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minicoffee00 · 7 months

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I don’t ask for much - Cassian x Rhysand Sister Reader.

POV: After Rhys asks to stay with Reader all the time when she is up in the Illyrian mountains, when she doesn’t want to come to the camps with him after the first day made her uncomfortable. He comes back to a site he never wants to see again.

Warnings: Blood

You felt uncomfortable with the amount of stares you got when Cassian made you come to the training camps with him.

All the men had stared at you as if you were this log of meat on a stick.

It was well known among all of Night Court, even through Illyria that you, as Rhysand little sister, had never taken a man to bed after your first bleed. By the time it had occurred Rhysand was High Lord and he forbade anyone from clipping his little sisters wings.

She was waiting for her mate that would be the only person she would ever give herself too.

You were of course a force to be reckoned with, rivalling your brother in his powers in every way. You grew up with Rhysand teaching, politics and how to be a true Princess of the Night Court, while Azriel would teach you how to fly, and from Cassian you learnt how to fight like a true Illyrian. You’d received Siphons over the years, being only 100 years younger than Rhysand you’d caught up to his maturity quickly.

So Rhysand having to deal with Feyre being stuck in the Spring Court and Azriel and his spies tracking through the Autumn and Winter courts meant you had to go to where your route led.

Illyria.

As a female, who had drive to be a warrior you were shunned daily, even with the trio to protect you, you were still called names and taunted by their piers.

So going back didn’t have the same energy. Rhysand had strict instructions for Cassian to follow.

1. Do not let her leave your site

2. Please make sure she is eating and drinking enough, the mountains are cold this time of year and she needs the energy.

3. Do not allow any danger to come to her

The first day in the mountains was awful. Even though you weren’t that scared little girl anymore who followed her brothers every move, the bullies were no longer gangly twiggy boys that looked like the wind would blow them off the cliff edge.

No, now they resembled Cassian’s hard training, they were all buff with rippling muscles and six packs that looked more like washboards to her.

They clearly also thought the same for you, you weren’t that scared little girl who was begging for her wings to be clipped whenever she trailed along after her brother who was trying to train. You were a beautiful woman, who resembled only grace and purity.

The men of course couldn’t keep their eyes off you or their mouths closed from saying god awful things about you and your body.

You were tense for the rest of the day watching your back, making sure no one was coming close to you apart from Cassian.

The next day came, and you refused to leave the cabin, asking if Cassian had seen how they’d treasured you.

His answer was short, explaining that Rhys had requested not to let you leave his site.

It was a compromise in the end where he would go speak to them for only 10 minutes to get them set up and motivated for the day before he would take you home and get Mor to come back from the Hwen City for a few days.

“Not to watch over you, just as a friend” Cassian had tried to assure you but it hadn’t really worked.

He left you in the cabin, you saw a canvas and some paint, and you started to use the brush and colours to make out the Starfall of Valeris and what you remembered the last one to look like as you had pined for your brother to come back safe and sound.

10 minutes turned in 20 and 20 turned in 30 minutes and soon you were getting anxious if something had happened to Cass on his flight over.

What you hadn’t expected was three guys to barge in holding you down, a knife to your throat digging in enough to wield blood.

“Hello Princess, how’s it been all these years knowing you escaped us” the seemingly oldest one based on looks asked you. They had gagged you so you couldn’t say anything back, the one to his left laughing a little.

And that was the last moments your wings would have their little flutter you lover so much. The last time you would fly was a week ago with Rhysand over Valeris. For now they had just shredded your wings, completely off.

You thought to yourself that it would be less pain if they had cut them clean off, and kept them as a trophy.

Blood poured down your back and from the small cut on your throat.

“Now, your going to paint in your own fucking shade or red bitch, or tomorrow we come back for more fun” he spits, before him and his group of thugs join him at his side exciting the cabin.

You obeyed, being in too much pain to do anything else other than take that order on the chin, you were ashamed that as the Princess they had gotten the upper hand and had the audacity to command you.

Cassian was currently haven’t a what he didn’t realise was a pre-emptied brawl. They had said could things about you again, little did he know it was a distraction so some of them could get to you in the cabin.

The only tell tale sign was the smell of your blood on the hair of one of the now slightly wet returning males.

“Where have you been” he growls out. Knowing exactly where.

“To pay that little bitch a visit” the Illyrian warrior smirks. Cassian grunts pushing forward and sliding the sword across his arm.

