MovNat Professionals

Publications

“And with that one word — “practical” — Le Corre exposes a key weakness in modern exercise: Our workouts are domesticated, while the world out there is still plenty wild. In a pinch, can a man put gym-generated biceps and tank-tread abs to any real use? Could it be that our treadmill-running, elliptical-gliding, well-oiled Cybex world has turned us into show dogs who can’t hold our own in the hunt?”

“Le Corre’s program occupies a space all its own. If anything, MovNat falls within the concept of “evolutionary fitness,” an increasingly popular trend embraced by a loosely organized but fast-growing global community of health enthusiasts, medical professionals, and athletes.”

“This kind of neural stimulation… can go a long way toward combating the sensory sameness of everyday life. Physical play forces us to process a lot of sensory information — a simple, human survival skill we rarely call upon in life or in the typical workout.”

“Under most circumstances, if I did an activity that left me with multiple bruises and such sore muscles that lifting my arms was agony, I’d guess that I’d done something very stupid. But after getting roughed up in Silver Spring earlier this month, I couldn’t help but feel smart — or, at least, smarter than the average gymgoer.”

“Mr. Le Corre… promotes what he calls “mouvement naturel” at exercise retreats in West Virginia and elsewhere. His workouts include scooting around the underbrush on all fours, leaping between boulders, playing catch with stones, and other activities at which he believes early man excelled. These are the “primal, essential skills that I believe everyone should have,” he said in an interview.

“Since we were chasing woolly mammoths and jumping from trees, in evolutionary terms only a few seconds has passed. It’s all about getting out of the gym and using the skills and muscles that helped us survive, e.g. jumping, climbing, swimming and running barefoot.”

“In a fitness industry driven by competition and aesthetics, Erwan Le Corre is a beacon of light. His school of natural movement celebrates Nature – both within us and around us. As millions of feet pound millions of treadmills in air-conditioned gyms the world over, one man in the wilds of New Mexico is quietly starting a natural fitness revolution.”

“The very essence of MovNat encourages you to work out in a different way to normal so it was entirely appropriate that the day after my session I ascended to a previously unknown level of agony. Nevertheless, this purgatory couldn’t change the fact that I’d finished my session with a genuine smile on my face. One could almost say I was grinning like an ape.”

“In small group or private sessions, Greg Carver [a MovNat instructor] and colleagues re-teach the natural or primal movements that he says have been forgotten in the age of computers, cars and couches. His philosophy is that, ‘Fitness should be useful, so exercise needs to translate into real-life activities…”

“MovNat, short for Move Naturally, is a mind-body approach to fitness — and, on a grander scale, to life.
Participants get a chance to reconnect with their ancestral selves by redeveloping “situationally intelligent” strength, skills and abilities.”

Not only does exercising outdoors make us more resilient, says Le Corre; it’s also a better conduit for fitness than the typical cardio penance or preacher curls popular at big-box gyms, where waist trimming and biceps bulking are the main motivators. MovNat advances a concept that certain athletics coaches have pushed since the seventies, one that treats the body as a tool for dynamic movement, not a topiary sculpture.

“So we lifted: logs, rocks, one another. Jumped on, off and over things. Threw stuff, walked and ran…The improvements were shocking. We were getting fit not by going to a hi-tech gym, but by going back to nature’s basics. The central ideology is adaptation: re-mastering the motor skills – from running and jumping to swimming and defending – that originally made us one of the most adaptable species on the planet.”

“You don’t do a particular exercise because it is good for a particular body part. You do it because it is fun and it appeals to you. The fun resides in the challenge to adapt to your environment. The physical improvement is the beneficial outcome, but you need to find instant gratification in doing exactly what you’re doing when you’re doing it.”

“Le Corre has won a following among young fit Americans, offering courses in West Virginia, Brazil and Mexico. The founder of UK-based WildFitness, Tara Woods, describes him as ‘coming closer than any other human she has met to embodying the efficiency and elegance of a wild animal.'”

“We’re surrounded by concrete and metal and glass and cables and asphalt. Like a mouse on a wheel, we repeat the same exercises over and over, getting faster and faster and developing a certain degree of fitness, of course. But for all our repetitive motion, yes, even our swimming, cycling and running outdoors, we’ve become too specialized and too detached from nature. Our overspecialization in unnatural settings, believes French-born triathlete, rock climber, martial artist and trail runner Erwan Le Corre, not only has no practical application, but has disconnected us from our natural selves. This disconnect, he believes, is the root of chronic pain, obesity, depression, and general lack of vitality that plagues people all over the world. It’s a plight, he says, of a race of zoo humans.”

“There’s been a natural exercise revolution of late, from gym classes al fresco to a return to wild open water swimming. Now there’s a new era dawning. Exercise gurus are urging us to rediscover our body’s instinctive movements for a more functional level of fitness and to help us fall in love with exercise all over again.”