply that your practice is too easy and that you must immediately scale it up so you start experiencing some failure. Are you being challenged despite being effective each time? Are you learning and improving in the process? If so, you might not need to immediately increase the difficulty. Although your execution externally looks right, you might be having a suboptimal experience psychologically, and you might feel that you could use more relaxation, better breathing, or greater accuracy.

 

The VIC Principle: Volume, Intensity, Complexity

 

Volume has to do with one of two things: the number of times you are doing a movement (for instance, how many jumps you perform overall) or the duration of the movement (for instance, how long you run). Greater volume supports the development of endurance, and if you increase volume with a focus on technique, efficiency improves as well.

Intensity has to do with how fast you do the movement. Intensity also is affected by external, environmental parameters—such as height, depth, distance, weight, or force of impact—that demand a significantly greater physical effort. You can combine variables to make performance extremely challenging. For example, sprinting is more intense than jogging, and jumping ten feet forward requires more effort than jumping two feet forward. Greater intensity supports the development of strength, power, and work capacity.

Last, complexity relates to environmental variables (it may also relate to sophistication in movement pattern). For instance, a rounded, uneven, unstable surface is a more complex surface to land on than a flat, even, stable one. Greater environmental complexity supports the development of higher levels of movement competency and adaptability.

A typical beginner reflex, especially in young individuals, is to immediately jump as far as they can, lift as heavy as they can, run as fast as they can, try the most difficult obstacles, do as many repetitions as they can, and so on. They try to start with high-intensity, high-complexity, high-volume action. It is nearly impossible to learn a technique this way if you haven’t already established a high level of efficiency.

Progressions in volume, intensity, and complexity work very well in a linear scalability, which means the consistent—yet incremental—increase of the variables involved in making your practice more difficult: higher number of repetitions; longer duration; greater speed, distance, height, depth, and weight; and more complex environmental variables. All three variables are intertwined to contribute to the development of greater capability and performance. A combination of volume and intensity supports the development of greater capacity. When intensity and complexity or complexity and volume are associated, the practice becomes representative of some of the most difficult single physical actions or prolonged physical actions that can be encountered in the real world. Depending on the level of intensity, complexity, or volume, greater frequency may support greater ability to recover or improved technique.

Great levels of any of those variables in training also fosters mental training and the increase of courage and resiliency. When you add frequency to the mix, you’re developing discipline and commitment. (Frequency relates to how often you practice techniques or movement in relation to a specific level of intensity, complexity, and volume.)

Last, progressions in VIC also work wonderfully with variability, which implies that you will vary difficulty and challenge from session to session by changing any of those variables in a non-linear fashion, which “surprises” your body and breeds greater physiological adaptability.

Getting Started

 

So where should you start? Would you learn balancing by trying to walk along a frail log that spans a deep ravine? Of course not.

Remember the Progressive principle. As you start, your primary goal is to establish a baseline quality of movement and learn fundamental techniques to develop efficient movement, which is simply impossible to achieve in the presence of high levels of intensity or complexity. (A certain volume—that is, a number of repetitions or time spent on a given technique—is necessary.) You can equally condition through sloppy technique or through impeccable technique, with the former teaching you inefficiencies and the latter teaching you efficient movement. Either way, the amount of energy and time spent is the same. Therefore, I recommend you start with the following:

• Simple movements that are not too hard for you to do: The movements should be sufficiently challenging so you are not overly successful or constantly failing; you get benefit from having a mix of successes, half-successes, and failures. The movements shouldn’t be so hard that you cannot perform them and become discouraged or get injured trying, but they shouldn’t be so easy that you get bored. However, you also don’t want to systematically skip the easy movements because they are beneficial in many ways. For example, easy movements release mental tension, might help alleviate physical discomfort, and energize your body and mind. Don’t mistakenly believe that low-intensity isn’t a stress on your body. Practicing even a relatively low volume of gentle movements is a form of stress, but it’s stress that’s sustainable and beneficial, starting with keeping you ready, or even helping you to get ready again, for more difficult movements.

Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.”

—Chinese proverb

 

In this book, I have done my best to present you with the simpler and easier positions and movements before I progressively explain the more complex and challenging ones. It is a natural progression that you want to follow as much as possible.