“I’m not gonna kill you, because Rhysand would kill me for letting the guy who hurt Y/N not be at HIS mercy” Cassian grins a devilish grin that makes most of the men shudder.

He flies of straight for the cabin. Finding you painting in a pool of your own blood, your wings in shreds as silent tears rolled down your face. The thing that crushed him the most what that you’d painted your own shredded wings in the pigment of blood, your blood.

“We need to get you to Majda, Cauldron im so sorry” he speaks picking you up and holding you into him.

“Ow it hurts” you cry, into his chest hoping that you pass out so you can’t feel it anymore or that it just goes away. The second was an unlikely situation though.

“ I know I know I’m so so sorry cupcake. Rhys is gonna kill me” he mumbles exiting the house and flying her straight to Madja’s healing house.

“Madja” he bellows and she comes running out gasping at the sight of the crowned Princess. Immediately he can tell that she has reached out to Rhysand who seems to already be back home. As the next thing he hears, sends shivers down his spine.

“I don’t ask for much Cassian” he growls into his mind.

Taglist:

@cat-or-kitten @sstrohma @horneybeach1 @its-sam-allgood @starryhiraeth @xcastawayherosx @glitterypirateduck @azriels-mate123

Hope you guys enjoy some Cassian. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have another Azriel part up for Fast Changes! Let me know if you want or if this needs a part 2

#cassian #acotar #acomaf #acotar fanfiction #cassian x you #cassian x reader #a court of thorns and roses #acowar #rhysand sister #rhysand #Cassian’s biceps

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palaceofthedeadmemes · 5 years

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Trust NPCs Meme

Selection: “Impress me.”

Job: Blood Mage (DPS)

Weapons: Daggers

AI Behavior: Stays in stealth when not in combat, often focuses on larger targets. Will steal your limit break. Always avoids standing in AOEs. May pull ahead of the tank if nothing is done for too long.

Battle Lines:

“Let’s see... You’ll be my first canvas...” - Trick Attack from stealth “Yes, that should be enough...” - Using Mudra Magic, after the death of at least one mob. “Isn’t it beautiful?” - All mobs dead. “Quickly, now... I’m growing impatient...” - Between mobs

Limit Break:

• “You’ve bored me... Unfortunately for you.”

KO’d:

• “Finally... True freedom...?” - Variation 1 • “…My own blood…? That won’t do at.... All...” - Variation 2

Revived:

• “Oh...? ... Am I to be imprisoned forever?” - Variation 1 • “Very well... I’ve not finished my art anyways.” - Variation 2

BONUS:

All his Mudras are crimson colored. Upon landing a killing blow a mob, blood stains the floor and gives him health and mp when he moves over it.

Selection: “Behold, for I am the morning and the evening star!”

Job: Necromancer (Healer)

Weapons: Cane

AI Behavior: Stands back behind the rest of the party to provide heals, buffs and summons easily disposable mummy minions. Resurrection Sickness debuff replaced with ‘Undead’ which does the same thing.

Battle Lines:

“You fight for MY empire! I decide when your time has come!” - Healing “Behold! The Empire of the Sphinx Tribe!” - Summoning Mummies “Servants! I demand you work faster!” - All mobs dead. “Receive this, your Pharaoh’s boon, and carry our my will!” - Buffing party

Limit Break:

• “Soldiers! Arise and fight for your emperor!”

KO’d:

• “But... My empire...” - Variation 1 • “I am the morning and the evening star... My rule is eternal...” - Variation 2

Revived:

• “Behold! Your ruler returns!” - Variation 1 • “ Naturally... I am, after all, eternal.” - Variation 2

BONUS:

Mummy minions will stun by wrapping enemies in bandages and clinging to them, much like the undead minions in Satsaha Hard.

Selection: “... Fine.”

Job: Void Warrior (Tank)

Weapons: Greatsword

AI Behavior: Initiates combat when the party gets close enough. Prioritizes enemies attacking other party members until he gains threat.

Battle Lines:

“Hmph.” - Pulling mobs “... T’ch.” - Using tanking cooldowns “... Go.” - All mobs dead. “...” - Between mobs

Limit Break:

• “Unbreakable.”

KO’d:

• “...” - Variation 1 • “... How...?” - Variation 2

Revived:

• “... Okay.” - Variation 1 • “... Thank you.” - Variation 2

BONUS:

His Dark Knight abilities are fiery, aesthetically.

