Top 5 benefits of Animal Flow

An interesting new movement practice, Animal Flow, has been designed to integrate a range of fitness programs and resistance training models to provide you with increased mobility, flexibility, stability, power, endurance, coordination and (most importantly) fun!

But you’re probably wondering: what is it!?

So before we get into the benefits lets unpick this new movement program.

It was developed by Mike Fitch, an American fitness educator with a background in gymnastics, parkour, breakdancing, and hand balancing. And essentially brings all those practices (and more) together, to provide a complete training system that is easy to pick up and has benefits for any and every body.

If I were to describe it, I would say it’s like a mix between yoga, contemporary dance, and breakdancing. It has some similar moves to yoga, often moving through yoga style positions, but then there’s a fluidy and stylisation reminiscent of dance.

Where does the ‘Animal’ bit come in? Will I find my inner llama!?

If you were expecting to find your spirit animal or roar like a lion the entire class, unfortunately this is not that class.

The forms are named after particular animals; CRAB, BEAST, SCORPION, APE, and yes it does sound a bit gimmicky, but there is some method to it. Firstly, they’re easy to remember, which is great when moving from one call out to the next! Secondly they describe particular forms of locomotion that are familiar to us but less well practiced in our modern lives. For example, the BEAST describes a crawling move on all fours and whilst this is one of the building blocks of human development, how often do you actually crawl? (And when you do crawl under the table to pick up the dropped cutlery, how easily do you get back up!?)

So… the benefits?

ONE – ANIMAL FLOW CAN BUILD STRENGTH

What many of these animal movements have in common is that they require you to support your full body weight, which is why they can be used for strength training. The Travelling Crab exercise, for example, aids in core stability and also builds strength throughout your shoulders, abs, hips and back. For added leg strength and explosive power, try the Forward Travelling Ape exercise that requires you to jump forward while in a deep squatting position.

Movements that need you to support your body on all four limbs very close to the ground such as the Travelling Beast are great at supporting your body weight with locomotion requiring a significant strength effort.

Be your own superhero. It’s important to be strong, to be useful!

TWO – ANIMAL FLOW CAN IMPROVE MOBILITY

The Form Specific Stretches are designed to improve your overall flexibility and range of motion through mobility. For example, any movements requiring squatting or crouching down into a crawl position help to improve mobility in your hips and lower body. Pandiculation rather than stretching is something that animals do and is nature’s way of maintaining a youthful range of motion. What this means is that rather than passively stretching a muscle, you actively contract the muscles while slowly lengthening them – a bit like when you yawn.

Give yourself a whole body yawn! You deserve it.

THREE – ANIMAL FLOW CAN IMPROVE CARDIO FITNESS

Try the Animal Flow moves and combine them into a 30-minute, vigorous intensity circuit workout. Instead of moving from weight machine to weight machine, you are moving to different states of animal movement patterns – a circuit – in your gym, your local park or even your living room. Great for the heart and lungs and for your motivation too.

After a few seconds of doing a Travelling Beast, for example, you might transition into doing a few Side Kickthrough’s (see image above), then on to a Lateral Travelling Ape. This helps to boost your overall conditioning, keeps things engaging and allows you to move at your own pace and rest as required too.

FOUR – ANIMAL FLOW CAN IMPROVE CO-ORDINATION

As you might have initially guessed, some of these movements – such as the Full Scorpion – actually require quite a bit of coordination, dexterity and power to pull off. Even simpler animal movements like the Beast Activiation (in which you start with hands and feet on the floor and lift one limb at a time) help with overall coordination, balance and stability.

Crawling – a quadrupedal movement where you rely on all four limbs for movement has significant benefits for the brain because of that coordination challenge.

These animal workouts are good for the brain as well as the body.

FIVE – ANIMAL FLOW IS FUN!

Once you get over any initial anxiety about being a grownup doing what look like bunny hops (Travelling Ape definitely sounds better!) then you’ll quickly see that these animal moves – all modelled on the movements of animals in the wild – can make a big difference to your health but they are also playful and pleasurable too!

Putting it all together into one Flow gives you fun, freedom and fluidity!

I’m Louise Douse, founder of Bodyworks Massage and Movement Studio, empowering people to connect with and find more ease, vitality and enjoyment in their body.

Why not try it out for yourself. Join me for my free Animal Flow Taster Class on Wednesday 29th April at 3pm. More info HERE.