concept focus in baseworks

3.1. Concept: Focus in Baseworks — Transcript (English)

Summary:

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Transcript

Congratulations.

You have just finished a segment that introduces Baseworks form practice.

We’ve discussed how we work with relatively common movements, but we approach them in a somewhat unusual way that we sometimes have jokingly referred to as anti-functional movement.

Our ultimate goal in taking this somewhat unusual approach to become more aware of certain aspects of our behavior, which are normally automatic, and to regain more manual control over our movements and behaviors.

But that’s our future goal.

And when we’re here in the form, we still need to understand what is it that we’re doing right now, because understanding what you’re doing helps stay motivated, and also it impacts the learning outcomes.

So we need to have a clear, measurable objectives in order to improve our performance.

And one of the frameworks that describes the overall quality of movement in Baseworks is the six principles that we already reviewed in the end of the previous segment.

And in this segment, we will introduce another framework, something that we call focus, that explains what we’re trying to achieve in every particular form, especially at the level of macro movements.

For example, we said that in Baseworks, squat is not a leg strengthening exercise.

Then what is it?

Within our framework of focus, squat has three fours i and by the way fours i is the plural form of the word focus.

So, squat has three fours i which are structure, transit, and transpose.

What is a focus?

A form’s focus defines its movement goals and learning objectives and macro movement dynamics.

A form typically has one, two, or three, or occasionally four fours i.

And all together we currently identify 12 foci, which are structure, gravity, ascend, torsion, converge, expand, inflect, intent, equate, transit, transpose, and isolate.

Again, absolutely no need to memorize these names right now, but as we go through the characteristics of some of these foci, maybe it will give you more confidence in performing Baseworks forms.

So now I’ll give you a brief overview of each focus and for the rest of this segment, we will explore some of these on a practical level.

Structure, forms with this focus include very basic bodily positions which serve as a foundation of most movements that we perform on a daily basis, like standing for example.

The goal of practice with this focus is to use Distributed Activation and micro movements to explore what it feels like to be in these positions so that we can find the same positions the body parts are not vertical, but at an angle to the normal direction of gravity, or when other external forces are applied to the body.

Then gravity.

In forms with this focus, our body or some body parts are not vertical, and we’re trying to arrange them in exactly the same position as if they were vertical.

And we’re comparing them with what we remember from the structure forms.

And Ascend movement dynamics include some kind of step-by-step progression and rely heavily on the principle of fixing, separating, and isolating.

And as the name ascend suggests, the progression is built in the upward direction.

The idea here is like an architecture.

We want to create a very solid foundation and then we build something on top while maintaining the structure of the foundation.

Then torsion is very similar to ascend, but it involves movement of turning around the spinal axis.

Converged forms work with the overall body flexion as well as with strengthening the so-called hollow body pattern.

And we want you to forget about the core strength here and we want to view the whole front of the body as one continuous sheath.

The expand forms work with the overall body extension.

They work on the awareness and control the subtle movements of the feet, legs, hips, pelvis, ribcage, chest, shoulder, all the way to the neck, from different positions in gravity to explore this compounded expansive potential of the body.

And converge and expand foresight are probably the closest to the common exercise and fitness view of training, because here after we dial in all the safety and and injury prevention related concerns.

The work is as much about addressing the physical prerequisites and structural limitations as it is about building awareness and skills.

Then inflect and intent.

These two different foci address two different aspects of forms that include the spinal flexion, extension flexion dynamics that you have experienced in the simple cross inflection.

Inflect focus is about the details of the spinal movement The intent focus is about the intentional use of Distributed Activation that helps us to discover how muscle activation can be used to improve flexibility.

The equate forms focus on dynamically equalizing the pressure between two body parts while fixing the third part of the body.

We’ll cover equate focus as well all the four sides I just mentioned in this segment.

Then transit focus is about transitional movements where we significantly change the position of the legs and we’ll explore this focus in detail in segment 5.

Then transpose is about the visceral understanding of the center of gravity in relation to stability.

And in this course, the main form with this focus is the squat.

And we’re currently not covering more complex forms with this focus in this introductory course.

Then the isolate focus is about isolating the hip movements with the fixed position of the pelvis.

And again, we will not cover it in this course.

So from the next lesson, we will continue with our format of key points lesson followed with practice lesson.

And in this segment, the practice lessons will consist of short sequences of several forms.

And we encourage you to repeat the practice lessons several times, perhaps on different days because as you become more familiar with the movement dynamics, you might begin noticing some interesting changes.

But before moving to the next lesson, the last question I’d like to address here is the one you might be asking right now.

And that is, why on earth would you come up with all these four signs, all these principles and all these other stuff?

And the answer to this question is that we only came up with the names to refer to certain concepts.

And the concept themselves emerged organically from our practical work over the years as a result of continuously adapting movements and teaching instructions in a way that facilitated understanding and learning, especially for students with low body awareness.

And many people once they get used to our approach say that this movement practice makes a lot of sense physically and that it respects the structure and the hidden potential of the body.

So let’s try to make sense of the basework’s foresight and I’ll see you in the next Key Points lesson.