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Old 05-10-2011, 12:59 PM   #26
John Brockington
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Michael-

I may be able to expound a bit upon what Jason is saying regarding avoiding "using the major muscles as completely as possible." Another way of thinking about this is to "avoid relying on local muscle use as much as possible." Let me explain as best I can, and please understand that quite honestly I am certainly in the early learning stages in this type of body training.

For most of us humans, when we expend physical effort we do this using our most available and obvious local musculature. An example would be, how do you open a door and what is the primary muscle or group of muscles involved? Try it and really analyze what muscles you are using, or just watch someone do it if that is more helpful. Do you (or they) primarily pull the door with the shoulder musculature? Do they lean into the door and sort of jerk it open, using their lower spine as a lever of sorts, with shoulder effort kicking in hard a moment later once the spine runs out of range of motion? Or does the door-opener initiate movement with their lower trunk/midsection/dantien, then drive with (source power from) their legs, then finally engage or use shoulder or arm only enough to maintain some contact with the door and provide a conduit through which the rest of the body can continue to exert force?

Now this is just a simple task of opening a door, with minimal resistance offered. Most people just go to their default mechanism of opening it. Not coincidentally, many, many people end up needing shoulder (rotator cuff) or cervical or lumbar spine surgeries, or suffering debilitation because of injury to these regions. I know- I see them all the time in my clinics. I think it is just a natural consequence of placing physical demands on our bodies that our structure can't sustain over the long haul.

One of the premises behind IS type training is to develop body mechanics that allow us to maximize the efficient use of our musculature, along with tendons and fascia. And unfortunately these mechanics are not only not intuitive, they are very difficult to isolate and practice, and to make matters worse, if you only practice them an hour or so a day, it is really hard to stop the other, more conventional local muscle usage patterns.

In general, I don't think that Jason or I or anyone doing IS training is truly advocating not using muscles. Even children know you just fall over if you let your muscles go all loose and floppy. But this type of body mechanics does require a lot of critical self-analysis, really sensing what one is developing with training efforts. It is very slow and repetitive, not sexy at all in terms of cool aikido or martial techniques, and it also does not build what most westerners consider to be a very attractive physique (muscular arms and chest). In fact, weight lifting done the way most people do it just kills all the other mechanics. And finally, I do think Jason hit the nail on the head when he said, basically, you have to figure this out for yourself. Guidance helps, so a lot of us go to forums like this for tidbits, but you've got to put in a lot of solo work. Like basically, rethink all your body mechanics and put that rethink into everything you do- door opening, using computer mouse, chopping wood, lifting water..........

So doing this IS training is lonely, not obviously or immediately gratifying, hard on the ego since there is no group acknowledgment like in a dojo, counter-intuitive, and ultimately you look flabby. Hmm.... maybe I answered my own question from another thread in this forum, when I asked why there isn't more discussion here.

Hope that helps.

John
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Old 05-10-2011, 01:18 PM   #27
thisisnotreal
 
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Maybe another way to put that part of it is like...you've heard of synergistic dominance problems in neuro-muscular recruitment? Well.maybe this is like the opposite. A combination of new neuro-muscular recruitment patterns...but also necessitates integrating and building off of new structural developments. then learn the movement stuff. This is only my thoughts at present. btw.. This is only a part of the picture. You would have a field day w/ all this stuff... Fwiw
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Old 05-10-2011, 01:49 PM   #28
Keith Larman
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

I've posted this link before, but I think it is worthy of posting again. I think it speaks greatly to how the body can be used somewhat differently from what most would expect. Men's Health Article on Winding and fascia I think this stuff speaks to aspects of the ideas on internal strength/power and also speaks to notions of "unification" of the body. And I think we have all had experiences where when you learn some movement it is awkward and lacks power and smoothness because you're thinking about individual muscles. At some point you learn to relax and use everything at the same time, spreading the load out at a hopefully optimum level. So many times "over muscling" is really about doing something "all wrong". You have to relax to gain the speed and power of someone like Kuroda. Which means allowing entire long chains of your anatomy to work together from the center out.

