CONTACT:

Alex Iglecia
The Epic Workout
781-405-1248
alex at epicworkout.com
www.epicworkout.com

For information about Symetrie, contact Equinox, Palo Alto

Equinox Fitness features The Epic Workout as part of Symetrie

Palo Alto, CA, 10-8-2009 - The Epic Workout will be a featured class during Equinox Fitness’ six-week Symetrie beginning October 16th, 2010.

The Epic Workout features class a high standard of progressive exercise based on function and natural movements, mindfulness, breath, and conscious relaxation. Epic has been called Yogic Warrior Conditioning, is accessible by people all fitness levels, and offers profound results and experiences. Epic’s functional movements and mindful strength & conditioning makes a big impact in athletics and life skills.

The Epic Workout’s founder, Alex Iglecia, is dedicated to helping people enjoy life, inside and outside. His work spans martial arts, self defense, personal training and program design. Alex studied at Cornell University and later received a MA in Conscious Evolution, and created pioneering body-mind research focusing on how mental and emotional changes occur during physically-focused body practices.

Symetrie is created and led by Kirsten Johnson-Group Exercise Manager, Jayme Boyle-Teacher-Yogi Extraordinaire, and Clyde Wilson-Stanford PhD. This six-week program is nearly filled to capacity and offers two classes each week, expert nutrition coaching, motivational coaching, and more.

Symetrie Featuring The Epic Workout

Equinox Fitness is a premier, cutting edge fitness company with select locations throughout the United States.

EPIC WORKOUT FOR YOUR HERO’S JOURNEY
WITH ALEX IGLECIA

WHEN: Saturday July 11th 2009 @ 12:30pm – 2pm
WHERE: Equinox, Palo Alto (map)
440 Portage Ave
Palo Alto, CA‎
(650) 319-1700‎

WHAT & WHY YOU SHOULDN’T MISS THIS
The Epic Workout is Yoga for your Hero’s Journey: Yoga, Functional Movement, Primal Patterns, and Consciousness. The Epic Workout enhances training by developing core capacities in body and mind, from breath, to strength, to optimal recovery.

This master class will be an adventure of strength, movement and awareness, leaving you feeling refreshingly sweaty, focused and primed for life.

We will cover poses and movements that address the biggest areas of improvement for yogis and athletes. You will flow through pushing, leaping, crawling, stretching, posing, inverting, breathing and meditating. We will develop awareness, body and breath for effortlessness, efficiency and enjoyment of heroic proportions.

Saturday July 11th 2009 @ 12:30pm – 2pm

INVESTMENT: $ 15 members, $ 25 non-members

Reserve your spot at the front desk! Call (650) 319-1700‎

ALSO: Watch out for Epic Workout Workshop this August.

Every athlete wants to be faster, stronger, more powerful, and more injury prone. This is especially true for triathletes who swim, bike and run great distances. You demand speed, require strength, and need to save time. Tools and methods that increase your foundation of strength and speed are extremely valuable, and every edge counts.

This article reviews the benefits of using kettlebells from the perspective of Yogic Warrior Conditioning and is designed to give the triathlete the possibility of greater outcomes in exchange for your valuable energy and time spent training.

On Kettlebells:
Buy the hype, just don’t believe it. (in other words, get your kettlebell but own your movement).

Kettlebells are simply stimulators and enhancers of multi-functional training of natural human movement.

You already have all the weight you need to create phenomenal strength and power for your purposes and your life. Kettlebells add a level of challenge, skill and learning that support many specific sports, yet the basics are the same. The basic skills of running, jumping, leaping, pushing and pulling are what take you across pavement and through water.

You already know how to build your endurance and train your psyche to succeed for the race. The advantage you are missing is the buildup of your fundamental baselines. This is the level where kettlebells add a concrete and immediate benefit: build your baselines of strength, power and mindfulness and your race time will decrease as you enjoy it even more!

The three skills that most directly transfer to your triathlaon success.

1. 1 and 2-Arm Swings
2. Swing/Hi-pull/Gunsling
3. Snatch or Rack & Push-Press

Thus, DO

• Improve your baseline foundations through appropriate intensity.
• your training needs by balancing the lowest volume required and greatest intensity possible.
• just less (than you think you can), and you’ll progress faster.

And DON’T

• Ignore your breath. It’s your greatest coach, so follow it and heed its lessons.
• Focus on learning too many skills. Push intensity and mastery in core skills and build your baselines.
• Do endless sets and reps. With functional work, build capacity through intensity. Then go practice your race skills.

