circular
04-06-2004, 03:19 PM
http://www.wannabebig.com/article.php?articleid=132
What started as a book review has morphed into a product review, since a good book can be as much of a tool as any piece of gym equipment. Body-Flow, written by Scott Sonnon, has more to offer to a body than an entire circuit of machines or a class full of gizmos. The second half of Body-Flow is a series of ‘biomechanical exercises’ that can be woven into what he calls a kinetic chain (All you Steindler advocates please pipe down, he makes no reference to, or comparison with, the classic open- or closed- kinetic chain debates that are ripe on many online lists and discussed throughout all physical therapy texts and programs.) The first half, however, is where so much of the meat actually is, since the trilogy of Body-Flow is Breathing, Structure and Movement, so the exercises (Movement) lack substance without the understanding of the other two factors.
Coach Sonnon is credited with ‘creating’ Zdorovye, which is a movement program based on techniques learned from former Soviet Olympic coaches and Spetznaz Special Forces trainers. He is also a world-renowned grappler, particularly Sambo, and has coached many fighters with the techniques used in this book. Body-Flow “may become my Magnus opus, my primary contribution to the world (pg.77),” summing up years of research and practice in movement and Being.
Body-Flow is an easy read, as far as user-friendly typeface and layout go. The concepts, on the contrary, have a wonderful depth to them that span many sources of inspiration and are dutifully explained by someone who obviously understands and practices them. Both the physiology and emotion-ology of stress are presented as key obstacles to progress, while the practice of Body-Flow enables anyone not just to circumnavigate these obstacles, but create a path where they don’t exist.
“When your flow is bound, it’s like walking across a mud-lined river…. Think of Bound-Flow as a pattern of knots in your muscles, making it difficult to breathe, stand, and sit straight, painful to move. It’s difficult, painful, and energetically expensive to move with these networks of tethers, isn’t it? You bet it is!
“You need to ACT, to MOVE in order to cast off the shackles to your health, strength and performance. (Pg.6)”
Bound-Flow, which hinders healthy Body-Flow, has many faces, including Sensory Motor Amnesia, Residual Muscle Tension, and the recent pop-psychology catch phrase of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Sonnon addresses these and other obstacles by modernizing the work of Seyle and reminding us, that, “like any form of conditioning, the more you do something, the more you make that activity repeatable. And once you make that activity repeatable, you ‘progress.’ (Pg.7)” In other words, the body adapts to stress and gets used to bad stress (just as it does eustress, like exercise) and can hold onto it unconsciously, interfering with recovery and conditioning, both of mind and body. One of his three laws of conditioning, the Law of Adaptation, states: Whatever you do over a period of time creates a change in you to find homeostasis, regardless of how you value that adaptation.
Coach Sonnon digs a little, but knows, as any good philosopher does, if it can’t be explained to a bonehead like me, what use is it? He discusses how dwelling on all the aspects that many of us declare ourselves by; addictions, diseases, etc.; is dwelling on that which isn’t you. These characteristics, sometimes worn as titles, are the cultivation of learned, conditioned reactions to stress, what he calls Fear-Reactivity. Following the Keep It Simple principle, the genius in this epiphaniacal paragraph sums it up brilliantly:
“Who you are is the slab of marble. Remove everything that is not your greatness. What remains is your Body-Flow.”
Embracing the Wisdom of the East, Body-Flow is explained as not being an acquired skill, but something that is our nature, our birth-given way of being. But…
“We haven’t evolved to accommodate our new post-modernistic lifestyle. We’re Stone-Age bodies living in a digital world. Our physiology differs not at all from when we chased down Woolly Mammoths and gathered berries. We still have the potential to track game and gather food, but we don’t have a way to release all that stress, and we don’t have a way to distinguish between true threats and false threats. Or as the anonymous acronym states, distinguish between evidence and F.E.A.R. – False
Evidence Appearing Real. (Pg.14)”
So before getting to the exercises, Body-Flow addresses the need to move, and why movement is essential to not only eliminate current Bound-Flow, but to avoid it in the future. Structure and Breathing are essential, and an introduction to the Be Breathed process is given (he offers an entire book and video on the Performance Breathing technique through RMAX.tv productions). The technique differs from the usual Power Breathing techniques taught by the other Russian-trained coach Pavel Tsatsouline, which, according to Sonnon, can increase power instantly but at the expense of fine and complex motor skills.
