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Old 03-11-2008, 12:59 PM   #62
Timothy WK
Location: Chicago, IL
Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 187
United_States
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Re: Connecting with "Hara"

Quote:
Matthew Gano wrote: View Post
So you ARE talking about using the least number of muscles as possible (ie-minimal muscle usage).
Ehh... I don't like saying that.

In this context, it's too easy to misinterpret what I was trying to get at. I've had lots of teachers tell me "don't use the arms, use the legs, it should be effortless!" What they then do is use certain angles of attack and body alignment to minimize muscle strain (most notably by bringing the elbows and/or hands close to the body, and aligning the forearms with the angle of force), while they use their legs and weight/momentum to press into the strike or throw or whatever.

If I may bring in a non-Aikido example of this idea, when I worked loading trucks for UPS, I would grab heavy boxes and press them into my chest or stomach, so the weight would fall on my hips. I could then walk around with minimal, if any, upper body strain, while my legs carried the weight. I developed OK back strength, but I never developed big arms, despite carrying around, maybe... ~5000 lbs a day.

But that's not the kind of thing I'm trying to talk about. Those examples still use localized muscle. They feel "effortless" because they are, in fact, reducing the strain and workload on the body. But is there a way to maintain the workload/strain and still "feel effortless"?

Here's another example---let's say you want to push uke's chest or whatever. If you drop your arms and press into uke with your shoulder, that feels like you're "not using your arms", right? You feel that because you're NOT actually using your arms, right? So you retry it, but this time, you lock the arm straight and press. Again, it feels like you're "not using the arm", because the arm is basically pushing bone on bone. But what if you bend the elbow 90 degrees? Is there a way to make THAT action feel "effortless" for the arm?

How did Ueshiba do the "jo trick", where he held out a jo straight to the side, while someone pressed against it---at an angle perpendicular to his arm and body? How does that "use the legs"? Some have claimed that it's impossible to keep the arm steady under such conditions, that the muscles in the shoulder joint aren't strong enough to bare that sort of the load. And they're right, the shoulder can't do that. So either Ueshiba's uke was faking, or Ueshiba was accessing a different source of strength. (I can't do the jo trick, but I can appreciate how its done.)

So not to leave you hanging, all this points back to "connecting" the body, via the fascia (my belief), through the "center" nexus (abdomen), such that the strain is moved around the body, not simply reduced. Watch this video of Mike Sigman (who frequents this board). Pay attention to 5:00 - 6:15 (but also notice how he stays relaxed when someone is pushing on his *bent* arm at 0:45). Think about it and be honest with yourself---why and/or how would he (literally) feel pressure in the foot when someone torques his wrist? (And I'm sure that's not some sort of vague, half-imagined feeling he's describing.) I don't think THAT involves any muscle activity. (And similarly, I'm not sure that the "jo trick" requires any muscle, either, but I might be wrong about that.)

And one last thing (I mean it!)---even if there's a certain amount of muscle activity in the body, the quality of this activity is different. You're not just transferring the strain from, say, the shoulder to the quad, so you feel a lactic acid burn in your thigh instead of your shoulder. If you read accounts of high level practitioners, there's the recurring idea of "relaxed strength" and "effortless" movement.

--Timothy Kleinert
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