Summary

The article provides four techniques for improving posture and movement in martial arts, focusing on shoulder positioning, bone stacking, balance, and walking.

Abstract

The article titled "A Martial Arts Lesson In Posture And Movement" introduces four techniques to improve posture and movement in martial arts. The first technique, "Bringing our shoulders home," involves pulling the shoulders towards the ears, bringing the elbows together, and dropping the shoulders down. The second technique, "Standing in your bones," teaches the reader to distribute weight on bones instead of muscles, aligning the skeleton and relaxing muscles. The third technique, "Balance using marbled feet," involves imagining a marble inside the foot and redistributing weight to improve balance. The fourth technique, "Walking instead of falling with grace," focuses on placing the foot in front and transferring weight only after making contact with the ground.

Opinions

The author believes that practicing these techniques will improve posture and space awareness.
The author suggests that standing and moving with a fighter's grace is a result of practicing the "Standing in your bones" technique.
The author emphasizes the importance of bones carrying weight instead of muscles for better posture and balance.
The author encourages readers to practice these techniques and share their findings.

A Martial Arts Lesson In Posture And Movement

First, learn to stand, then learn to fly. Natures rule Daniel San, not mine. ~Mr. Miyagi

Today I want to give you a quick glance into four ways we teach standing and moving in martial arts.

We can learn all the cool kicks we want, but if we cannot stand, we cannot kick.

Also, by practicing these techniques, you will get better posture and space awareness.

In some mysterious way, we even found that people started treating us more respectfully when we started practicing these techniques.

Allow me to show you.

Bringing our shoulders home

Our shoulders often travel to places we don’t need them to go. And it’s our job to prevent them from wandering off. ~ Yours Truly

If our shoulders leave their homes, they often move to the fronts of our bodies, making us hunch.

Worse, This posture drains our energy and puts us in a weird passive, submissive body frame.

So we need our shoulders to come home.

What you need to do:

Pull your shoulders towards your ears (no need to force or exert strength!)
Bring your elbows together behind your back until you feel some resistance.
Drop your shoulders down and your arms with them.
Welcome home.

Standing in your bones

The following technique will change how you stand by using your bones instead of your muscles.

It sounds a bit macabre, but bear with me for this one…

When people say that one moves or stands with a fighter’s grace, there’s a good chance this technique is practiced.

Bone Stacking

I will need you to stand and bring your shoulders home to do this technique.
Then set your feet straight, a little wider than shoulder width.

First, we will focus on feeling our bones do their job — from the waist down.

Now I want you to gently move your body weight to the left and right, front and back. I want you to be very mindful of how you carry your weight.
Notice a difference between where your muscle carries the weight and where the bone carries the weight.
You’re nearly there if you feel where the bones are doing their work.

Second, we are going to practice bone stacking.

You should try to distribute as much weight as possible on your bones. Try to only focus on your legs for now.
You will notice that you will continuously start aligning your bones.
If you have a feeling for that, try to stack your whole skeleton.

Last, we are going to relax into our skeletons

When your skeleton is “staked,” I want you to relax your muscles
Give all that weight and tension over to your bones. Carrying that weight is their job, and they’ll be glad to do so!

Balance using marbled feet

Our ninjutsu sensei taught us a technique for keeping our balance. It’s called the marbled feet technique and will require some imagination.

National Geography once documented this technique.

The video uses the “marble” inside the foot as a measurement point, but we can use it as a mental crux to improve our balance.

When you stand on one foot, imagine the marble being where your weight is.
Now play with moving the marble inside your foot by redistributing your weight.
Try to find the edges and move from the edges back into the center.
Have fun practicing!

Walking instead of falling with grace

Most of us don’t walk. We move around by falling as gracefully as possible

When Most people walk, they lift their rear foot off the ground, swing it forward and just kind off fall atop their foot.

They then use forward momentum to “fall forward.”

Does that make sense?

If you want to move while keeping balance, I have another suggestion for you, and it builds off the marbled feet technique.

When in balance (focus on the one foot that has the marble)
Now place your other foot in front of you
When it makes contact with the ground, only then start transferring your weight.
This foot becomes the marble foot, and you can continue the process.

We can go deep into this, but I think our lesson time is up for today

Conclusion:

Knowing a thing is not enough; one must do the thing! I invite you to pick one or two of these techniques and practice them for a few days. I am very curious about your findings.

This is my first time sharing some lessons in my newsletter and blogs. Please let me know if you’ve gotten some value from this!

Thank you for reading, my friend!

Originally published at https://www.senseibas.com on August 4, 2023.