Erwan Le Corre, Founder of MovNat.com
Amy and Clifton of MovNat
Last week at the Paleo FX conference in Austin, TX, I participated on a on a panel entitled Exercise vs Activity. With me on this panel was Erwan Le Corre, who is the founder of MovNat.com. It was a pleasure to listen to Erwan share his innovative perspective on movement with the audience. At the conference, I also had the chance to speak with several other members of the organization, including Clifton Harski and Amy Heidbreder (pictured here on the right of the page). I enjoyed my opportunity to learn more about their philosophy, which has high resonance with the Dan’s Plan movement philosophy. After the conference, Clifton graciously agreed to an interview to tell our readers more about their work and workshops. I have yet to do one of these workshops myself but I look forward signing up for one as soon as possible.
1. For someone who has not yet heard of MovNat, please tell us a bit about what you do and your philosophy.
MovNat is a physical competency system based on the evolutionarily natural abilities of all humans. Physical competency is the combination of physical conditioning and physical skills, so MovNat is not just interested in fitness for the sake of fitness. We think that the ability to move well and confidently in all areas of life is just as important. We believe that humans have become almost completely divorced from nature, and that one of the most natural things we can do as humans is to move.
Unfortunately, even movement (in conventional forms of modern ‘exercise’, and even other forms) has become unnatural. Many of us engage in artificial movements in an artificial gym environment – this is now standard. We aim to instruct people to be able to move in complex, adaptive, and natural ways.
2. The physical culture in the US encourages people to cluster activity into a walled-off period, otherwise known as a ‘workout.’ I’m a big proponent of integrating mixed-intensity movement throughout the day (i.e., standing, walking, stretching, and exercise). When we spoke, you told me about the MovNat concept of “opportunistic training,” please tell our readers more about that.
People just don’t move often enough. We encourage people to move more in general, and not to compartmentalize their “fitness or activities.” From an evolutionary perspective, humans used to rely on movement and activity for the necessities of life, so they never had to worry about “getting to the gym”.
We don’t argue that we should all revert to a lifestyle of our forebears in the industrial, agricultural, or paleolithic times. That is not reality. We can, however, look back in time to understand how daily movement was requisite for all humans. This understanding informs us as to why our modern sedentary lifestyles are catastrophic for our health.
Opportunistic training is the concept of moving whenever you have the opportunity to do so; almost the antithesis of “scheduled” workouts. Here are just a few ideas of what opportunistic training looks like:
- Carrying the hand basket at the grocery store, and carrying your bags to your car instead of using the big shopping cart with wheels.
- Sitting on the floor and moving through our various ground movement drills during your television programs.
- Taking the stairs.
- Balancing on curbs (not near traffic).
- Brushing your teeth in a squat position.
A main point we emphasize is that a ‘workout’ is not the only type of useful movement to involve in our lives! Lighter activity like walking, hiking, play are all incredibly important to incorporate into daily life to combat our sedentary lifestyles.
3. Can you tell us more about the different types of workshops you offer and give us a few ideas about the types of skills you teach? Also, please share video examples of your training methods.
We teach techniques in walking, crawling, balancing, jumping, running, climbing, lifting, carrying, throwing, catching, defending, and swimming. We currently have 1 day workshops each weekend all over the USA and World. The 1 day workshops cover fundamentals in all the areas above (except defending and swimming). We focus on efficient movement skills. These workshops are held both outdoors and indoors.
Also, we are well known for our 5 day workshops in WV. These events have participants living in tents, eating a paleo diet, and moving for 5 whole days. We are able to cover all of the skills, including swimming and defending. The campground and lake are awesome. I’m excited for the 6 weeks I’ll be spending there this summer.
Finally, we are starting our certification program in May. This is something we are extremely excited about because it means we can try to spread this message of health through movement to a wider group through our new trainers. This certification will extensively cover our philosophy and the why we do things how we do, and spend lots of time testing and perfecting the future trainers’ skills to perform and teach our techniques.
As a thanks for having me on here, your readers can email [email protected] and let him know to ask for the Dan’s Plan discount of $30 on a workshop, and he’ll get you set up with a discount code.
4. Where can I read some more info about MovNat?
You can read about us on www.movnat.com but I think checking out some of these features is a great way to get perspective of what we are doing:
- Outside Magazine feature
- Experience Life feature
- 1 Day workshop review at Mark’s Daily Apple
- Washington Post
- The MovNat YouTube Channel
Lastly, here is a video of MovNat founder, Erwan Le Corre at last year’s Ancestral Health Symposium at UCLA.
“MovNat: evolutionarily natural fitness” by Erwan LeCorre from Ancestry on Vimeo.