I’m not talking about a polygon with triangular faces or a marketing scam to rope your friends in. I’m talking about The Pyramid Method, laid out by Cal Newport on his blog, Study Hacks. Newport tells the story of a friend of a friend’s journey to becoming a professional hip-hop artist. The key, he claims, was that the friend, Chris, followed the Pyramid Method – named for the hip-hop club, The Pyramid, where he honed his craft.
Bone Rhythm is a core concept taught in Z Health and I’ve found it to be one of the single most important teaching tools I have when it comes to getting people moving. The idea is very simple, that each bone is a rigid structure and because of that, when one end moves, the other must move. Now, the question of how the other end moves is what matters here. When the two ends of the bone move correctly relative to each other, you have smooth, effortless movement.
- You’re lazy Think about your daily movement patterns. How much variety is there? If you drive to work to sit at a desk and then relax by coming home and watching TV, you’re living your life essentially seated in front of a screen. You need to change up the patterns: stand, run, twist, bend and move, not just your body but your eyes and head too.
- You eat crap
People often ask why we do chi gung sets in certain numbers. Whenever I’ve heard Bruce Frantzis answer that question, he tells a story about these elaborate experiments they run in the Taoist monasteries, over generations, with control groups and varying repetitions, to see what the optimal number of repetitions for each exercise is. I always feel bad for the monks who spent their lives doing a few too many of each exercise.
It’s been on my mind a lot in the past month that Brookline Tai Chi is approaching its 20th anniversary. With a rough calculation, that also means that we are approaching having taught 10,000 students in that time span. I can’t decide which one of those milestones is going to look better on the big banner out front. How about “10,000 People Relaxed”? In light of reaching these major institutional marks, I’ve also been wondering about the underlying mechanisms that have given the school such an amazing run so far.
Check out this post from the Trainerfly blog. I talk to teachers and trainers all the time who want move beyond their live events, but the number of steps it takes, and the technology required to make it work seem overwhelming. Hopefully, I’ve made a little dent in that perception!
So far in this series we’ve been talking about adapting your teaching style and the structure of your teaching business to fit the needs of your students. Now I want to look at a trait that all of the best teachers I’ve studied with share, which is a work capacity they can turn on like a fire hose. If your work capacity only comes out like water from a dripping faucet, you won’t be able to be “
In the previous post in this series, we looked at how adhering to a particular rhythm, in that case running at 180bpm, can trigger the natural spring in the body and give you insight into “stuck spots” in your body that won’t move at the right pace. Now we want to explore the practice of changing rhythm deliberately as part of your movement practice. The value for sports or martial arts, where the ability to change speeds gives you a competitive advantage, should be pretty obvious.
