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The Lower Body Powers The Technique
Shorin-ryu is a natural style. It is efficient. It uses the large lower body
muscles to supply the power regardless of whether the technique is a lower or
upper body technique.
To illustrate how this works, let's look at the sports that utilize a power
technique of the upper body. It is how a baseball batter hits the ball for
power. It is how a golfer drives the ball off the tee. It is how a basketball
player shoots a three point shot. It is how virtually all athletes use their
lower body to power an upper body technique.
To further illustrate the action, let's contrast it to an opposite example
where the lower body purposely remains static during an upper body action.
This is how a body builder lifts weights. (And, pointedly, how a power lifter
does not lift weights.)
When a body builder does an exercise, he isolates the
muscle being targeted. He locks his knees to do a standing bicep curl so that
the bicep and only the bicep works. How much easier would it be if he flexed
his knees before the lift and then straightened them to throw the weight upward for the curl? The weight would move much faster and he could do a lot
more "curls" doing it that way than if he isolated the biceps by locking his
knees, because the large quadriceps would be doing the exercise rather than
the small biceps. But that wouldn't build his bicep muscle which is what the
body builder is trying to accomplish. He wants to do the exercise as inefficiently as possible in order to build the individual muscles.
But that's not what we're trying to accomplish in a block or punch. We're trying to visit the maximum power possible to the target of that specific arm
technique. To punch as powerfully as we can or to block as powerfully as we
can.
Further, since Newton's Second Law of Motion states that net force is equal
to mass times acceleration, we want to get as much body mass behind the technique as we can while remaining balanced. That requires moving our entire
body in the technique rather than just pushing out the punch, for instance,
with the triceps.
When first learning to use the lower body efficiently you probably will want
to make the motion of the hip fairly large so that the upper body has a sufficient interval of time to be affected by the motion of the lower body.
Exaggerate it a little if you wish to feel the upper body be "thrown" by the
legs and midsection.
Once you've learned to power the upper body by the motion of the lower body, you should begin to cut back on the degree of lower
body motion. Make it more graceful, more fluid. Think of a Mark McGwire homerun or a Tiger Woods tee shot or a Michael Jordan jumper.
Without a slow motion playback of their shot you'd probably never notice that
their legs and hips moved before their hands. You'd only notice the result.
Domo arigato gozaimasu,
David Baker,
Denshi/Shihan
Midtown Karate Dojo