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Old 05-10-2011, 04:56 PM   #34
Janet Rosen
 
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Location: Left Coast
Join Date: May 2002
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Couple of thoughts....
1. Walter wrote "but the motion is generated by muscle contraction, not muscle extension." Yes.
I'd point out that the EFFECT can be flextion or extention of a joint though - and that sometimes a muscle is both a flexor and an extensor - the hamstrings being a classic example, having one effect on hip and the other on knee!
Does it matter? YES.
Men tend to jump/land by engaging the hamstrings, women by engaging the quads, which the most recent research on ACL injuries in womens basketball points to as the major source of those injuries. Women can be retrained to "do the same movement" using different muscles and universities doing so see drastically reduced injury rates.
2. I remember being a 20 yr old, 100# lass working in a food coop warehouse - this was back in the mid 70s when women doing "mens work" was very unusual and we were about 50/50 men/women doing all jobs including forklift driving, trucking, etc - my work included lifting and carrying 100# sacks of beans. I learned to "lift with my legs". Yeah, my biceps did some work, especially once I got the sack up. But if I'd relied on them to get those sacks off of a low palette into my arms, I'd still be working on trying to lift that first sack today :-) So I learned at an early age that there are many different ways to use the body, rarely just one set of muscles that HAVE to be used to do a particular job.

Bottom line, I may not always correctly name the muscle or body part I'm using, but I know when I've trained something to work differently from my default setting, and a lot of what I work on in my aikido has to do with that ability

Janet Rosen
http://www.zanshinart.com
"peace will enter when hate is gone"--percy mayfield
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