FWIW.

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Old 05-10-2011, 02:13 PM   #29
phitruong
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Quote:
John Brockington wrote: View Post
So doing this IS training is lonely, not obviously or immediately gratifying, hard on the ego since there is no group acknowledgment like in a dojo, counter-intuitive, and ultimately you look flabby.
John
hey! we are not flabby! we are well endowed in area that conducive to partying and carousing where cheap beers and wines and perfumes involved.
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Old 05-10-2011, 02:28 PM   #30
Walter Martindale
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Well, anyway... Muscles contract when a nerve impulse stimulates contraction. Contraction of muscles shortens the distance between the origin and the insertion of the muscle, moving the bone(s) to which it is attached if the force from the muscle overcomes the mass/inertia of the bones and whatever is attached to them. The latissimus dorsi are a shoulder flexor group, assisted by triceps (a little) which primarily extends the elbow. Deltoids and biceps participate in shoulder extension, whether in classic old fashioned weight training/body building movements or tractor tire flipping. I can see how contracting/bracing in a relatively isometric contraction can stabilize using the trapezius, lats, triceps, teres major/minor, subscapularis and infraspinatus, and depending on the angle of movement, using supraspinatus, deltoids, biceps to raise (flex) the shoulder joint, but whether or not the person is thinking of 'pushing from under' the muscle action causing the arm to raise (shoulder to flex) has to be from a contraction of muscles shortening the distance between origin and insertion. As another has said, muscles don't push.
People push, but they use contracting muscles to do it. They may brace their bodies through all that connective tissue and muscle fibre while pushing from the soles of their feet to make impact with a knuckle, but the motion is generated by muscle contraction, not muscle extension.
Maybe my anatomy and physiology were studied 30 years ago but I haven't heard any great revelations about how we've evolved since then.

Unless of course I've got my flex/extend reversed... AIUI, from the anatomical position, flexing the shoulder is raising the arm anteriorly from the shoulder (palm up although that's irrelevant), flexing the elbow is raising the forearm anteriorly. Extending the shoulder brings the raised arm back to the anatomical position and/or behind the body, extending the elbow straightens it - hyperextending the elbow hurts, a lot.

back to work...
W
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Old 05-10-2011, 02:31 PM   #31
chillzATL
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Quote:
Keith Larman wrote: View Post
I've posted this link before, but I think it is worthy of posting again. I think it speaks greatly to how the body can be used somewhat differently from what most would expect. Men's Health Article on Winding and fascia I think this stuff speaks to aspects of the ideas on internal strength/power and also speaks to notions of "unification" of the body. And I think we have all had experiences where when you learn some movement it is awkward and lacks power and smoothness because you're thinking about individual muscles. At some point you learn to relax and use everything at the same time, spreading the load out at a hopefully optimum level. So many times "over muscling" is really about doing something "all wrong". You have to relax to gain the speed and power of someone like Kuroda. Which means allowing entire long chains of your anatomy to work together from the center out.

FWIW.
nice, here's something similar I read recently and enjoyed.

http://articles.elitefts.com/article...ity-to-fascia/

Last edited by chillzATL : 05-10-2011 at 02:34 PM.
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Old 05-10-2011, 03:37 PM   #32
phitruong
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

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Jason Casteel wrote: View Post
nice, here's something similar I read recently and enjoyed.

http://articles.elitefts.com/article...ity-to-fascia/
so would you said that IS training is really about training fascia to integrate full body control of all the neural muscular and fascia to accomplish physical tasks?

we know how to train muscle, right? but we don't really know how to train fascia and how to use it to bind and control our body motions, right?
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Old 05-10-2011, 03:47 PM   #33
John Brockington
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Walter-

I think you (and Josh) are still focusing way too much on local muscle issues and usage. Not that you have the anatomy wrong. But what you are describing is the complete opposite of the point of IS training.

