Taking the centre (part 1)

Taking the centre of the opponent is a concept common to many martial arts. Some styles may call it taking the balance, some may call it contorting the structure and these are certainly aspects of ‘taking the centre’ as we mean it in the internal arts. But there can be more to this concept than these ideas. In these posts i will try to outline some of the many ideas associated with ‘Taking the centre’.

Firstly some definitions:

Centre.
This is open to interpretation depending on the theory of your style. But for now let define the centre thus:

‘A state where the Mind is in control of the body support, balance and structure creating a physical  stability’

Taking

Here we mean to bring something under our control, or take it away from the opponent.

Taking the Centre

So we can define taking the centre as:

‘Removing the opponents physical stability, their ability to control their support, balance, structure and mind to the point where they must recover before being able to act.’

Why take the centre?

Before i get into how we take the centre of the opponent, i think it is useful to ask the question of why do we aim to take the centre of the opponent.  In my opinion it boils down to these reasons:

1. It breaks the structure of the opponent in such a way that he cannot strike or throw you effectively.
2.  It creates opportunity to strike an unprepared structure. They cant brace to receive the hit.
3.  It allows you to throw/take down the opponent with relative ease.
4. It disrupts the timing and rythm of the opponent.
5. It can nullify Fighting intent (but doesn’t always).
6.  It causes a feeling of insecurity and loss of control.
7.  It triggers defensive reaction instead of offensive.
8.  It buys you time in an encounter to bring the situation under your control.

So here we have an outline of the aims and benefits of taking the opponents centre as i see them. In the next post i will discuss in detail the first method of taking the centre.

Stay Tuned!

Internal Training Exercises

Here are some of the basic internal training methods I have developed and been working on. I am not so good at them yet but they may be useful for some of you out there looking for internal training

The devil is in the detail with all these of course and over the coming months i will take each of these 5 exercises and put a detailed description of what they are and how they should be trained online.

1. Body cross
2. Body row
3. Pushing mud
4. Slapping water
5. Horizontal coil

Slow training for increased awareness

Awareness is one of the key points of IMA training, be that situational awareness, awareness of our body state or awareness of the moment in combative encounter. How can we really train to enhance our awareness in a free fighting / sparring setting?

Here is an interesting idea for increasing combative competency  through increased awareness.

Higher Speed >lower awareness of force and lines

Lower Speed < higher awareness of force and lines.

This principle of slowing the real fight down to increase our awareness of the nuances’ of the movement encounter may seem somewhat strange to some of the MMA or Sport fighting guys out there but lets examine what slowing the encounter down during training helps us with.

1. Increased ability of the mind to calculate angular change and movement
2.  More opportunity to become ‘in tune’ with the attacker
3.  Longer opportunity to pattern the attacker or break/change rythms.
4.  Awareness of the moment becomes more prolonged

The overriding difficulty with slow mo training is our ability to control ourselves. It is very easy to get excited and change speed. When you see a gap you shoot a fist through it 4 times as fast as the partner was moving!

It is ok, even good, to be quicker than your partner but you will never be 4 or 5 times as quick at real speeds so we need to keep our excitement in check.

Training at slow speeds should be a mutual ‘game’ of stratergy and awareness of the moment. If we work slowly with this idea of ‘play’ then the problem of ‘winning’ can disappear.

Try some slow sparring and see how you get on, after 20 – 30 minutes speed up to full speed and see whats changed. Your overall awareness and movement skill should have increased dramatically.

Leaking power

One interesting topic when we look at how movement and body mechanics work to provide optimum force is the idea of force leaking from individual joints during movement. These movements often contradict the overall goal of a movement and are normally confined to a single joint. They can be thought of as cracks or breaks in the power of a motion. Although small in volume the leaking of power from, for instance the elbow, can result in much lower overall efficiency of the limb at transmitting force in a certain direction.

For instance we say that Pi Quan in xing yi has the ‘heavy elbow’ in order to keep the direction of force down and maintain the optimum amount of power expressible in the required direction. However this Pi Quan movement gives us a good opportunity to examine what is meant by power leaking from a joint.