• Low to medium volume: A certain amount of time or number of repetitions is necessary to learn technique and acquire efficiency. However, just because you can repeat the same movement one hundred times right from the beginning without too much effort doesn’t mean that you should. You could surprisingly wake the next day and feel sore beyond belief. Instead of immediately going for high volume, first look at the quality of each movement you do while seeking constantly improved efficiency. A small number of mindful and efficient repetitions is better than many mindless and inefficient ones.

• Relatively low intensity: Intensity is like volume: Just because you could jump farther, run faster, or lift heavier already doesn’t mean that it is the right thing to do. If you do try to push the limits of intensity, you could be in real pain the next day, which, contrary to common belief, is not productive at all. Are your movements optimally efficient? If not, then you don’t deserve to work with greater intensity yet. Slow down, cowboy or cowgirl; you’re still riding a green horse.

• Relatively low complexity: The presence of context makes practice more realistic and satisfactory, but just because it is more realistic to jump between two obstacles doesn’t mean that you should start jumping a large gap between tree branches at a great elevation. Ground-level jumping surfaces will do. I talk about this more in the “Risk-to-Danger Ratio” section later in this chapter, and I explain why simplified environmental complexity within a controlled environment is where a safe and progressive path to skill acquisition and physical development should start.

You also need to manage frequency. How frequently you want to train the same skill, technique, drill, or combo depends on how you feel and respond to the movements at the level of volume, intensity, and complexity you practice them. For instance, when you practice technique at low intensity, you may use relatively high volume and great frequency; developing metabolic conditioning, on the other hand, relies on volume and intensity but not a high frequency. Your goal and how your body responds determine whether very frequent or more intermittent practice is desirable and beneficial. Everyone is somewhere on the continuum of health, fitness, movement competency, and physical capability, and each person must determine what is best based on feel, sensations, observation, and experience.

Example Progressions

 

Progressions in VIC can be dissociated, but it’s not necessary to dissociate them. You may incrementally raise levels of all three variables simultaneously rather than separately. The following are some examples for practicing the Power Jump with a progressive increase in each of the three variables (over the course of three days or more, again depending on your body’s response).

Volume Progression

• Ten repetitions, distance of 4 feet, ground level, large landing surface

• Fifteen repetitions, distance of 4 feet, ground level, large landing surface

• Twenty repetitions, distance of 4 feet, ground level, large landing surface

Intensity Progression

• Ten repetitions, distance of 5 feet, ground level, large landing surface

• Ten repetitions, distance of 5 feet 4 inches, ground level, large landing surface

• Ten repetitions, distance of 5 feet 8 inches, ground level, large landing surface

Complexity Progression

• Ten repetitions, distance of 5 feet, ground level, large/flat/stable landing surface

• Ten repetitions, distance of 5 feet, 1-inch elevation, medium/rounded/stable landing surface

• Ten repetitions, distance of 5 feet, 2-inch elevation, small/uneven/unstable landing surface

With a simultaneous progression in VIC, all three variables would obviously increase in difficulty together. However, that type of combination can be an explosive cocktail, with a significant increase in risk injury. For instance, greater volume at a low or medium level of intensity supports the improvement of technique, but greater volume with near maximum level of intensity increases and accelerates fatigue, which can suddenly destroy technique. If you also add environmental complexity, you are guaranteed to rapidly fail and are very likely to injure yourself as well.

Adjusting all three variables of progression should be approached very incrementally and wisely so that you stay effective, efficient, and safe. This being said, with very small incremental progressions, the combination of increasing volume, intensity, and complexity simultaneously can be extraordinarily valuable.

Often, a reasonable increase of complexity alone can make your practice immediately more beneficial. Let me give you an example. Say you are performing a volume of ten depth jumps with an intensity of 3 feet of depth. You have a choice between landing on the ground or landing on a 1-inch-thick, 1-square-foot board. In both scenarios, the volume and intensity are the same, but you have a choice of complexity, which challenges your attention, accuracy, and balance upon landing. You will spend the exact same time and energy going through those ten repetitions, but which of the two options is the more beneficial? You can apply this reasoning and complexity strategy to any movement you do.

