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Movement Foundations is designed to get you in touch with your natural instinct to move freely and playfully while building strength and flexibility. This program is an ideal starting place for learning how to incorporate a wider variety of movements into your everyday life.
Movement for where you are. This trailers showcases some of the movements in the program as well as the movement style of the two teachers, Slava and Amanda. Slava teaches Animal, Power, and Transitional movements in the learn component. Amanda takes those movements and sequences them into three guided classes that you can practice anywhere: at home, the gym, outside, or even in a hotel room.
In this program preview, Slava shows you how to do Corkscrew. This transitional movement teaches you a different way to get up and down from the ground, how to change planes of motion, and that you don’t always need to do things the familiar way. Amanda previews Class 01, showing you how to sequence Corkscrew along with other program movements, into a creative movement practice.
Movement Foundations comes with a program guide to assist you in learning Slava’s movements and outlines what to expect from Amanda’s classes. The guide was designed to give you a visual reference of each movement through high-quality photographs and descriptions, and includes Words from Slava, 7-Day and 14-Day Training Plans, and more. The guide is perfect if you are on the go and want something to reference as you learn to integrate the movements into your practice and everyday life.
Amanda Riches created these innovative guided classes by combining the movements that you learned from Slava into a sequence to follow along to. Each class consists of a warm up, main sequence, and cool down. The main sequences are taught like a choreography; you learn one movement at a time and come back to the first position after each movement you add on.
Amanda chose to teach in this way because the repetition makes it easy for the body to memorize and integrate the sequence. Your body remembers the flow and soon you are moving without thinking.
This 20-minute class is all about changing planes: improving our ability to move with grace as we get up and down from the ground, increasing hip mobility to deepen our squat, and getting comfortable with being on the floor.
This 20-minute class focuses on circular movement patterns. You won’t be physically moving in circles, but the feeling that the sequence evokes in the body is a sense of spiralling. Expect a challenge in coordination and strength, especially in the upper body and core.
This 20-minute class is all about strength and play. It utilizes advanced movements to offer an immense challenge for your balance, strength, flexibility, and control.
Frog is the first of four “animal-based locomotion exercises” - which simply means we imitate how animals move. These movements will likely feel familiar to you: as children we often flow through these types of motions naturally while we play. Frog is a great way to get comfortable moving with your hands on the ground.
Monkey is a great movement to counteract the effects of sitting, standing, and moving in a straight line (think running, cycling, walking, and even weight training). This movement demands mobility in the hips, which is the key to unlocking a deep squat position and essential in finding freedom in movement in your daily life and movement practice.
Gorilla is all about exercising your joints. The movement is ideal for getting into the hip and shoulder joints, both of which are often blocked due to the poor movement diet of our modern lives. All of that sitting - in a car or transit, at work, on the couch - takes a large toll on our bodies. Exercising our joints is extremely beneficial to our bodies as we age.
Bear, Crab and Bear-Crab Rolls are an easy and fun way to get your hands on the ground and play. You may actually have so much fun in the movement that you won’t notice how much it’s benefiting your shoulder mobility and strengthening your core. If you want to work on strengthening and toning your core, think crab, not crunches.
If there’s any one movement that reminds us of our childhood, it’s this one. The Cartwheel is both fun and powerful. It will strengthen your entire body, create flexibility and mobility in all the major joints, and teach you how to balance power with control. Channel your inner child as you learn (or relearn) this movement.
Pistol Squat is truly a full lower body workout. This one movement tests your ankle mobility, quadricep and glute strength, as well as balance and coordination. You can easily practice all variations of this movement, anytime and anywhere.
Martial Arts Kick has never been our favourite movement, but that’s exactly why it’s in this program. With our yoga background, we’ve taught our bodies to move slowly with control through an impressive yet passive range of flexibility. The Martial Arts Kick is all about explosive power and active flexibility.
The Shoulder Roll may look a little intimidating at first, but it’s quite effective when learned and practiced correctly and responsibly. It’s critical that you take your time with this movement. The Shoulder Roll is an uncommon way of moving from laying down to kneeling position. By practicing uncommon and uncomfortable movement patterns, we train ourselves to face uncomfortable situations with a calm and open mind.
Corkscrew is an interesting way to get up off the ground. This movement teaches you a different way to get up and down, how to change planes of motion, and that you don’t always need to do things the familiar way. The easy way is seldom the most rewarding. Corkscrew is the ultimate test of balance and coordination and will teach you how to recruit the underused inner leg muscles.
This movement is a heavy hitter when it comes to mobility throughout the entire body. Not only does Scorpion demand strength and flexibility from every joint in the body, it also trains your proprioception (spatial awareness), gives you a strong foundation for inversions, and is a great way to begin practicing self-expression in your movement.
Slava is dedicated to the exploration of the body. He has travelled the world exploring various disciplines of movement including: gymnastics, acroyoga, circus acrobatics, thai massage, Tai Chi, Wing Chun, yoga, and dance. He connects his studies in movement with a practice of stillness, Vipassana meditation, as he believes we cannot separate our physical state from our mental state. Slava is always willing and excited to be a beginner as he approaches all new movement disciplines with with a sense of consistency and curiosity. His most recent movement studies include Capoeira and ballet. As a mover, he balances the concepts of fluidity and strength to create a sense of grace and ease that is both artistic and functional. As a teacher, he guides his students to understand their bodies through educated exploration and body integration, emphasizing the importance of movement in aging gracefully.
For more information about Slava or to practice with him - visit his website
Amanda has a long history with sports and movement. As a young girl, she practiced gymnastics and figure skating before moving on to a career as an elite junior tennis player where she first developed a foundation in conditioned training. Amanda compliments that dynamic training with over 15 years of practice and 10 years experience as a yoga teacher with a strong focus on restorative yoga. She teaches people how to access movement from where they are now and at whatever stage they are in their life. Amanda will empower you to create a personalized daily movement practice even if you only have ten minutes. She believes that when we move our bodies, we move our lives forward, opening ourselves up to new opportunities for creativity, connection, and lifelong health. Her classes balance effort with ease, making time for both high-level athletic training and a quality of rest in practice.
Amanda’s movement classes were filmed in a loft space on a cold winter day. In between takes, Amanda and the team behind the camera would move around to keep warm and stay energized. This program was made by people who truly believe in the power of movement, even if it’s only a five-minute stretch break between filming. Our goal is to get you moving too. You don’t need a lot of time, space or prior experience to start. Wherever your body is in this moment is where you should begin.
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