Bumanov

Something I've seen implemented by GMB and Wim Hof is offering 3 people free access to the program based on a weighted lottery. People accrue points based on how many of their friends they refer and get signed up for the lottery. The more points you accrue, the greater the chances of winning the free program. A major benefit from this is that you get people to sign up with their email addresses, so when the program goes live, you now have a great base from which to market it and those that signed up for the lottery also know when the program is ready for purchase. How to set something like this up is beyond my capabilities but I'm sure there are some tech savvy people who can help you with that.

Tuesday's Practice: SAS Warm-up: floor Release, joint rotations, tea cup with weight for the shoulders, some halos with a 35lb ball felt great. Core Sequence with front and back line drills, forearm side plank pulses and leg Lifts. Strength Sequence: 3 cycles 1. Front lever: 10 sec on/10 sec off for 5 reps 2. Single Leg RDL with 12kg x12 reps 3. Tuck Planche: 10 sec on/10 sec off for 5 reps 4. Bulgarian Split Squat, first set with 30lbs for 8 reps. 2nd and 3rd set were with 35lbs for 10 reps. Rehab: 2 rounds shoulder retraction with band, drawing sword, single arm Cuban rotations with 10 lbs for 12 reps, poliquin step ups with 8kg for 20 reps Today's Practice: BAS Warm-up: joint rotations, wrist and squat sequences, skin the cats Skill: 6 reps of Straddle press negatives and Dragon Squat. I elevated my foot to a yoga block, felt pretty good, progress is being made Strength: 1. Rings Pull-ups: 5 sets x 10,9,8,8,8. Numbers have gone up pretty drastically. Not sure if it is because I did it in the rings and the natural turning of the forearms from promoted grip on bottom to supinated grip on top made it easier. 2. Pike Push-ups: used a higher platform for the feet. 5x6 3. Tailor Pose: 3 rounds for a 2-3 min hold. Not sure if it was because of the heat in NYC or because I've been active since morning but I've never felt so open in this position. Heels were a couples inches from the groin. Knees were maybe 4 inches from the ground. When I went into my pancake, it only took me about thirty seconds before I was able to actively pull my chest to the ground without any assistance from the arms. Strange but I'll take it! Wont be able to practice much the next two days, teaching a lot tomorrow with very little break. Friday I'm helping a friend with construction on his house. Thanks for reading! Boris

Today's Session: Warm-up: Joint Rotations, spinal movements, hangs, balancing sequence from fighting monkey, cossacks, tea cups with 5 lbs. Core: Frontline drill with 5lbs/hand 1 min, backline drill with 2.5 lbs/hand 30 seconds (really felt this in the lower traps), side plank pulses + 10 leg raises, single leg glute bridge + 10 leg raises, ab wheel on knees 10 reps. Skill: Straddle press negative x6 paired with Dragon Squat x6/leg with foot elevated about 6 inches. Finally starting to understand this pattern. Press is challenging, finding active compression is really the missing component and strength in the bottom position. Jump to straddle is feeling solid, about 70% of the time I'm getting into a solid hold before I do the negative. Strength: 3 cycles of FL to Single Leg RDL with 12kg x12 reps to Tuck Planche to Poliquin step ups 8 kg x20 reps. Shoulder Rehab: 2 rounds of Band retractions to Drawing the Sword to Single arm cuban rotation 10 lbs x12 reps. 2.5 hr session, warm up and core took 1 hr 15, skill work took 30 min, strength work 30 min, rehab 15 min. ) x6

