Here is a 20 minute movement flow that I used as a warm up, before more aggressive resistance training.
Movement flow training has become a big part of my workout regimen. I enjoy moving from one exercise to the next without a plan. I find that it challenges my mind and body to communicate at a level that isolated resistance training simply doesn’t.
Movement Flow Breakdown
I begin the movement flow in the 90/90 position working forward leans on each side.
The 90/90 position is a staple base position for a lot of my mobility work. The angles are difficult, and the exercises can be easily scaled based on my progress.
Forward leans, heel clicks and other movements out of this position have proven to be brutally effective for hip flexibility.
Half way through my 90/90 sequence, I spend a few minutes working in the bear position. I’m squeezing essentially squeezing my legs inward against the resistance of my arms, followed reverse the motion outward.
Just after this, comes the most torturous exercise known to man: straddle hip circles. 🤮
Few other exercises make me cringe like straddle hip circles. Great drill, lots of pain.
After a quick change of the music, assisted sissy squats (using a dowel) make their appearance, followed by prone swimmers, an awesome drill for shoulder conditioning. I’ve filmed prone swimmers as part of a larger movement flow, but never in isolation. I’ll have to do that soon.
Sissy squats make a lot of people nervous, but holding onto the dowel makes this exercise much more palatable.
Using the dowel as a guide, lowering your knees down to the floor becomes more manageable due to the added stability and slight decrease in load.
Next in the flow came Cossack squats.
Cossack squats have been a staple movement for me for a number of years.
I’ve experienced consistent progress with this movement, and seen my mobility increase pretty significantly from practicing Cossack squats on a regular basis.
Animal Flow’s Crab Reach has played in both my warm ups and as a filler exercise during strength training for quite some time. It’s one of those exercises that delivers a ton of value and can help to unwind a body that sits for prolonged periods of time.
Hip extension + spinal rotation/extension + active stretch through the quads/hip flexors/anterior body = AWESOME.
Crab Reach is fantastic to incorporate into flow sequences.
This 2 exercise flow sequence is a prime example:
Of course, I’m crawling. Always crawling. Forward, backward, lateral, and with plenty of transition work in between each variation.
Around the 1:45min/sec mark, I inject a little bit of creativity with a few ground based patterns.
I don’t have names for these movements, but I really value the slow tempo, focus on range of motion, control and overall difficulty.
In the last few seconds of this 20 minute flow, I shift my focus to a few natural movement exercises.
Inline lunges are best performed using a 2×4 piece of wood, but you can mimic the inline challenge using your imagination.
Wide stance, stable base of support movements might be preferred, but as we all know, are not always realistic in real world scenarios.
Sometimes you’ve got to demonstrate strength and balance all in one shot.
M(eaux)tion Fitness 