Tagged by: @leatherlaceandblades

Tagging: @lavender-hemlock and anyone else who wants to do it

@locke-rinannis for the templates

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brightlotusmoon · 7 years

Photo

Cerebral palsy makeup application:

Revlon Teal eyeliner, NYX Sliver eyeliner smudged, It Cosmetics Confidence Compact Cream Foundation over Too Faced Born This Way Liquid Concealer, It Cosmetics Superhero Mascara, Too Faced Long Wear Liquid Lipstick in Bend Snap over It Cosmetics Buff Nude Lipliner.

Spastic Hemiplegia workaround: take a muscle relaxer, if not prescription then OTC or online bought like Magnesium with MSM, Passionflower, Kava, Kratom, Mucuna. After it kicks it, use fingers to apply moisturizer, let it absorb for a minute. Use fingers to apply foundation and/or concealer, blend with makeup brush or sponge. Keep elbow straight. Very slowly apply eyeliner to upper lid, mistakes can always be smudged. Same with mascara, if you feel confident gently press mascara to lower lashes. Very slowly swipe lipstick and rub lips together. Keep brushes and sponges nearby. Make funny faces to make sure makeup looks okay, plus, Face Yoga tones muscles. When taking selfies, consider lighting and angles. Depending on how your cerebral palsy affects your hands, you will need to modify this also applies to arthritis and fibromyalgia and other conditions that affect muscles, joints, fine motor control, physical focus, etc. My mother graduated from FIT with degrees in fashion illustration and design, plus anatomy and makeup artistry before becoming a painter and figure drawing master instructor whose clients include celebrities. I wasn’t interested in fashion or makeup until I was in college and let Mom teach me, learning how to see the skin as a canvas. Because of my disabilities my mother helped me modify and compensate. My Facebook groups for cerebral palsy are always looking for makeup tips and no two of us are alike. Remember: modify, individualize, compensate, compromise. You’re crippled so do it you’re way and make the most of you.

**********************************

And now for Related Random Rambling!

This makes me think of my fictionial characters, both Original and in Fanfiction.

My top major fandom, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, involves humanoid turtle mutants with human minds and humanoid anatomy who grew up isolated and seperate from human society until age 15. They began as an homage to gritty Marvel superhero stories and are directly tied to the origin of Daredevil. They also seem to pay some homage to the X-Men, with themes of isolation, forced hiding, being feared and hated. They never did meet Daredevil despite being covered in the mutagen goo that caused Matt Murdock’s blindness. Splinter was based on Stick and The Foot was based on The Hand. Anyway. I am getting off track. Stop that, neurodivergent compulsive writerbrain, get back here. I promise this ties into beauty and self confidence.

******

In the original Mirage comics, the Turtles identified as asexual boys, according to Eastman and Laird. But the youngest, Mikey, in every version, is so completely fascinated by human cultures that he doesn’t care what scraps of humanity he gets. GI Joe and Barbie dolls. Tiaras, body glitter, skirts, eyeshadow, whatever. And later versions changed things around and then the fandom did its own thing. However, Mikey and Donnie as the two youngers and the curious insightful minds, are always confident in their masculinity that they are confident in femininity. The fact that they grew up with no obvious gender roles should be meaningful.

Mikey loves gender play. In the 2003 series, Don and Mike did dress up as an elderly man and woman couple to trick some criminals and Mike joked happily about it.

Raphael: You can lose the dress now, Mikey. Michelangelo: Why? Does this dress make me look fat? C'mon, tell me the truth! I can handle it! Donatello: I’m just glad Mikey stopped referring to me as his husband. Mikey: …. Mikey: *shrug, smirk* Me, watching again after recently coming out as a nonbinary neurogender mid femme demigirl: LOL. I shall interpret that however I wish.