In the example below we see a diagram of Pi quan with heavy elbow, and pi quan with extending elbow.

In Figure 1, we see the back arm drawing back and around and the entire high arm structure maintaining its angles and expressing cleanly downward with no power leaking in the upward direction.

However in figure 2  we see a flatter expression of Pi Quan where the elbow is being used to extend the power forward. In this example the result is a leaking of power in the upward direction from the elbow. This ‘up’ force expression in the elbow will reduce the total ‘down’ force in the Pi Quan movement. This is an example of force leaking from a single joint within the totality of the movement.

It is possible to extend the elbow while minimising the amount of force lose within this movement. You have to be aware of when the tendons are still in use and when they are too extended to be utilised. It is important that the nature of the frame is recognised and the force isn’t allowed to extend too far outside of the structure.

This is not to say that the there shouldn’t sometimes be opposite directional forces in movement, indeed there normally SHOULD be opposite forces happening. What this highlights is essentially a crack or break in the efficiency of the body mechanics.

Such leaking force occurrences are normally limited to a single joint or single point of the body. Our aim is to minimise these occurrences of force leaking out of our frame and maximise the body mechanics at work.

Check your frame in your art and see if you can feel where power is leaking from certain areas of the body.

Happy training.

Chris

The frame from the ground up Part 2

Ok now we have set up the basic position of the body we can start to go into detail about how we can begin to tie the frame together and start to build a useful and dynamic structure.

Beyond the basic position of the body we also need to begin to work on the structures that connect the body together.  Here we are not talking about building muscles individually, but building the lines of muscle/connective tissue/fascia that connect distant points of the body, for instance the hands and feet or the top of the head and the Perineum.

So onwards with part 2 on building the body frame.

Drawing up the Legs.

The legs are an interesting area of the body to begin to work with, especially as we mean here,  as it is not the most natural structural method we are used to. However i can very easily show you what we mean by drawing up the legs.

1.       Stand feet shoulder width apart Knees bend slightly and aligned with the big toe

2.       Very gently start to pull the feet together on the floor, like your gripping something between your feet.

3.       You should begin to feel the upper inside area of the leg engage as you begin to pull in.

4.       Focus on the resulting direction of power, it should feel as though your pulling up into the area of the perineum and the direction your body wants to go in is up.

This is the drawing up power that we talk about when describing ‘drawing up with the legs’. However there are several points which are of importance when we consider this power.

-          Do not allow the power to put lateral pressure on the knees. This is very important as it can lead to knee injury. The knees should be unaffected by the force travelling up from the earth along the insides of the legs.

-          Do not overdo it. This force should be felt and should be demanding to maintain, but NOT painful! I have seen a few people overdo this training and injure themselves. If your building this part of the frame correctly you will feel it the next day initially but it will not cause any damage to your body.

-          Create this force once the rest of the initial points are set. If you start to action this force when your upper body is misaligned or your not set up correctly you will most likely not start to work the wrong line of tissue.

Arms and Legs like Drills.

Visualise a screw being drilled into some hardwood. This is what i mean when i say drilling the legs and arms. It is a very useful practice to begin to work with especially as one of the core components of IMAs is the idea of Spiral force or power.

I will start with the idea of Drilling the legs as this is the most important to get right. Here we are not looking to see any external movement or rotation in the legs. The spiral power is held inside as the muscle and tissues ‘wrap’ around the frame created by the skeletal structure. Due to the way the legs are constantly under load it is important for work on this idea very softly, with deep concentration and awareness and without tension. If you feel any points of tension as you drill the legs you will need to adjust your posture or force to release the points of pain or tension you feel.  The direction of the spiral can actually change or reverse based on what direction you want to receive or project force in, but for basic training i would suggest that you focus your intent on the leg rotating as if the toes are turning inward and the heels are turning outward. Again, i stress do not allow any external expression of the spiral to show.

The arms are slightly different in that they are not anchored at both ends. This means that the joints are not under load and are more protected when spiralling. In the arms we want to produce counter rotation rather than singular spiralling. You can think of this like a double helix wrapping around both sides of the arms simultaneously.