Monday: Bent Arm session. Changed up the warm-up routine for the legs: 20 ankle rotations/direction, 20 knee rotations/direction (10 with the heels grounded, 10 with the heels lifted/full knee bend).Then single leg balance while the other knee is raised up (hip at 90), doing this open/close movement where the knee rotates out, there is some rotation happening in the hip of the standing leg. This followed by full circles at the hip. After 20 of each the outside hip of the standing leg burns like crazy. I follow these with both feet grounded hip rotations, which feel like butter. Learned this little sequence from Fighting Monkey, it's a part of what they call "Form of the Father" and appears to be taken from Tai Chi. 12x1 rings muscle up. Decided to start from scratch with this pattern, focus on 1 quality rep at a time. In between reps I did legs: 3 sets 90 second horse stance, Behind the knee shrimp squat x6, front to back scales x8/leg. -Pullups: 3x7 -Pike Pushup: 3x5 Tuesday: Straight Arm - FL & Tuck Planche, 3 rounds 10 sec on/off. Moved to a lighter resistance band for the Planche. - Single Leg Romanian DL 10kg 2x20 - Kinstretch Hip Int/Ext Rotation sequence. Wednesday (Today): Bent Arm Was a lazy day, had to spend almost an hour on the floor before my body was ready for anything more vigorous. Worked on some locomotion patterns. Lower down from handstand to the bottom position of the straddle press, was only able to hold this position for maybe 5 seconds at a time. - Pullups: 4x7 - Pike Pushups: 4x6 (with feet elevated to a bench), nice progress here. - Poloquin Step-Up (knee rehab): 4x20 w/ 13 kg. Hope to get in one more Straight and Bent arm session in this week, as well as take a Movement Class at the Ido Portal studio. Thanks for reading, Boris

@Nathan Back feels much better, it's at 90% and hasn't affected my sessions today or yesterday. The thing is I've never felt like I've been going in the wrong direction. In fact everything felt fine, I'm in a massage therapy program, doing my movement practice, teaching others, making a positive impact on those around me. It took an outiside perspective to show me how blindfolded I've been when it came to my own desires, which I've shied away from for so long. From the Bhagavad Gita, "When you keep thinking about sense objects, attachment comes. Attachment breeds desire, the lust for possession that burns to anger. Anger clouds the judgement, you can no longer learn from past mistakes. Lost is the power to choose between what is wise and what is unwise, and your life becomes an utter waste. But when you choose to move amidst the world of sense, free from attachment and aversion alike, there comes the peace in which all sorrows end, and you life in the wisdom of the Self." This has been my mantra since I read the Gita 5 years ago. Made it feel okay to not desire things, or set goals. I tried to keep my days simple, practice, learn and grow, without any vision for the future. I recently read an auspicious post on the Gita by an yogi on Instagram, Marc Robberds. He wrote, "But what happens when there are no more goals to be attained? Often ambivalence arises, disguised as non-attachment but it's actually that the person doesn't care anymore, which is a form of aversion. Is there a way to remain passiaonte without the wanting/craving and without aversion?" So I guess the shift in perspective for me moving forward has to be on simply doing the best I can in every situation. Even if work doesn't inspire me, doing my best as a trainer/coach to empower my clients. If it's good/bad, doesn't matter. It's about aligning your whole mind-body with your intention to get something done. I've been reading Potent Self by Feldenkrais, who calls this spontenaity, where you let go of all resistance (what he calls cross-motivation) and your whole being is devoted to the act. Edit: What helped a lot with the back area was a lacrosse ball all along the iliac crest, lateral border of the sacrum, as well as the muscles in the posterior hip.