The Nick 2012 Mikey, with obvious neoteny in his round face, freckles, huge baby blue eyes, youthful immature behavior, and desire to stay cheerful, playful, wild, carefree, optimistic, and Zen despite the horrors of the world, is underestimated as too naive. But he invented his own kata for the kusarigama when it didn’t exist, he is a masterful master of the very difficult nunchaku, he is athletic and acrobatic with unnatural speed and flexibility, when he truly concentrates he is a force of nature, he can create chemistry without thinking, he is a confusingly good sociologist and psychologist, he is a powerful empath and natural raw psychic, he can assess his environment using all his senses, hinting at synesthesia. If he really wanted, he could become a master ninja. But he is sensitive and loving and compassionate until he is betrayed. His greatest fear is being betrayed, rejected, ignored, abandoned, turned away in anger, left completely alone in the stifling darkness with the monsters in his mind and in the world. His powerful deadly talents need to be backed up with feelings of love, acceptance, understanding, light, positivity. Not cultish positivity but basic positivity that allows for negativity that he can use to push himself forward to keep fighting.

When I wear my makeup, my silver or gold eyeshadow and my illuminating concealer and my shimmery red lipstick, I feel that power, that force. I feel positivity flow through me and I take my negativity and use it as a shield and sword, I use negative energy emotionally to push myself like my fictional characters. The cosmetics I wear are like war paint. Because I am a Fae warrior dammit.

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healthandfitnessrecipes-blog · 6 years

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The Viral Video Star Behind the Fitness Fad That May Replace CrossFit

https://healthandfitnessrecipes.com/?p=8769

“Bro, what kind of muscles you have?” asks Ido Portal in a short video introducing his philosophy. He’s barefoot and shirtless, his long hair pulled back as he tumbles across the frame and does handstand push-ups in the rain. “No—bro, what kind of patterns you have? Can you flip? Can you invert? Can you crawl?”

The 48-year-old Ido Portal has spent the past three decades honing a physical credo and method that’s now practiced by thousands of people all over the world—from office workers, to former CrossFitters, to NBA players, to the ever-controversial UFC titan Conor McGregor. Known as The Ido Portal Method, or simply “movement,” his approach purports to take the “most potent” parts from a range of physical disciplines by shedding the dogmas that often accompany them. As he puts it: “I want the contents, not the container.”

Videos of Portal in motion began circulating in certain physical circles in the mid-2000s—entrancing clips in which he flows along the floor like liquid, playfully combining capoeira-inspired flips, hand-balancing, and animalistic movements. But it’s only in the past few years (in no small part thanks to McGregor’s influence) that his profile has exploded, his following has expanded, and his business has revved up.

Star athletes reportedly pay Portal six-figure sums for two weeks of in-person training. He spent chunks of the past year doing “movement design” (something akin to choreography) for a multi-million dollar Bollywood film, and is set to star in a mini-series in which he works with elite athletes in sports ranging from surfing to fighting. (Some of his closest students have landed similarly glitzy gigs, with two recently serving as advisers to the current season of Israeli Ninja Warrior.) Portal has been called a “guru” and a “movement master” more times than I can count; one interviewer even called him “the smartest man in the world.” But the question—hotly debated on Reddit and on MMA blogs—endures: Is there value in the movement, or is Portal simply slinging snake oil?

“Most people don’t have the user manual to their own machinery,” Portal told me emphatically when we connected over Skype. “Your being is a physical being. You brush your teeth everyday, you need to move everyday. It doesn’t take five minutes, and it does take a certain education.”

Portal seems like the the right guy to be dispensing such an education. He appears in control of every vertebrae and muscle fiber, he’s charismatic, and he looks the part. (“Why do all these movement teachers look like Jesus?” comedian, MMA commentator, and member of the Intellectual Dark Web Joe Rogan once joked.) For years, Portal tied his hair in a topknot and was so jacked he says he was once asked to shed muscle for a photoshoot. These days he’s ponytail-less and a bit less buff—he told me his muscles were getting in the way of evolving his movement practice in certain directions—but his body-fat percentage still hovers in the single digits and he can bust out a one-arm handstand or helicopter at will. The only clear sign he’s aging are the flecks of grey in his dark-brown beard.

And he is, fittingly, always on the move. Born and raised in Haifa, Israel, for the past decade he’s been effectively nomadic, carrying his possessions on his back as he brings his method across the globe. A few weeks before we spoke, he’d been leading a movement camp in Phuket. The week before it was Seoul. Next up: Cyprus. In between camps, he works with elite athletes—from Olympic swimmers, to MLB players, to professional mixed martial artists—applying his broad perspective to their sport to try to give them that extra edge. That might mean focusing on spinal articulation for a swimmer, or developing a baseball pitcher’s shoulder mobility through oft-neglected hanging work. Portal described himself as an “information-and-systems broker, mobilizing knowledge from one discipline to another.”