Consider this- of course the delts and and biceps play a role in proximal arm and shoulder movement. Of course you can not lift a weight or tire or whatever with your arm, if you don't use those muscles at all. The key (and question) in IS is: because the deltoid and biceps have a limited amount of strength available at any time, when you do something that involves those muscles, what other muscles or fascia can you use to augment or even vastly exceed what the delts and biceps can do alone. This can be accomplished in very simple terms, with some slight gain in power, or more extensive terms, with greater power gains. The more of your body you use to lift or hit or jump or run or whatever, the better you will do that.

If you think not about what muscle are you using in the shoulder to lift, but rather, what muscles or tissues elsewhere in the body can be used to create an end result of a lift, I think that is the beginning of the correct general direction from an IS standpoint. Bracing is a different matter altogether, and will not effect anything other than a bit of structural stability that can easily be undermined by someone who sources their power lower than you.

Regards-
John
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Old 05-10-2011, 04:56 PM   #34
Janet Rosen
 
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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
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Old 05-11-2011, 04:04 AM   #35
Michael Varin
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Quote:
Jason Casteel wrote:
One only has to look at the changes in the strength and conditioning world over the last decade or so to know that your statement is incorrect. It wasn't long ago that strength training was done body builder style. Work the biceps, triceps, shoulders, back, etc, all in isolation.
I probably didn't say that as well as I could have. But do you honestly think that is how Olympic lifters, powerlifters or gymnasts were training? I will not disagree that the understanding and ability to teach about the body and training of it has improved over the last 20 years.

But similar to what you said before, the human body has always been the human body, and the proper way to train it has always been the proper way to train it, regardless of our understanding or our ability to explain.

Quote:
John Brockington wrote:
The key (and question) in IS is: because the deltoid and biceps have a limited amount of strength available at any time, when you do something that involves those muscles, what other muscles or fascia can you use to augment or even vastly exceed what the delts and biceps can do alone. This can be accomplished in very simple terms, with some slight gain in power, or more extensive terms, with greater power gains. The more of your body you use to lift or hit or jump or run or whatever, the better you will do that.
Is this really the foundation of "IP/IT/IS"? How is this any different from sports performance in general?

I appreciate everyone's' contribution to this thread. I must say that contrary to the way it might sometimes appear, I am not arguing against "IP/IT/IS." I'm simply trying to draw out your explanations and maybe try to get you to think about it in a different way. I have learned a great deal from my discussion on this subject, and I am better off for it.

-Michael
"Through aiki we can feel the mind of the enemy who comes to attack and are thus able to respond immediately." - M. Mochizuki
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Old 05-11-2011, 06:15 AM   #36
Pauliina Lievonen
 
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

When one thinks of lifting an arm, that idea alone will make a change in the activation of various muscles. So the idea of a movement will already activate the pattern that one usually uses for that movement. Now if you want to change that pattern for a more efficient one, it can be very helpful to think of the movement in a different way (like "I'm not going to use my biceps at all to lift the arm" or all the other examples Janet gave earlier). That is the benefit I see in all these sometimes wacky instructions. It's a very effective way of changing habits that shouldn't be dismissed too lightly I think.

But one shouldn't mistake it for a description of what is actually happening. It's an instruction, not a description. OTOH an anatomically correct description isn't always the most effective instruction.

Something else that I see happening in the internal strength etc discussions is something I also see in my own Alexander technique teaching practice. Our kinesthetic/proprioceptive sense isn't absolute - it always compares to how things were just a moment ago. And what you end up being aware of is an interpretation of the brain of the messages coming from muscles and other tissues.

New movement patterns can feel very odd, because the brain struggles to interpret something new. And using less muscle can feel like using none - but really what the proprioceptive sense is trying to say is "youre doing way less than a moment ago".

