Craig

What Emmet said! It's from the coffee shop conversation you filmed with Dave where you were talking about ballistic stretching for some amount of days in a row. Good times

Hi everyone! So this post is pretty old and if you've found it, the answer is "no the programs aren't available anymore". I don't at all practice any of the things I used to and I'm not at all keen on teaching things I don't practice myself. Those programs are now super old and lots has happened in the world of flexibility training since then, which means they are also pretty dated. The good news is that there is tons of free stuff available that's basically just as good if not better than what I had. I'm sure if you youtube "ballistic stretching program" you'll get about a million hits these days. @Emmet Louisbasically made it all available for free too. I'd recommend starting there: https://www.youtube.com/user/EmmetLouis/videos . And of course the mighty Sea Dog @Kit_L can likely hook you up with some good training principles regarding ballistic stretching (see attached). If you're interested in what I'm up to these days, I've basically gone 'full dao', all of my training is in the Daoist tradition of Da Xuan - you can read more at my website if you're interested (www.craigmallett.com).

Side splits evening with the splits wizard @Emmet Louis ... Much progress made. Cueing in this movement is essential. It's amazing what difference a few degrees of pelvic tilt and specific tissue chain contraction does. I think I was as deep as I've ever been, calves closing in on the floor!

@Francesco excellent! The gua sha is definitely a very good tool for removing fascial adhesions. I'm going to keep doing reasonably regular work with @Emmet Louis while I can hopefully. Physical training continues to be light, a bit of stretching here and there. On the tutorials front, I just filmed a 9 week qigong course that will be available to all and will take them step by step through a form from my first teacher Dapeng. Looking forward to editing this one and getting it released!

Good! Progress is always good. Keep practicing until it is somewhat the default method of lifting the arms. Once this is in place your can shift your intention to attempting to drop excessive tension and have the arm sit heavily on the armpit connection instead of forcing it there. Also if you have some time get a partner to do the ST shoulder push down partner stretch and then see how much easier it is to keep this connection after - try to do 15 minutes of practice on something that uses the connection immediately after doing the stretch. Shi Da Pan #6 is a good example of an appropriate exercise!

Hanging out with @Emmet Louis today. - piriformis stretch - tailor's pose - bent leg Pike with deep hip and abdominal activation as priority - side splits with Emmet's wizard assistance - some kicks - some random handstandsing - got the previously mentioned guasha treatment on my quads. Not so bad, but then Emmet discovered a secret way of finding trigger points that need attention, that was gnarly!

Many thanks Mr S! Glad to have played such a part in your practice. Looking forward to the coming years to see where it goes!!! #unreasonablypumped

Taught a workshop in Cologne. Two days of basics, stances, kicks and partner work. I'm super excited to get back into doing my old training methods with knew knowledge and awareness. Also got to learn some incredibly important details from my friend and co host Carsten, if you're ever in Cologne I can highly recommend his classes. We did: - joint circles type prep - leg awakening -spinal waves - lifting with the armpits -how to use all of this to make a good structure -partner drills to test the structure -learning the weak points of the structure and how to manipulate it -grounding with heaven and earth -qigong basics and how the structure is integral to a good qigong practice - shi da pan -basic kicks - 5 step boxing form (a basic method of training the 5 stances) - more partner games - movement leading with the head - how the head can be used to break structure - more qigong basics and a little form A great weekend overall. Next stop, Iceland. Physical practice will be reasonably sparse between now and then for many reasons.