In Tel Aviv, much of this work takes place in what looks like a CrossFit box, but with more free floor space. The walls of the Ido Portal movement school are covered in handprints, scuff marks, and phrases like isolation → integration → improvisation and Let them DIRTY the walls, motherfucker! The equipment scattered about is basic: gymnastics rings, monkey bars, wooden sticks, tennis balls. As Portal—who tends to be either barefoot or in basic canvas shoes—puts it: “The more expensive the toys, the cheaper the mover.”

Some 700 people have joined the school since it opened in late 2014, he said. Throughout the day, you’ll find muscular men and women bouncing a tennis ball against a wall with their fists, working on inversions, experimenting with different kinds of squats, or slowly swinging a dowel while a partner evades it using spinal waves and soft acrobatics. Or, to hear Portal tell it, in each session students “step into the cloud of movement and attack a subject” by doing drills or challenges, “maybe it’s coordination, or speed ... ” Training in “movement” might look or sound frivolous to outsiders, but Portal and his tribe are nothing if not serious about it. “It’s not some hippie concept as many people make it out to be,” he said. “I am a radical person, for the good and the bad.” He and his “inner tribe” train from six to ten hours a day.

“How many movements did you learn today? This week?” he challenged me. “A contemporary dancer might learn hundreds of new movements in one class ... and the neurological connections being made, the type of brain that is being developed ... ” Portal has long preached that learning new, complex movements betters the brain in ways straightforward cardio or weights do not—and some recent research supports this. One 2015 study found that adults who undertook a regime loosely based on freestyle wrestling performed better in cognitive tasks than people who spent the same amount of time performing tiresome brain-training tasks or gutting it out on a stationary bike. Similar benefits have been seen in those who practiced Tai Chi as compared with brisk walking. But Portal believes his method is superior to other forms of training. “It makes you smarter, I know it, I feel it,” he told me. “There is no more potent tool to make people sharper, more complex, more ethical, more realistic.”

Portal presents his approach as a sort of atavistic antidote to our lifestyles—a bent that aligns him with the recent “evolutionary fitness” movement. Chief among the movement is Erwan Le Corre, the former parkourist and founder of the popular “MovNat” (a portmanteau of the French term for “natural movement”). Supposedly modeled after the challenges faced by our hunter-gatherer forebears, Le Corre’s wilderness workouts involve vaulting across rivers, heaving boulders, and climbing trees. Though Portal’s approach is perhaps more palatable for the urban set, the men lament similar things: Our 9-to-5 cubicle jobs, smartphone addiction, hyperspecialization in sports, and the rising obsession with fitness for aesthetic purposes have robbed us of our capacity to truly move, leaving us empty.

At the heart of movement culture is an emphasis on play. Animals and kids play as they navigate the world, Portal often says, but as adults we channel this instinct in futile or destructive directions. “That workmate of yours who’s always clicking his pen? That’s his body screaming, ‘Let’s play! Let’s play!’” he said in a recent interview. Portal frequently cites a Dutch text from the 1930s called Homo Ludens or “Man the Player,” which argues that play preceded mankind and is central to thriving societies.“ Most people think play is juvenile” he told me, “but it’s actually a training tool of all animals and must be undertaken with utmost seriousness.” Which explains why he’s as inspired by monkeys as he is by guys who break orbital bones for a living.

Portal lizard-crawled into the popular consciousness in 2015, when he was recruited as the “movement coach” of soon-to-be UFC “champ champ” Conor McGregor. The brash Dubliner was just beginning his rapid rise from little-known fighter to the UFC’s most-bankable star when, in 2013, he tore his ACL. While recovering, he started to look at training through a new lens: He discarded his more-conventional workouts, he studied footage of predators hunting their prey (and he got the ink to match—his sprawling chest tattoo depicts a crowned gorilla devouring a human heart). “I learned a lot more about how important balance is, how important control of the body is," he told Esquire. McGregor came across videos of Portal in motion and, fascinated, sought out the Israeli.

Numerous UFC fighters had dabbled in broader training before Portal appeared on the scene, aiming to improve not just their conditioning, but those qualities that sit somewhere between striking and the ground game. Carlos Condit had been frolicking outdoors with Le Corre since 2014, and Georges St-Pierre had been training gymnastics for years. Back in 1999, jiu-jitsu-legend-turned-MMA-star Rickson Gracie showcased his own discipline-melding workouts in the documentary Choke. But Portal’s approach—thanks to his loud-mouthed star student and his own habit of calling out doubters on social media—was immediately much more polarizing.

