CORE TO EXTREMITY CONCEPT
It would be helpful to read the
Pareto
Principle post first before reading this post. As one becomes more mindful
when practicing Zhan Zhuang, it becomes very obvious how many common injuries
are caused by one simple reason. Sheer mindlessness! In other words, it is our
lack of awareness and the laziness that causes many common injuries that we
face such as backaches.
The body is designed in such a
way that many common tasks are to be performed in unison that is to engage the
whole body mechanic to act as ONE. This is the same as the principles outlined
in Yiquan.
What most people do however is
entirely the opposite! Instead of engaging the whole body including the core,
they use the extremities to perform their daily tasks. Sometimes this includes
tasks that are designed to be engaged using the whole body. Imagine if I ask
you to chop down a tree using a penknife. How would you go about doing this?
Most people would stick the knife into the tree and start twisting or sawing it
using their wrist, mostly. Not only would this take a long time, but it violates
one of the main principles, that is to using your whole body. You’re not
chopping a cucumber but an entire tree. However, even if you’re chopping a
cucumber, it’s better and far more efficient to use your entire body.
In the video above, you can see
how this task is performed. Notice that left hand holds the penknife steady at
an angle and the other hands holds another branch as a tool. His entire body
pivots steady on the ground and this kinetic chain travels from the ground into
the right arm to hit the knife and chops away steadily at the tree. What most
of us tend to do in our daily life would be to use both hands to hold tightly
onto the penknife and stick the knife in straight at the tree and try to saw
back and forth. Not only is this energy sapping but it is futile and utterly
pointless. Not to mention, the real risk of hurting your wrists by asking it to
perform a task it’s not designed to do.
A more pertinent example would
be lifting heavy objects. Most of us, out of sheer laziness fail to engage our
core muscles including the abdominal muscles, leg muscles and pelvic when
lifting heavy weights. Instead we relax the entire body and put the entire task
onto the spine to lift a heavy object. OUCH! Do it enough times and you’ll soon
feel a backache especially when you grow older. The video below shows you how
to do this correctly.
What you should be asking
yourself is then: WHY DO WE DO THIS? We do this out of sheer laziness. The body
is designed to work from the CORE to EXTREMITIES. That is we must engage the
Core Muscles which are where the most powerful and strong muscles are located.
The core muscles together with the ligaments and fascia flows along a kinetic
chain to the extremities and together work in unison to perform more demanding
tasks.
What happens with most people
is that over time, we omit using the core muscles through sheer neglect by a
lack of exercise and bad postures. However, as we still need to perform most basic
tasks, we take the easy way out and do these tasks using the extremities.
Namely, we perform most tasks using our wrists and fingers. So, a simple task
such as wringing dry a towel is performed mainly using the wrists and fingers
alone. However, this task is designed to be carried out using the entire back
muscles travelling along in a spiral the armpits, flowing down into the triceps
into the forearms, then the wrists and to the fingers. The wrists and fingers
merely act as a conduit to kinetic chain of energy that originates from the
back muscles. This enables the towel to be wringed dry without damaging the wrists
and fingers. And obtain a proper upper body workout as well.
So remember, all tasks
especially demanding ones must abide by the CORE to EXTREMITY concept.