To start with you can hold your arms out in front palms facing down, now without letting the hand rotate, use the shoulder to rotate the orientation of the elbow joint. This is a good initial basic exercise but can take a little time to become good at. One very useful idea with this is the ability to touch and without changing the touch completely change your line.

Intent driven structure setting

In terms of building useful structure, one of the most vital tools is your ability to feel the body state and use the mind to make micro adjustments to force and lines. I call this intent driven structure setting and at its most fundamental level it applies to the ability to listen to the body and its reaction to load. We need a very deep and clear attention on the body to be able to feel for the main culprits of changing or misaligning the posture.

1)      Points of tension caused by misalignment

2)      Points of tension caused by breath hold

3)      Points of pressure caused by internal collapsing

When you set up your posture, become used to turning your attention inwards focusing on the physical structure of the body. This process of Recognization is the first step. From here we need to resolve the tension with small deliberate changes, either to our breath cycle or to the physical position of our limbs, bones and muscle.

The next step in intent  driven structure setting is to actually use your intent to produce force in the structure. This involves using the mind to affect how the structure maintains its position. When we do this we are trying not to move at all externally.

One good exercise to feel what we mean by this is to set up your structure, Then focus all of your intent from the centre pushing out to the skin of every surface. Everything inside is pushing out strongly, the joints want to inflate opening the arms, the body wants to rise up, the stomach wants to expand, but you hold them all in place. Then relax and repeat. This should be a Physical process, the body should react to the minds intent, it is not visualisation of expansion which is something different all together.

Not this should not affect the breath at all and should not cause any pressure in the body or head. We are using the mind to create the expansion in the body, not Tension!

Other intent driven internal changes can be:

-          Leading to the horizon

-          Condensing to the centre of the bones

-          Coiling the tissues

-          Power to the fingertips

-          Melting into the earth

-          Becoming light

Part 3 will discuss some more points on structure setting and how to build the body for work.

Happy training.

Developing the Legs (Part 1)

One of the key methods in Martial arts training, especially when you read about the old masters, is the development of the legs through deep stance training and a lot of hard focused work!  Often you hear that an IMA master would have spent many years training an external style and mastering its basic foundation training before moving into IMAs. Much of that time would have been devoted to training the legs so that the tree has good roots.

Beyond Kicking there are plenty of good reasons to develop good leg skill. We need good legs to transmit and receive force from the earth,  we need them for good powerful and connected footwork, we need to them to lift and throw people ... the list is a long one!

But what attributes are we specifically trying to develop in our leg training, well here are a few of them:

- Freedom of movement and mobility in the joints,

- Strong lines of connection 

- Endurance

- Power

- Sensitivity.

How do we train the legs to achieve these things?

Here are some basic training exercises to help develop functional leg skill and bring out some of the above attributes.

SQUATS

Clearly the Squat is one of the most fundamental excersises no matter what the discipline. It is a great tool for developing leg strength and how to align the bones of the legs with your direction of force. However beyond the basic squat we have several other ways in which we can train this basic exercise.

- Speed variation

Try performing a squat with variation in speed. You may go down very slowly and then shoot back up, you may fall into the squat as if someone took away your support then stand very slowly. There are a lot of ways you can try this .. but here are a couple of specific drills which are both challenging and useful.

1. 30 breath squat

Perform 1 squat but take 15 breaths to sink and 15 breaths to rise. This should be a very smooth and slow motion with not jerks or pauses.

2. 5 as fast as you can then 1 slow

Perform 5 full squats as fast as you can remembering to breath, then perform 1 squat with 5 breaths down 5 up. 

3. Explosiveness

Using a jump squat drop down very slowly, as soon as you reach the bottom point explode up into a jump, when you land again, very slow drop.

- Height Variation and holds

One very useful way to mix up your squat training is to hold the position every so often at different heights during the squat. Try the exercises below:

1. Step and Squat height variations

Take a forward step and then make a full squat, another forward step 2/3 squat, anther ½ squat, another 1/3rd ... Then turn around and repeat backwards.