Dr. Mel Siff, author of Supertraining and Facts and Fallacies of Fitness, and the original moderator of the Supertraining Internet list, would often pontificate on catch phrases and rhetoric of self-titled masters that he called his Guru Terminology Kit. It was a tongue-in-cheek look at the techniques and propaganda used by leaders in the fitness community to market their systems and programs. The lesson being for us to question bold, yet generalized statements that either had no real meaning or were not supported by actual fact. Although Sonnon is no quack, and his book truly is a must-read for anybody with a passion for movement and exercise, modesty will always speak louder than what we’ll call poorly worded enthusiasm. His dismissal of Pavel’s breathing technique becomes a full-blown infomercial when statements like “The method I teach you below, Performance Breathing, will help you…more…than any other technique in existence (pg.62),” or “there’s no other breathing method in the world that addresses this in the midst of exerting effort…Only Performance Breathing addresses this (pg.64).” This is classic Guru Terminology, which, although strangely out of character to the overall theme of his books, videos and whole philosophy of egoless-ness, does pop up in weird places. Albeit these statements are pretty darn rare (and perhaps my personal pet peeve, a recognition of my own bound flow?), there wasn’t enough evidence to support such claims. The other reason this was a little surprising is because the rest of Sonnon’s philosophy is heavily supported (so far, in fact, that an ever-growing list of recommended reading keeps popping up throughout the book) and he modestly acknowledges the roots and origins of many of his ideas. Body-Flow may be unique, but he admits it wasn’t created in a vacuum, and he’s excited to see the future of Body-Flow and how it grows in the hands and minds of other people.
The exercises are not mass builders. I state this outright, since most gym-goers seem to be searching for the Rosetta Stone of bulging biceps (and let’s face it, the name of this website is Wannabebig) and not necessarily in the importance of movement in life outside of simple big body parts. If this sounds like you, if online and newsstand muscle mags appeal to your thirst for that perfect chest routine, or how you can add an inch to your quads while ripping them to the bone at the same time, don’t bother reading this book (although it’s insights may actually open doors to parts of your brain previously reserved for proper needle insertion depth or quick calculation of pounds-to-protein-grams per day). The exercise tool of choice for Sonnon is the Clubbell, which even the biggest meathead in any gym would quiver from when a 15lb clubbell was put in his hand for the first time (yes, only 15 lbs, heck even 10 lbs. Stay tuned for clubbell review), but this book focuses only on floor-based body exercises that may look to the uninitiated like a tumbling/yoga hybrid. They will make little sense if the first half of the book isn’t devoured first. But follow the steps and instructions on page 73, slowly tying three of the exercises together (your choice as to which three) into one kinetic chain, and you will, believe it or not, feel pretty darn good, ultimately making the performance of any other movement choices, be it powerlifting or marathon running, or day-to-day existence, better.
What started as a book review has morphed into a product review, since a good book can be as much of a tool as any piece of gym equipment. Body-Flow, written by Scott Sonnon, has more to offer to a body than an entire circuit of machines or a class full of gizmos. The second half of Body-Flow is a series of ‘biomechanical exercises’ that can be woven into what he calls a kinetic chain (All you Steindler advocates please pipe down, he makes no reference to, or comparison with, the classic open- or closed- kinetic chain debates that are ripe on many online lists and discussed throughout all physical therapy texts and programs.) The first half, however, is where so much of the meat actually is, since the trilogy of Body-Flow is Breathing, Structure and Movement, so the exercises (Movement) lack substance without the understanding of the other two factors.
Coach Sonnon is credited with ‘creating’ Zdorovye, which is a movement program based on techniques learned from former Soviet Olympic coaches and Spetznaz Special Forces trainers. He is also a world-renowned grappler, particularly Sambo, and has coached many fighters with the techniques used in this book. Body-Flow “may become my Magnus opus, my primary contribution to the world (pg.77),” summing up years of research and practice in movement and Being.
Body-Flow is an easy read, as far as user-friendly typeface and layout go. The concepts, on the contrary, have a wonderful depth to them that span many sources of inspiration and are dutifully explained by someone who obviously understands and practices them. Both the physiology and emotion-ology of stress are presented as key obstacles to progress, while the practice of Body-Flow enables anyone not just to circumnavigate these obstacles, but create a path where they don’t exist.
“When your flow is bound, it’s like walking across a mud-lined river…. Think of Bound-Flow as a pattern of knots in your muscles, making it difficult to breathe, stand, and sit straight, painful to move. It’s difficult, painful, and energetically expensive to move with these networks of tethers, isn’t it? You bet it is!
“You need to ACT, to MOVE in order to cast off the shackles to your health, strength and performance. (Pg.6)”
Bound-Flow, which hinders healthy Body-Flow, has many faces, including Sensory Motor Amnesia, Residual Muscle Tension, and the recent pop-psychology catch phrase of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Sonnon addresses these and other obstacles by modernizing the work of Seyle and reminding us, that, “like any form of conditioning, the more you do something, the more you make that activity repeatable. And once you make that activity repeatable, you ‘progress.’ (Pg.7)” In other words, the body adapts to stress and gets used to bad stress (just as it does eustress, like exercise) and can hold onto it unconsciously, interfering with recovery and conditioning, both of mind and body. One of his three laws of conditioning, the Law of Adaptation, states: Whatever you do over a period of time creates a change in you to find homeostasis, regardless of how you value that adaptation.