Comments I've often heard from Alexander technique students:
"Wow, it felt like someone else lifted my arm"
"My arm just floated up"
"But, but, you lifted my arm, I didn't do it!" (I was guiding with two fingertips touching lightly)

Mind you these were people who hadn't done any kind of conditioning their fascia or anything like that. They just succesfully changed one movement pattern, and the result felt confusing because it was a new experience.

So I would be vary of making up theories about how or why things work based on what one feels in one's own body. The proprioceptive sense isn't an accurate enough tool to do that.

Pauliina
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Old 05-11-2011, 07:07 AM   #37
John Brockington
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Michael-

I very much appreciate your engagement and propagation of this type of discussion- it does help crystallize or maybe reconsider training methods.

If you haven't done much of this training, however, I am not quite sure what you are intending when you say you are trying to get those of us who are doing it "to think about it in a different way." If you mean you are trying to look for terminology that makes sense to you, well, remember that terminology and understanding are extremely subjective and what you understand conceptually may be quite different from what anyone else does.

So you've really got to start doing the training or at least go to a seminar and feel Mike S or Akuzawa (Ark) or Dan H in order to have something other than a verbal experience. Like Pauliina indicates, this is an intensely tactile perception type of training, and it does cross paths with Alexander technique as well as other types of training.

With regard to athletic training, well, there is increasing interest in using IS type methods and even terminology. They don't call it neijia or Aunkai or aiki, but sprinters are starting to use coiling or winding type movements in their training in order to activate fascial connections and use those to augment speed. Remember, these concepts are not found much in the West, so all of us here may be a bit behind the IS curve.

John
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Old 05-11-2011, 07:18 AM   #38
chillzATL
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Quote:
Michael Varin wrote: View Post
But similar to what you said before, the human body has always been the human body, and the proper way to train it has always been the proper way to train it, regardless of our understanding or our ability to explain.
I'm not sure I can say that Michael. Simply because in my lifetime i've seen the notions of what was good training and what was not good training change quite a bit. A lot of the stuff that's coming out now about the myofascial connections looks oddly similar to some of the stuff the chinese were talking about centuries ago. As I've said, I'm no doctor or scientist, but when I read some of these articles about fascia and they discuss how our view of the muscles in the body was formed, it's really hard to accept that we had it all figured out decades ago.

Quote:
Is this really the foundation of "IP/IT/IS"? How is this any different from sports performance in general?

I appreciate everyone's' contribution to this thread. I must say that contrary to the way it might sometimes appear, I am not arguing against "IP/IT/IS." I'm simply trying to draw out your explanations and maybe try to get you to think about it in a different way. I have learned a great deal from my discussion on this subject, and I am better off for it.
I think that's a hard one to answer right now. Simply because of the incomplete view that we currently have of the body, which makes it even more difficult to quantify exactly what's being trained in the IP realm. I think we may find, eventually, that this growing new view of the body gives us a more clear way to explain the IP side of things, but the usage of it is very different than what most anyone in athletics is doing today. I know that makes it almost sound like there's a lot of blind faith going on, but it's something that can actually be felt. Which is why you see so many people always going back to the "it has to be felt", because I don't think we really have a clear, scientific vocabular to explain what's happening, yet.

no worries Michael, I enjoy the discussion.
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Old 05-11-2011, 07:31 AM   #39
Walter Martindale
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Quote:
John Brockington wrote: View Post
Walter-

I think you (and Josh) are still focusing way too much on local muscle issues and usage. Not that you have the anatomy wrong. But what you are describing is the complete opposite of the point of IS training.

Consider this- of course the delts and and biceps play a role in proximal arm and shoulder movement. Of course you can not lift a weight or tire or whatever with your arm, if you don't use those muscles at all. The key (and question) in IS is: because the deltoid and biceps have a limited amount of strength available at any time, when you do something that involves those muscles, what other muscles or fascia can you use to augment or even vastly exceed what the delts and biceps can do alone. This can be accomplished in very simple terms, with some slight gain in power, or more extensive terms, with greater power gains. The more of your body you use to lift or hit or jump or run or whatever, the better you will do that.

