246: Rafe Kelley on The Art of Rhythm, Fluidity and Timing in Athletic Performance Training

Today’s show brings back Rafe Kelley, owner of Evolve, Move, Play. Rafe has experience with dozens of movement styles, playing many sports, including gymnastics, learning dance, exploring parkour and studying many forms of the martial arts and MMA styles. When it comes to human movement, and the story and history behind our movement, Rafe is my go-to expert. Rafe’s students have ranged from world-class parkour athletes, to MMA fighters, to untrained grandmothers. He has been a two time guest on this podcast, and offers knowledge from a source that is largely un-touched by mainstream strength and athletic development. On previous shows, I have talked with Rafe about our movement roots, structured vs. unstructured training, play based training, and emotional and cognitive links between play, performance and adaptation. Episode #174 was one of the most transformative episodes I had done in terms of how it immediately impacted my work in my own group training sessions afterwards. On this show, I wanted to tap into more of Rafe’s knowledge of human movement in terms of his experience with martial arts, fighting and modern dance. The sports performance industry talks about force a lot, but it is critical to look at the best athletes in the world on a level comparing to them with dancers, instead of powerlifters, to get a fuller understanding of the required timings and rhythms. Today’s podcast is a wonderful experience in discussing the deeper movement qualities that really make elite athletes and how we can consider those qualities of rhythm and fluidity in our own training designs. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 6:20 Discussing complexity in training, and how to get more work and effectiveness in a shorter period of time 13:49 Quantifying fatigue in basketball and parkour, and concepts on how risk increases session fatigue, and extreme depth landings in parkour 23:34 Philosophy on movement quality in the martial arts, parkour, and athletic movement in general, and questions on if Rafe takes time out of parkour itself to spend time on movement quality 35:53 Rhythmic qualities of movement in athletics, and how to improve athletic performance from a rhythmic perspective 55:16 Points on the use and relationship of dance and ethnic dance styles, to athletic performance 1:00:08 Animal forms and flow in training and human movement “The neurological fatigue associated with a parkour session is not simply associated with how many approach runs did you do, or how big were the jumps. It was more associated with how much risk, or how threatened your nervous system was by the jumps that you were taking on” “One of the master-keys for re-covering the capacity of my lower limb was tibial rotation drills” “When you are working with a novice athlete, a lot of times the answer is just that they need to do the thing more. But when that doesn’t fix it, you have to ask, “why isn’t self-organization working”.” “If I initiate a punch, I want that punch to land, and I want my hand to be hard, and my body to be hard as the punch lands, but any time is it hard before it lands, is slowing me down, and wasting my energy…. how sensitive is the foot when it is hitting the ground” “The timing of force production is massive; it’s the harmony of the body as its hitting the ground; the ability to find that moment. You have do (purposefully) do things, to get (timing)” “I think of it, kind of like music. Every set of movements or a solution to a problem is like a set of beats. You can have an optimal set of beats, or you can have noisy extra beats that aren’t contributing to the harmony of the piece” “What (Josef) talked about the first time I talked to him was: “When an athlete has their rhythm, break their rhythm… make them find it again”” “So often, really great athletes have a dance background, and fighters tend to do well in dance, and dance often exists within fighting circles” “I think that, for me, you get the same benefits, and it’s more interesting (than basic crawling) by doing modern dance ground work” “I found that dancing an achy body part, fixes it… when there is something I am studying in my body or trying to release I find (that) to be particularly useful” Show Notes: David Belle Jumps and Landings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x98jCBnWO8w Isreal Adesanya Dance and Fight Methods https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6QL3ue1Tag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJs7pbWK8ms Athletic African Tribal Dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX0H85tj1yU About Rafe Kelley Rafe Kelley is the owner of Evolve, Move, Play, a business designed to use movement practice to develop more resilient and embodied humans. Raised by two yoga instructors, he was a basketball player and gymnast (and gymnastics coach) in his teens. Rafe started in the martial arts at 6 years old, studying Tang Soo Do, Aikido, Kung Fu, Kick Boxing, Brazilian Ju Jitsu and Muay Thai. Rafe also has experience in modern training disciplines such as sprinting, gymnastics, crossfit, FRC, modern dance and many others. His primary specialization is in parkour, the practice of navigating obstacles by jumping, running, flipping or swinging over them, a skill set he primarily taught himself by watching videos and training deep in the woods. Rafe co-founded Parkour visions at age 23, and eventually left to form Evolve, Move, Play. His students have included world-class parkour athletes and MMA fighters, as well as untrained grandmothers. His passion to is help people build the physical practice that will help make them the strongest, most adaptable and resilient version of themselves in movement and in life.