It's been a while since I've posted my sessions. 3 weeks actually. A lot of things have happened since then. My girlfriend and I had a few "breakthrough" talks. She noticed how dis-empowered and monotonously I've been going about my days. No passion, no fire. All water, just trying to flow by the days and get to the end (on a daily basis and in the long term). School has been a wave of up-and-down. Some classes are exciting (like Shiatsu), while others bore me and I find it challenging to stay focused. My movement practice has been uninspired. Work at Brooklyn Boulders likewise... So we talked about how I can bring desire back into my life. When she asked me what I want, I had a very hard time answering this simple question. "I don't know." After some digging, we uncovered that I've been holding onto 2 dis-empowering beliefs: 1. "I shouldn't want things for myself because typically when I strive for something I want, or set goals for myself, they never happen." This goes way back to when I was practicing martial arts devoutly at 13 years old. Daily practice, daily class at the studio. It was my everything. Until my mother decided to take me away from it to focus on my studies in high school. I was devastated. It was a pivotal moment that set the course for my life in the opposite direction I wanted to go. "Man plans and God laughs" was the motto. So I just didn't plan. 2. "I have nothing to offer or share because there is nothing new under the sun." We talked about this one previously in the blog. As Kit mentioned, "We stand on the shoulders of giants," his words hit the nail on the head. Yet this specter still seems to loom over me from time-to-time. Movement drives me, it brings me passion and fulfillment. However, my work at Brooklyn Boulders is not fulfilling. I don't love climbing nor care to train for it. Despite having several members that have a similar movement mindset, there is no one I feel I could learn from. My girlfriend doesn't really understand where this need for a teacher comes from, but I often wish for someone to guide me through the process, a process which for the past 4 years I've undertaken on my own. What originally inspired me towards movement outside of specializing in one thing (such as climbing) was Ido Portal. So I've decided to go back to those roots. Although money is a greatly limiting factor, I decided to go for broke and attend classes at an Ido Portal Method studio in NYC. I took one class and absolutely loved it, it rekindled my fire. Decided to go to class once a week and practice what I learn outside of class on top of my typical 3-4x a week strength and conditioning sessions. Climbing has been put aside (for now) to make space for this. Training overall these past few weeks has been going pretty well. Still working on Front Lever and Planche. Can now hold a Tuck Planche for 10 seconds as a max best effort. Nailed a few new moves, like headstand kip-up to handstand. Shoulder feels great and hasn't bothered me. Poloquin step-ups and high rep mobility for the knees is working like a charm. Numbers for pull-ups have gone up. Had a minor breakthrough with the dragon squat pattern. Unfortunately, I think I did too many backbends yesterday. At night I felt a burning intense sensation around the SI joint, lower back area. Goes away with laying down and standing, but returns when sitting. Didn't go to my movement or massage classes this morning. Had a hard time even just getting up off the floor. After my morning mobility session, standing flexion of the spine is where the most intense pain is (none on the standing back bend). Possible disc herniation at L5-S1? After doing spinal waves, bouncing/shaking, ROM the area felt better. Was able to get into plough pose at the end. The most intense movement was trying to round my spine from the neck down in a standing position to come into forward fold. Took several tries but managed to get there at the end. A hip hinge from standing to 90 degrees at the waist was also intense (but in a much nicer way). Anyone have any tips for rehab-ing this area? Will probably go through this morning sequence 3-4 times more today. I expect it to be fully healed within a week. Thanks for reading everyone! Boris

Most of my experience comes from taking yoga classes, such as the Rocket or Hatha where the teacher either begins or ends the class with a breathing meditation. The main types I've encountered are Kapalabhati or Skull-Shining Breath (Yoga Journal gives a decent explanation of the technique https://www.yogajournal.com/poses/skull-shining-breath) , Bhastrika or Bellows (https://yogainternational.com/article/view/learn-bhastrika-pranayama-bellows-breath), Khumbakha and Naudi Shodhana (http://www.chopra.com/articles/nadi-shodhana-how-to-practice-alternate-nostril-breathing). The first two are what I would call Yang techniques meant to warm the body by hyper-oxidation and are useful for repaying "Oxygen Debt" as Steve Maxwell likes to call it. For example, if you go for a breath retention and your measuring your max time you are building O2 debt. Our bodies monitor CO2 levels, which increase during that period. These first two yang techniques are great for quickly restoring normal (and slightly more alkaline) O2-CO2 levels by quickly pumping the CO2 out of the system. Khumbakha is what I am currently playing with. Basically the breath is broken up into four parts: inhale:retention:exhale:retention. Start with a 1:1:1:1 ratio of parts, for example 4 count inhale, 4 count retention, 4 count exhale, 4 count retention. Then slowly build up the ladder 5:5:5:5, 6:6:6:6 and so on. In the sutras Patanjali mentions using a 1:4:2:1 ratio (please correct me if I'm wrong with this I don't have my source text with me). You can play with the ratios however you want. You can do this seated, and you can do this as a walking meditation (which is what I've been doing for the past several months) where each count is a step. The last one, Naudi Shoda is more of a yin technique meant for restoring alignment, centering and balancing the body. Each nostril corresponds to the yin or yang elements of your being so the point is to create harmony between the two. Very useful after a practice or before going to bed. All of the above Khumbaka techniques apply to this last one. For example say you start the cycle by breathing in through the left nostril on a count of 4, you hold for a count of 4, exhale through the right for 4, hold for 4, inhale through the right for 4, hold 4, exhale left 4, etc I am planning on writing a detailed post about my experiment with walking khumbakha. Let me know if you have any questions in the meantime. Sorry I don't have concrete videos demoing the techniques.

