JP - movement & Play

John Polley - movement coach, educator & mentor

John Polley, known as ‘JP’ is highly regarded in the fitness industry as a movement coach, educator and mentor with a focus on using 3D movement and play.

JP’s movement, lifestyle and wellness studio is based in Perth.

I met JP at the New Zealand national fitness conference ‘Fitex’ in November 2018. At the end of the Personal Trainer course I completed in 2018, the tutors had recommended going to this conference as part of our ongoing development. Browsing through the workshop options, JP’s ‘Day of Play’ just stood out to me and I enrolled.

It was a practical and fun day about how you can use play in fitness for a wide range of populations from, the chair-bound to elite athletes, and the science behind why it is effective, on both physical and mental levels. It was a transformative experience for me. I actually emailed well-known Les Mills fitness professional Bevan Eyles to suggest he might be interested in interviewing JP on his fitness podcast - and he did! You can listen to it here.

A few months later I went to JP’s Myofascial Workshop when he came to Tauranga in March 2019. Here we went more in-depth into how fascia works and its importance, along with exploring loaded and unloaded 3D movement such as Animal Flow. I’d actually been doing Animal Flow myself for a few years just because it was enjoyable and felt good to do, so it was great to understand more about how it is a type of unloaded 3D movement, and why this is beneficial.

From September 2019 I embarked on JP’s mentorship programme, ‘The Next Level’. It involves learning about the key lines of fascia in the body and techniques for freeing up ‘sticky spots’ to improve movement patterns. This in turn facilitates improved performance - from rehab through to everyday movements, to athletic endeavours.

I’m excited to be synthesising my learnings from JP and putting them into practice via my group fitness offerings.

You can follow JP’s work (and play) on his website, the Next Level facebook group, or on JP’s Instagram.