Fitness Mantra: Try animal flow workouts to improve flexibility, strength

This led him to find a fitness activity called animal flow that was created by Mike Fitch, an innovative fitness educator, and movement coach.

The movements are animal-style that encourages core stability and strength, joint strength, and body awareness — all these without any fitness equipment.

“A ground-based movement, animal flow combines various bodyweight-training disciplines and creates a fun, challenging and effective workout. It is designed in such a way to improve flexibility, strength, and mobility. Animal flow is for everyone and can be done individually or as a group,” says Shrihari.

One can group the range of movements and combinations into six different components — writs mobilisation, activation, form specific stretches, travelling forms, switches and transitions, and flows. “Each component is designed to obtain specific results. You can mix and match these six components in many ways, allowing you to incorporate one, some, or all of them in your workouts. It is great to engage children in this movement and I am sure they will love this type of workout. It’s beneficial for everybody and you don’t have to be super mobile to do it. You can easily work within your range and the more you practice animal flow, the better your range of motion and mobility gets,” points out the fitness expert.

One of the fastest-growing fitness programs, the animal flow should be avoided by people who are suffering from orthopaedic problems. “A 5-10 minute each of warm-up and cool-down is required before and after each exercise. Repeat every exercise two-three times and increase the number gradually, as your endurance improves,” he explains.

The brilliance of animal flow is that it’s a melting pot of movement disciplines. Instead of being locked into one movement discipline, this draws the best from several practices like yoga, martial arts, parkour, break dancing, and gymnastics to name a few.