Ep. 22- How do we move like a human? with Rafe Kelley

Rafe Kelley has spent much of his life moving and promoting movement. Rafe is the owner of 'Evolve Move Play' and has an amazing philosophical and experiential grasp of movement. He has been involved with many different martial art forms, has been practicing parkour since its humble beginnings and is a huge natural movement advocate!

His 'Evolve Move Play' podcast and views on movement have really expanded my perspective.

In the health and fitness industry, all too often movement is abstracted into components of fitness. Gyms are often highly contrived environments. There is a bias to focus on all that can be measured but as Rafe says; 'not everything that can be measured is neccessary and not everthing that is neccessary can be measured'. Yes, there is a time and place for; measuring, doing isolated exercises and controlling the environment but thinking 'this is the only way' is self limiting.

Sometimes we should 'just move in nature'!

Why? Well, from an evolutionary standpoint, before 'the comforts of the current age', there was a time where if you couldn't;  run, climb, swim, hang, wrestle, crawl, throw, dance; you wouldn't survive. As humans we were designed to do all these general physical skills coupled with our natural environment.

So, let's try some of these meaningful human movements. Perhaps overtime it helps you better couple how you perceive the environment with your movement, your rhythm, timing and co-ordination? Perhaps it challenges you to do potentially fear evoking/fun/challenging/playful things that you normally wouldn't do? Perhaps it helps push you towards better functional athleticism rather than being able to do a meaningless lift in a very controlled environment?

Thanks for the enlightening chat Rafe! If you want to hear more from Rafe Kelley be sure to go to his website: About Rafe | Natural Movement Training | Evolve Move Play