MovNat Chapel Hill workshop = awesome

As many of you know, there was a MovNat one-day workshop in Chapel Hill this past weekend. If you've ready any of my previous thoughts on MovNat, you probably have a pretty good idea of how excited I was to have it show up in my town.

Actually, it showed up in my living room. Clif Harski, who trained with me last year in West Virginia and has since gone on to join the MovNat team, arrived a few days early and crashed at my house. We got to do some running around UNC, had some epic meals, and got to talk shop a bit - it was great having him in town.

The actual day of the event was as pretty as you could ask for - North Carolina is really tough to beat once September rolls around. We had a good sized group - 15 people in total. I was pleased to see some Fifth Ape representation in the group and was impressed by the number of MovNat vets in attendance - you know a program is good when people come back multiple times. I was also happy to see a wider range of skill/fitness levels than was present at my expansion course last year. It's fun to see MovNat starting to spread out and creep its way towards broad cultural awareness.

I was delighted, but not surprised, to find myself learning new things as the day went on. As Erwan told us last year, there's a lot more to MovNat than can be taught in a week - a lot of it depends on the context of the environment you are moving through. We got to try out pole climbing techniques that were new to me (and super fun) as well as some all new ground mobility drills that I'm still feeling in my hip flexors today. Clif's superlative lifting experience was on display - we reviewed some really neat ways to apply selective tension to link up shoulders, back, and hips during deadlifts and cleans.

The day ended with a two part combo that served as a great review of everything we'd reviewed that day. We all left a little dirty, a little tired (but not utterly exhausted), and extremely happy. Then it was time for one final feast (Pedro Bastos would have wept) and Clif was off for South Carolina to do it all again on Sunday.

I was curious and slightly worried about how the experience would translate into a one-day session. While I still think everyone should attend one of the 5-day sessions to get the full immersive experience, I was happy to discover that the one day workshop still managed to fully capture the MovNat magic and was a complete experience in its own right. Clif is a great teacher - for such a big guy he has a very deft style and perfectly combined humor and seriousness to deliver the message.

I cannot recommend MovNat enough - if you're interested but cannot make the 5-day event happen, I can now difinitively say that the 1-day workshops are a perfect way to introduce yourself to the (r)evolution.

I'm looking forward to Wednesday when Clif briefly rolls back into town. Rumor has it that the MIB will be with him...