I have started my sprint training now. We old farts need to keep our speed up for escrima training. 
What have you been doing?
I hope ya’ll are doing well. I’ll be pulling out the nerds for this one. The personal trainer in me, the kettlebell coach, the ortho-shoemaker and the combative escrima instructor get excited about the video interview below.
To give a little back ground, we’ll start with some competing theories that supplement each other at different points. There are different systems of thought that govern treatment and training of the human body.
Part of the basis for Z-health is the order of mobility and stability in the joints of our body. The general principle is this. Ankle joint = mobility, knee joint = stability, hip joint = mobility, lower back = stability and so on. Hopefully you get the idea. Lack of a given function in a joint means the load is transferred to the next joint up or down the chain. An example is the way some people squat with a rounded back and their knees goes waaaay forwards. Other people hinge much more in the hip joint and look like they are doing a squat. Because the hip joint works some what like it should, you see a better squat and that person does not have knee pains.
In another system people talk about how the body activates other muscle around a joint to stabilize it. Why? Because the muscle that should have been activated to start with never kick in. One of the corner stones of this Muscle Activation System is how our nervous system is triggered to work optimally if a specific muscle starts the movement chain.
We all have experienced the gym class in school, where you do a lot of static stretching to warm up. That was the general idea for years. The modern criticism of this idea is that the nervous system becomes slow and is slow to compensate and adjust as needed. The result is an injury because the nervous system did not quickly activate the muscle(s) needed to perform the skill.
What happens if we start to look at the common ideas of the different systems and start to look at what is a common factor in all systems. Yoga, general static stretching that the Dr. tells you to do for neck pains (The problem is short muscle on the front of your body compared to the back side by the way), olympic weight lifting training, and martial arts. The answer is you start to get an understanding of how our bodies work in the best possible manner.
I have been a big fan of coaches like Mike Boyle and Martin Rooney for while now. That’s because they say a good specific sport athlete should be a good general athlete. Of course a baseball pitcher will have to work more on shoulder issues compared to some other type of athlete. The key is that there should be some common ground if we are to avoid pain, injuries and have a general sense of well-being … not to mention longevity.
The same goes for escrimadors, BJJ fighters, karate folk, smart crossfitters, RKC kettlebell coaches, and olympic weight lifters. I’ve been checking out some videos from Kelly Starrett for a while now. We can always talk about the difference in treatment and training according to differing systems, but lets talk about what they have in common instead. When we do that we see how a KB swing can help an escrimador become stronger faster and have a better balance. The escrimdor’s everyday life becomes better because his body works like it should. That’s why the podcast/video below is really cool and the different nerds in me get excited by the video. ( It get’s crowded in here sometimes!)
I hope ya’ll enjoy it. Have a great day.
Stay Proactive in Life and Training
CW
