Keeping you on your feet for a lifetime

Keeping you on your feet for a lifetime

Keeping you moving

Imagine an exercise system that will always be age-appropriate and will keep you on your feet for a lifetime. What could be better? You don’t grow out of 3-D Workout, you grow within it. If you’re not on your feet, use 3-D Workout: The Chair Edition for unique whole-body exercises even while seated.

Level I Course Manual with new drawings in 2014 edition

The manuals for 3-D Workout and other courses have gone through many text revisions, enrichments and re-thinking over the years. Artist, Arna Selznick, has created a new set of drawings for the Level I Instructor training manual used for the first time in the 2014 intensive training. These drawings appear elsewhere including this site, the Chair Edition DVD and the Body-in-Motion Facebook page.

Arna is a director and story artist for animated films. Animation is a movement-based art form, so Arna has plenty of experience drawing characters in motion. Her own fitness pursuits have included 3-D Workout so she is familiar with the material.

Converting three-dimensional movement to a two-dimensional page is challenging but it’s also very exciting to be a part of the process. Arna took photos of the sequences as I demonstrated them. We worked to best represent the objective of the movement through angle, spatial pathways and joint articulation. Arna drafted the images which we tweaked into a final form. Sheila Mahoney formatted the final version for a new edition of the Level I manual.

3-D on YouTube

Watch a segment of a workshop I gave for the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in New York in January 2012. This workshop provided CMA (Certified Movement Analyst) students an opportunity to experience some of the ideas in 3-D Workout.

The audio is not very clear so listen closely. I have asked for the captions to be revised: “plans” should be “planes”, for example. There’s more on YouTube: go to “Moving in Three Dimensions” for four segments to learn about moving in the planes.

New and ongoing 3-D Workout classes for the public in the Greater Toronto Area

Go to the links below and bring up the class schedules. For classes in other areas, contact an instructor on the Our Community page.
West end: Retrofit
Midtown: Inhabit Pilates
East end: Counterbalance
Burlington: Seniors Centre

 

Three-Dimensional Circuit Training

by Dianne L. Woodruff, CMA, PhD

In conventional circuits the client moves from station to station performing exercises on machines that work various muscles one set at a time, one after the other with little or no rest in between. The client may also do aerobic exercises between stations. The muscles are worked separately–in isolation.  3-D Workout is a variation on circuit training.

By contrast, a 3-D Workout approach trains the body-as-a-whole using combinations rather than one muscle group at a time. 
 
In 3-D Workout attention is paid not only to the larger, typically stronger muscle groups but also to the injury-prone smaller muscles such as the rotator cuff and spinal rotators. This is important because in real life muscles ALWAYS work in groups, never in isolation. If you want to move as a whole, you have to train for it. The exercises should use all the joints through their full range of motion. Movement in three-dimensions has an added benefit in which both hemispheres of the brain must work together.

The 3-D Workout circuit is made up, not of visits to machines but of visits to your body. There are three parts to the workout: 1) floor exercises for coordination, 2) stretches for muscle and fascial elasticity and 3) resistance combinations. There is a great variety of well-paced movement organized in intervals. These intervals vary the use of muscles by systematic use of the kinesphere–the space around the body. The mover avoids overuse while movement combinations keep up the fun and the challenge.

The result produces a feel-good workout for coordination, strength and endurance along with good balance and overall function. No machines are needed, just space, a mat and light hand weights. Two volumes of 3-D Workout DVDs provide support for in-home practice.
 
When you train the body-as-a-whole your exercise and your daily activity changes. You walk, run and climb stairs with more endurance. You play better golf, squash, baseball. You swim, dance, skate with ease and power. You enjoy your workout and stick with it. Your life becomes not chore-full but joyful because your body is there for you.

Thanks to Terri Benison for her help with this article.