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In Check It Out, Practice / Training by andy

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In my energy balance article, I mentioned a product from RMAX called Warrior Wellness that I highly recommend for releasing stored tension, increasing dynamic range of motions, and generally keeping the body working as it should. Specifically, I listed it as suggested body maintenance for Taidoka.

In this review, I will share with you some of the things I love about the Warrior Wellness program. I’m hoping that i’ll convince you to purchase it for yourself so you can experience the benefits of including it in your own practice (and I do mean include; you don’t have to add anything, as Warrior Wellness can be integrated with whatever you already do - I refer here to your Taido practice sessions).

Results

I know some of you are results-oriented, so I’ll start by filling you in on what you can expect to notice after a couple of weeks of practice. If I were making a powerpoint presentation to your brain’s CEO and Board of Directors, I would probably start with some fancy title page with a cool gradient background. It would be blue with yellow block caps. The next page would be a bulleted list of the top attributes you will improve when you work this program:

• range of motion
• dynamic mobility
• balance
• movement efficiency
• integration of breathing with movement
• bodily awareness

After I had introduced each point briefly, the screen would dissolve to reveal the words: “All in about 25 minutes”.

So maybe I shouldn’t give up a steady job to try my hand at commission sales, but you get the idea. I’m pretty passionate about this program, because I believe it is the best available at anywhere near its price point. I may as well go on and mention that this DVD course sells for only $50. I’m pretty certain that we’ve all paid a lot more than that to get much less than what I promise this course can deliver if you work consistently.

My Results

I’ve have been working on Warrior Wellness since summer 05. Let’s just go on and say that I was in pretty good shape when I ordered the disc, arguably the best physical condition I had ever experienced up to that point in my life. I have always been (probably thanks to practicing Taido since an early age) very coordinated and basically flexible. But nobody over ten years old ever looked at my movements and said “Wow - that’s crazy!” until I had been doing this program for a couple of months.

When I went to Atlanta for the 30th anniversary tournament, I had a very few brief chances to put on a dogi and practice with everyone. I got a lot of wows in regard to my easy and fluid mobility. I think it was Chad Gilmartin that called me “jello-man”. I had been doing Warrior Wellness for two months, about five times a week. I was feeling really relaxed and in-tune with my body despite the crazy schedule I kept for those three weeks (about four hours of sleep a day and a lot of running around). It helped convince me that Warrior Wellness was doing good things for me.

In the months after that, students at the Yokohama dojo started to take notice of my interesting warm-up routine and my ability to move in strange ways.

At the 2006 Asia Pacific Games in Australia, almost everyone remarked at some point on my freaky mobility. Shima Sensei seemed impressed with my ideas for applications to Taido movements. It actually gave us a whole new framework to discuss power-development and transitions between various techniques.

Actually, it should be no surprise that increasing the body’s movement capabilities should have a good deal of carryover into Taido performance.

Back to the 5SRs

As I pointed out in my article about Taido’s 5jokun, Taido’s theory values creativity, adaptability, and freedom of motion, among other things. Just looking at high-level jissen or tenkai should be enough evidence that Taido is very demanding of our bodies’ abilities to move in various ways. In one of my first articles on this site, I wrote:

I feel that freedom is a necessary condition for creativity. In terms of motion, you are limited in your potential performance (your creativity) by your mobility and strength (your freedom to manipulate your body).

Warrior Wellness is a progressive technology for increasing physical freedom.

Teaching, or even just watching beginners should make it obvious that most people do not begin Taido with a great deal of skill in moving beyond general walking a other day-to-day movement. Our daily lives just do not stimulate our bodies’ capabilities to move. How many joints are there in the human body? I have no idea, but I can tell you there are a lot. How many of these joints get to move through their entire ranges of motion in a typical day? Very, very few.

Use it, or Lose it

If we do not move our joints through their full ranges of motion, that range diminishes. I’m not going to get medical, but this is not just an empirical observation - it has been experimentally verified time and time again that the body gets tight and movement gets “clunky” unless we make use of our bodies. This results from mechanical, neurological, and biochemical factors that are far beyond my ability to explain. For our purposes, the key point is that if we do not move our bodies, they get stiff.