If you think not about what muscle are you using in the shoulder to lift, but rather, what muscles or tissues elsewhere in the body can be used to create an end result of a lift, I think that is the beginning of the correct general direction from an IS standpoint. Bracing is a different matter altogether, and will not effect anything other than a bit of structural stability that can easily be undermined by someone who sources their power lower than you.

Regards-
John
Hi John (and others).
I'm a sports coach by profession. Specifically, I coach rowing, and I've trained quite a few rowing coaches, too, who themselves are helping young people become champions (most of those are in New Zealand).
The whole body participates. Isolating a particular muscle group is silly unless you're trying to educate the muscle's owner about the muscle's role in an overall movement, and useless also if you don't re-integrate that isolated motion with the overall movement.

And when you try to isolate a muscle, you really can't unless it's surgically removed, in which case it's kinda beside the point.

Lifting Janet's 100 lb sacks means having a grip on the bag, and lifting from bent legs through a "connected" core, shoulder girdle, and arm, without actually pulling with the arms. If you're throwing that sack of spuds or whatever, then you accelerate it through the body, but it happens by being firmly connected to and pushing on the ground.

Training for elite heavyweight men's rowing means being able to push on a foot-plate while holding an oar (or pair of smaller oars called sculls) with a force of approximately 800 Newtons, (roughly enough to lift about 80 kg, or about 176 lb) somewhere around 35-40 times per minute, for somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30 (minutes:seconds) while sitting on a round-bottomed boat that's moving anywhere up to and even exceeding 7 m/s (during certain phases of the stroke cycle) - in wind and waves, coordinated with as many as seven other people, and racing against other people who also want to win.
You don't do that without good body control, good overall, coordinated strength, focus of attention, power, "integrity", IS, or whatever.
In my previous post I think I mentioned being solidly connected to the ground when making impact with the knuckles - whether that's a brief, momentary 'snapping' type of solid connection or a longer 'push through the target' type of solid connection, the muscles are contracting to do it - not extending. You can't do athletic/dynamic/powerful movements without a solid connection to the ground (or boat in my case) or without having had a solid connection to the ground while generating the momentum needed to complete the desired movement, whether that's jumping, vaulting, gymnastics, or the big flying kicks. They all started with a coordinated, solid connection to the ground.

Relating back to this discussion, certainly, the shihan demonstrating kokyu-dosa is fully integrated/connected/balanced, etc, using all of his body and lots of control to stay solid, but there's no way in this little blue planet that he can raise his arms without using the muscles of his shoulders. It is possible, I suppose, if you "wing" the scapula, brace the shoulder, and pull down the "winged" scapula, but you still have to have muscle contraction in the deltoid muscle group, or the muscle is flaccid, and the humerus hangs down from the gleno-humeral joint. You can't get away from it.
W
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Old 05-11-2011, 07:49 AM   #40
Keith Larman
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

When I first started training with the sword I was told that that when doing a lot of cutting practice I would first feel the fatigue/pain in my arms and shoulders. The story went that as I gained experience it would move in to the high upper back, then finally into the mid back and down. And yes, being the guy who was completely fixated on weapons who trained a *lot* daily that's precisely what happened over time.

But I also came to realize that maybe there's more than just "learning to do it right". In other words, it's not just choreography. The idea is that possibly it is the developing and conditioning of the body in a certain way through a lot of (proper) repetitions allowed me to be able to start using more core to "power" the movement. Maybe the long term training helps develop the connections allowing you to use more of the "core" muscles through those connections to support the movement, somewhat altering the role of the muscles originally more used in the movement.