Coach Sonnon digs a little, but knows, as any good philosopher does, if it can’t be explained to a bonehead like me, what use is it? He discusses how dwelling on all the aspects that many of us declare ourselves by; addictions, diseases, etc.; is dwelling on that which isn’t you. These characteristics, sometimes worn as titles, are the cultivation of learned, conditioned reactions to stress, what he calls Fear-Reactivity. Following the Keep It Simple principle, the genius in this epiphaniacal paragraph sums it up brilliantly:
“Who you are is the slab of marble. Remove everything that is not your greatness. What remains is your Body-Flow.”
Embracing the Wisdom of the East, Body-Flow is explained as not being an acquired skill, but something that is our nature, our birth-given way of being. But…
“We haven’t evolved to accommodate our new post-modernistic lifestyle. We’re Stone-Age bodies living in a digital world. Our physiology differs not at all from when we chased down Woolly Mammoths and gathered berries. We still have the potential to track game and gather food, but we don’t have a way to release all that stress, and we don’t have a way to distinguish between true threats and false threats. Or as the anonymous acronym states, distinguish between evidence and F.E.A.R. – False
Evidence Appearing Real. (Pg.14)”
So before getting to the exercises, Body-Flow addresses the need to move, and why movement is essential to not only eliminate current Bound-Flow, but to avoid it in the future. Structure and Breathing are essential, and an introduction to the Be Breathed process is given (he offers an entire book and video on the Performance Breathing technique through RMAX.tv productions). The technique differs from the usual Power Breathing techniques taught by the other Russian-trained coach Pavel Tsatsouline, which, according to Sonnon, can increase power instantly but at the expense of fine and complex motor skills.
Dr. Mel Siff, author of Supertraining and Facts and Fallacies of Fitness, and the original moderator of the Supertraining Internet list, would often pontificate on catch phrases and rhetoric of self-titled masters that he called his Guru Terminology Kit. It was a tongue-in-cheek look at the techniques and propaganda used by leaders in the fitness community to market their systems and programs. The lesson being for us to question bold, yet generalized statements that either had no real meaning or were not supported by actual fact. Although Sonnon is no quack, and his book truly is a must-read for anybody with a passion for movement and exercise, modesty will always speak louder than what we’ll call poorly worded enthusiasm. His dismissal of Pavel’s breathing technique becomes a full-blown infomercial when statements like “The method I teach you below, Performance Breathing, will help you…more…than any other technique in existence (pg.62),” or “there’s no other breathing method in the world that addresses this in the midst of exerting effort…Only Performance Breathing addresses this (pg.64).” This is classic Guru Terminology, which, although strangely out of character to the overall theme of his books, videos and whole philosophy of egoless-ness, does pop up in weird places. Albeit these statements are pretty darn rare (and perhaps my personal pet peeve, a recognition of my own bound flow?), there wasn’t enough evidence to support such claims. The other reason this was a little surprising is because the rest of Sonnon’s philosophy is heavily supported (so far, in fact, that an ever-growing list of recommended reading keeps popping up throughout the book) and he modestly acknowledges the roots and origins of many of his ideas. Body-Flow may be unique, but he admits it wasn’t created in a vacuum, and he’s excited to see the future of Body-Flow and how it grows in the hands and minds of other people.
The exercises are not mass builders. I state this outright, since most gym-goers seem to be searching for the Rosetta Stone of bulging biceps (and let’s face it, the name of this website is Wannabebig) and not necessarily in the importance of movement in life outside of simple big body parts. If this sounds like you, if online and newsstand muscle mags appeal to your thirst for that perfect chest routine, or how you can add an inch to your quads while ripping them to the bone at the same time, don’t bother reading this book (although it’s insights may actually open doors to parts of your brain previously reserved for proper needle insertion depth or quick calculation of pounds-to-protein-grams per day). The exercise tool of choice for Sonnon is the Clubbell, which even the biggest meathead in any gym would quiver from when a 15lb clubbell was put in his hand for the first time (yes, only 15 lbs, heck even 10 lbs. Stay tuned for clubbell review), but this book focuses only on floor-based body exercises that may look to the uninitiated like a tumbling/yoga hybrid. They will make little sense if the first half of the book isn’t devoured first. But follow the steps and instructions on page 73, slowly tying three of the exercises together (your choice as to which three) into one kinetic chain, and you will, believe it or not, feel pretty darn good, ultimately making the performance of any other movement choices, be it powerlifting or marathon running, or day-to-day existence, better.