When your mind doesn’t get the stimulation it craves, you get bored, complacent, and depressed. When your body doesn’t get the stimulation it craves, you get similar results. I assume that most people reading this get some physical stimulation through their Taido practices, but I think that you can do better.

The Three Levels

I said above that this program is a “progressive technology for increasing physical freedom”. You already know that I advocate incremental development, so let’s look at the three levels of the Warrior Wellness progression.

Since we don’t typically use our full ranges, we can safely assume that most of us are at less-than-optimal mobility right now. To address this, the first level of the Warrior Wellness course is focussed on recovering range of motion in each major joint. “Recovery” because we all have limitations that are induced by our habitual movement patterns.

Once we have worked out some kinks and freed up our joints, we will find that we are able to move through a wider range of motion. This wider range equates directly to greater freedom in our movements. That’s good for Taido, and I was just starting to see the possibilities when I visited Atlanta in 2005. After recovering range, Warrior Wellness helps us to refine the movements around each joint.

The second stage is about this refinement. The movements become a little more sophisticated and the focus is on absolute smoothness. If the first level is movement rehabilitation, this is movement reeducation. The second level starts us on a process of building greater efficiency of movement by learning how to use our joints in different ways.

The third level is coordination. At this stage, you should be able to move pretty freely in just about any way you can imagine. You’ll definitely feel the difference in Taido practices and likely during other activities as well. In the coordination stage, the course is focused on building our ability to use many joints together in… coordination. While the exercises look very similar to those on the first two levels, they are much more difficult to perform with any level of grace.

How to Practice

Many Taidoka will find the basic level “too easy” at first, and it is if you only look at the surface. I watched this video the first time and thought to myself “I already know how to move my arm in a circle.” But then I realized that my circle was not very big or smooth, and I was having to cheat by bending my elbow at a certain point. One of the most difficult keys to grasp at first is that Warrior Wellness is an introverted activity.

To get the most out of this program, we need to reduce outside distractions and shift our attentive focus within. Instead of simply swinging the arm in a circle and thinking “I’m doing it just the way that guy on my screen is,” the real benefit comes from performing the movement while asking ourselves these questions:

• How does this feel?
• Is this the most efficient motion I can make?
• Where do I carry tension?
• Where do I feel pain?
• Is one side of my body less-mobile than the other?
• What other joints want to recruit when I move this joint?
• Does my breathing mesh with my movement?

and et cetera. One of the valuable benefits of doing Warrior Wellness for me has been learning how to “listen to my body” in a very subtle way. I was already very bodily-aware and spent a lot of time thinking about movement efficiency, but my daily practice of this course has really increased my position sense, coordination, and sensitivity.

Western TaiChi?

All of these things are often cited as benefits of traditional moving meditations, such as taichi and qi-gong, both of which I happen to have a little bit of experience with. I can say for a fact that practicing Warrior Wellness can develop many of the the same attributes, and it does so without having to believe in chi/ki or practice semen retention.

Just as in taichi, it takes a few sessions to memorize the routines and internalize the movements, but after that, I find that I don’t spend a lot fo time thinking during my practice. Instead, I am focused on feeling - sensing my body and breath. This internal focus and relaxed awareness is exactly the mental state I would achieve during a good qi-gong session.

Actually, the Warrior Wellness progression is very similar to the basic stages one goes through when learning taichi: begin by learning the movements and building the balance and mobility required to perform them. Remove impediments to easy movement by relaxing into your tensions. Build smoother motion by focusing on the transitions between each “part”. Integrate breathing with movement such that the body tells you when and how much air to take. Eventually, the movements will do the breathing for you, without effort. Done properly, a twenty-minute session leaves you with more energy than you had when you began.

As a daily health practice, I rate this course highly. It takes only a short amount of time and provides concrete benefits as well as subtle benefits. One can receive all the benefits of any moving meditation practice and beyond by practicing this routine, in whole or in part, for a few minutes each day.

