The Catie Brier Method - A Brief History

To give you the reasoning behind my methodology, I want to start at the beginning.

The early days...

I started dancing and doing gymnastics as a child. So naturally some stretching was involved there, but there was never any technique explained, no problem solving if something didn't work. You just had to do the thing and hope for the best.

And this mentality was carried through my contortion training as well. I started contortion when I was 16 with a lot of natural flexibility, and the coaches just pushed and pushed.

No explanations.

No prepping your body for harder skills.

No care for the well-being of your body.

And surprise, surprise, I got injured! And my body has honestly not been the same since.

After the injury, I continued to perform for years. I kept going as long as I could, but I was slowly losing most of my back flexibility. This meant taking more and more tricks out of my act, to the point where I didn't really feel like it was a contortion act anymore, and ultimately led to my early retirement as a performer (this is about to get cheerier, I promise!).

This life experience is the base of my teaching style. I loved teaching already, but knew that I never wanted anyone to go through that same frustration, pain, and injury.

So when I started to teach at Circus Center in San Francisco in 2013, I had a lot of good and bad coaches to draw from, and my number 1 priority was figuring out how to teach extreme flexibility safely and effectively, rather than relying on the outdated and unsafe methods that were taught to me.

This is when I started to develop my curriculum...

When I started at Circus Center, I was teaching full time to students of varying levels of flexibility, who came to class 1-3x per week, and I was able to see which exercises made an actual difference and which didn't. And then I would phase out exercises that were just filler.

I would notice when all of my students seemed to be lacking in a certain area and come up with exercises specifically to target the weak points. I would then wait and see what changes happened over the course of a few months, then tweak those exercises until they were perfected.

So I had the perfect setup to figure out what truly worked. And after about 2 years, I had a really solid curriculum in place, that I have continued to tweak and update as I learn more.

So everything we're doing in The Catie Brier Method, including starting off in a seemingly very basic way, is intentional. Because in my early teaching days, I sometimes skipped over these basics when I thought students might be beyond them, thinking they were too advanced to need "simple" exercises, only to realize that they had gaps in their training that were holding them back in advanced skills. And I've seen this time and time again, even someone with amazing flexibility, may still have issues holding them back, that are solved by going back to these basics.

I've also pulled from my experiences in my own training. Because now, years later, I understand where the gaps in my foundation were and how filling in those gaps and having a stronger foundation (and actually prioritizing training the basics) would have led me to have a longer career and not get injured as much.

So my knowledge as a coach is a mix of personal experience as a circus artist and dancer, real world practical coaching experience, and continuing to learn new techniques and anatomical knowledge from very knowledgable physical therapists, body builders, other contortion coaches, and athletes of all types.

Now, with all that background out of the way, let's get into the actual thought process behind the method...

Throughout the years, I've learned that safe flexibility training is so much more than just stretching. Some the most important parts of genuinely safe and effective flexibility training are:

• Learning proper muscle engagement

• Strengthening the appropriate muscles to support joints in stretches

• Building flexibility in tandem with strength

• Continuing to strengthening your end range as you gain more range of motion

So... a lot of focus on strength! Because:

1. Weak muscles don't like being stretched (they're far less likely to respond well to any form of stretching, and will feel more tense and painful when being stretched)

2. Your joints need to be supported, and you need strength in the muscles surrounding the joints to support them

3. Your body feels safer when it's stronger, and will be more willing to go into crazy positions and extreme stretches when the muscles are strong enough.

Bottom line: The stronger you are, the safer you are, and the more you'll get out of flexibility training.

This is why my curriculum is so focused on foundations and strength. Everything I include is designed to make your body function better in general, but also for more advanced training and skills. A solid foundation is the key to success!

EXAMPLE TIME!

If you want to be able to do a perfect Needle, you don't just do a Needle over and over and over again until you've magically developed the flexibility for it. You need to train the foundational components (square splits, good shoulder and upper back flexibility, a narrow bridge, and solid active flexibility), and then the trick will be achievable without force.

This goes for every advanced flexibility trick you can imagine, because advanced tricks come from solid foundational training.

And that's The Catie Brier Method! Flexibility training, from the ground up, with advanced skills in mind.

Train consistently with this method, and more advanced tricks will start to come naturally. No force required!

If you want the full backstory of baby Catie and getting injured, it's on the About page on the website!