Locomotion Movement Session: Isolate & Integrate

In today's Locomotion Movement session I am joined by student and friend, Sebastian Bohorquez.

This video will provide some insight into how we structure our Locomotion Flow practice sessions.

The Warm Up

We started with a ball on a string which is a nice way to warm up with a partner. The rules were that you could only lift one hand off the ground from the quadrupedal position and try to maintain contact with the ball while your partner moves it (and you) into various stretched or contracted positions.

Isolations

We then moved onto practicing the following skills in isolation:

1. Role

2. Cross Step

3. QDR

4. Soft Cartwheel.

We did 5 reps per side and for the QDR, supported holds of up to 10-20 seconds for a total of 3 rounds with around 90 seconds of rest between sets.

Integrations

After the isolations it was onto integrating the skills together.

Starting off we performed two skills at a time and practiced joining these together as smoothly as possible for 5 reps per side for 3 rounds (again with 90 seconds of rest between sets).

Then we finished with all 4 skills in closed and open flows for 90 seconds per round. We did 3 rounds of this and afterwards played freely with some of the transitions to experiment and explore how we could better combine the skills.

This is format is how we practice locomotion to ensure we are learning the isolated skills and refining them as well as learning how to combine them in both closed and open flows.

Open and Closed Flows

Closed flows are when we agree on a certain order for the 4 skills to be performed in.

Open flows allow the 4 skills to be performed in any order you choose. This creates a requirement to improvise slightly without pre-meditating the sequence.

Practicing this way ensures skill development, refinement and sequencing and starts to open the door towards more advanced improvisation.

It was a pleasure practicing with such a beautiful mover that as Sebastian and you can check him out on Instagram here. 

To learn Locomotion Flow, you can take my 7 week online course here.

Happy Moving!