How to Incorporate Rope Flow Into Your Programming
Have you ever seen people doing this on Instagram or Tiktok? And have you found yourself wondering what are they doing with that jump rope, they’re not even jumping over it. Well, in this video, I’m gonna break down what they’re actually doing, and more importantly,
why. But before I dive in, if you like watching videos about unconventional, creative and fun exercises that will help you move better, promote longevity, and maybe even help you get out of pain or even if you’d like just to understand the whys the intentions behind such exercises, make sure to to subscribe to this channel. Alright, the rope flow has totally blown up in our facility. And in the movement culture, our clients enjoy so much that they take the ropes on vacation. In fact, I just got back from Lake Como this summer, where I was in a botanical garden looking over Lake Como and just busting out some rope flows in pure workout bliss. Our clients have asked us even to take the rope flow and add it to our class schedule. In fact, there’s a class going on right now on the other side of these walls, where our coaches are taking them through a group rope flow class, they love it. It’s an amazing tool that I would recommend to everyone. So in this video, I’m going to talk about what rope flow is, what the benefits are, and why we like it so much and how we use it in our sessions. If you’re looking for a specific rope flow exercises to do, then click above here to watch our video on how we do exercises like the figure eight, like the matador, the dragon roll, and many others. So what is a rope flow? In a sense? Well, it’s a blend of two things. It’s a blend of art, and the blend of function. Just like an amazing athlete you see on a screen juking here go in there diving over the touchdown, or to get that touched on it’s like it’s like, whoa, how’d they even do that? That was like elegantly amazingly powerful. That’s essentially what rope flow is. It’s blending the art of movement dance, per se, and the functionality of it. And why is it called the flow? Well, it’s a sequencing of different movement patterns into a seamless or nonstop progression, right, just like any sort of athletic event is or even a lifestyle event, right? Even taking groceries out of a car, carrying them walking, kicking open the gate, walking up the stairs, hugging the side, typing in your code, or your key into the front door, putting it down and walking in. That was a flow of exercises that were seamlessly put together into a progression to get a job done. That’s what rope flow is. So what is it functional for per se? Well, again, this is just a tool. Like all fitness tools, we’re trying to accomplish something to make our training and conditioning more effective and more efficient. So it really covers two really huge things. It improves our walking or our gait mechanics, and improves our throwing mechanics. Now even if you’re someone who says I don’t really throw things out that often, well, throwing and reaching are very, very similar. And I bet you reach for things all the time, or certainly your clients do. And they definitely walked into your facility as a trainer and walked out. And as a client, you definitely have to walk the places. So covering those two biomechanical functionalities is a massive, massive undertaking. And if only one tool can help, those might be more efficient and more effective or more functional. This is a game changer then. So it’s really has amazing benefits that we’re going to talk about later in this video about what this single rope can do for your body. Well, how do we use it at our facility called Gymnazo? Well, there’s a lot of different things that we can do from warming up or priming the body to move in assessments, to simple mobility practices, strength and cardio. Well, let’s start with the warm up piece. Even taking this rope and any sort of strapping and just pulling on and getting some active tension, we can create some upper body stability or tension as we like to call it and just start moving through different core patterns. And just allow pushing and pressing and reaching and pulling. With that simple tension or active tension being applied to it. certain muscles start to get primed or get warmed up, or at least get neurological activation, that we can just start to move our body in different undulations and ranges of motion that allow us to prepare for a workout. So that’s very, very simple. That’s just pulling on the rope. That’s just anything. But we can also take it to create some certain momentum patterns, just even a whipping pattern. And I’m basically timing this rope with my hips to time, the hip to time the hip and what I’m doing is I’m essentially getting rotation through my entire body just by using the rope as a timer to create momentum, and therefore joint mobility. So it’s really that simple. There’s way more that you can do with a warm up but that’s just a few examples. What about assessments? Well, this is pretty cool because you can take a certain rope. Now you say one that’s Much, much brighter and much shorter. And what we do with clients, if we want to assess their ability to rotate through the through the thoracic spine, we’ll have them do an underhand rope. And with this underhand rope, I’m going to throw it directly at you. So zero degrees in front of me, if I’m on a compass, and you’re in front of me yours 00 degrees in front of excuse me, so I’m going to throw right at you. Well, most people at least coming in for assessment, they’ll be unequal in their rotational capacity to the right and left. So watch what I’m about to do, most people will do something like this, they’ll throw right at you, as they come from their right to their left, but then they’ll go off of a 45, when they go the opposite direction. So they’ll come right at you here on the right, and then go to a 45 degree, go with a 45 degree and they don’t even know that they’re doing it. So what’s really going on is I’m getting good rotation of my trunk from the right to the left, but I’m getting limited rotation of my trunk from the left to the right, because it can only access 45 degrees, versus get that clean zero degree action that cleans zero degrees. So they’re actually kind of just kind of skating off to the side, versus getting that clean approach on both ends. And we can see that as a movement practitioner be like they can’t rotate the same on either side. They don’t even know they’re doing it because all they’re doing is focusing on throwing that rope in an underhand pattern on either side. So it makes it very obvious for us as we practicing biomechanical movement patterns, because they start to break down different patterns. Now we can do that from different foot positions, where we can start to say, Well, what how are the hips moving as I angulate in rotation through the upper body. And since rotation is such a massive piece of human biomechanical movement, in general, the better we can assess rotation, because it’s really should be viewed from a top down to actually see it purely, the more we can view it. And other means it only makes our job easier as a movement practitioner. What about from the mobility side of things? Well, taking just a general rope, we’re always looking at how we can create more movement potential or capacity in the human body. And that’s a squat for the thoracic spine, which we’re so kyphotic in our nature, at a desk or in just in movement, because everything in life is in front of us. But if we overdo that, we create this kind of kyphotic or bent forward thoracic spine that brings posture into in question, and I’ll stop there. But it’s hugely important that we correct that and create a better posture experience. So doing a motion like a dragon roll, for example, forces my body to extend backwards, that even though I might not have the cleanest motion or climate and have the cleanest motion, if you don’t want to get hit by this rope, you’re going to have to extend through the thoracic spine extended through the thoracic spine.