So again we talk about those deshi with lots of hard, good training. Maybe they developed more of this body than they realized. And lacking an understanding of how and why things work start talking about things like "relax completely" and "let your ki flow" without realizing that they were talking about feelings they had inside their conditioned bodies that their students may not be capable of feeling in their unconditioned bodies. So the crux, again, becomes conditioning correctly and learning how to use that conditioning to do those things that the real greats could seemingly do without thought or effort.

Or... Just watch Kuroda and his sword. Amazingly fast. Amazingly fluid. Amazingly relaxed. Full integration of his entire body in every movement. Just like a smaller woman easily picking up a heavy bag of dried beans and tossing them on a shelf. Learn to do it right an develop the body that allows it to be done, and voila.

Which all reminds me of family who still live/work on farms and ranches. Some of those little guys can toss bales of hay around like they're nothing. Me, I struggle. The difference isn't "muscle strength" (I'm much bigger and "stronger"), but a lifetime of tossing the damned things.

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Old 05-11-2011, 09:31 AM   #41
HL1978
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Arguably olympic lifters are using some elements (but not all) of what we refer as IS/IP etc training, so anyone care to hazard a guess why we don't see crossover from that sort of training into martial arts or other sports movement?
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Old 05-11-2011, 10:11 AM   #42
Janet Rosen
 
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Quote:
Walter Martindale wrote: View Post
Lifting Janet's 100 lb sacks means having a grip on the bag, and lifting from bent legs through a "connected" core, shoulder girdle, and arm, without actually pulling with the arms. If you're throwing that sack of spuds or whatever, then you accelerate it through the body, but it happens by being firmly connected to and pushing on the ground....
Relating back to this discussion, certainly, the shihan demonstrating kokyu-dosa is fully integrated/connected/balanced, etc, using all of his body and lots of control to stay solid, but there's no way in this little blue planet that he can raise his arms without using the muscles of his shoulders. It is possible, I suppose, if you "wing" the scapula, brace the shoulder, and pull down the "winged" scapula, but you still have to have muscle contraction in the deltoid muscle group, or the muscle is flaccid, and the humerus hangs down from the gleno-humeral joint. You can't get away from it.
W
Yes, points well taken. Also, Pauliina, thank you for articulating so well some of my thoughts. Michael V, I don't see you as at all "argumentative" or "not getting it" rather than calling on all of us to try to clarify our terms. I'm enjoying and learning from this thread.

Janet Rosen
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Old 05-11-2011, 11:22 AM   #43
John Brockington
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

"Arguably olympic lifters are using some elements (but not all) of what we refer as IS/IP etc training, so anyone care to hazard a guess why we don't see crossover from that sort of training into martial arts or other sports movement?"

A few thoughts on why-

1. Weight lifting, like many other athletic endeavors (rowing, running, throwing) requires high level of proficiency in a relatively limited range of motion, which requires a relatively limited range of body stability while exerting. Martial arts can require structural stability in a much greater range of motions and body positions, and so there is limited crossover benefit from athletic training (as done conventionally). Some types of training such as dance, maybe, could be more beneficial or complementary. Some athletic competitions could benefit from IS training, but athletic trainers are not easy to convince that their methodologies are incomplete or could be significantly improved upon.

2. Lifting (up power) is a single part of IS, not its whole point. There is down power, explosive power, intent, stability, tactile perception, taking center, and so on. If you do a lot of weight training, the benefits of that come often at the expense of all these other components.

3. Weights don't hit back.

What do you think?

John
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Old 05-12-2011, 04:58 AM   #44
Michael Varin
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Quote:
Walter Martindale wrote:
Training for elite heavyweight men's rowing means being able to push on a foot-plate while holding an oar (or pair of smaller oars called sculls) with a force of approximately 800 Newtons, (roughly enough to lift about 80 kg, or about 176 lb) somewhere around 35-40 times per minute, for somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30 (minutes:seconds)
Walter,

On a total side note, thanks for posting this. I have wondered for some time what is the rough equivalent in pounds of the resistance a rower experiences per stroke.