Have you tried doing some sort of breath work before your sessions? For example a couple rounds of yogi skull shining breath followed by breath retentions. Or my new favorite called kumbakha where you break the breath into a square: inhale-retention-exhale-retention, start with say 4 seconds on each then move up by 1 count each cycle and see how high you can go. I always feel more energized after I do these and mentally ready/focused to train.

Love the idea behind the desk! I find the floor the most versatile space to do any sort of work. Sitting in a chair limits you to maybe 2-3 positions with the legs while the upper torso basically remains static (with the exception of the occasional thoracic backbend over the back support). Standing doesn't offer much variety either unless you have a counter at about hip height where you can place your lower leg into a figure four or place the foot on top for a hip flexor stretch on the standing leg. However, from sitting I am able to transition from at least 10 different positions with the legs. You can also have the spine in extension like in a sphinx pose. I tend to do all my work from the floor, and often create a small surface to place my computer and a notebook on that's low to the ground with a stack of books, although something a bit more sturdy and elegant would be great You can also modify with a yoga block if the flexibility is an issue.

Sunday's Practice: Warm-up: joint mobility, sections of "Form of the Father", a tai chi sequence taught by Fighting Monkey. Squat sequence, shaking/bouncing, leg kicks Skill-Work: crow to headstand kick up to handstand. Managed to stick the landing a few times. The less I kick with the legs/low back and the more I explode off the arms the better my form feels, the less of an arch as I end up in handstand. Not sure if that's proper technique...Played with some air baby, can get to 1 finger on each side although it will be a while before that finger will lift. Feels like a strength/endurance limitation rather than balance, it's intense on the obliques. Strength Circuit: -Pull-ups alternating grip: 7,7,7,8,7,7 -Pike Push-ups with feet elevated: 5,4,4,3,5. These felt more challenging than normal, perhaps because I was working that motion dynamically in the skills work -Rows: 5x12 -Pushups on Parallel bars (feet elevated same height as bars): 7,6,5,5,5. Working on increasing ROM and lean as I go down. -Leg Lifts Pike and Straddle variations on parallel bars: 5x12 Tuesday's Practice: -Front Lever & Planche: 10 sec on 10 sec off for 5 rounds. 3 sets. I tested my Planche after all this work and I managed to hold the tuck without resistance bands for about 10 seconds (a first for me). It seems I wasn't challenging myself as hard as I could have, which means I should start with the tuck hold without bands next time I train the hold, keeping the toes of one foot down and alternating. Today's Practice: Floor work, Release technique. Started with my usual warm-up then began to improvise and flow. Played with Crow to headstand kick-up to handstand and Macaco. Would any one like to offer some feedback? Not sure what I should be focusing on to clean it up. Finished the day with a community Fighting Monkey class. Love Aswad (@trumovmnt) he's an amazing teacher, so happy I found him. We began class with Stillness practice. Horse Stance transitions starting from straight legs in a straddle to balls of feet, bending the knees forward and squatting down keeping the heels lifted then placing them down, hold then straighten. A lot of fun partner work with the practice balls (head, ribs/pelvis, feet, then combination of all three, then keeping the feet planted). Helicopter partner game. Class time flew by too quickly. Met some awesome people too. Body feels great after a long day, now to study for my midterm! At some point I will write a post (it will be a long one) about the walking breathing meditation I've been doing inspired by the workshop I took with Steve Maxwell. Nothing new under the sun, I'm sure there are people who practice this, I'm just surprised at how I've been able to systematize and create progressions for breath holds while walking. Been feeling incredible benefits from this practice. Thanks for reading, Boris