2. Hold variations.

No in a static position try to hold  the ½ squat position for 5 seconds as you go down into a full squat. Then the same when you come back up. You can hold for longer and longer or at different points in the squat range.

Integrate breath

Clearly we need to breath to live! But when we  train any sort of loading exercise it can be useful and increase your performance if you actively think about how your breathing as you move through the exercise. The squat is a very useful exercise to start this training on as it acts very much like a pump, changing the pleasures in the body as you move through the exercise. Try these ways to begin to integrate your breath and movement.

1. Breath Pump

As you squat breath out for the entirety of the movement, then as you stand breath in! Its fairly simple, but you should remember that the breath should go out for the WHOLE movement down and in for the WHOLE movement up. Focus deeply on this cycle and repeat very gently and slowly for 8 repetitions. 

2. Listening to the Natural Breath 

The natural breath is what your Body requires in terms of oxygen. This natural cycle is very smooth and precise when there are no mental/physical blockages making the breath become stuck. Try performing relatively slow squats and breathing in accordance with your bodies requirements. Here you are merely watching what your body does and not trying to enforce any set breathing pattern. 

Breath integration can be continued in all exercises but it is good to start out with something very simple like a squat.

HIP MOBILITY AND LEG CONTROL

One of the most important factors in training the legs is training their ability to move and change direction at will. There are some very simple exercises that help to build the mobility attribute.

1. Leg hanging & swinging

This method is used to help the hip joint soften up and move unimpeded in its joint.

- Stand on a step with on foot on the step the other off the edge, so the edge of the step should be on along the inside of the supporting foot leaving the other leg hanging.

- Ensure the pelvis is level and that you have something to hold onto for support.

- Gentely swing the leg back and forth, extremely softly. 

- Focus deeply on the hip and release any built up tension with each out breath.

- Repeat for an equal amount of time on each side.

2. Tag the Target

This exercise is suprising demanding to do well! It is a simple game of touching targets that you have laid out for yourself with your big toe.

- Pin small circles of paper to a wall (or use post-it notes) These should range from next to the floor to hip height . You can extend this to shoulder height when you get better.

- Stand close enough to the wall so that you can touch it with your big toe with a bent leg.

- Stand on one leg ensuring that the pelvis stays level. Touch the targets in a random order continuously without dropping the foot to the floor for 30 seconds.

- Change legs

Note: Make sure that you are not leaning the body or tilting the pelvis as you go through the exercise.

3. Kick Walks

This one can look a little funny but has great benefits to the mobility and movement involving the Psoas and adductor muscles.

- stand feet together body upright

- Without adjusting the body at all or moving the arms or pelvis raise the knee and kick out the front holding the leg in place. Knee should be bent and the feeling of lifting should be in the hip. 

- Holding the leg up allow the body to fall forward so that you end in a front lunge with the kicking leg supporting.

- The rear hip should be open and stretched

- Pulling up with the original kicking leg drag the rear leg up and then kick up forward. 

- Repeat the process

4. Leg rolling Adductor/Abductor

Very simple exercise this but it can cause some difficulty in the rest of the body.

- standing on one leg raise the knee out too the side as high as possible.

- swipe inwards with the leg until it is just past straight ahead .

-drop the knee back in line with the standing leg and then repeat.

Be sure to change direction as well to work the outside muscles.

One important point with this exercise is to not have any resulting movement visible in the rest of the body. Make the body tight and tied together so that the arms are not flapping around and your not leaning or wobbling around.

In part 2 i will aim to talk about Power, Sensitivity and Connection training methods related to developing the legs for Martial Arts. Try the exercises above for a month and let me know how you get on. I think you will find a good improvement in mobility and strength fairly quickly.

Fascia 'fuzz' release

This is an interesting video showing the Fascial 'fuzz' that builds in between the body sliding surfaces when we are at rest or when we are injured and movement is inhibited.

I think this very nicely highlights the usefulness of integrating bodywork and movement into your daily routine.

NOTE: this video does show cadaver portions.