How fast you should progress in terms of volume, intensity, and complexity has to do with many variables: your personal potential, your lifestyle and how it supports your practice, your commitment, how you physiologically respond, and so forth. You might have an innate ability to intuitively determine effective progressions, or you may determine progressions more analytically by monitoring such progress through methodical programming, or you may use a blend of the two. The golden rule of MovNat practice is to first establish quality of movement before you advance to higher quantity of movement, greater intensity of movement, and greater complexity of the environment where movement is performed. In other words, always respect scalability and progressions while focusing on improving or maintaining technique and movement efficiency. Never raise volume, intensity, or complexity too much or too soon. Knowing what level of volume, intensity, or complexity (or a combination of the three) you can—or rather should—handle without degrading good form is key to efficient and safe practice or effective programming. Such knowledge requires practice, experimentation, observation, experience, and humility.

You can always use this very simple yet very effective method when approaching progression in any of the three aspects of difficulty (VIC): If you can consecutively perform three to five impeccably executed attempts—and I really mean consecutively—then you have demonstrated enough consistency to deserve trying the same movement at a slightly higher level of difficulty. Keep in mind, though, that as with scalability, being effective at a movement at a given level of difficulty doesn’t mean that you aren’t challenged or improving anymore.

Risk-to-Danger Ratio

 

The risk-to-danger ratio is a concept that relates to practice mostly in regard to environmental complexity. Risk is the probability that you will be unsuccessful in completing a physical action and potentially be exposed to danger. Risk depends on your individual physical capability, the context, and your physical and mental state at the moment you perform the action.

For example, the risk of falling if you walk across a 2-foot-wide beam that’s 4 feet long is quite low because the beam is very wide and the distance is very short. If the beam is 1 inch wide and 20 feet long, the risk becomes quite high to an untrained person, yet for a person who’s well-trained in balancing, the risk remains low. However, even a well-trained person can experience risk of falling if that person is sick, strong winds are blowing, or something suddenly distracts the person as they try to balance across the beam.

Danger is the physical danger that is present if your movement fails, and it’s likely that you’ll experience physical harm or even death regardless of the level of risk involved. For example, the danger related to losing balance off a 2-by-4 that’s on the ground is zero; if you do lose balance, you only step off the surface rather than “fall off.” However, the danger related to losing balance off a 2-by-4 that’s 30 feet in the air is much higher; if you fall, you’ll likely hurt yourself badly—or possibly die.

Although danger has mostly to do with environmental complexity, it can also be related to your movement behavior. You don’t need a high level of danger to get hurt; you can get hurt when you augment the level of risk implied with movement by doing it at a greater level of intensity or complexity. For instance, if you walk on a concrete surface, you can’t really hurt yourself, but if you sprint on it and stumble, the combination of your weight, speed, gravity, and the hardness of the surface represents an obvious danger of causing you harm. If you sit on ice, you are safe, but standing and walking on it implies the danger of falling and hurting yourself.

Not all movements are dangerous, but all movements are risky. The more you move (increase volume) with more intensity in more complex environments, the more risk you deal with. Statistically, the chances that you will miss go up. If you go on a simple hike on the sidewalk, the longer you walk, the more likely it is that you’ll stumble at least once. It’s a risk you can’t deny, even though no real danger should be associated with that risk. When you know that risk exists, being mindful means treating your movements as if none are casual as you also stay relaxed and confident.

The risk-to-danger ratio is the relationship between risk and danger. It’s is generally inverse. The higher the danger involved in a physical action, the lower the risk should be. The higher the risk involved in a physical action, the lower the danger should be. Obviously, if the level of danger and the level of risk are both exceptionally high, you know that you are going to die. This is the extreme ratio you do not want.

Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free.”

—Paul Tillich

 

If you don’t know the environment where you are, or if you do but want to try something new or more difficult, you first need to assess the danger rather than the risk. It doesn’t matter if the chance of missing is only one in ten; if you perform the move several times in a row, you will miss. What happens if you do? That is the question. What danger and what consequences will you be dealing with at that point where you miss and fall? As part of your progression in Natural Movement practice, you want to avoid unsustainable levels of danger regardless of the level of risk. Period. There is a point at which additional danger doesn’t train your body; it trains only your mind. Yet if you know that missing implies great harm to your body or can result in death and that there is a risk of even one in ten, deciding whether to proceed is a choice that only you can make. Are you willing to kill yourself while trying?