This article in a sentence:

Follow your breath and maintain awareness as you practice your maximum intensity and effort.

Original examples of Conscious Movement include Feldenkrais, Alexander Technique, Tai Chi, and Yoga. Today’s clubs and fitness industry are moving in the direction of conscious movement, but are they going to get it right? For example, should a class with yoga postures + boxing + loud music be considered conscious movement? What is the difference, ultimately, between the vertical inclusion of meaning and the horizontal inclusion of body techniques? I want to offer four distinctions, or criteria I believe are necessary to help frame the conversation about what makes a session or class, Conscious. These points are found in all the great mind-body programs. Does yours meet the standard?

• Intention: intention to transform and explore what meaning might be found in meeting the upcoming challenges.
• Learning: expanding one’s repertoire, nervous system, brain wiring (and however else you put it) creates new connections. Transformation and consciousness are interested in new connections.
• Inquiry: You, the you that inquires, must make deep and meaningful connections with the observed (your body, your relationships, your thoughts and emotions)
• Awareness: What you are capable of being aware of, or your ability to ware, must expand.

With these points in place, you can be assured that the exercise you are sharing with others or practicing yourself is indeed more than just exercise.

Epic Workout and Yogic Warrior Conditioning is but one expression of Conscious Movement, one that happens to explore the relationship between yoga, functional training and transformation. Now go move, learn, heal, and transform!

Yogic Warrior Conditioning® is category of conscious movement or mind-body/body-mind practices that starts with you. Flipping a class experience on its head, you are the center and your health, fitness, meditation, movement goals are the tools we use. It’s about power and strength both internally and externally. It’s about making exercise more than exercise, and taking yoga off the mat.

Yogic Warrior Conditioning® is a comprehensive health and fitness system combining Yoga, Functional Training, Conditioning and Restorative Techniques in a way that creates usable strength, develops effortless movement, and deepens awareness of body, mind and spirit.

It’s mindful approach to natural movement and strong focus on awareness and creativity transform our tissues and nervous system to create a balance between improved health & fitness, reduced stress, and enhanced coordination & clarity.

Yogic Warrior Conditioning® makes exercise more than exercise, and helps launch one’s yoga practice off the mat.

Fitness has many levels. Do we address them all with each training session? With our entire movement practice? The mainstream fitness industry address many sides of fitness, and at Epic, we’re interested in going even deeper. Let’s briefly look at the Four Faces, or Perspectives, of physical fitness.

First Face of Fitness

We are motivated by feelings, emotions, self image and enthusiasm. Any physical activity we practice serves to bring you enjoyment, emotions, and experiences ranging from brutal or challenging to refreshing and wonderful. Relative to this perspective, why do you exercise?

Second Face of Fitness

We are motivated by the science and story of how our body’s biology, chemistry, function, strength, power, and capacity. We think about muscles, fat, weight, range of motion, and other external factors. Relative to this perspective, why do you exercise?

Third Face of Fitness

We are motivated by the interplay between the body’s systems, or the relationships between, for example, two fighters, members of a team, teams in competition, and so on. The rules of the game, the systems we follow, the protocols we experiment with and results we achieve are all very important. Relative to this perspective, why do you exercise?

Fourth Face of Fitness

We are motivated by the commaraderie of teamwork, the thrill of competition, the shared community of a yoga class. How the relationships feel and the meaning they provide are crucial to us.Relative to this perspective, why do you exercise?

Now that you’ve looked into the faces of fitness and gained a new understanding that there is more to exercise than exercise, what will you do next?

Epic trainers are huge fans of yoga. In fact, Epic is about bringing the lessons an inspired Yoga practice offers the world to a new order of movement. In fact, conscious movement is critical for personal and collective transformation and when we get past much of the mainstream fitness marketing, we find that in order to make a real change in our body and mind, it helps when we really pay attention to what we are doing and why we are doing it. Yoga teaches about intention for movement and the skills for really noticing to our experience. In a nutshell, this means that as we learn to honor our bodies, nurture our spirits, and deepen our relationship with our self and everything we’re connected to, we help to heal the world as well as ourselves.

Yogis of all kinds see something for themselves in The Epic Workout that radically compliments their Yoga practice. Some appreciate the mindful anaerobic activity that highlights a new form of breath to focus on. Some appreciate exploring infinite variations of human movement. Others comment on the aspect of Epic that asks each participant to own their body, mind, and life through the practice. We invite you to join in their story and enhance your practice as well. As you explore, write to us and let us know how you’re doing.

Namaste.