My journey with movement started my senior year of high school. My body felt tight and tense. I felt like a walking brick. I knew I needed a change, but I didn’t know exactly what that looked like. I texted a friend and forced him to go to a yoga class with me. When we walked in, we instantly regretted our decision. The room was hot as hell and smelled like lavender. We were sweating, and the class hadn’t even started. As the teacher effortlessly squeezed herself into a pretzel, I laughed out loud disrupting the entire class. “There’s no fucking way I can do that” I said under my breath. The entire class, I was annoyed, sweaty as hell and irritated as fuck. But something kept me going back.
On my gap year, I met a teacher who would teach me the fundamentals of yoga, meditation, and discomfort. “Pain is your greatest ally” she said. On the other side of pain is change. Change is uncomfortable but necessary for this game of life. She pushed me to challenge myself, my body, my beliefs and what I thought was possible. “If we can’t control our bodies, how can we control our lives” She would say. I quickly learned that the body you have dictates the life you live. If your body is tight, tense and cold then so is your mind and are your thoughts. Change the body. Change the mind. Humans were not designed to sit at a desk all day. We were designed to move, to go places, to run, to walk and to interact. Movement is the easiest way to take yourself off of auto pilot. Connecting with your body allows you the chance to reconnect with yourself.
In yoga everything becomes a metaphor. Your body molds to how you live your life. If you walk fast and always sprint around, then that’s a metaphor for how your daily life will unfold. Rushing from thing to thing. Never stopping to enjoy the moment. If your shoulders are rounding down, you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. Putting everyone’s stress above your own. We move to change our body and path. We move because we can.
I interviewed Simon Roth, mobility expert and owner and founder of Ark Elite. Roth began his journey early at the age of 5. His father was an Olympic caliber martial artist with an emphasis in Tae-Kwon-Do. Roth recently left his 15 year career in the corporate training and fitness world in search of something new.
I know and have personally trained with Roth. His vision and approach to fitness is unmatched. Last week, we met up, and I picked his brain. The conversation is below:
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First, tell us a little bit about your path and career. How did you first get into movement and mobility?
My father was an Olympic caliber martial artist with an emphasis in Tae-Kwon-Do. He was determined to turn me into a tier one athlete. My training started at the age of five and carried into my early adolescence. By the time I was thirteen, I was fascinated by power, ballistic aerial kicks and elite Tae-Kwon-Do masters. At the age of seventeen, I developed an obsession with the Navy Seals. Though I never lived that trajectory, it helped me further develop and study how lethal yet precise a body when properly trained can be. At twenty, I started professional and self training. Over the past fifteen years, I have explored the precision and fluidity behind “effortless motion”
Define mobility for us?
Mobility is raw strength. It is the reprogramming of kinetic chains, muscle control and stability isolation which yields in higher results and performance. To create a stronger machine like body.
Superior and efficient mobility is operating at your genetically intended optimal state without involuntary overcompensations due to pain-limitation, tendon or muscular tightness, inactive muscular imbalances, disconnection of the kinetic chain, muscular atrophy, scar-tissue, inferior spinal and joint-stability, which are all by-products of weak motion or a lack of mobility training.
What’s the biggest stereotype when it comes to working out?
The public opinion of training.
Training is not limited to just gaining muscle mass for an aesthetic sake. There is deep biochemical and anatomy that goes into training. Training takes a keen eye. One that I will argue takes a minimum of a decade to acquire.
Before we go too far. Tell us a little bit about your philosophy? How do you go about training?
I focus on biomechnical weakness through your kinetic chain and movement patterns. I then focus on symmetry, muscular activation, inhibition-release, mobility limitations, overcompensation patterns, tendon-muscular-joint instability, neuromuscular over-guarding, tempering or extreme muscular atrophy (scar tissue).
I prioritize grip, stability, power, speed, and alignment-driven functional training over mass building. This all heavily prioritizes and reinforces muscular armor at anatomical weaknesses or instability by design while developing a masterful posterior-chain and mobility.
What makes your approach different from most exercise professionals?
My approach correlates with strongman-mace club modalities. I promote superior mobility and functional muscle. I push your limitations in training to yield adaptations.
Where is the number one place people go wrong?
People underestimate how mobility is strength and irrefutably power.
Does muscle mass equivocate to health?
Muscle mass in itself definitely does not equate to a healthy or optimal state.
What’s the best way to determine one’s physical health?
A true test of strength is not just a drastic push or pull movement. It is getting into the movement and then clean execution of the dramatic push or pull movement as well.
A true litmus test should have many metrics to access a true condition of one’s health including cardiovascular, neuromuscular, and respiratory systems which should all be evaluated. Resting heart rate, VO2Max, joint stability, spinal stability, connection and isolation of muscles, mobility under load while in or under load and motion also must be considered.
Our most vulnerable state is in transitional movement patterns where we are forced to adapt at fast frames in unstable and heavy demands.
Does pushing too much meat or training to hard impact one’s health?
Overtraining is abuse and will at minimum stunt or reverse strength and power gains. Inevitably it will kill results and an extreme injury typically in the form of a blown rotator-cuff, MCL/ACL and/or hamstring tear or a herniated disc will happen.
What is the best piece of advice you have for people looking to switch up their patters and incorporate more movement?
I recommend mastery over the fundamental movements with deadlifting and squatting. Then progress to unilateral work that emphasizes eccentric overload and full range of motions and ultimately to grip, instability, and power by developing the kinetic chain.
You recently left Lifetime to go out on your own. How is that going? What made you seek that change?
It’s going well. After twenty years in the corporate fitness world, my vision no longer aligned with corporate greed. I expect, deliver and offer superior mobility training.
The ARK, n reference to Noah’s Ark, is a haven from the corporate, commercial grade fitness model. That prioritize shareholders and profits over elite training, programming and results.
Tell us a little bit about your clinic? What can people expect?
I offer elite motion and superior training despite injury, surgical or neuro-muscular limitations. Superiority in mobility is as vital as water is to life.
Lastly, what’s the best way for people to get into contact with you? Do you have a website?
No website at the moment. People can contact me through my Instagram @simonrothjag, or directly by phone (903)-328-7886.
Are you taking on new clients?
Yes. I have a few slots available. Give me a call and we can try to set something up.
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