Think about it: You can’t manage danger; you can manage only risk. After you take the risk, you can’t change the danger that exists, even if you have adjustable props that make your training environment safer, such as within controlled environments customized for practice; danger is not scalable while you’re in action. You can’t fix your movement once it has failed, and you can’t unhurt yourself after the hurt has occurred.

To lower risk, you must gradually build up your physical capability and self-confidence. In addition, you need to become gradually experienced in realistically assessing risk level. Just as you can’t expect “mind over matter” to make danger physically disappear, you can’t always expect your mind to nullify the probability of failure. If an environment exceeds your physical capability, the risk is maximum, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you want to keep your practice safe, you should be able to objectively assess that there is no—or very little—danger associated with a limited risk and that you can expect to perform a movement successfully based on your experience and current sensations. Better yet, you want to scale the movement by doing it first with a lower level of difficulty, which is the most effective way to give you a realistic sense of capability versus risk.

If you are afraid of doing a movement, there could be three causes:

• You have a rational reason to fear it because of the combined presence of danger and risk.

• You have a rational fear of the movement because of the presence of danger despite very limited (but not nonexistent) risk.

• You have an irrational fear of the movement because some risk exists, yet there is no actual danger.

You will find some obstacles that you can never overcome because they are beyond your physical capability. You can only dream of clearing them. Those you can physically overcome are either permanent limitations or mere delays: The choice is yours. Assuming that you want to enjoy life for a long time and that you have nothing to prove, facing high danger with the risk of failing your attempt is not the best choice. So many people have died while daring to do extremely dangerous feats.

You may occasionally face limited, non-lethal danger as part of mental training. It makes you or keeps you brave, emotionally in control, and coolheaded. But, by all means, keep your practice sustainable. Reserve the highly dangerous stuff for when the real world leaves you no other option.

OBSERVATION AND FEEL VERSUS QUANTIFICATION AND MEASUREMENT

 

Not all progress and performance can be measured easily. Aspects of technique—such as positional control, ease, relaxation, alertness, responsiveness, timing, balance, and accuracy—are mostly observed or felt. But it can be useful and highly motivating to measure what is measurable. You can use basic measurements, such as how far or high you can jump, how heavy you can lift, or how fast you can run a distance.

On the other hand, you might prefer not to use any measurement because you can just feel that you move better, that you are more mobile and relaxed, faster, and stronger. You might notice that not too long ago you were unable to jump over an obstacle that you now can clear quite easily. Do you know the exact distance between two rocks that you’re using in your practice? Does it really matter if you have a measurement for what you can simply observe, such as a longer distance now versus a shorter distance from before? In some cases, what you can perceive without measuring is sufficient to give you an empirical sense of your ability and also to give you the confirmation that you have made progress. It can also give you the confidence that unmeasured, nonprogrammed practice is quite effective when you are determined to get better and do better. It can make your practice simpler and save you time.

I have encountered highly fit athletes who knew exactly what their “vertical jump” height was but had no clue whether they were able to clear the distance between two rocks or walls when outdoors, let alone whether they could land accurately and in a stable way. My point is that it’s not necessarily more rational to precisely know what number or measurement you can achieve than it is to know what real-world physical performance you’re capable of or what progress you’ve made using the simplest and most ancient method: observation.

The important thing is to consider your mindset. Some people immediately relate to a “pure” approach of practicing Natural Movement barefoot, outside in nature, and by intuition. These people don’t want their practice to include what they see as artificiality—watches or clocks, training logs, counting, measurements, quantification, planning, or programming. Other people want to integrate Natural Movement practice within a gym setting and exclusively train in a quantifiable, predesigned, and monitored fashion. In the middle ground are the people who are opportunistic and adaptable; they can practice anywhere, using diverse environments, props, gear, methods, and mindsets. You don’t have to belong to a category, and you could ultimately blend both approaches. Not only is there no contradiction in approaching practice both ways, but you will learn a lot by doing so.

I am large, I contain multitudes.”

 

—J. K. Rowling

 

These two approaches serve the same purpose by using two different methods and mindsets. Neither is right or wrong, superior or inferior; they’re just different.