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Old 06-14-2011, 05:56 PM   #97
Tom H.
Location: Rhode Island
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 72
United_States
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Re: Basics, basics, basics

Quote:
Cliff Judge wrote: View Post
I kinda see what you are talking about. I am not sure how useful it is for martial purposes to study what happens when you sneak up on somebody lifting weights and try to push them over, though.
Cliff, I apologize for jumping into the middle of a conversation, but this is an interesting scenario.

Weightlifting involves one body & one nervous system, and most lifting movements are nominally intended to be stable only in-and-of themselves against inertia and gravity. Martial movements, on the other hand, involve the back-and-forth of two or more reactive neuro-muscular systems, often in the context of a larger martial scenario (e.g. battlefield). For example, it is clear to me that the best way to push a heavy cart up a hill is not the best way to push a 2-legged human in a judo match or in aikido randori. For example, if you were to go all-out pushing in judo, you would open yourself to being thrown in a way that doesn't readily apply to the cart-pushing.

The scenario Tim raised of pushing a weightlifter from behind is an excellent example because the result he describes--falling over backwards--depends on a particular common reaction in the body of the person being pushed. In my limited experience, IP/aiki training creates new posture, movement, and reaction patterns that change how a person responds to force applied by other people. These patterns were selected for their martial utility, and may or may not be relevant to other movement activity like cart-pushing or olympic-weightlifting.

(I'm a big fan of the olympic lifts for body conditioning, but training those lifts will not give you heavy hands, a ghosty feel in judo, or non-telegraphed punches. But you can't hold that against the o-lifts, because they aren't even *trying* to develop those martially-relevant qualities. That's what the IP/aiki training is for!)

In my opinion these IP/aiki posture, movement, and reaction patterns are hard to learn, explain, or see on video because they are "software" patterns trained into your body. Sometimes aspects are visible--it's easy to learn to spot a hip-powered turn or raised shoulders, for example--but other aspects require hands-on because the visual clues may be subtle, absent, or down right contradictory (e.g. someone may appear to be in an unstable position, but they feel immovable upon push-testing, or what may appear to be a light tap is actually a knockout).

I also think the existence of these IP/aiki effects (and therefore the validity of the principles behind them as well as the validity of the training that creates them) is hard to even *believe in* before they have been personally encountered because aiki effects can be so bizarre, counter to common sense, or outside the realm of one's "this is what humans do". For example, the first time someone's push on me disappeared because I was neutralizing, I literally stopped to ask "why did you stop pushing?". Of course they hadn't stopped, but that's what it felt like to me, while the other person described me as immovable. Another example: I distinctly remember the first time someone moved me without giving me a force--that I could feel--to resist. I was clearly being moved even though I could not identify the force moving me. (I asked for a couple repeats and was never able to even *find* a force to resist against, much less get ahead of that force to do anything about it.)

Tom

(To be clear, I'm not talking about anything metaphysical or outside the scope of western sports science. It's just that martial movement is not so simple. See Grey Cook's physical therapy textbook "Movement" for an introduction to the complexity present even in a simple functional movement pattern like the unloaded squat.)

Last edited by Tom H. : 06-14-2011 at 06:05 PM. Reason: found some extraneous words
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