When videos emerged of the Israeli brandishing a pool noodle to test McGregor’s reflexes, the fighter Nate Diaz taunted McGregor for “playing touch-butt with that dork in the park” and criticized Portal, “that goofball with the ponytail,” for using the exposure to promote his own schtick. (McGregor would soon suffer his first UFC loss at Diaz’s hands, by second-round rear-naked choke, before winning a bloody rematch months later.) Sports writers and keyboard warriors mocked the seriousness with which Portal spoke about silly-looking drills. “Using the chaotic trajectory of a flying card to keep [Conor McGregor] sharp” reads Portal’s caption for a video of him flinging playing cards at the Irishman in preparation for his boxing bout against all-time great Floyd Mayweather. Here’s McGregor “risking a severe paper cut as he gets ready for his megafight,” one sports blogger rejoined. McGregor’s cartoonishly loose-armed warm-up, a product of his work with Portal, was memed to no end.

Some MMA commentators have suggested that any gains Portal provides might be mental. But McGregor credits movement training with his ability to ”fight in many stances, from many different angles,” with feeling “loose but connected at the same time.”(“I’m more a squeeze of the lime at the end of the dish,” Portal said about his own influence.)

As McGregor racked up wins with Portal in his corner—most memorably knocking out longtime champ Jose Aldo in a record 13 seconds—Portal says he was inundated with coaching requests. “I got some NBA players, some NFL players reaching out,” he told SBNation. “Tony Robbins reached out.”

“Whatever you do, don’t call him a guru or a master of movement,” a couple of his students told me seriously. “He hates that.” When we spoke, Portal emphasized that movement can’t be mastered—it’s too encompassing. “When people say ‘I’ve got it,’ I think, you’ve got nothing; you didn’t get shit,” he once put it, ”That only shows me how much they didn’t get it.”

Portal may shun the “movement guru” title, but his narrative about how movement culture came to be only bolsters this image. As he tells it, his method was born of a personal quest of sorts. Growing up in the beachy city of Haifa, he was an active kid, practicing kung fu. At 15, he took up the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira. Skeptical of the dance and drumming aspects of the discipline, he was dragged to his first class by a friend but quickly became hooked. “I was living it, training night and day,” he told me—not just mastering the techniques, but dressing the part and learning Portuguese. Within a couple of years, he’d earned himself the nickname “The Missionary” for his radical dedication, and had started an academy in the basement of his family home.

Feeling constrained by the limits of the martial art, Portal soon began experimenting with other disciplines. While dabbling, he came to the “epiphany” that he wasn’t satisfied with any one realm, but was obsessed with movement as a whole. So, Portal says, he embarked on a years-long journey to find a movement teacher. “After countless searches, I could not find anyone who HONESTLY could represent that title,” he writes on his website. He decided he would become the movement teacher the world lacked, by continuing his travels and curating knowledge from experts in an array of fields.

Portal’s old blog recounts stints training with former U.S. junior national gymnastics team coach Christopher Sommer, balance expert Claude Victoria, and circus performer Yuval Ayalon, as well as a “crazy year” spent working as a physical theater performer in Bangkok and Berlin. He has cited as influences “strength sensei” Charles Poliquin and paleo patriarch Robb Wolf (who, Portal told me, sent him money to keep his capoeira school afloat when funds were tight). Over the years, he’s practiced boxing, jiu jitsu, and yoga; learned from parkourists, dancers, and osteopaths. All the while, he read voraciously—about speed, coordination, “the riddle of the fight”—and documented his evolving method on a blog and, later, on Facebook and Instagram.

In the mid-2000s, Portal founded a new training space in Haifa where he and his devoted capoeira students began experimenting with movement outside of the martial art. He built a “special-ops unit” of movers, he told me, doubling the gym fees and “eliminating all the unnecessary ... the people who weren’t willing to train many hours a day, six or seven days a week.” When he began traveling frequently to teach hand-balancing workshops and perform physical theater, he closed the school. But his students weren’t content to stop training; one of his closest students, Odelia Goldschmidt, started a small training group in a local park called “The Freaks.” Shortly thereafter, with Portal’s blessing, her brother Roye opened the movement facility in Tel Aviv, and Portal started a mentorship program to pass on his methods. (Each of the 40 mentees check in with Portal regularly, receive personalized programming, and attend a couple week-long camps each year.)

