Master RKC, Peter Lakatos on the Origin of Primal Move
There are already several bodyweight systems out there, and they are great. I love them, I've even practiced them. Since I lead FMS certifications and am an FMS coach, the breakthrough for me was FMS. I had been looking at a correctional chart, and thought it might be possible to put all the corrections into a fun way of movement that people would want to repeat and practice over and over. When we started to play with this idea, we found out yes, we can do it.
Next, we asked Lee Burton what he thought about our idea, and sent him a lot of material. Since he was very supportive of the whole idea, we felt like we were moving in the right direction. We found out that if our program is fun, people will want to practice it. So we put all the corrections (and more) into a fun environment that people will want to repeat over and over again. We also figured out that we needed to create a tool that would reinforce the whole idea—games. The moment we found games, we knew we really had something, because if we could disguise the corrections and even the workouts within games, everyone would love it and want to practice it. Right now we are working on creating more games that will strengthen the movement patterns. As a side effect, these games make participants stronger and fitter.
Even people who need to work on movement issues want to participate when they hear that we're going to play a game. It definitely works well with kids and the general population, but it also works well for special populations. People start to have fun, they laugh and play like they're 16 years old again.
Master RKC, Mark Reifkind
I’ve learned so much and have had such a great experience at the Primal Move Workshop. I learned that I can move much better than I thought I could. The progressions that Peter Lakatos has created and taught us have allowed me to activate so much more of my body than I thought I could. I have a lot of joint injuries and physical restrictions that I thought were much more limiting. Getting back to the basic patterns, crawling movements, and rolling movements really have turned on muscles in my body and movement patterns that I didn’t really think I had access to lately.
I was able to get into positions and move in a way that I haven’t been able to in a long time. I had a lot of shoulder issues coming in, and didn't think I’d even able to do a lot of the movements. Once I started doing them, it somehow magically made things work. My shoulder stabilized in a way that I didn’t think would be possible with just basic movement patterns. So it’s really exciting—it’s fun.
I really think I need to spend a lot of time learning and mastering Primal Move before I give it to my clients, although certain things are going to be applicable right away. The basic crawling, creeping, and rolling patterns will be applicable right away. But I really want to spend a lot of time mining and delving into the depths of Primal Move. I don’t like to teach things that I don’t really know well. So I’m going to be mainly working on myself and working with the manual, really figuring it out before I start teaching it more. But, I'll be using the basics with my clients right away.
I have problems with my knee—walking is painful, and running is out of the question. So, the gait patterns in the crawling and the creeping movements have really allowed me to work on my gait. I have been able to move better and faster than I have in a long time in the gait pattern. The crawling and creeping movements allowed me to bring it down out of the pain zone. Gait is one of the primal patterns, if someone can't spend enough time in a gait pattern, a lot of things don’t go well. Gait activates the body, through the core, hips, shoulders, and connects the dots in sometimes completely unexpected ways.
I think Primal Move is going to be a very, very, very big thing. Peter Lakatos has created a really unique system—in the same sense that Pavel did with kettlebells. Almost on that same level, he has organized the material in a way that is truly original. This is just the beginning, but I think—no pun intended—it really has legs. It's going to be a big deal because it's applicable to everybody, young, old, injured, or not, sedentary fitness newbies, and experienced athletes. Everybody is going to benefit because Peter has tapped into how to help people remember what they did when they were very, very young. So, I think Peter is really on to something with this.
Master RKC, Andrea Du Cane
Primal Move is a reminder to put "play" back in my training and classes. As an instructor, it's my job to make sure my clients and classes benefit from training with kettlebells. While working with my clients, everything should make their training, their body, overall health, and ultimately their life better. It is easy to forget that moving is fun, and moving better is even more fun! So, everything I do with my clients should be as fun as possible, making it easier and more enjoyable for them to reach their goals.
I have an extensive background in pilates, yoga, martial arts and dance, so Primal Move is right up my alley—it feels natural and normal. Primal Move feels like going "home"—I feel like I've done most of the exercises before, perhaps with a different focus. I LOVE moving my body, as a dancer this fits into what I do naturally.
