Other people have said that I was dealt a low hand genetically and socially: born with a series of physical and learning disabilities into the impoverished trailer court life of a single mother and multiple siblings. Teachers didn't know how to educate me since I didn't respond to the orthodox learning styles (verbal/linguistic and mathematical/logical). So, they institutionalized me in a psychiatric hospital. The doctors there didn't know how to reach me since I didn't respond to their didactic therapies.

But my Mother sought out alternative educational methods for me such as I've written about with Total Physical Response, Chisanbop, Phonics, outdoor leadership, youth fellowship, poetry, dramatic theater, role playing games, music therapy, choir and 5 different instruments (viola, flugalhorn, tuba, drums, guitar.)

I recall being in trigonometry class and coming to the same answer as the rest of the class, with a much simpler proof, and faster than anyone else. However, due to my alternative methods for problem-solving, the method I used differed from how the teacher preferred. Incensed that I "refused" to follow directions, I was sent to the principle's office, yet again.

But through many other experiences like the one with this trig teacher, I discovered that I could compensate for my "deficiencies" with other approaches to the same problem, through...

* Adaptation

* Improvisation

* Flexibility

* Mental Agility

* Lateral Thinking

* Ingenuity

* Innovation

Simply, my life was and is Compensation. And the necessity of my genetic circumstances gave birth to a concept, which over time, refined into a technique. Every mental and physical attempt I made needed to be compensated for, so that I could sustain the activity. Easily fatigued, in mind, emotions and body, I would fall injured or ill... without somehow compensating for the exertion.

Even as a young child, my dreams spun with fantasies of martial arts mastery, of deft repose and sangfroid composure. Huddled in libraries, I would devour books on esoteric mysteries, trying somehow to decode the cypher which locked my potential away from me.

Many trials, always errors. I'd test. Push. Dig. And that's where the concept erupted.

Compensatory Movement: unloading residual tension through the functional opposite motion. Releasing residual tension prevented myofascial density from forming, which preventing sensory motor amnesia from forgetting the movement, which prevented fear-reactivity from bracing when moving into that lost function.

But I had to study disciplines across the world from many arts and sciences to grasp function in order to understand its complementary opposite. Standard physiology lacked the sophistication; as did kinesiology. Even basics biomechanics didn't have the capacity to render three-dimensional movement successfully.

It wasn't until I applied the works of Russian scientist, Nikolai Bernstein (Degrees of Freedom), to martial arts and physical culture, that I was able to articulate the intuitive method I had developed over a lifetime, and suddenly was able to teach it to others, to make my technique 100% repeatable.

The physiological language of movement derived from the knife and the scalpel: it only described the function of a "part" - not of the entire body as a whole. My view of compensation evolved from a lifetime of studying movement, not muscles. You cannot compensate for an individual muscle contraction because nothing in the body ever happens in isolation... it happens in chains of tension, slinging force from one to the next in a cascade of force production.

You can only compensate for movement. And that is what has given someone swimming upstream from the shallow end of the gene pool, like myself, the ability to win international championships in multiple martial arts, the honor of being asked to be the US Coach for multiple sports, and earned someone deemed mentally and athletically incompetent as a child a place in the hall of fame, keynote for the MENSA High IQ Society and emcee of the largest fitness festival in the world.

Why Conventional Yoga Teachers Hate Me

Conventional yoga teachers (those that believe how they were taught is the ONLY way that yoga ought to be taught) despise my use of yoga. Yoga is an ocean of possibilities: tools which I draw from in order to concoct and modify for Compensatory Movements as I've recently posted in video tutorial format here: Functional Compensation for Swipes.

It's not "proper yoga" but it's certainly functional!

However, for dogmatic yogis, yoga must be taught exactly as they were taught... no different mentally than the trigonometry teacher I had as a young man when I created a proof he had never seen before, which despite it working for me with my alternative method and despite it working faster and shorter than the other children, was deemed "wrong".

Compensation is the new cool-down, which has traditionally been a near random collection of stretches intended only to resume resting length, rather than to restore total mobility through the release of residual tension in the functional opposite motion. My world-famous Circular Strength Training Coaching Staff are like surgeons with their precision accuracy in my technique because of the repeatability of the approach you learn at CST Certification Seminars. And this is why personal training professionals from the best gyms in America and around the world are studying CST at my seminars to add this unique and efficacious technique to their resume.

Although I've been branded as the pioneer of mobility, and the man who launched the club swinging movement (the other 2 rings of the Circular Strength Training System), it's the 3rd ring... Compensation, which will become a household term in the years to come.

Copyright (c) 2009 Scott Sonnon