Jason Alan Griffin :: The Blog

I do a specific workout for about a month and then I change it up, doing a different workout each month or so. For July, I did a workout I called the Crazy Circuit. So called because I took six exercises and did them all, back-to-back for thirty seconds each without rest in between.  After that three minute cycle, I rested for a minute and repeated them again. I do this four or sometimes five times and that's my quick and dirty workout. I posted a video of myself doing this workout, including a warm up and cool down. The warm up and cool down are both of the variety that I call "disorganized," meaning that there is no structure to them. In the warm up and cool down, I'm moving in a random way to achieve the desired result. On YouTube I have posted a video, also taken in July, of me doing the same workout, but on a different day than what I have available for download.  But if you'd like to see a quick sample of the types of movements you'll be seeing, ch...

I use a technique for increasing flexibility that I call Deep Stretching. It involves putting my body into a position that I can relax into. The more I relax, the deeper the stretch gets.  I'm relying on gravity to do the stretch so I have to do no work.   In fact, the biggest challenge is to remain relaxed while my body experiences such a deep tissue stretch. In this video I'm holding about 18 stretches for three minutes each.  I turned the camera on and let it run as I did my workout and then I went back later and recorded a voiceover, talking about what I'm doing. Due to an injury, there are a couple of stretches that I'm unable to do, but I show them anyway so I can demonstrate a way to do your workouts even while injured. You can download this 57 minute video here for only $9.  Or if you want more videos for less money, you can subscribe to JAG's Video Club and get three videos each month for only $13 monthly. Use this button to purchase Deep Stretch...

I was inspired by a recent event at Soma Ranch called Men of Nia. In this weekend event, Helen Terry taught a whole Nia class to the Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd album while we watched The Wizard of Oz on a big screen. And William taught a couple of songs that weekend, too. The ones that stuck with me were Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf and Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin. In all honesty, I was struggling with whether or not I was going to continue to be a Nia teacher after about 16 years of teaching. This weekend fired me up again not only to the point where I relicensed as a teacher, but I also was inspired to put together a new routine based on what I mentioned above. I set out to create an entire Nia routine out of 70's classic rock songs. And ROCKIN is the result. The playlist is: Speak To Me/Breathe      Pink Floyd On The Run                              Pink Floyd Time ...

I injured my knee in February and had to do physical therapy for two months. During that time I was unable to teach Nia classes. Even though they were challenging and interesting at first, I eventually got bored of my physical therapy exercises, and wanted to start teaching Nia again. I started to play around with ways to do my physical therapy exercises in the context of a Nia class.  I discovered that many Nia songs already had some of my exercises in them, and others could be added with small choreography tweaks. And that is how the KNEE-AH routine began. Eventually it came time to teach again, and this is the routine I put together for that event. It was very important to me that the routine felt like Nia, that it was a challenge, but that it didn't exacerbate my knee issues. I also thought it would be cool if I could manage to not only avoid hurting my knee, and not only to do my physical therapy exercises, but to strengthen my legs and correct imbalances in my knees a...