Movement Class with Philip Shepherd

Get your body moving with Philip each Friday at 12!

Classes are designed to stimulate both mind + body, developing & improving participants' overall mobility, joint health, & range of motion. Classes follow this general structure:

 

Coordination: Participants are taught a coordination-based movement pattern or cognitive task & are given time to practice the pattern or task independently. The pattern is then applied to a game or drill involving a partner in order to add a layer of complexity. 

 

Game: Participants will pair up for an interactive & dynamic game that will test their speed & reaction time in an effort to elevate the heart rate, warming up the entire body. Sometimes simple props like tennis balls or dowel rods are incorporated. 

 

Locomotion: After some brief + specific joint preparation, participants learn to isolate a short series of "low-gait" locomotion patterns that involve traveling across the open floor. We then combine these patterns into a sequence of moves with the ultimate goal of learning to seamlessly improvise these movements.

 

Strength: This is the most "conventional" section of the class where participants perform sets & reps of either upper body or lower body strength exercises (think pull ups, push ups, squats, or deadlifts). Most of these exercises will use the participant's body weight. 

 

Stillness: The class ends with 5-10 minutes of stillness as an opportunity to down-regulate the nervous system, which is proven to enhance recovery after significant bouts of work.