I plan to use Primal Move as a warm up and as active rest during our kettlebell strength and conditioning training sessions. I'm planning on starting a short Primal Move half-class before a few of my regular kettlebell classes. I will also encourage clients to use Primal Move exercises on their low intensity or rest days. Also, guided Primal Move workouts will help my private clients build movement skill.
So far, my clients seem to enjoy the movement and elements of play. A few people have been experiencing some difficulty, and they are the ones who need the mobility and flexibility the most. With extra instructions and modifications, they're able to work at their own level and still seem to enjoy it. For many others, having a blast with Primal Move gets them ready to really hit their kettlebell workouts.
Senior RKC, Franz Snideman
What really attracted me to Primal Move was the concept of a playful mindset. That is one of the first things that I really want to implement. When we’re happy and laughing, we learn better and we’re more in the moment. Which ultimately means we’re going to get better results, feel better, and move better. I’ve been so focused on reps, number of sets—and of course quality, but haven't included enough play—at least in my own training. I’m already thinking of programming ideas for my classes and clients.
One of the most profound elements of the weekend was that participants should enjoy the training—I’m really enjoying it. The Primal Move progressions are also really nice, and there really is no limit with an infinite amount of progressions and combinations. Instructors are left with a lot of tools, and as Peter Lakatos says, you can invent a lot of different languages. So it’s fun.
I see Primal Move as another shift in the whole fitness industry. We all know movement is important, but now we’re taking it to an entirely different level. We’re adding the mindfulness, playfulness, and the pure joy of movement. We’re not taking away the quality of it, but we are adding the flow state that is often lacking in fitness. I really see this as a pivotal, monumental shift for the fitness industry. I’m usually a pretty good judge of trends—in 2002, I found kettlebells and knew that they were going to be huge in the industry.
Primal Move is very high quality information, like the RKC. It’s a great marriage with the CK-FMS, and has a place in the RKC and other Dragon Door certifications. But, I think it's going to have a bigger effect on the whole fitness industry. It’s exciting to be part of that process! I’m very excited. I think Dragon Door is leading the way in these cutting edge movement workshops.
RKC Team Leader, Dustin Rippetoe
I was excited before the workshop, because I saw some of what Peter Lakatos was doing on YouTube. I have always been interested in movement and primal movement as a big concept, since I first started with FMS. I think the biggest issue with my clients and compliance will now be solved because everything we’ve learned here is fun. It’s easily applicable to whatever they’re doing, even if they’re not swinging kettlebells and just want to move better. I think I’m going to make people move better, and that's going to be awesome to see. My first class is Tuesday, and I’ll be throwing in Primal Move. I really like all the silverback drills and some of the frog jumping drills. Watching Peter Lakatos, our instructor, just jump and freeze in slow motion looks like something from The Matrix—I can’t wait until I can do that!
I think Primal Move is going to be a huge success. It’s going to be very interesting to watch trainers get this information. There's a need and a real hunger for this style of training. What’s great is how it's integrated with the substantial, quality systems like the FMS and now the RKC. Primal Move has a firm foundation, science behind it, and it’s fun. Getting people to do fun stuff is always easier—I think Primal Move is just going to be unbeatable.
Master RKC, David Whitley
Primal Move rocks. Peter Lakatos has taken FMS correctives and turned them into play. This is going to make compliance a lot easier for my clients and myself—because I also neglect some of the stuff that I need to do the most. I’m excited on a personal level because I can see the path to improving some of my own movement issues and restrictions by using the Primal Move sequences.
The first time I was introduced to Primal Move was in Ireland. I immediately saw it as the marriage of Pavel’s joint mobility ideas and the FMS corrective strategies. They come together in way that's enjoyable for people to practice. So, I’m definitely going to implement Primal Move as soon as I get back home. I’ve already told some of my class members to be ready for some paradigm shifts in the way we lead into strength training. I’m going to bring back something different and it’s going to rock their faces off.