Critics in the MMa sphere often attribute attribute Portal’s fame to McGregor’s star power or the Israeli’s cult of personality, rather than the substance of his ideas. But the rise of movement culture maps onto a broader shift toward more-functional approaches to fitness. Beginning in the 1970s, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Nautilus machine helped usher in an approach to training that privileged form over function. By the 2000s, the fitness pendulum had swung so far in this direction that even kids’ figurines were more jacked—scale up a GI Joe Extreme doll from that era to the height of 5ft 10 and his chest would’ve been just three inches smaller than Schwarzenegger’s at his steroid-inflated peak. In 2003, the word “bigorexia” appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary, and a decade later, a condition called muscle dysmorphia—anorexia’s brawnier counterpart—abruptly entered the DSM.

A forceful countercurrent to this image mania emerged in the 2000s, led by CrossFit. Within a decade, thousands of mirrorless “boxes” had spread across the country, whose trainers touted “functional fitness” through daily workout challenges drawing from gymnastics, Olympic lifting, and sprinting. Soon, freerunning and parkour gyms began cropping up, and a number of more-traditional gyms traded machines for floor space and some battle ropes, to allow for more bodyweight work. Tough Mudders, Spartan Races, and their ilk made a take on Le Corre’s favored training format—the outdoor obstacle course—more accessible, and continued an emphasis on a more versatile body.

Then, in 2013, David Epstein’s best-selling The Sports Gene prompted fevered discussion about the “epidemic of hyperspecialization” in sports. Epstein pointed to a spate of studies showing greater rates of injury and burnout among high-school students who honed in on a single sport before their teenage years. Even more compelling, his book debunked the so-called “10,000 hours rule” to mastery, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers in 2008. Epstein cited research showing that those who entered the topmost rung of their field tended to dabble across disciplines further into their teen years than those who topped out at a sub-elite level. Kids who played a range of sports for longer tended to develop “physical literacy,” Epstein explained, which meant they were quicker to pick up the skills of the sport they ultimately settled on quicker than peers with a narrower sporting background. Epstein advocated that kids and teens do the very things Portal preaches for adults: experiment with a range of disciplines, play in unstructured ways.

In Just Move, a 2017 documentary about movement culture, one of Portal’s students says the community aims “to bring movement and life and everything we do out there to as many people as possible.” And in the past couple of years, his inner tribe has begun to fulfill this prophecy. Movement schools have cropped up around the world—in Boulder, New York City, Miami; in Europe, Hong Kong, Brazil, and Australia—mostly started by the students of the Ido Portal mentorship program.

Matt Bernstein and Zack Finer were both heavily involved in CrossFit when friends sent them YouTube videos of Portal in motion. Intrigued, they reached out to him, attended camps and workshops, and quickly became hooked on his method. They started introducing elements of Portal’s method to their personal-training clients and, after a few years, left their respective jobs and cities to start a movement school together in Boulder, Colorado. They told me more than thirty people uprooted their lives so they could regularly train with them, and talked at length about the various ways Portal’s approach had impacted their lives for the better. “Ido’s nickname for me was ‘the refrigerator,’ because I had the build and athletic prowess of one,” said Finer. “The stuff I can do now, I would never have dreamed about doing years ago.” (Their Instagram profiles feature videos of them nailing inversions, working on acrobatic maneuvers, and learning to balance a soccer ball on their head for a minute, among other things.)

Bernstein added: “CrossFit is physically hard, but [Portal’s method] is physically challenging, it’s intellectually challenging, it challenges your ego ... a lot.” (This, too maps onto a larger trend: A 2015 study by students at the Harvard Divinity School noted that as feelings of loneliness have risen and young Americans have become less religiously affiliated than ever before, “spaces traditionally meant for exercise have become the locations of shared, transformative experience.”)

But such personal transformations aren’t accessible to just anyone. Portal makes no bones about the fact that involvement in the community requires a significant investment of both time and money. In a 2013 Facebook post, he wrote that his movement camps were for the “got money and a ton of motivation and willing to travel kind of person” (for the “no-money, little motivation, want to fuck around kind of person” he recommended Zumba). In 2015, he lost fans in the parkour world and beyond when he announced he wouldn’t train vegans, saying they wouldn’t be able to keep up with his meat-eating “tribe.” The dozen or so movement schools that have cropped up in these past few years have made Portal’s methods more readily available. But even now, those wishing to take part in one of his camps are required to sign non-disclosure agreements and fork over between $600 and $1000 for two to three days.

