Monday, March 15, 2010

Visualization of Form

In response to JP's comment on my past post, I do have ideas on maintaining your training while injured or unable to train for other health reasons. I am a believer in visualization as a training aid in a student's progression.

When you are unable to train properly due to health issues or even lack of space, I recommend visualizing yourself performing your forms and techniques properly. This will help remember the sequences so you are still able to do these things when you are able to train regularly again. The visualization must include the reminder of what is proper because this will help you remember what points are important to do your form correctly. Remember all details such as how your feet should be positioned, where your hands should be, posture, correct stance, how power should be generated in the technique, etc.

If you are not feeling that visualization is enough, there is the hybrid of visualization of your proper steps and stances while performing the hand techniques. This allows you to still move your upper body while not requiring you to move your legs. If your health issue is with your upper body, you can reverse this and only perform the lower body parts of your form while visualizing the upper body.

1 comment:

DigitalCoolie said...

Also to add to this if I may...

Often times schools will teach to the point of exhaustion. The reason for this is it forces students into a physical state that requires practitioners to achieve form through the path of least resistance... So basically, you're so tired, you are forced to do forms with accuracy and brevity.

The problem is students mistaken intention in training through exhaustion in two ways.

The first is that they'll mistaken brevity with poor form.

The second is they can confuse exhaustion with training through physical impairment... instead of training around it.

When impaired, your body is telling you something needs to rest. This doesn't mean the rest of you has to.

Since 90% of the work done in martial arts comes from explosive core movement, focus on things related to your core and come to an understanding of they type of relaxed brevity that is required to quickly move from one posture to another.

I mean it sounds weird, but the idea is relaxation in form. Most of the time students are fighting against their own wasted energy in achieving technical goals. If the goal is a kick, a punch, a pull... there is always a right and efficient way of achieving that and I guarantee you, it isn't by powering all the way through. It's by understanding where you need to relax to achieve your strike, where you need to tense, and how you need to "relax" in order to get yourself back to your base posture directly after the punch...

anyway fun stuff...