Brief history of Baseworks

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The following text is a slightly modified narrative from a lesson in an online curriculum of a Baseworks teacher certification course. This is a story from Patrick’s point of view.

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The Brief History of Baseworks

STUDIO IN JAPAN

Hi. I am Patrick Oancia, the founder of the Baseworks Method.

I’d like to talk about my experience in opening and operating a physical education studio in Tokyo with the health & wellness industry in the background, and how it eventually led to the development of Baseworks.

I come from a background of competitive athletics and have been an avid athlete in some manifestation for most of my life. I was also a musician and songwriter - singing and playing guitar in bands both in Canada and in Japan. When I first arrived in Asia in the late 80s, I immediately got turned onto yoga and martial arts. 

I opened a studio in Tokyo in 2003. The original model for the studio was intended to be an interdisciplinary learning space. We offered a variety of classes and we also had regular workshops and lectures by guest teachers from all around the world. It was a transformative time,  and I’ve had a lot of amazing and equally rewarding experiences. We were also the first studio in Tokyo to conduct some really unique and interdisciplinary events - where yoga, dance, music, expressive arts, food and other stuff were all mixed together. Now you see a lot of it, but at the time we started doing these events, there was nothing else like it. But eventually what happened was that despite my ideals to go with this very open concept, I inevitably ended up becoming more specialized in how I personally taught, which in the end resulted in removing all the random workshops and  freestyle yoga classes at the studio and developing Baseworks, making it the signature syllabus at the studio. 

FRUSTRATION AS A TEACHER

To explain why this happened, I need to give you a bit of an overview of the industry and also of my own compounded frustrations as a teacher.

(1) Slow progress unless the student already had a background in learning movement in a structured way.

What I soon noticed at my studio was that with this very open freestyle concept, the majority of the students were not really progressing, not even close to the rate of progress that I experienced in my own practice. And this became frustrating for me— because, as a teacher, I thought– what measures your own accomplishment as a teacher if not the progress of your students?

And again, this model of many teachers teaching different things was the original and uncommon model at the time, but today, it is very common for thousands of fitness studios and gyms worldwide. Typically, modern fitness studios today are muti-style, where teachers all come from different backgrounds. You come to a gym, and you can choose from 50 different activities, all taught by different teachers. You know how in academic institutions, the teaching faculty are trying to have a grasp of what’s taught in other courses so that they have a clear understanding of what the students are supposed to already know when they come to their classes? None of this kind of collaboration is typically present in multi-disciplinary physical education institutions, unless they are pro-level or competition-oriented.

This is not to say that this model is wrong, but what I noticed at my studio, was that the only people who could really benefit from this kind of environment were already adept in how to move their bodies. And it could be a background in any movement modality – athletics, martial arts, or dance - and people who fit this scenario could show up, learn and take something meaningful to them away from this interdisciplinary learning environment. An important point to note is that what these people usually share is that they come from a background of practicing and developing one discipline for a long time prior to showing up at the interdisciplinary learning space. That also defined my own personal experience across many endeavors in learning.

(2) Students rarely committed.

Students would frequently come and go, and seldom committed to regular practice. And having had parallel experiences in athletics and music, and knowing first hand  that committing to something is the only way to progress, this was quite heartbreaking. 

And this is not only my experience. I frequently have these conversations with people teaching various movement modalities, and get this same story of how  teachers put a lot of energy into supporting the students’ progress yet they prematurely drop off, missing out on the very viable opportunity to go deeper and get that much more out of the experience. And in fact you can see the same trends across many other learning environments these days. 

Like seriously, can you even call yourself a teacher if your students do not learn? I guess, using the word “Instructor” instead of “teacher” common in the Fitness and Wellness industry is intended to cushion this cognitive dissonance. If you are an instructor, you just instruct, so if your students do not learn anything, this does not undermine your professional skills.

(3) Becoming confused or injured.

So, from what I observed, the students would actually be optimistic at the start. But after being exposed to so much different information, although exciting and inspiring at first, eventually they would get frustrated and not really understand how to progress. And for some this led to some sort of strain or injury. 

You know, many people turn to physical practice because they have heard that it’s somehow good for them. But then, many can’t figure out how exactly the practice is supposed to benefit them and how to approach it for safe and sustainable results.

(4) People who don’t do well in a freestyle interdisciplinary learning environment have low body awareness.

Just looking at many students back then and now, it is obvious that some people have no idea what they are doing and have no defined measurable goals.

This wasn’t only the experience at my studio in the 2000s, but this is what has become normal in most yoga schools, dance and movement studios and fitness clubs with random instructors, teaching or i guess i should say instructing all different things for the perceived novelty of programming diversity. 

Don’t get me wrong, there are specific schools of movement disciplines where you can go to and work within a structure and really improve your practice. But they are far and few between. 

And the idea about the importance of STRUCTURE and COMMITMENT is not presented anywhere on the surface of the industry. And this extends across to the study of martial arts, dance, sports the more current wave of movement practices that have all produced an array of instagram influencers who directly or indirectly validate an interdisciplinary approach. 

THE INDUSTRY

Now I’d like to talk about the Fitness and Wellness industry, certain prevalent trends and ideas which often reduce learning outcomes. The reality is that:

(1) In order to establish a solid physical practice, unless you are already a full-time professional athlete or already have a solid background in some kind of discipline, the entry point is very difficult to get your head around.

