Why leaving the RKC is going to work for me [Part 1]

Sounds crazy if you are way wrapped up in your RKC identity and your Code of Conduct, but for me, for my future, this was non-negotiable.  The last post allowed you to hear about how/why the split went down, now i want to tell you about what it is i plan to do.  No, what i have been doing.

I was invited and attended the Gym Movement Level I [biomechanics education] July 25-26 2010.  Yes, it was awesome.  No, it wasn't awesome.  It was frightening.  It was frighteningly simple, the blueprint that frankie Faires laid out.  It was scary and reductionist in the approach to anatomy and physiology.  In fact, i think i even heard someone say that 'they' didn't want us to know what we were about to learn.  'They' have been in my rear view since i was 11 years old and i'll be a monkey's uncle if they are going to take this from me!  Maybe i'm kidding.  Maybe.

So day one of max lecture and minimal lab left me with about 6 pages of notes.  The few questions i had were
-Why didn't we go over testing protocols?
-Why didn't we start until 1000 because your ole' Dad here woke up at 0600?
-How does my hair look?


These questions were answered smartly, by Me, over a dinner of salad, chicken, steak, chicken, and salad.  in that order. 
-This was an invitation based educational weekend that leads to candidacy and completion.  We are here because we had been testing and posting to #PReveryday on Twitter, we are here because we have purchased the products, used the protocol, and were invited to be part of the group that moves this forward.
-We trained from 1000-1940 with a 90 minute lunch, so an 8 hour training day was completed nonetheless.
-My hair always looks good.

Day two involved heavy lab and great lecture.  Yes, frankie Faires is a great presenter.  Not unprofessional despite the profanity that peppered the weekend, and quite professional despite the devious implant of the Gym Movement DVD in the Dragon Door dome [someone smiles and someone frowns right now, no doubt], fF was all about the clarity of the material and urged us from the start to take copious notes.  He checked in periodically with me to make sure that i wasn't going to go Pavelite on him and try to lock him up in a hold [he would escape and take me over i believe] and he also displayed concern for my health and the sub-par surgical job done on my inguinal hernia, repaired in April.  Also known as the purple streak that draws attention, also known as the area that hurts when i do pistols on my right leg, and lovingly known to my other hernia scar [who shall remain unnamed] as Gordon Shumway. 

fF and Mike T. Nelson looked over and worked over the scar with their hands [totally he-ter-o!] and gave me ideas of how to test the impact on that area and what to expect from future Movement courses.  So, the weekend ended similar to how my relationship with Gym Movement began: someone concerned with my health was intimately involved with me for a moment of revelation.  In October, Adam talked to me about toe-touches and shoulder flexion tests [me to him "you are an idiot"], in February he demanded that i call him back, and in March, we had a telephone conversation that i will never forget.  He was concerned with me and why i was not training, my voluntary exclusion of all beef, pork, fowl, and lamb, and why i had been in a state of physical pain that had escalated and in turn escalated the severity of my mood cycles.  I told him the truth.

I busted my back the day after Christmas and my girl [at the time, and if i can get it together, once again] thought i was going to kill myself.  She told me that she feared it the moment i cried out in pain and hit the deck [on a 325 lb. deadlift of all things, not like i was saving a bus of orphans from a disaster].  Not when the despair hit the next day, and not when i lost my mind 5 weeks later and broke up with her [happy birthday, by the way].  She told me that she saw me limping and thought right away, 'Holy shi!t, he's injured again, and this is the last daggone straw'.  Indeed, it broke my back but it was not the last straw.  I ain't no dude turnin' in his horse and saddle.  Forget that.  I got a massive eagle tattooed on my chest to remind me that men born into less have done greater things out of necessity than i ever have out of desire.  if you fear dying, you are already dead.  I feared reconstructing myself in the best image i could, in my own image, and fulfilling the prophecy written in the air at every birth and death-
"This is your life"

So what did i get out of biofeedback testing?  I got away from the Rubik's Cube CKFMS and the medical community put me in, and i got behind the wheel of a 1979 model E.O Williams Junior with 240lbs. of burnin' love under the hood and a trunk full of textbooks i'm ready to throw away.  I am using big movements that test well in order to move my body in the direction it wants to go.

fF "Train quality, tested movements, with varying degrees of specificity, and the minimum amount of distress"

Adam Glass "F@ck everybody, do your own sh!t"

My body, my system, my truth.  I think i may fix myself and reduce my pain levels to a serious low while improving the physical function in movements i consider important, and improving my ability to manage emotional flare ups resultant from any distress inherent to a reasonable lifestyle.  Step one, fix myself.  Step two-take this $#!t to the bank!

Stay tuned.