Hey everyone! Thanks for being here. In this article, I would like to tell my story, how the Wildbodies Movement was born and why. If you feel aligned with or inspired by my mission, I would appreciate it if you shared this article with your loved ones. Let’s get started.
I’ve been in sports since a very young age. I started as a swimmer with my brother, then a basketball player for more than 5 years, before making transition to parkour and calisthenics, which is what I’m practicing daily now.
As an intuitive introvert person, my character is complex, like any other personality type. What make intuitive introverts like me complex are multiple factors, including the unique communication style we respond to.
Without going deep in this, it’s very hard for us to conform to established systems. We have to create our own.
Thus, all my sports and non-sports pursuits as a kid went unsuccessful. I was too sensitive to criticism and didn’t like to compete against other kids. My parents suffered in trying to find “the best” fit for me, not knowing that I was not meant to fit in the first place. The same pattern was repeated at school.
When I graduated from high school, I started exploring my inner world that never had the chance to express itself as it always had to conform at home, in school, society and basically everywhere.
That’s when I discovered the Tapp Brothers (Thomas and Jonathan) through their parkour videos on YouTube back in 2015. I was 18 years old then, and my country, Syria, had already been in a civil war for three years.
I used to watch their videos on my small Samsung S Duos device. The internet was very slow, slower than you could even imagine. So I had to download them in 144p resolution and watch them offline.
Infrastructure was limited (electricity, internet, water, heat). Economy was collapsing. Missiles and bullets were everywhere in the air. Everything seemed dark and apocalyptic.
But deep inside me, there was a voice shouting loud, and the urge to be and express that trapped energy made me go above and beyond the physical challenges that normally cripple the millions.
So I started learning parkour as an art of expressing myself through physical movement, but later my weak vision was a serious obstacle in my workouts. So, I had to shift my focus to learning calisthenics instead, where beauty and strength are combined and I learned several beautiful skills like the handstand, V-sit, Back Lever and so on.
My journey didn’t stop there. I wanted to teach my local community in Syria what I managed to learn overseas over the internet! One day I received a comment on my straddle sit photo from the person who inspired me and taught me how to hold my first ever handstand, Gary Hewitt, who also once called me Braveheartz for showing my resilience in the face of immense challenges in a war zone.
So, I listened to my calling and I started teaching calisthenics to young kids back in 2021. I made amazing memories but they’re too long to mention, although they’re really inspiring to tell.
Kids have amazing energy. They’re too humble to learn and I had the honour to be looked at as a healthy role model to young kids I personally coached and to kids in different spots across the city where I used to do my workouts.
The best part was when Lea, the girl you see in the photo below, once told me: “Coach Mark, I love you!”.
She didn’t know that she made me cry the whole day that day!
I and my 2 super girls: Lea & Lilia, whom I had the honour to coach, doing the most fundamental movement of the human body: squatting. :)
Then I started to pick up fitness courses for adults. That’s when things became interesting. I faced problems I never faced with myself or the kids. So I started reading every book and every article I can get my hands on, and my clients got the results they were looking for.
As my capabilities as an athlete and a leader in my community started to crystallise in the real world, I decided to take my philosophy, my experience and my aspirations to a global level.
I’ve grow up in a world of war, destruction and annihilation. I wanted to create a movement where strength is the core foundation around which we collaborate and move, as strength is a characteristic attribute before it is a physical one.
If you think you are only strong if you can lift a certain number, whatever that number is, you will feel pretty weak most of the time. Strength is not a data point; it's not a number. It's an attitude.
In other words, I wanted to create a movement of people who refuse a mediocre lifestyle and want to learn to move with freedom and power. That’s when the Wildbodies Movement was born. The name is inspired by the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau in his article, Walking:
All good things are wild and free.
I believe that “every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.” ~Henry D. Thoreau, Walden.
This is the Wildbodies Movement and this is the story of Mark Braveheartz.
If you’re looking for learning how to move with power and freedom, make sure to click the button below.
Thanks for reading. Train safe.
Mark