(2) The emphasis is often put on either “to push hard for gain-based results” or “back off and take it easy” avoiding  anything that feels the slightest bit overtly challenging, often being referred to as being very mindful and careful. The first approach often results in burnout and or injury, and the second results in learning very little. There is usually no middle path.

(3) What I also see is that in terms of expectations, there is a desire for immediate gratification. As in “I wanna be fit. And I want it by next week.”  so people end up setting premature goals that are not realistic. Again, this approach may result in a burnout or injury, or disappointment. There is rarely focus on more foundational aspects of physical practice, such as body awareness, and sensitivity to one’s conditions and limitations. 

This has also been my observation in being a student to other teachers. I’ve had my own share of uninformed goals, either not supported by, or even guided by teachers in a way not appropriate to my condition. And the CT and MRI scans of my joints are a vivid illustration of what can go wrong in an unsustainable or misguided practice. A major part of my creating Baseworks was to deal with the damage sustained during the earlier stages of developing my own practice.

Anyway, all of this inevitably got me thinking about the possibilities for somebody to develop a solid, considerate and sustainable practice over time that could be approached at a pace relevant to one’s ability and lifestyle. Of course, the Fitness and Wellness industry delivers a lot of good for many people. It is just that based on my direct experience as a long time teacher, and studio owner, having witnessed thousands of students pass through our doors, and the doors of other studios, these are the problems that I felt needed to be addressed.

BASEWORKS: SAFE AND EFFECTIVE

In trying to solve the problems that I was observing both at my own studio and across the industry, I focused on the following objectives;

(A) I was modifying my teaching, the content of the classes, and the dynamics of the movements, to make them as safe as possible and to support a sustainable injury free practice.

In Baseworks classes there are a lot of very explicit instructions which specifically relate to avoiding joint compression, preventing shoulder, neck, spine, hip, and knee injuries.

(B) The next point was about how to ensure the efficacy of learning.

You know, in the study of motor control, there is this thing called the “motor equivalence problem” also called the “degrees of freedom problem”. It basically states that there are multiple ways for humans to perform a movement in order to achieve the same goal.” 

I know it may not sound very intuitive at first, but What it basically means in class is that when I say “lift your arms” or “lean forward”, there are actually multiple ways to do so.

…and different people will be performing different movements, with different trajectories, using different sets of muscles, even though they are following the same instructions with the intention to follow my instructions. This creates a lot of ambiguity and inconsistency, which is not favorable for learning.

One person may be doing a movement in a safe way, and another person thinks they are doing exactly the same movement…..but they are not, and they are actually hurting themselves. Moreover, when I am teaching a “new” movement, people may recognize it as something that they already know and perform it in a habitual way. This way, no learning will occur – it will just be doing habitual movements.

Of course if you show up every day to do your practice, even with this ambiguity, from repetition, and from reflecting on your experience, you will be also able to learn. 

But very few people have time to show up every day.

And even fewer people come with an already developed appreciation that it’s better to show up every day. So as a result, the ambiguity negatively impacts the efficacy of learning.

So, I thought to myself, although I can’t make the students show up every day, I can make the practice method more consistent so as to reduce the ambiguity and improve their learning experience. 

This is what we did in Baseworks. In a way, it’s like a micro-analysis of people’s movement goals and intentions.

I’ve standardized the logic and order of the progression of the movements in such a way that every person in the class is doing exactly the same thing, and created a framework on how to approach almost every possible situation when a person has multiple limitations. 

This way, the students could better learn to understand and move their bodies, and as a result more effectively built their physical prerequisites and skills.

I’ve also introduced a bunch of applications inspired by osteopathy, physiotherapy and exercise physiology to reduce compression on the major joints, to increase the synergistic action in the muscles and to improve the muscle-to-brain feedback.

On top of that, and what is critically important, I wasn’t just doing it alone. We had a group of dedicated teachers, who were all attending each other’s classes, and we collectively refined the method, looking at what worked and what didn’t, what the students responded to and what was difficult to understand. We often had to step away from common notions and applications in sports and fitness. We simply did whatever worked better as long as it was safe. We allowed the method to evolve across our collective minds and bodies of the practicing students. It was a unique experience like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. Of course, my experience, my involvement as a driving force and kind of like a supervisor, as well as the organizing abilities of my business partner and co-developer Satoko Horie, played a significant role. But in many ways, we were harnessing something that was emerging as a by-product of trying to “communicate movement”.

This led to creation of all these patterns that you can experience in Baseworks classes, such as spinal movements and micromovements, oppositional force and pulling parts of the body in different directions. 

This is why we extend the ankles in seated forwards bends rather than flexing them. This is why we adhere to the principle of Symmetry and drive the students crazy correcting their shoulder and hip position in lunges and other asymmetrical movements.  

All these small things work either at the level of the myo-fascial system, or at the level of neuro-muscular interactions and higher-level processes of perception, attention, and learning.

I mean, essentially, we teach body awareness. I wouldn’t say it is like teaching vision to blind people, 

but just think about it -  if you can better feel and understand your body, and you have control over fundamental movement skills, then you can show up at any of those multi-style places and actually learn something. 

So in a way, Baseworks allowed me to close the gap between those people who could benefit from any movement practice, however random it was, and those people who couldn’t figure out how to progress.