That's a great concept! We do this with skin rolling, although it only directly affects the superficial layers. Thank you for sharing!

That's pretty smart! Love the idea (currently in school for massage therapy). Was also looking into integrating it into my future practice. I've seen cupping used in conjunction with gua sha. One of my classmates felt the combination was very effective. Thank you for sharing!

Hello lovely humans, I am wondering if anyone has experience with cupping therapy that they would be willing to share as used for a recovery protocol? Was it beneficial (or the opposite), were there any notable effects? My physical therapist mentioned cupping and how it promotes circulation and all that other good stuff to tissues to help with healing and prehab. From what I understand, there isn't much scientific evidence to back it. However I have seen physical therapists use it on their clients/athletes (my mother used to do it to me as a child when I got sick, although it was too long ago to remember if it actually did anything). In any case, I'm not one to completely rely on science to dictate what I should and shouldn't be doing. Personal experience is far more valuable. I'm also curious what kind of effect it would have an effect on tissues that are chronically tense.

Today's Practice: Floor flow, started with some structure and moved into improvisation. Created an interesting shoulder sequence. Supine, hands in a T-shape, I start with a twist bringing opposite foot to hand while pressing the other arm into the ground and away from the leg that rotated. This line felt great as I actively pulled the arm-leg in opposite directions from each other, so I decided to explore different lines by position my arm on different angle in the arc while the leg also moved to create the oppositinal force. I also explored pronating/supination the forearm and internally/externally rotating the shoulder joint. The rest of the warm up was Yuri's band sequence, some skin the cats and a rice bucket sequence to prepare the forearms/wrists/fingers for climbing. I spent some time climbing, mainly sticking to the 45 degree wall. I managed to clean up the V5's I struggled with last time, got a V6 and projected a V7. After this was some Skill work: Front Lever and Tucked Planche with resistance bands. 10 seconds on 10 seconds off for 5 rounds, 3 sets alternating btw the 2 patterns. Limitation is the FL was grip because of climbing and core. Strength work was 3 sets of Rows with feet elevated for 10 reps, parelletes flow: L-sit to Shoulder stand to Croc on each arm to straddle sit back to L-Sit and single-leg RDL's with 15lbs for 12 reps. I challenged the balance a little by standing in a soft matted surface for these. The L-sit bent arm press to shoulder stand is feeling solid. The pike push-ups are paying off. I'm finally able to maintain a 90 degree bend in the elbow as I lift the legs up, which before was not possible. I finished the session with rotator cuff capacity work, 3 rounds of 20 reps for each exercise. I added poliquin step-ups with 5 on weight for 20 reps as well. Lastly I massage my shoulders with a lacrosse ball. Im enjoying the FL and Planche work. In an effort to keep things simple, these will be my strength goals, perhaps along with HS press. Will give meditation in the morning a go Thanks for reading, Boris

Amazing, I would never have thought of that. Life's lessons staring me right in the face. If only I would take my sunglasses off to see them properly. Thank you for taking the time to read and respond @Kit_L , I greatly appreciate your words. Someone dear to me said something similar, "Simplicity Amplifies." When I narrow down what I want to do to a few important things, I can amplify their growth with my concentration and focus. My movement practice is so diverse that progress is incredibly slow in all the different facets. The challenge in now to hone in on what really matters to me. I'll leave the question of "why" for another day (it's worth delving into, although I practice because it's such an integral part of my being and it fills me with joy, I can't imagine myself not having a regular practice).