The Physical Creative

Flux Lab April Workshop

Rediscover the joy of movement and find ways to weave play and creativity into your strength and movement practice: and vice versa.

Empower yourself to chart your own path and find joy and exploration whether you are a beginner or seasoned professional. Chip and I have combined 50 years of experience teaching human movement and physical expression.

Designed for the fitness enthusiast and professional trainer, Flux Lab workshops will teach you how to reinvigorate , revitalize and reinvent your training.

Let’s develop real skills and find ways to create a better relationship with your body through strength and movement.

We use, we steal and repurpose ideas, tools and resources from the old ways. You can register here: Flux Lab Workshops on April 29-30th.

“We cultivate a way that is adaptive and alive to create a beautifully moving, adaptable and creative human being.”
— Jason C. Brown


Putting the Art Back Into the Art of Teaching

Some of your students/ athletes/artists simply will not consider themselves artists. My personal opinion is that anyone that steps inside a movement or martial arts studio is already an artist, it’s simply a matter of refining and cultivating one’s artistic skill.

Recently a mentor of mine, who is a dancer, told me that everyone is a dancer, but some people just need to learn, or maybe relearn the techniques. As a grappler, I would add that we are all grapplers, but maybe we just need to learn or relearn some techniques. My sons, as toddlers were excellent dances and roughhousers (grapplers.)

That’s how I think about movement and martial arts. Or even personal training and athletic development. It’s our job to bring out the artistry and movement creativity in our students. We are here to help guide and shape someone, not to change them.

If you’d like to learn more about my upcoming workshop please go here for some details Teach Like an Artist.

TEACH LIKE AN ARTIST
TEACH LIKE AN ARTIST
$50.00

Escaping the Shallows

“My purpose is to re-instill passion and romance into our connection with movement and play, to make movement and ability our primary aim, over appearance and ego, and to let joy, pleasure and excitement be our main motivations and inspirations.”
— Jason C. Brown

My work and this site is undergoing a bit of a rebrand. After spending 22 years in the fitness and performance fields I simply need to branch out. To curate, to teach and to share content, clarity and coaching on topics that I honestly consider much more important than exercise, sets and reps. The art of expressing the human body, the craft of teaching human movement and the profound effect that a physical practice can have on our creativity and quality of life will take center stage.

Perhaps my new direction began as an unconscious reaction to the surge of a more surface kind of physicality and creativity that I started to notice and live within.

A rebellion of sorts against the rushed demands that were creeping into my own physical practice. Once I became consciously aware of the tolls these shallows could take, I longed to enter into a deeper conversation and exploration about the wellspring of physicality and creativity. I began to identify in my own physical practice (as well as those of my students), certain eternal elements to access and enthuse. These elements will serve as our foundation to building a creative physical practice and enjoy it forever.

These 4 elements are:

  • Deep Play

  • Deep Practice

  • Deep Nature

  • Deep Rest.

I hope you’ll join me on this journey, in this new direction. And as your guide, I’m excited to start sharing. Thanks for being here with me.

Power and Accuracy Day in The Strength Garden

In this video I share one of my favorite workouts from my humble Strength Garden. To be completely honest, most of my physical practice is spent playing and moving in other ways like hiking and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu but I always enjoy a quick and focused training session.

This particular session consist of an explosive extension exercise (kettlebell or CMB Snatch) super-setted with an explosive flexion exercise, a single-arm slam using a dead-ball that I borrowed from the Baseball world.

I usually match the repetitions per move…5 slams for 5 snatches. And I usually perform 5 sets. I do not work for time and rest as needed since my focus is speed and power.

I add the accuracy by slamming onto stone pavers. It seems a little silly and the dead-balls do not bounce well, but if I’m not on point and accurate with my slam they will bounce off in chaotic directions. Which can be fun as well.

7 Super Skills Every Movement Coach Should Know

What is a Super Skill?

Super Skills are skills that have a guaranteed result on your investment regardless of your professional circumstances or otherwise.

Super Skills increase the value of nearly every activity , as well as the value of all of your other skills.

There are many Super Skills but I have carefully curated the Top 7 for movement coaches and created the brief yet comprehensive guide.

This guide contains 7 videos and PDFs that you can download onto your own computer and study at your own leisure.

You can order your downloadable copy below.

Life is Physical and Artistic

Life is physical, that’s what makes it artistic. That’s what makes artistic practice its central discipline.

Of course it’s deeper than that. What makes life artistic in its physicality is that it is created by inner processes. Inner processes are generative, life in fact is creative. That is how come science is an art and the poet writes from a sense of fact. The imagination is a fact.

After a while I took up pottery as a craft. I also took up dancing and woodworking and printing and farming and cooking and cutting stencils.

A 10 Minute Kettlebell & Bodyweight Workout for BJJ

The russian kettlebell may be the ultimate "Becoming Bamboo" tool for jiu-jitsu players.

It's effective because it is simple. And so is this quick 10 minute kettlebell and bodyweight workout.

I explain everything in the video so please be sure to watch completely to get the details but here are a few quick tips:

  • Start a new round of 10 kettlebell swings and 10 sit-throughs or sit-outs every minute on the minute for 10 minutes.

  • The faster you work the more you rest. Stay active during the rest.

  • You can pick any kettlebell swing variation. The choice is all yours. But remember, some kettlebell swings are slower/quicker than others. You may be able to perform 2-arm kettlebell swings quicker than the hand-to-hand swings that I use in the video.

  • You can progress this workout a few ways...once 10 & 10 become too easy pick a heavier kettlebell or up your repetitions. You could also add some complexity to one of those skills like throwing a high-bridge into the sit-through. Make sense?

Please let me know how it goes.

Gracias!

What is Motor Creativity? This is.

“Exploration “Play Rules.” These rules are as follows:
(1) you shall investigate the unfamiliar until it has become familiar; (2) you shall impose a rhythmic repetition on the familiar; (3) you shall vary this repetition in as many ways as possible; (4) you shall select the most satisfying of these variations and develop these at the expense of others; (5) you shall combine and recombine variations with one another; and (6) you shall do this all for its own sake, as an end in itself.”
— Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape (1967)

The “correct” way to perform a skill is frequently abandoned by top performers.

I am a teacher. A physical education teacher, a movement and martial arts teacher. And I define teaching as the cause of learning. This may happen simply because the student is ready; or it may come from a cue that was given by me or another student. Or it may have come from the environment or a constraint placed on the learner.

But most likely, it came from the practical physical experience and the sensation and assessment of what is effective by the actual performer.

I’d like to share two videos with you below. The first video is a during a friendly competition during a football game. Please notice how the “winner throws the football incorrecty. And she wins $100,000 because of it.

This second video is dear to my heart as a father that has a baseball pitcher that tends to throw more side-arm than overhead. I simply watch as coaches try to correct his form and actually make his throwing worse off.

Now, instead of being “corrected,” these movers should be applauded for solving these movement riddles in a way that was most effective and satisfying for their own individual expression.

The three books below were required reading in Human Movement Studies at Temple U. If you’re interested in skill, its development and practice design I highly recommend you check them out. I’ll link to them here as well.

Motor Learning & Performance

Dynamics of Skill Acquisition

Movement Discovery

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The Language of Movement

Because movement is a language and language is alive, there are no strict mechanics by which it may be understood. We come to know movement and play in much of the same way we come to know a person. A person made it, created it, expressed it. And like that person we know it in different degrees, in different contexts, tasks and environments. To come to know movement, play and creativity more and more completely. To feel these elements change as we change. The transformations of creativity and play are organic, in the same way as we are.