Functional Fitness and Practical Mindfulness for Everyday Life
Become fully human
People today endure environmental stressors never before experienced in human history. This requires an adaptive, innovative approach to health and fitness. Namely, we need ways to restore our innate biological strengths and abilities, which have been undermined by a world dominated by machines and computers. We need to become more fully human.
Through functional fitness training and intelligent, fascia-driven, mind-body movement practice, we'll enable your ability to live fully and adaptively across a lifetime (otherwise known as your healthspan). Reclaim your innate vitality. Become fully human.
"There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy."
~ Nietzsche
There are two key dimensions of FULLHUMAN Movement+Wellness. While these overlap and mutually reinforce each other, we'll create a customized plan to meet your unique needs and goals.
Functional Fitness and Fascia-focused Movement Training
Functional fitness gives you the practical strength and adaptive abilities needed for any activity life offers you, whether hiking, gardening, dancing, playing with your kids or grandkids, recreational sports, traveling, biking or simply remaining mobile and capable throughout your whole life. This emphasis of FULLHUMAN integrates traditional strength building with innovative fascia-focused movement training. Fascia is the most important organ system most people have never heard of.
Practical Mindfulness, aka Cognitive Hygiene
Hygiene derives from the Greek term hygiene techne, which means "the healthful art" and reflects the ideas of "having a vigorous life; living well; vital force." Today, this is more important than ever, due to the myriad ways that the mechanical and computational nature of industrial-technological society compromises our cognitive function. This dimension of FULLHUMAN teaches you how to maintain the natural vitality of your integrated mind~body system without resorting to drugs, biohacks, expensive treatments, or contrived "longevity" plans that are so trendy today.
Science-based
The fitness, movement, and mindfulness industries are full of snake oil and click-bait nonsense. At FULLHUMAN, everything I offer is supported by high-quality scientific evidence. Rather than trends and hype, you'll get real knowledge, real methods, and real results.
Functional & Practical
I believe health and fitness are about living well in daily life, not trying to look like models on magazine covers. I train for functional fitness that supports you in all aspects of life, across a lifetime.
Customized plans
Anatomically and kinesthetically speaking, everyone is unique to some degree. This means that I customize a training plan to match your needs and goals rather than trying to fit you into an abstract formula or impersonal model. I get to know your specific movement dynamics and adapt your experience to your ever-evolving life situation.
Enjoyable
Moving should feel good! Fitness and movement practice shouldn't be a chore, they should be the best part of your day. At the core of the FULLHUMAN approach is the conviction that moving well and exercising our strengths are among the best parts of being alive and being human.
Functional Fitness and Practical Wellness for Everyday Life
For decades, the fitness world has been dominated by extreme, idealized images of huge bodybuilders; ripped, chiseled, gruff men; and exquisitely toned, slim, angelic women with perfect complexion and expensive, trendy, stylish workout clothing. And, sadly, the "mindfulness"/wellness industry has followed suit in recent years, projecting idealized images of transcendentally "mindful" people sitting in perfect serenity on a beach or ocean cliffside or in a forest, as if they are energetically levitating above the supposedly crass, messy, unenlightened nature of everyday life.
These images and ideals might be nice to contemplate, but they are unrealistic and impractical for 99% of people simply trying to get through the chaos of the day-to-day and maintain their health and mobility into old age. At FULLHuman Movement+Wellness, I prioritize functional fitness and practical mindfulness that enables people to live well within the messy, unpredictable, demanding conditions of everyday life.
I didn't come to this work from a former career as a bodybuilder, pro athlete, or model. I came from living and working in both physically and cognitively demanding conditions including farming, construction, landscaping, customer service, psychotherapy, emergency response and trauma resolution, and the highest levels of academic research and scholarship. Through all of this, I've learned what it takes to be mindful in a practical, grounded way and to be fit in a realistic, functional way.
If you want functional fitness and cognitive hygiene for life, not for a magazine shoot - you're in the right place.
Movement is medicine
Did you know that staying fit and strong is literally one of the best things you can do for your health at any age? This is no exaggeration. Research has shown that muscle loss -- more than any other biological marker -- is the greatest predictor of all-cause mortality. Moreover, building and sustaining muscle is about much more than looking good on the beach. Our muscular system contributes to vital biological functions such as mobility and stability; immunity; metabolism; hormone function; vision; and circulation.
Nearly 40% of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in life, and 30% of people who die from cancer actually die from the muscle weakness associated with cancer. Building and sustaining muscle, therefore, is less about looking like Arnold and more about sustaining your health and wellness across a lifetime.
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Meet your trainer: Dave W., PhD, NASM-CPT, CYT, TIYT
Hi - I'm Dave, lover of all things movement and health. I've been developing my "movement literacy" and cognitive and kinesthetic hygiene for decades. Throughout my life I've participated in a variety of sports and athletic pursuits including football, soccer, baseball, track, mountain biking, cycling, rock climbing, hiking, backpacking, high ropes course facilitation, slacklining and gymnastics. I've also worked in a number of physically-demanding jobs including masonry, carpentry, farming, trail building, ecological restoration and construction.
After earning degrees in psychology and education and publishing a PhD dissertation on embodied cognition, mindfulness, and autopoietic biology, I turned my attention to the practical application of my research. I'm a National Academy of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Trainer (NASM-CPT), certified in hatha, vinyasa and yin yoga, certified in trauma-informed yoga therapy, and I am currently completing a training in FAMO® Fascia Movement, one of the first of its kind ever offered in North America.