So already, just in that practice of trying to get that particular motion happening already creates the possibility of greater momentum and greater flexibility through that momentum into the thoracic spine. You can go through a split stance and start to create even a bigger whip. And as I lift to get that underhand throw, already creates better focus and extension through my hip. It’s all about the intention, right? But all a workout exercise tools are it’s how you use the tool that makes this intention. The most powerful. What about strength? Well, if I can grab a heavier rope, let’s say I grabbed it literally a battle ropes a two inch rope that weighs about five pounds. And I started throwing this sucker around and making it move my core and my thoracic spine from a strength standpoint even if I go single leg and hold on. This is immense stability and met strength as I have to manage the mass leverage of that five pounds under momentum is incredible. It’s really incredible what it does now is it deadlifting 200 pounds No, but is gate about lift dead lifting. 200 pounds is throwing about deadlifting 200 pounds, not at all it’s applicable strength. And that’s the best part a part about it fits into the function of life. What about the cardiovascular piece? Well, again, I’m gonna take very similar and very basic patterns, I’m underhand and I’m gonna go through a split stance change and I start cranking as fast as I can. And if I do this for a Tabata time clock, I can already feel the obliques. I can already feel like hear the breath coming. And I only did that for a few seconds to that for a minute. Again because of the leverage. And the momentum is a whip that this thing creates our body has to manage that and still progress seamless movements and my breath is Chemi is catching up on me just in demonstrating that low impact cardio Even if I don’t step, just due to my upper body to create a cardiovascular experience that is driven from the upper body by not using an Aerodyne bike by not using an elliptical by not using the tools that are needed for boxing, a bag, gloves, even wraps, and you only need a rope. It’s an amazing invention for those application pieces. And that’s how we use them in Gymnazo. So what about different scenarios, right? I do group training, I do one on one training, what do you do? What do you participate in? One one on one coaching, again, it helps us take people who need more mechanical leverage, more functionality, just to produce better fitness outcomes. So if if we can be in a one on one space and say, gosh, you know what, you just need to walk better. But really, they’re just walking from their hips, they’re not really getting through the thoracic spine. You just saw how I moved through so much in a rotational pattern through my thoracic spine already, you can get a sense of how we can easily adapt that. And even from a client who’s brand new to the space, I can take a very small rope. And like I said, in the very beginning of the video, that we can just teach how they can rotate through it, we can teach how they can just shift their hips because they’re just following the momentum of a rope. And even that shifting left and right even that rotational from a left to right is a huge and helping clients gain that awareness to their movement potential, or the movement capacity. So one on one coaching, it’s a no brainer. In our group, how do we take into a group setting? Well, I only showed you mostly like underhand throws, but there’s so many other ways that we can progress movement, even changing our angulation even adding locomotion to our rope flows. Like I said, we have a group class going on right now as I’m filming this. In a big circle, there’s about 10 of them all adding this, this component to it. We change different ropes for different applications. We allow them to practice their own movement awareness and their own assessments because they can see where the ropes flowing. And the coach and the instructor is basically guiding them through that process. As they gain more skills, more ability to move with athleticism, with the more complicated drills, but also just someone walks in fresh, just feeling what it’s like to activate the spinal engine that is that connects to our ribcage and feeds into our hips and feeds into our hands is hugely powerful. It’s an absolute Win win because it helps clients and offers us an additional revenue source for those trainers out there and those business owners to diversify your offerings from
just basically a bootcamp or fitness class. Hugely effective, I highly recommend you start rope flow is a versatile and functional tool to incorporate into your training. It just depends again, what your intentions are, and how you want to set those intentions for your athletes and for your clients. I highly recommend you check out our rope flow course there’s a link in the description. It’s 50 or so videos, detailing each and every step of how you use that rope for the best of intentions for your clients and outcome for your facility. Please subscribe to this channel. If you liked this content like this video, so you can share out to more trainers who are pushing the movement to collective of what this industry is all about. Thanks for watching. My name is Michael Hughes. I’ll see you next time.
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