Generally speaking, the major circle that you use the most is the movements of your waist, it is a horizontal circle that you are making every time you move your waist around. Then there are the most obvious circles: your shoulders, elbows, wrists, pelvis (hip bone), knees and ankles. Together they can make very complicated circles within circles and generate very strong power that a straight line move can never compare to. But there are some more subtle circles you need to learn to leverage if you really want to know the secrets of your masters. The circles made by your ribcage and shoulder blades.
Start learning the tiny movements that you can do with your chest, feel how it can affect your upper-body and how it connects your waist and hips. If you take time and feel it, you can learn how the force is transmitted from the foot to the hands and how it works when you throw a punch and pull the hands back. And you will find there is a circle you can leverage from your ribcage to dissipate excess forces and direct necessary power to where you want it to go.
Then there is the shoulder blades, if you try to extend them as long as possible or retract them as much as you can, there will be at least 30 cm of distance you can maneuver without moving other upper limb joints, and that is a huge difference between hit or miss in a real combat situation! Now, try to make vertical circles with the shoulder blades and you will see how much more maneuverability you gain from it! If you leverage the circles correctly, you can throw punches at your opponents and they will never see them coming.
These two extra parts of your body and how to leverage them are overlooked by most of the fighting systems while some oriental martial arts treat them as big secrets that will give them major advantage either in offensive moves or defensive ones, for example, Systema in Russia and Xing-Yi Quan in northern China are good examples of how to leverage the chest area and shoulder blades to the extreme. And don’t ask me any more detail about these two, there are Google and YouTube.
Now we have talked about all the major circles you should know to leverage in your body, the next step is to know how to leverage them in coherence and coordinate them in a good manner.
Each of your major joints of the limbs has it corresponding partner joint. The ankles are paired with the wrists; the knees are paired with elbows; the shoulders are paired with the pelvis. You will always connect the moves with corresponding joints or you will lose the leverage and coherence of your overall balance. In the meantime, since you drive 90% of the moves from your waist and the power generated by the waist movements will go to both the upper and lower limbs, the connected ways of movements will minimize the loss of energy that generate from the waist thus maximize efficiency.
Take an easy example and you will see why do we need to coordinate the upper and lower limbs: Stand loosely and let your foot point outwards then throw a straight right punch. First you spin your waist to the left, the power goes up through the torso and you relax the shoulder blade and let the power go and move your elbow forward, then you twist the shoulder a little and immediately your elbow and wrist follow through with the twist and complete the punch.
Now, in a coordinated manner, you keep everything the same for the upper body movement, in the meantime, you place your foot a little bit inward and when you swing the waist to initiate the punch, utilize the momentum to slightly tighten your knee and ankle as your elbow and wrist start to twist. Do it slow then increase the speed, I believe you will see my point and take your punch to a new level.
The same concept applies to all your moves and since you utilize the most out of every move you initiate, it actually saves your energy and keep you from exhausted by moving every body parts with separated maneuver. If you make this connection between joints a second nature, you will be swift, agile and unpredictable to the opponent’s eyes. Good luck!
Coming up next Ch9. Relax
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