’m excited about the frog and silverback jumping, the crawling, happy baby rolls and stuff like that. As soon as I attempted to do some of the rolling from the baby positions, I was met with a giant Family Feud style eh, you can’t do this. So it bothers me a little bit on a personal level—to the point that I know that I need to work on it. I want to be able to demonstrate it correctly, properly and well for my students. So that’s going to be my first step, is cleaning up my own act with those moves.
I also think that what the Primal Move is bringing to the table is going to deliver what a lot of people are looking for when they go to stuff like yoga classes or Pilates classes or whatever. I think that what people are looking for when they go to those things is the ability to move better, move with more elegance, as Peter describes it, and to be stronger from the center out, and I think this is going to deliver that to a lot of people, maybe through a side door that they’re not expecting, because this looks like a lot of fun and play, and it is, but I think the inherent message in there is going to answer the questions that people are looking for when they pursue those other disciplines.
RKC Team Leader, Lauren Brooks
I’m excited about Primal Move! I love the fact that I get to bring this fun, effective, playful system back to all my clients, and they won’t even know that they are doing corrective exercises. It's kind of sneaky, and it allows them to let go, relieve some stress and move better. So, that’s why I’m really excited.
I've enjoyed just really getting in depth into the system. Since I have been practicing it for a couple months—I got a little ahead of the curve in London with James Breese. Being able to really see the different progressions broken down much more in depth has been priceless. Now I have information overload, so it will take me some time to kind of digest everything.
RKC Team Leader, Andrew Read
I think I’m old and broken. So, it’s not necessarily about trying to "get it" anymore, and that’s a difficult thing for people who were very athletic when they are younger to accept. I’m no different—I’ve still got my ego attached to how I perform athletically. But the reality is past 40, the longer I can maintain what I can do, the better off I'm going to be. Seeking to chase performances past 40, is a good way to get hurt. So the take home message for me from Primal Move is the importance of concentrating on moving better, more often and avoiding injury.
Primal Move is a combination of the school of movement. It combines the accuracy of Super Joints and the FMS system, the RKC, and Indian clubs. All of those things fit together as functional movement. The very base of the performance pyramid is functional movement, and Primal Move is the bottom step of the pyramid.
At our facility, we have a different structure. We run what I think of as an open coaching philosophy. Each one of our group fitness customers is actually working individually. We don’t have a workout of the day, everyone has their own plan. This has allowed me to program in rest weeks for people. We don’t have everyone training flat out anymore.
Within a week now, I’m going to remove days of hard training and put in days of Primal Move only. So, instead of telling people not to come to training on rest days, I'll tell them if they want to train every day, we need to have easy and hard sessions. The easy sessions will be Primal Move because it's FMS-based, corrective, gentle, and allows us to de-load ourselves. We’ll actually be able to get that "wavy-load effect" not just within our training cycle, but within the week itself.
RKC Team Leader, Keira Newton
After the Primal Move workshop, I’m walking away with a wealth of information. It will be really cool to use in terms of pulling the concepts of our foundation together. Primal Move seems to utilize our Functional Movement Screen, flexibility, strength training, and is a really cool way to warm up and cool down. I’m going to introduce it to my classes and see how it feels—I can use it to begin and end class, as well as in the middle. We’ll see how that goes.
I think sometimes as participants in RKC training, we tend to focus too much on strength and not the other things that would make our strength better. What I like about Primal Move is it's a way to release some of the tension that we use with our kettlebell training, while working with our bodies in a more flexible, dynamic way.
RKC Team Leader, Prentiss Rhodes
I’m really excited about Primal Move. As a coach, I’m happy to see it combine a lot of complex knowledge into a system that’s simple, fun and very easy to use. First thing I’m going to do is go back home, crank up my CD player, and play with the movements. I want to try to internalize them as much as I can, then take some of my more advanced students through the first progressions.
