jjy5016 wrote:Bending the spine side to side is one thing. I also do this. But I can't see the advantage inhaving the shoulders and hips going in opposite directions. Doesn't make sense to me. If I want to hit someone with my right fist then my right shoulder would have to turn towards my opponent. Why would I want to turn my hips in the opposite direction? If the force I'm generating is supposed to come from the ground up and get directed through the waist then turning my hips in an opposite direction seems to be contrary to what my goal is.
Dragon's body as I know it does not involve twisting the upper and lower spine in different directions. It is opening and closing or straightening and curving.
I don't have to cock my hand back to punch using the spine as I do.
Still not convinced gentlemen. But am interested.
jjy,
Chris when you speak of spinal torque it makes me think of a horizontal movement of the spine instead of the vertical stretch.
Yeah, that's because it's mostly about generating large amounts of torque, with sections of the spine twisting slightly in opposite directions, and only a small amount from a change in the length of the spine. The spine's length can physically only be altered by flattening the curves of the thoracic and lumbar sections, causing momentary lordosis and kyphosis of those sections, respectively. You create that effect by thrusting your chest out and flattening your lower back simultaneously. The force generated from doing so is noticeable, but not as much as that which is generated in the form of torque by the transverse twisting of different sections by the multifidae and other muscles. The latter is exactly the same motion seen when dogs shake water off their bodies, though dogs have a much greater natural and conscious control over the motion than humans.
It is quite often the case that in the pursuit of a full and complete understanding of the facts of what's happening in a kinesiological analysis, it's often necessary to get down to the nitty gritty of very numerous, very specific, and very technical terms for things, just to make sure that everything is being covered thoroughly and accurately. However, once everybody is on-board with their understanding of all that, it's often the case that you can all then go back to using a much simpler and more colloquial set of layman's terms for things from that point onward. For instance, I can (and have on more than one occasion) give a precise, detailed, and technically and scientifically accurate description of exactly what happens in generating spinal torque for hidden short power in the internal arts, from the muscles and bones involved, the force chains, all the way up to how the specific motor cortex engrams are formed and reinforced physiologically. Sometimes such an exhaustively detailed description is necessary if a bunch of folks are arguing over what they think is happening and some of them are getting it all wrong.
However, once I've provided that crushingly boring description, and I've made sure that everyone in the conversation is now fully up to speed, I can usually simply refer to the whole shebang as "the dog shake" from then on and they'll all get it.
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