Three months into my Holistic strength training or what some now call “MovNat” journey, I made a mistake that perfectly illustrates the complexity of comparing these two training approaches. https://www.rushwalter.com/holistic-strength-training-for-beginners/ I was feeling cocky about my progress with natural movement patterns, so I challenged my powerlifting buddy Alex to what I thought would be a…
I discovered another exercise program called MovNat during one period of my fitness career. Despite training consistently for over twenty years, sometimes I felt like I was getting weaker at the things that actually mattered in daily life. https://www.rushwalter.com/holistic-strength-training-for-beginners/ I could deadlift impressive numbers but struggled to carry my sleeping five-year-old grandson up a flight…
You know, there’s nothing that’ll humble you faster in the fitness industry than realizing you’re not practicing what you preach. https://www.rushwalter.com/holistic-strength-training-for-beginners/ I learned this lesson about fifteen years into my career, and honestly, it’s probably the most important wake-up call I ever got. I was running a pretty successful Atlanta training studio at the time,…
I’ll never forget the first time I attempted what I thought was a “simple” bear crawl in front of some of my family members. I was demonstrating natural movement progressions, feeling pretty confident in my abilities after decades in the fitness industry. https://www.rushwalter.com/natural-movement-strength-training-for-complete-beginners/ What followed was thirty seconds of the most humbling movement experience of…
Earlier I watched my 67-year-old client Patricia carry four grocery bags up two flights of stairs with better form and less effort than her 32-year-old daughter. The difference wasn’t that Patricia was stronger in the traditional sense – she couldn’t outlift her daughter on any gym exercise. The difference was that Patricia had spent two…
Several years ago, I had what I now call anther “gym revelation” moment. I was working with Ed, a 42-year-old client who could deadlift 400 pounds, bench press 315, and squat 350 for reps. On paper, he was incredibly strong. In reality, he couldn’t pick up his three-year-old daughter without his back seizing up, and…
I thought I knew what explosive power was until I got schooled by a 140-pound dancer named Carlos at a movement workshop several years ago. Here I was, a guy who’d been training strength athletes for decades, watching this lean dancer explode through animal flow transitions with more raw power than most of my powerlifting…
More than once since I’ve begun structured exercise I’ve experienced that moment which has been both humiliating and enlightening – it showed me just how disconnected I’d become from the natural movement patterns we’re all born with. What we don’t use, we lose physically; and we can get it back. Animal flow brought me back…
Last summer with laughter, I watched a five-year-old completely destroy my carefully planned workout program without even trying. My friends grandchild Jake was visiting while I was training a client outdoors, and within minutes he was bear crawling around us, transitioning into perfect squats, then rolling and tumbling with this effortless flow that made our…
Several years ago, I found myself in the middle of what I now call my “fitness identity crisis.” https://www.rushwalter.com/understanding-faithful-fitness-a-holistic-approach/ I’d been training people for over two decades, building my entire career around physical strength and performance, when a client asked me a question that stopped me cold: “Do you think God cares about our physical…
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