“Skill Based Training – and so much more

I was about 15 years old when I started working out on a more or less regular basis, going from simple bodyweight exercises in my room at night to working the old steel machines in our tiny school gym after class. Later on, during my twenties, I wasn‘t too serious about the frequency of my training, but thanks to my athletic physique and healthy metabolism I was never worried about being unfit.

I met Ariel on a beautiful spring morning on the shores of the Spree river on the outskirts of Berlin. My friend invited me to join her for what was announced as an introduction to GMB and Animal Flow - whatever that meant! I had only recently started working out on a regular basis again but was feeling pretty confident - I would easily do 20 pull-ups and my stomach was almost an eight-pack, after all!

Turns out I was wrong. What I learned that day was deeply humbling and would go on to change my understanding and my approach to my body forever. I had to realize that any number of stomach-packs doesn‘t help with deep squatting or shoulder mobility, and that a few simple bodyweight exercises could bring me to the brink of frustrated, total exhaustion.

That day, I started to understand the difference between muscle and strength, the importance of mobility and motor control, and their highly leveraged impact on your everyday life over time.

Seeing Ariel move over the pier with the natural strength and grace (and hair) of a lion got me hooked. What followed in our subsequent bi-weekly training sessions, however, was anything but fun. Ari first made me understand that I was completely misguided in most of my training efforts, doing the important stuff either too fast, with terrible form or simply not at all. He insisted on the most basic regression exercises, and explained how they are the indispensable baby steps to doing the amazing stuff like a straight-line handstand or the ring muscle-up one day. He also kept reminding me of quality over quantity and of the importance of slow – SLOW! – movements - to the point where 3 slow pull-ups were all that was left of my original 20.

As we went from complete articulate rotations (CARs) and locomotion patterns to Animal Flow sequences, hand balancing and free bar exercises, I would often experience a peculiarly exciting kind of panic whenever Ari asked me to do something new – while quietly assuring me that I have the strength, the motor control and the experience to pull it off. I wouldn‘t usually agree with him, thinking that, for example, kicking up into the handstand was out of the question - but then it suddenly wasn‘t anymore...!

This, to me, is what makes Ariel such a powerful coach. He understands you, guides and challenges you where he sees room for growth, but doesn‘t push you to the point where you lose the fun in movement. Working with Ari is a mindful, playful, and highly sustainable exploration of your body, and of how best to use it.

Most importantly, however, Ari‘s training can a source of inspiration in that it quietly builds your confidence that with consistency, curiosity, and pleasure virtually anything is possible.”