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Old 03-08-2010, 04:06 PM   #26
Erick Mead
 
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Dojo: Big Green Drum (W. Florida Aikikai)
Location: West Florida
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 2,619
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Re: Sword tip movement

Quote:
Jonathan Wong wrote: View Post
{It's a simple motion, if you can't form a "bridge between heaven and earth" while doing that, then it tells you something is up with your body (and/or mind), right?

.... In fact the OP says "When I swing my sword ... I just can't seem to get the tip of the sword to go straight." This is the point-- he is trying to make his body move an object in a straight line, but it doesn't happen. ...
It's not about swordsmanship, it's about failure to be able to make your body do a simple task the way one wants it done.
My suggestion: The cut should be actively driven (from the center) from the rearward extreme (differs depending on who you talk to), to about the 45 deg. position of the fists as the cut is "thrown". At that point correct structure creates the dynamic -- not active futzing.

If at that point you do not feel a comfortable tension across the shoulder blades pulled passively by the momentum of the sword (some call it the upper cross), instead of muscular action, and which rounds and rolls the shoulders around the spine, forward somewhat, then structure is disconnected and the line of cut will wobble. Your job at that point is to hold your rudder fast -- not to steer.

With connected structure, shoulder stress at the recovery largely goes out of the cut. But if you are more actively stopping the cut at the end it is because the structure is not naturally balancing the recovery moments to come to rest at your belly, and this shows up in shoulder cuff soreness, because the shoulder is handling shear loads it was not made for.

You want to hold that dynamic load in a passive tension bearing at the spine, like your ape great (great^150,000th)-granddad held his weight in full tension swinging from the static limb -- only now you are relatively static and swinging the limb instead. Mechanics are the same, just reversed.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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