Application to Taido

Personally, I feel that this routine is far superior to any warm-up I have ever seen in a Taido practice. I recommend that every Taido instructor view this product and at least incorporate various aspects into their routines. In a perfect world, I would be beginning every class I lead with a condensed version of this routine. It is far more effective (and safer) than the standard of jogging, half-assed calisthenics, and static stretching.

I’ve already noted a lot of the general benefits in terms of health and and mobility. I also mentioned how this routine complies with Taido’s 5SRs - the core values of our art. Now I want to list some specifics about how practicing these movements can benefit our Taido performance.

• It increases mobility in all joints, which directly translates to increases flexibility for kicks and strikes as well as grappling.
• It builds balance which helps with kicking and other unilateral (one-legged) movements. The improvement in your balance also has carryover to improve your hengi and tengi.
• It teaches body awareness, allowing us to have a better sense of how we are moving.
• It teaches breathing integration. By tying our breath to our movement, we will find greater efficiency, endurance, and power.
• It’s a great warm-up.
• It’s great for releasing tension after practices as well.
• It may help to rehabilitate injuries sustained during practice.
• Lot’s of other stuff. There’s about a million other things I could say here that I feel make this program an ideal addition to everyone’s Taido practice.

Logistics

Routine Time

About a half hour for the first week. Once you basically memorize the routine and learn the exercises, it takes a little over twenty minutes for the beginners’ (”recovery”) level. The intermediate and advanced (”refinement” and “coordination”) levels are shorter, as they gradually remove the redundancy built into the first level.

As your proficiency and efficiency increase, you will find that you are able to mix and match levels to suit your own purposes and time availability. I do portions of each level at various times throughout the day.

Unfortunate Title

OK, so I think the name of the course is a little dumb. I know lots of other people do too. You know what, it doesn’t mater - this could be called Sausage Party 4: Extra Mayo, and I would still practice it every single day.

Contents

Three progressive routines for full-body integration of movement, breathing, and structure as increase of range of motion and dynamic mobility.

Presenter

Scott Sonnon gives us instruction, advice, and performance tips in a friendly and helpful tone. Watching Scott’s performance will remind us just how much we stand to gain in increased range of motion and mobility by practicing this program. As a bonus, Scott has ditched the striped Speznatz shirt he wears in some other videos and covered the man-fur on his chest with a simple and unassuming t-shirt. Somehow, he looks older in this video than he does in much more recent series.

DVD Production

This DVD was transfered from tape, and it shows a bit. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because you can hear everything scott is saying and see his movements clearly. Some people might not think it looks “professional” enough for their preference, but the packaging does not detract from the efficacy of the product. The benefit in a course like this has nothing to do with the package and everything to do with the implementation of the material into our daily practice.

Price

About $50, plus shipping from Atlanta.

Intu-Flow

Warrior Wellness is no longer the flagship product from RMAX. It has been refined and expanded to create something called “Intu-Flow”, which I plan on purchasing. I’ve heard great things about Intu-Flowand recommend it as a step up from Warrior Wellness. It costs the same as Warrior Wellness did and is worth every penny, and I feel quite confident to recommend the $50 investment to any Taido student.

International

My friend, Ryan Hurst, is a CST Head Coach who lives in Osaka (and often works out at the same budokan as the Osaka Taido group - small world). He has created a Japanese version of Warrior Wellness that is available now. When he released his product, I made referrals to many instructors over there. Ryan’s movement is pretty damn impressive, and I think Taido instructors will really be able to see a lot of applications for his material beyond what I am capable of demonstrating.

And Finally

So that’s my “brief review” of Warrior Wellness. I know I’m usually pretty long-winded, but I really tried to keep this as short as I could while still conveying my high regard for this program and its potential for Taido students. I know that three bulleted lists in a single article may look like overkill, but Warrior Wellness really deserves it. I looked back over this article several times, but couldn’t find anything I felt I could really remove without selling Warrior Wellness short.

I really love this disc, and i’m immensely confident that you will love what it does for your Taido, your general feeling of physical well-being, and your health. visit RMAX to buy Warrior Wellness.

Content of this page created by Andy Fossett exclusively for Taido/Blog.

Tags: review

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