What an incredible output!

-Michael
"Through aiki we can feel the mind of the enemy who comes to attack and are thus able to respond immediately." - M. Mochizuki
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Old 05-12-2011, 05:01 AM   #45
Michael Varin
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Quote:
Janet Rosen wrote:
Michael V, I don't see you as at all "argumentative" or "not getting it" rather than calling on all of us to try to clarify our terms. I'm enjoying and learning from this thread.
Thanks, Janet. I feel like I'm "getting it" just fine!

Quote:
John Brockington wrote:
Martial arts can require structural stability in a much greater range of motions and body positions, and so there is limited crossover benefit from athletic training (as done conventionally).
Obviously, American football requires stability in an environment that is as chaotic as what a martial artist faces.

Quote:
John Brockington wrote:
Lifting (up power) is a single part of IS, not its whole point. There is down power, explosive power, intent, stability, tactile perception, taking center, and so on. If you do a lot of weight training, the benefits of that come often at the expense of all these other components.
I think Olympic lifting requires up power, down power, explosive power, intent, stability, and tactile perception.

Of course, I do not suggest that one could become a highly proficient martial artist merely by mastering the Olympic lifts.

-Michael
"Through aiki we can feel the mind of the enemy who comes to attack and are thus able to respond immediately." - M. Mochizuki
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Old 05-12-2011, 07:55 AM   #46
Walter Martindale
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Quote:
Michael Varin wrote: View Post
Walter,

On a total side note, thanks for posting this. I have wondered for some time what is the rough equivalent in pounds of the resistance a rower experiences per stroke.

What an incredible output!
Thanks Michael,
Here goes a completely OT post... Sorry Jun.
It is quite amazing to see some of these guys crank it out. I actually got into rowing after I hung up my Judo (knee injury, neck injury) at least in part because of a judo session in which a champion LIGHTWEIGHT rower and I had a tussle in ne-waza. He knew no judo. He was, however, so bloody strong, and had such good endurance, that I couldn't get any techniques to work. And I had developed a reputation around the Vancouver area for being "the guy from the Y with all the armlocks"...

I got into rowing, and after 8 months of training went back to my old judo dojo. There weren't many people there, but my sensei (a sandan) and a couple of ikkyu were there, I'd recently been bumped up to shodan but not practiced since starting rowing. Essentially, they couldn't (not even my sensei) do anything to me, I wore them out - practiced with each one of them three times, three minutes each, and I was only just warmed up... That was a LONG time ago in 1981, and I couldn't do that now, but... the point is that rowing, pushing on that foot plate, balancing, hanging onto the oar handle develops one heck of a tough and sensitive person. Because you're interacting with a boat, rowing in synch with a bunch of other people, you do learn to blend your movements with others.

It ain't a rowing machine. In a single scull, you're sitting on a 14 kg carbon fibre tube, your mass centre is several cm above the balance point of the boat - you're stabilizing the boat with your core muscles and with the weight of the oars sitting in the oarlock. A twitch of vertical force on either side - turning to see if you're still on a safe course, turning your head to wipe sweat off on your shoulder (you can't let go of your handles and stay upright if you're moving) will throw the balance off; dealing with waves, wind, all while working as hard as you can using oars that seem to want to dive to the bottom of the lake or wash over the top requires full attention, full focus and - if you're in a crew boat - you can't stop until the finish line no matter how much your body screams to stop. It's a bit like what fighting a bear might be - it's not over until one of you is unconscious - after which it doesn't matter any more.

