I consider myself extremely fortunate to have lived the life I’ve lived and experienced the the teachers I’ve had.
I’m even more fortunate to have created a gym with a culture that encourages open mindedness tempered with cynicism and critical thinking.
It means that my clients are not afraid to call me out if I’m ever caught talking shit, or if my ego gets out of control.
But it also means that they appreciate the broader spectrum of physical culture and training.
They’re not looking for pigeon holes to fit into
“Oh, I’m a <…fill in blank….>”
The only “thing” I really push is the idea of becoming a better Human Animal and not letting your ego destroy your future health.
Part of this comes by attaining balance.
Stress and Recovery
Go Hard and Go Home
Tension and Relaxation
Sympathetic CNS activation and Parasympathetic CNS activation.
Clearly throwing around heavy Kettlebells and Barbells is stimulating the sympathetic side of the nervous system.
Our Wg-Fit logo incorporates the famous Yin-Yang symbol which shows balance and the constant flow between two extremes
But so does your daily commute, that deadline at work, that extra espresso, that hour or two less sleep, that mouth breathing, that constant electronic stimulation.
Our poor parasympathetic side, the “rest and digest” side barely gets a look in.
And of late, it’s been a conversation in the gym, especially amongst the higher flying clients, be that in athletic or business endeavours.
So we’ve introduced breathing drills and what go under the heading of “mindfulness” exercises.
One of which comes from the Internal Martial Arts traditions called Chi Gung.
I was fortunate to have spent time training under a highly skilled martial arts and Chi Gung practitioner Mark Rasmus. And also more recently talking with, play around with and learning from Phil Greenfield of Zero Balancing fame.
So far my regular clients are enjoying the practice, and have requested support material for when they’re not on site.
So I’m putting together a series of tutorials that I’m prepared to make public.
The first of which has just gone live.
This is a 20 minute video tutorial that also acts as a follow along video once you have done a couple of sessions.
There will be further lessons coming, if you sign up to the newsletter you’ll get advance notice of them as they are released.
One thing you can be rest assured of, there’ll be no talk of “chi balls” or “shooting energy from you palms” or any other mythology. Yes we joke about that stuff, but the reason we practice Chi Gung in reality is:
Quiet the mind and learn to focus
Align the skeleton to allow muscles to settle into relaxed place
Settle the sympathetic nervous system to allow the Parasympathetic work
Improve breathing mechanics
Develop structural alignment to better conduct gravity through the skeletal structure rather than fighting it with muscular tension
Because 10 minutes of quiet is hard to come by these days, so a deliberate practice of quiet is exactly what we need.
Future lessons will eventually take us to moving Chi Gung practices, such as:
A post shared by Dave Hedges (@dave_hedges) on May 24, 2017 at 1:30am PDT
But that is only any good once we have the basics.
Lesson 1 gives you those basics.
Regards
Dave Hedges www.WG-Fit.com