Primal Move reinforced the necessity of practicing slowly, because it’s very easy to hide instabilities just by moving quickly. It also reinforced the importance of being playful. I work with people in high stress situations in a high stress city—they’re very regimented and always want to be right. Being able to help them out of that mindset with games will hopefully make the movement corrections they need easier to implement and accomplish.
I find it’s very difficult for some of my clients to follow through with their corrective exercises—we've heard examples from almost everyone this weekend. Now, I think I can just sneak them in with Primal Move. Since I know my clients’ FMS scores, I can plan their Primal Move sessions based on the information I already have.
I’m just happy to be part of this community. It’s very rare to be in a room with so many bright minds and to be able to train, laugh, and learn with all of these people.
RKC Team Leader, Michael Rendle
Primal Move has given me a lot that I can take back to my club and share with my instructors. It expands the toolbox of things we can do on the floor. The number one goal at our facility is to have people move better. When they move well, we can load them with weights—kettlebells. So, we're really going to open some big doors for people back home. They are going to really benefit from this type of movement. Because of the way it was presented, it’s immediately applicable and we can integrate it into our programs.
I had some knee pain before the workshop, so I was a little tentative thinking it would hamper my movement. By day two, my troublesome knee actually felt better, so I had a good time. I came to the workshop thinking I would have to figure out how to compensate for it and actually I wound up feeling better. I feel great, what I thought would limit me actually improved. I can see how Primal Move will actually help rehabilitate my injury. It's supported my health right away, instead of being something I would have to wait to use.
Primal Move will work in seamlessly with everything that we do already—it supports everything we do. Especially since it’s tied to the FMS system. This means we know what we’re looking at in terms of where our clients are starting, and how to give the corrective or supporting exercise that will help them move better. There's a lot more to Primal Move than I expected—and I expected a lot, and it is awesome.
Senior RKC, Shaun Cairns
The biggest thing that interests me is the way Primal Move integrates the FMS correctives into training. The result being that you feel awesome after doing just a few basic moves. It felt like my body had reset itself.
I am introducing it slowly to my clients by using it as a warmup and then adding games into their training. Personally, I am working through all the progressions so that I can master the moves and look half as good as Peter Lakatos. The rolling moves are my favorite as they tend to reset my body the quickest, they feel great, and are really cool.
Currently, the fitness industry is all about going heavier, faster, and doing more—not about moving better. Primal Move is going to change this and show people that without moving better, injury is the only long term result one will get from "heavier, faster, more." My clients have already reacted very positively to Primal Move.
RKC Team Leader, Paul Daniels
When I think about Primal Move, simplicity is what comes to mind. When I first started working with Pavel, it was the simplicity of what he was teaching, and the effectiveness which caught my attention. It’s less complicated than what I was learning before, and yet far more effective. What we're learning here with Primal Move is about as basic as it gets. The extreme basics have been forgotten in our society which is so big on flash and fluff. I really like the idea that we’re going to back to what really matters—the basics, the very simple basics.
Before I teach Primal Move to my clients, I’m going to spend time with it myself—I want to really own this. Even though I already train clients with crawling exercises, my take on it will now be different. One of the key things we've learned here is that crawling is so integral to our physical and mental development. It’s very interesting to see how many things we’ve overlooked in how much our physical growth enhances our mental growth.
I look forward to introducing Primal Move to my clients as a complete program—as well as introducing it incrementally. I will start out using some of it as a warm up for our kettlebell training and go from there
Peter Lakatos has taken us on a journey which actually continues on a lot of what Gray Cook has taught us with the FMS. Going back to basic movement patterns is the key to correcting or preventing the advanced injuries of our adult bodies. This workshop has given me the opportunity to improve my skills as an instructor and learn how to not only better serve my clients, but better serve myself. Because if I can help myself, I can definitely help other people.
One of the things about Primal Move that makes it so much fun is a lot of what we call "play" is incorporated into movement training. When people are playing and having fun, they'll do more than if I directed them to do it. This incorporates a very easy element into their training sessions. It’s going to be very exciting to see how that’s received when I take it back to my clients. Primal Move is absolutely awesome.
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