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Old 12-22-2010, 01:02 PM   #10
Lee Salzman
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 406
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Re: Does Extension Mean Straight? or Central Axis Neither Central Nor Axis?

Quote:
Mike Sigman wrote: View Post
Exactly. If you are going to push something, it requires strength, so the question is whether you use muscular strength or 'internal strength' (whatever that is). If you are going to use strength, you must have structure of some kind; the question how that structure is formed and what it's composed of: normal body mechanics or the body mechanics of 'internal strength' (whatever that is).

Your diagrams appear to be roughly about structure rather than how the strength is generated, but the question is about what and how that structure is being held together and how it functions.

For all practical purposes your diagrams could be considered oddly-shaped brackets (like the bracket that holds up a bookshelf on the wall). The question is about getting the force from the bottom of the right-side black line to the tip of the left-side black line. The ideal force would go straight from one to the other, so the body, regardless of its shape should act mainly as a frame that conveys the shortest, strongest practicable force from foot to hand.

How to hold the frame together so that it is strong but flexible? That's what breathing exercises are for.

FWIW

Mike Sigman
The diagram, in a roundabout way, was sort of asking about both the structure and how the strength is generated.

Perhaps to ask the problem a bit more explicitly, I give you some random woman in yoga warrior pose:


If she wants to get the force out the front arm, and she is sourcing the back leg, and she is keeping her spine nice and straight by sinking the tailbone and raising the neck and all that stuff... if she were to push straight along that back leg into the spine, there'd be a lot of stress on the lower spine no matter what that had to be diffused somehow. How would you overcome that?

In this position the only thing it seems her back leg can effectively do, without leading to that stress, to get force out to that front arm is push asymmetrically on her torso to rotate it around that central axis of her spine, but the spine can not actually extend along that axis in that position. Whereas in the pictures of the baseball pitchers, the structure of their torsos are actually more directly behind the extension of the arm, so the torso can actually extend along into the arm.

Either way, the force seems like it has to travel roundabout, never straight. Is that not the case? Or would those breathing exercises enable the force to actually push straight zig-zags from foot to hip, from bottom of spine to top of spine, from shoulder to hand, without worrying about such stresses?
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