The mainstream fitness industry takes in 30 billion dollars a year and yet we are the least healthy, and weakest generation of humans to walk this planet. The traditional approaches are failing people with a narrow vision of fitness as people are becoming less healthy despite the wide reach of the industry.
We help humans like you cultivate a sustainable transformative lifestyle to help you become your most heroic self.
Experience an ecology of practices made sustainable through fun, fulfillment, community, and a broader sense of what it means to be well. This is Evolve Move Play.
We reconnect people to the most meaningful aspects of life and help them cultivate their character through outdoor movement training with our online courses and retreats.
We developed our outdoor movement training program by studying parkour, martial arts, capoeira, gymnastics, dance, and more. By looking at evolutionary science, biomechanics, and ethnography, we learned how people evolved to develop fitness in a range of areas—physical, cognitive, emotional, interpersonal—through play and interaction.
And we applied that evolutionary perspective to create and refine our programs. It’s how we empower people just like you to move like a human!
We help people learn to move like humans, to reclaim their capacity to move with flow over grass, rocks, and trees, play with sticks and stones, and achieve meaningful self development through roughhousing, natural parkour training, and more. Reconnect with nature and develop your aliveness in movement training to become a more resilient, embodied human!
To help people cultivate a heroic version of themselves by becoming stronger, better, more capable, and more aware of mind and body through outdoor movement training.
What do we mean by “heroic”? This is our way of describing a human who’s capable and effective, someone who meets the challenge of the day with purpose and resolve.
The highest purpose of our movement practice is to create deeper aliveness, deeper embodiment, and deeper engagement with the world. EMP helps people reconnect to the most meaningful aspects of life through a functional fitness program that’s engaging, dynamic, and fun. We’re here to empower you to progressively strengthen your body and mind, grow beyond your limits, and discover your greatest potential.
Humans evolved as part of an interconnected natural world, surviving within complex social systems. Understanding these contexts is crucial to understanding what it means to be a healthy human.
By building a path to self-cultivation that works with — rather than against — human nature and the broader natural world, we hope to help more people discover and embrace this intrinsic motivation.
All while building stronger relationships — and ways of relating — with one another.
Children and animals intuitively use play to learn and grow. Trees, cliffs, and rocks will become your playground. Classmates will become playmates. This approach is innately rewarding and motivating. Over time, you will experience a positive change in your character while gaining a progressively stronger body and mind.
Think of this process as rehab for play-deprived humans, adults and children alike…
Evolve Move Play is a movement education system based on the concept that humans evolved to move in specific ways —
Human bodies and minds were shaped for a natural environment, running, jumping, climbing, manipulating objects, cooperating with others, and even fighting (playfully)!
The way we move and the environments we move through impact our moods, alertness, awareness, and focus. They can make us strong and robust, not just for lifting weight but for dealing with cold and heat, abrasions and bruises, and more elements we as human beings were meant to experience. Even the way our mind handles both physical and emotional pain is deeply affected by our movement practice.
The long-standing approach to physical education and training has tended to perceive the human in a reductionist way, a set of parts to be improved. Movement culture and the methodology behind Evolve Move Play go far deeper than better abs or difficult parkour moves. We see the body and mind as one. And every aspect of our being – cognitive, emotional and physical – is affected by how we move.
We know that to develop the strongest, most adaptable, most resilient and happiest human beings, you need to give them movement. And it needs to be rooted in the movements we are evolved to be doing in the first place.
These online programs are completely dedicated to building your strong foundation. With lifestyle skills guiding you down a simple and sustainable path, you can look forward to huge leaps forward in your physical and personal growth!
Reconnect to what gives you meaning: nature, play, relationships, and self-actualization with outdoor movement classes.
Develop a sustainable movement practice you can do for the rest of your life.
Move where you are! We’ve got it all to get your movement practice going safely.
Your fitness level, experience, or age do not matter! If you’re looking for an in-roads to natural movement, the best parkour training, or simply a deeper sense of connection with what makes you human, welcome to the tribe!
We’ve worked with ages ranging from 4 to 73 years old, including people with no background and one student recovering from a traumatic brain injury who has made tremendous progress. We design our programs to scale in difficulty at an optimal pace, enabling students to come as they are and make steady progress.
We’re a harmonious space for both those who are already have fitness or natural movement ingrained in their lifestyle, and newcomers who are curious and excited about the practice.
No danger, no grueling slog, no boring training. It’s the most fun you’ll ever have with functional fitness workouts!
Rafe Kelley’s background includes gymnastics, martial arts, mindfulness training, and more along with years of research into the scientific and evolutionary perspectives of how humans move. As an explorer and seeker, he has spent decades on his deep-seeded search for better paths toward well-being. He landed on, among other things, parkour and nature as powerful tools to get there.
🌳 Rafe is a pioneer of the outdoor movement culture, having popularized natural parkour training, tree running, and roughhousing as essential components of an effective movement practice. With his roots and extensive experience in parkour training, he developed EMP to give people the maximum fitness experience that includes multiple levels of connection, nature, and of course, personal growth.
Rafe experimented with lots of movement practices and other methods of self-cultivation, but found that this form of natural movement was the best way he could help others connect to the essential human needs they’ve been alienated from. And to develop lifelong health and fitness in the process.
