The Devil is in the detail. And so is God.

Movement Progression.

Ido Portal’s ‘Floreio Art’ is developed from a sub-art of Capoeira called ‘Floreio’ or ‘Floreios’. It focuses on the solo floor work of Capoeira, rather than the traditional, reactive play between two people.

Floreio Art affords a perfect field of play for movement training. It is a practice which focuses on the development of singular movements which are then integrated, sequenced, and at the highest level, improvised with to create a fantastic display of individual movement expression.

Whilst teaching movement patterns, Floreio Art simultaneously teaches and reinforces the importance of movement progression. Each performance is compiled with separate moves, each move is held together with transitions, each move and transition consisting of individual movement articulations, each articulation requiring both the physical and neural training to perform correctly and, ultimately, with feeling and beauty. Within each of these elements, the Devil is in the detail. And so is God.

Process and progression is the path to ability.

Ability and Process.

A huge problem faced when learning new movement skills is process. The concept of progressive process is something nearly always overlooked on the road of learning a new ability, where in actual fact it is the very road itself. Sometimes this oversight is through a lack of patience. But more often, it is through a lack of education and, consequently, relevant knowledge and application ability. When you see a squat, a pull-up, a back-bridge rotation, a handstand: this is the demonstration of an ability. It does not present a strong process for you to achieve that ability and offers very little to a beginner, other than to see the end goal.

You cannot effectively learn a skill simply by trying to mimic it. If that were the case, then we would all, in the end, be experts at every movement we simply mimicked. Training systems, methods, and techniques would have never even developed. A race-car driver is foremost an expert with wheel coordination and pedal pressure, proprioception in accordance with the track and a knowledge of the vehicle. An artist is foremost an expert with their material, the motions of mixing colour and clay, in cutting or bending or shaping or moulding; first they must master these techniques and build an understanding of light, shape, shadow and form before a piece of beauty is born. Process and progression is the path to ability, and if of key focus in MoveMore workshops.

Isolate… integrate… improvise.

Before you can explore new movement patterns, are your wrists, ankles and hip complex ready? Do you have the spinal mobility to safely support your body in various dimensions? Will your shoulders move into a supportive position? Does your neck provide enough movement to afford a good level of proprioception to see the movement through? Do your hands remember what it was like to be in contact with the ground in a movement capacity?

Movement training focuses on all these elements as a preliminary to movement ability, the areas of your body which need health and mobility before adding stress and complexity. Starting with the smallest, isolated movements you will build strength, mobility and neural pathways (mind-movement connection). Most commonly this refers to quality, guided repetition, trampling the path so that the movement and level of stress becomes familiar and automatic. Next is integration, where singular movement articulations can be sequenced with other movements through progressive transitions. This is an intermediate level but can be achieved very quickly. Lastly, the highest form of Floreio Art, and for all human movement patterns, is improvisation. Before entering this level, your pre-gressions must be automatic from consistent training, it must be a language you can speak almost fluently. See Ido Portal for the true beauty of Floreio Art improvisation.

Few movers achieve the level of improvisation.
But that is the beauty of being a beginner.

Lacking in beauty and barely held together (very disappointed with the bent knees in the press and sagging thighs in au cortado!) but here I have drawn the line for my launchpad for progress.

The sequence: role, high bridge rotation, au cortado, low bridge rotation, straddle handstand press, negative & rotation exit.