What is Animal Flow?

Animal Flow is a ground based movement, that uses your own body weight to link creative sequence or flows together to give you a body weight workout. It is a dynamic and fun workout that can be adapted to any level of movement enthusiast from the beginner to the expert. 

The main benefits of Animal Flow are that is builds strength, it builds mobility, it builds cardio fitness, it improves coordination and its fun! 

Animal flow can be broken down into six key components. These six components are simply groups of movements and combinations put together into categories. Those categories are wrist mobilisations, activations, form specific stretches, traveling forms, switches and transitions and flows. You can mix and match these components in any way making Animal Flow really creative.

Lets explore these six components in a little more detail:

• The wrist activations are simple movements to prepare the hands and wrists for some of the challenges of an Animal flow workout. These might be similar to some of the wrist exercises you would get in an yoga class. 

• The Activations is Animal Flows way of waking up the body and bringing conscious awareness to your own body and its contact with the floor. The AF two key activations are called Beast and Crab. A similar pose that you might find in yoga is an active table top i.e Bharmanasana, or a reverse table top i.e Ardha Purvottanasana. 

• Form Specific Stretches (FSS) is all about encouraging flexibility and stability through your entire body. Travelling forms are the AF locomotive movements. They are meant to mimic animals i.e the Ape, Beast and Crab. Switches and Transitions are what makes up the main component of the flow in and AF practice. Expect dynamic moments that can be linked in endless combinations. 

• Finally the flows are sequences where movements are linked together. 

If you have been attending regular Vinyasa yoga classes you might try Animal Flow and recognise some of the movements however there are some key differences between Animal Flow and Yoga. Though both disciplines are intended to improve mobility, flexibility and stability, Animal Flow is a purely physical practice that does not include any religious, spiritual or cultural foundations of yoga.

Here at The Kali Collective our in house handstand expert Sam leads monthly animal flow workshops. You can expect not only a great functional workout but expert instruction.