Training Revelations From The Blues Joint 4. Getting Low

So begins the fourth edition of what was originally intended to be a one off scenario. A guy can learn a lot in bars I suppose so who am I to argue?

 

What validated this afternoon buzz however was spending time with my father back in the Fall who had flown out from Cape Breton Island to hang out for his 60th birthday. 

 

The agenda for the day being hanging out in Mikey's Juke Joint, a Calgary favourite of mine for live music and home to a smoking hot afternoon jam. My dad being a sax player himself happened to bring his weapon on the flight west and is no stranger to jumping on stage on a Saturday afternoon in Calgary.

 

And jam he did.

 

Playing The Horn. Practicing The Hinge.

 

So much so that things eventually evolved into a three man bar top sax blastoff at the request of the owner pictured in the middle. 

 

A move that would have been much better off executed earlier in the afternoon than later. Let's just say that from a fitness context, proprioception might have been compromised throughout the afternoon. From a my father flew across Canada to celebrate his 60th in my neck of the woods and play a little sax context, we weren't on the lemon waters. No sir.

 

Which is where the revelation comes in. 

 

After jamming at high altitude I couldn't help but laugh at Dad's comments on the need to keep a low centre of gravity as a prevention to eating shit. Laughter soon being replaced by being genuinely impressed by a man who just turned sixty with sax in hand, two eyes closed, ten beers deep and still able to handle the bar top like a mountain goat.

 

A blast of a Saturday but also a crucial reminder that there is up, there is down and your ability to have control over what goes on in between can save you A LOT of trouble.

 

Getting low requires a lot out of you. It requires strength, stability, mobility, acceleration, deceleration, as well as the competency to wire it all together in both controlled and uncontrolled environments. 

 
Turkish Get Up from Move Improve on Vimeo.

 

 

 

It should also be practiced universally. It may be spending a lot of time working on the ground in various degrees with a variety of my clients. It may be trained standing to prone work with some of my baseball players so diving and sliding becomes less of a risk. It may be because none of us will ever truly master it.

 

 

Either discussing movement strategy or who is paying the bar tab

              

 

Wherever you may fall into categorically I cannot help but praise integrating movement patterning that requires you to go from vertical to horizontal whether it is tumbling, Turkish Getups, or following the right of passage of the Saturday Jam and just moving and seeing where it takes you.

 

-Jeff