Anyway... Some data - I'd suggest people who don't think rowing makes you tough try this. The world record for a woman doing 2000 metres on a Concept 2 rowing machine is something like 6:28.5. Most men can't do this, but the world record for a man doing the same distance is about 5:35. The world record for a man doing 5000 m on a Concept 2 rowing machine is just under 14:59. I challenge MOST humans to hold that 1:29.9 "split" for more than one minute, let alone 15 minutes. With that much fitness and strength in reserve, elite rowers with any kind of fighting skill are likely a breed apart. The fellow who generated the 800 N AVERAGE forces on a 6 minute fitness test was a member of the 1984 gold medal olympic M8+. 6'4", 200 lb, could 'power clean' (actually just lift and reverse curl, his technique was horrible) 250 lb. We fitness tested him on a different occasion - his oxygen uptake at max effort was 7.4 L/min if I remember correctly. My best was just over 5.5...

The 2000 m world records can be seen on the Concept2 website.
(I was never an elite rower - pretty good according to my coach, but never elite)
Cheers,
Walter

Last edited by Walter Martindale : 05-12-2011 at 07:59 AM.
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Old 05-12-2011, 12:29 PM   #47
John Brockington
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Michael-

I respectfully suggest you re-read my posts, because I meant some very specific things that you may be interpreting lightly or perhaps just didn't catch.

When I said "athletic training (as done conventionally)" I meant just that. "Conventionally" means standard weight lifting, running, etc., as has been done in this country for a long, long time. But more and more now, standard sport athletes are looking at putting their bodies in positions of instability and working from there. Not conventional at all. Please re-read what I said earlier about sprinters using coiling/winding techniques. Traditional Olympic weightlifting did not, and maybe still does not, use these techniques. In fact, to my understanding, they try not to put their bodies into unstable positions because that is how they get seriously injured.

When I referred to up power, down power, explosive power, etc, etc, etc, I also meant some very specific things, and from your response, I think you are using a very different set of definitions of these terms than I am. I seriously doubt Olympic weightlifters have any concern whatsoever about the majority of these.

Have you felt Ark? Mike S? Dan H? Even Ikeda? Gone to any of their seminars or training sessions? If not, how can you possibly "call out" those of us who have, and ask us to "clarify" our thoughts and terms for you? Please understand, I am not saying this presumptuously, but rather, honestly and sincerely.

Consider this- would a casual 3 mile/4 days a week jogger tell someone who runs marathons regularly that they "get it" when they have a discussion about endurance and breathing and dealing with fatigue at the 20 mile mark while still performing at a high level? Would the casual jogger ask the serious runner to put this into terms she or he could understand, and really receive any serious or helpful response, other than "you have to go out and do it yourself to understand"? The two people both do the same activity, but with such different goals and levels of training that the same words mean very, very different things to each.

If you are truly interested in these physical skills, you can not, absolutely can not, learn enough or "get it" through discussion alone. This same conversation has been played out over and over here on Aikiweb. Maybe this is why so many people have dropped out of this forum.

John
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Old 05-12-2011, 12:42 PM   #48
thisisnotreal
 
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Michael, http://rumsoakedfist.org/viewtopic.p...art=15#p219981

??
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Old 05-12-2011, 01:53 PM   #49
Demetrio Cereijo
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Quote:
John Brockington wrote: View Post
Consider this- would a casual 3 mile/4 days a week jogger tell someone who runs marathons regularly that they "get it" when they have a discussion about endurance and breathing and dealing with fatigue at the 20 mile mark while still performing at a high level?
Devil's advocate mode on:

Does this someone really runs real marathons or coach actual marathon runners?
What is his record?
In which races did he participate?
How his trainees perform in marathon races against other marathon runners?

Devil's advocate mode off.
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Old 05-12-2011, 03:24 PM   #50
John Brockington
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Re: Kodo Horikawa's aiki

Quote:
Demetrio Cereijo wrote: View Post
Devil's advocate mode on:

Does this someone really runs real marathons or coach actual marathon runners?
What is his record?
In which races did he participate?
How his trainees perform in marathon races against other marathon runners?

Devil's advocate mode off.
Ok, that is really very funny.
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