Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Profile Of Scott Sonnon



Dave over at Formosa Neijia had a post letting us know that Scott Sonnon was offering a conditioning DVD for just the cost of shipping. I got it, and am very impressed with the simple ideas Sonnon introduces. It will however, take me some time to work up through some of his techniques, which were probably better suited for my body some twenty years ago.
This guy is fantastic. He is a Champion in Russian Sambo submission wrestling and kickboxing, and is a world-recognized conditioning coach.
The martial arts segments are at the begining and end of this eight-minute video, so stick with it, it's well worth it. He practices something many of us have written about-- a flow training that cranks along at less than full speed, at a comfortable rate for learning but still presenting a challenge. I love this type of training, so I intend to integrate some of his conditioning off his DVD into my warm-ups, and experiment with his flowing movement in grappling and light sparring.
Enjoy...

4 comments:

Dave Chesser said...

Ugh! It really killed me that I couldn't get the video myself since I'm overseas. And I even promoted it!

How long is the video?

I'm wondering if it's the full version.

Can you give a brief rundown of what he covers?

I want to know a bit more about what is on it.

I think Sonnon is great. I love what I've seen of his material so far.

BTW, us older folks might enjoy his IntuFlow DVD better. It's a great joint mobility program and the material supposedly necessary to buildup to what you saw on the FlowFit DVD.

Formosa Neijia

Dojo Rat said...

Dave:
The video is broken into eight short clips. It starts out with him using a stool to support the upper body while you train in squats, deep opposed stepping switching legs and other simple exercizes that will help me in low stances etc.
He then does most of the same techniques without the stool, hands and feet on the floor. These start to look like frog-hops, gymnastic leg circles, and twisting lateraly to a back bridge, the opposite of the push up position. He combines all these into a sort of flow.
I am taking it slowly, using a chair and hope to work up to the floor stuff. My last couple of workouts have been with a 3-man rotation, so when I am the odd-guy out I've been working these drills as well as crunches, leg lifts, etc.
I really like the way Sonnon flows in his fighting system, have you seen any of his martial training DVD's?

Patrick Parker said...

You know what this stuff reminded me of? The best flexibility book I've ever read was Staying Supple, by John Jerome. Check it out on Amazon (or wherever). I'll post a link, but the Amazon page links are about a mile long, so I don't know if you'll get all of it...

http://www.amazon.com/Staying-Supple-Bountiful-Pleasures-Stretching/dp/1891369032/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-9430792-3143266?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190928264&sr=8-1

Hmmmm, don't know what all that mess is, but it looks like all of the URL.

Dave Chesser said...

DR,
No I haven't seen any of his martial arts stuff. I know that they have RMAX internal arts, RMAX qigong, and a few other things for sale.

His Immovable Object, Unstoppable Force vid on throwing looked great a few years back. But his stuff always seems to be in flux as he improves it. So the older stuff doesn't get sold so much while he re-packages it into a newer format. This process is obviously good and bad since updates are good but then I'm tempted to hold off on buying something until he's perfected it.

For example, Tim Cartmell said that Sonnon's Grappler's Toolbox is great and he just came out with the updated version. Might be worth a shot.

I have the Intuflow program and I think it's great for joint mobility. There's a joint exercises that's perfect for bagua's toe-in, toe-out stepping.

Formosa Neijia