Hi B, Sorry to hear about your injury. It's really hard to offer any kind of accurate advice because I don't know you and your situation and your history and so on. The context is absolutely important for this kind of thing so please take the following with a grain of salt - it's very general advice and I can't say that if it is the right direction or not but hopefully it gives you some inspiration to explore in a way that will helpful for you. The immediate "don't go further" response should be listened to in my opinion. Don't go further With rehab I basically treat it the same as any progression, although the damaged tissue has to be treated much like a "before the beginning" beginner to restore it. In other words we want to be really gentle with it, the same as if we were working with elderly or some such. I also advise people to not take risks and push into things they aren't 100% certain of. This way may take a little longer, but if you re-injure the troubled spot it's going to be worse than the first time and take even longer then to restore. On to the restoration. Progressions I use (with anything) are static holds > slow gentle movements > faster less gentle movements > pulsing > explosive ballistics. The idea being if you can't safely hold it, you're probably going to have trouble moving through and around it safely, if you can't move slowly you're going to have trouble moving quickly and so on. You can also train these in a somewhat overlapping fashion, for example doing static holds one day and slow movements the next, or even both in the same session but slow movements dialed back away from the injury. An example of an approach like this would be to do a standing straddle, and hinge at the hips so you start doing a standing pancake, stopping the hinge just a little before the nope feeling comes into the body. It will be pretty easy for you as this range will probably be strong. Do 30s holds here, inching your way session by session closer to the area giving the nope signal but never going into it. We could then also do a seated pancake sitting upright like you said and do pelvic circles, making the circle only big enough so that when it passes the affected area it comes near it but does not go into it. Again this will be super easy for the rest of the circle made with the pelvis but should come close to the affected area without crossing the line so to speak. The idea with both exercises is to kind of massage the threshold line further and further away, reminding the body of the strength that it once had. The key (I think) to successful quick massage is to come as close to this threshold as possible without crossing it. The more you can do holds as close to the edges of it and have circles basically brushing this threshold, the faster it will heal. The problem here is that it takes keen awareness and control to do this, and therefore a large measure of skill because passing the threshold and messing it up will basically result in re-injury. The other problem is that most people don't have the patience and the dedication to keep up the volume necessary for long enough time to complete the restoration. We want reasonably high volume of these super easy gentle circles and holds, and we also want to respect the threshold - it will move, some days you can go deeper without passing it and others not so deep. Variation is also key to any kind of "life building" methods in my opinion. So basically we need to explore in a way that lets us find as many movements as we can that have these thresholds that give us the "nope nope nope" response. These movements are the gold, because they are where the faults are, they are the part that need to be restored. We find the movement that makes us go nope, then we back it way off to a much easier variation and start massaging with gentle movements and holds, keeping the distance from the threshold you feel is safe enough to massage in without crossing. Sometimes we also might not know that a threshold is in a particular movement, so we must only explore with movements that we can completely control and move gently enough that we can spot the threshold before crossing it. We must keep up this variety of gentle movements and holds until we have massaged the thresholds away. Once the thresholds are gone, we are not done. The tissue will still be somewhat weak, so we must also begin to strengthen the area by slowly loading the holds and the movements, and beginning to reintroduce pulses and eventually explosive ballistics. As for other movements, we must test many things. Sometimes a movement feels OK at the time but then after you realise something has gone wrong. This makes the whole process very difficult to give "yes you should do this and no you shouldn't do this" answers to. In my opinion the best thing you can do is take the responsibility into your own hands, it is after all your body and only you know what it's feeling. By all means seek out therapists and experts but the issue is more than half of the professionals don't know what they are doing, so you need to know how to find the good ones. To do this you need to have a good idea of your own system and the responses to see if they are aware of them and dealing with them or just absent mindedly prodding things and giving you random exercises. Finally, the restoration process will teach you so much about yourself, it's really quite an opportunity to have an injury like this that is not so serious that you can test things out and see what's effective for you and what isn't. After all, everything I just said I say because it works for me and the people I train, but it may not work for you or I might just be talking garbage. It's the internet after all and I'm really just a stranger. I hope this helps a little and that you restore your pancake smoothly! Cheers, Craig

continuing exploration of kicks, piriformis and activating the deep anterior hip/abdominal junction. All is going well, surprisingly little DOMS from the kicks. Side kick needs lots of work, as does the round kick which I've added. My current piriformis variation is doing magical things for both me and Cherie, I'll film a new video with the new explorations and movements soon. filming of new tutorials to begin soon. On the menu: - stances - kicks - waking the wrists (the wrist prep video remastered plus loads more things added) - deep hip and shoulder awakening - an exploration of rotating in the socket using straight limbs - qi gong basics speaking of tutorials, the quickening is upon us, and there shall be only one. Physical Alchemy has removed the head of ARC and now has all my tutorials. Same is happening with the website. You can now find the tutorials here: https://physical-alchemy.uscreen.io/

Last night: kicks! I've got space to do swing kicks (traditional cma style) in my living room. Alright! going to bang out sets of these throughout the day, focusing on qualities rather than height. This is hitting all of the tissue in the inhibited internal and external rotators that I am working on with the piriformis, tailor's pose and active pike explorations. To the simmering pot with thee! Variations I'm focusing on: - straight swing kick - inside crescent - outside crescent - knee up side kick I think I should also add the traditional side kick which is more like pure abduction than flexion + external rotation like the knee up variation.

Rendered and uploaded. Enjoy: https://awarerelaxedconnected.uscreen.io/programs/leg-awakening

side note: leg awakening tutorial is rendering now. Also have loads of time for work in the new berlin apartment so there will be many more video tutorials coming in Q1 and 2 this year. Ossssuuuuu!

A couple of sessions recently included: - more exploration of alchemical pushup methods - more piriformis exploration. This one is coming along reaaallllyy nicely, and integrating the changes with the da xuan family neigong is working wonders - deep hip flexor/lower abdominal activation in pike. working on the end range closing (to use emmet's term) but in a double elephant walk kind of way. This one has been wonderful and is producing dramatic results with just a few sessions. - deep aductor activation in active tailors pose. only one session of this so far, but i feel the results will be much like the pike. Looking forward to exploring this further. - straight limb rotations

Me too! Off to Berlin now where I should have access to some equipment and an @Emmet Louis for"help" (probably torture). I'll report in regularly. Yesterday: 2.5 hour bouldering session. Really miss the days of having a cave at my home to be able to climb regularly. Alas there isn't so much time available for me to do everything and there are daoist skills to be gained, so bouldering will likely live in the random attendance for funsies category from now on.