“I’m willing to elevate the crowd by providing them with some of the things I’ve found to be useful. But I’m not willing to be pulled down by them into some watered-down thing—some P90X, some CrossFit-certification weekend event,” Portal told me, when I asked if he seeks to spread his method further. “If [the public] come with me, that’s fine, but I’m not going to them.” He added: “Sometimes I think, let’s let the trend die already for God’s sake, and have only the really hardcore practitioner group.”

When we spoke, Portal kept emphasizing that his approach has to be experienced, not just described. “It sounds very vague because there is nothing that I can say beyond these descriptive words,” he said. Maybe Portal’s elusiveness is just a way to convince outsiders he’s offering something new and revolutionary, as some have argued. Maybe movement just another cultish fitness fad with a short shelf life. Maybe you could achieve similar results, and the promised “paradigm shift,” training some other discipline multiple hours per day—like dance or martial arts.

All of these “maybes” are good for business: How will you know, Portal and his followers insist, unless you try it?

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2018/08/Ido_Portal_FINAL/lead_960.jpg Credits: Original Content Source

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nancygduarteus · 6 years

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The Viral Video Star Behind the Fitness Fad That May Replace CrossFit

In the mid-2000s, Portal founded a new training space in Haifa where he and his devoted capoeira students began experimenting with movement outside of the martial art. He built a “special-ops unit” of movers, he told me, doubling the gym fees and “eliminating all the unnecessary ... the people who weren’t willing to train many hours a day, six or seven days a week.” When he began traveling frequently to teach hand-balancing workshops and perform physical theater, he closed the school. But his students weren’t content to stop training; one of his closest students, Odelia Goldschmidt, started a small training group in a local park called “The Freaks.” Shortly thereafter, her brother Roye opened the movement facility in Tel Aviv and helped start a mentorship program to pass on Portal’s methods. (Each of the 40 mentees check in with Portal regularly, receive personalized programming, and attend a couple week-long camps each year.)

When we spoke, Portal kept emphasizing that his approach has to be experienced, not just described. “It sounds very vague because there is nothing that I can say beyond these descriptive words,” he said. Maybe Portal’s elusiveness is just a way to convince outsiders he’s offering something new and revolutionary, as some have argued. Maybe its just another cultish fitness fad with a short shelf life. Maybe you could achieve similar results, and the promised “paradigm shift,” training some other discipline multiple hours per day—like dance or martial arts.

All of these “maybes” are good for business: How will you know, Portal and his followers insist, unless you try it?

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/ido-portal-the-player/566687/?utm_source=feed

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ionecoffman · 6 years

Text

The Viral Video Star Behind the Fitness Fad That May Replace CrossFit

In the mid-2000s, Portal founded a new training space in Haifa where he and his devoted capoeira students began experimenting with movement outside of the martial art. He built a “special-ops unit” of movers, he told me, doubling the gym fees and “eliminating all the unnecessary ... the people who weren’t willing to train many hours a day, six or seven days a week.” When he began traveling frequently to teach hand-balancing workshops and perform physical theater, he closed the school. But his students weren’t content to stop training; one of his closest students, Odelia Goldschmidt, started a small training group in a local park called “The Freaks.” Shortly thereafter, her brother Roye opened the movement facility in Tel Aviv and helped start a mentorship program to pass on Portal’s methods. (Each of the 40 mentees check in with Portal regularly, receive personalized programming, and attend a couple week-long camps each year.)

When we spoke, Portal kept emphasizing that his approach has to be experienced, not just described. “It sounds very vague because there is nothing that I can say beyond these descriptive words,” he said. Maybe Portal’s elusiveness is just a way to convince outsiders he’s offering something new and revolutionary, as some have argued. Maybe its just another cultish fitness fad with a short shelf life. Maybe you could achieve similar results, and the promised “paradigm shift,” training some other discipline multiple hours per day—like dance or martial arts.

All of these “maybes” are good for business: How will you know, Portal and his followers insist, unless you try it?

Article source here:The Atlantic

0 notes