key points structure and gravity

3.2. Key Points: Structure and Gravity — Transcript (English)

Summary:

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Transcript

Welcome to another Key Points lesson.

Let’s review the key points for the next practice lesson where we will try to perform a couple of forms with the gravity focus.

So let’s take a look.

Here you can see Satoko and she’s just standing.

Her shoulders are drawn down, the ribcage is upright, stacked with the pelvis.

It’s very easy to maintain this position when you’re just standing on two feet.

But then she’s going to perform a form which we call a wide squat.

And as Satako does the form, she will try to maintain the same position of her ribcage and the pelvis as she has right now when she is standing on her two feet.

So let’s take a look.

She will bring the feet wider than he puts the part.

And ideally we want to keep the outside edges of the feet parallel as we do in any other forms.

Here’s a quote showing a position of the feet that you might choose if you have any problems with your knees.

So essentially as we start going into a squat and you feel pain or compression in the knees, you might have to open your feet out like this, but don’t do it if it just makes it more comfortable.

Of course it’s much easier to to perform this wide squat with your feet out like this, but this is not what we are looking for.

It shouldn’t be easy to do.

So this variation is only for people who have problems with their knees.

If your knees are fine, your feet should stay parallel.

So as with the other squat that we practiced before, what Satoko is doing here is that she starts to shift her weight to her heels and her upper body tilts forward, see, and she uses her arms to offset the weight.

And here her ribcage and the pelvis, as we did in the other squat, they stay stacked, the same as they are when she’s standing.

So she does it here a couple of times, just to show the movement.

Then she begins to bend the knees.

Up until now the movements are very similar to the squat with the feet hip width apart that we did before.

But what she does now is that she inserts her elbows in between the knees.

See, her knees are above the feet and the idea is that she just inserts the elbows.

The shoulder is kind of a little bit inside the knee and she is going to start pressing her elbows like this outside the knees and the knees will be pressing in.

So we’ll create a positional force between the elbows and the knees.

And again, see her ribcage and the pelvis are still in this the same line as it would be if she’s standing.

Now, for many people, this will be the shape of the squat that they will be doing.

The priority in the practice with the gravity focus is to maintain this position on the spine.

Obviously, if you stay in this position for a long time, it becomes challenging because it’s a squat.

So if it becomes very tiring, you don’t have to continue doing it.

But as with any squat, the lower you go, the more challenging it is.

So you can also keep your knees slightly more extended because it will make it easier to perform the form.

And as you stay in this position, you continue to press the L both out and the knees in, creating a positional force.

That movement ultimately helps to work on the mobility in the hips, but the focus is still to keep your spine in this position and see her chest is open.

So we don’t allow the chest to close and collapse.

So the continuous to do these movements.

Then if it is possible, so if the mobility of the hips allows, and you can do this while keeping the ribcage and the pelvis stucked.

You may choose to lower your pelvis, but you don’t want to collapse like this.

So here she’s showing a movement that you want to avoid.

We don’t want this to happen because here, the shape of the upper body is completely lost.

So here she restores it, and she lifts her pelvis up first, but her hip mobility allows her to go lower.

So Satako is Japanese, she is really used to sit on the floor, her hips are very open.

So some people may be able to come into this position, but this is not the requirement.

You can only come here if you can do it all the way while keeping this position off the spine.

If at any point you have to cheat, then you just don’t do that.

Also, this position is obviously very easy if you just open your feet.

But don’t do that.

So as I said, the only condition where you are allowed to open the feet in Baseworks is if you have serious problems with your knees, otherwise, if there is no pain, if it’s just a question of, because it’s easier to do so, you just don’t do that.

And you just stay with your pelvis much higher.

And then she slowly comes out, she unhinges arms forward.

And she brings the arms down.

And she returns the feedback to keep us apart.

And again, to release tension, she moves her neck a little bit.

So that will be the first form that we’re going to do, right?

So our ribcage and pelvis, they come into a position at an angle with a normal direction of gravity and plus because it’s a squat, it complicates the movement dynamics because it is a little bit challenging.

And it may be tempting to just forget about the upper body and just focus on being comfortable in a squat, but we don’t do that in basework.

So in base, the focus of this form is gravity, which means that we need to keep the position of the replication, the pelvis the same way as in standing.

And then we will do another form where the task will be the same, but there will be a slightly different challenge.

So here we will open the legs even wider than we did before.

Here the position is like when we did the star form.

So Sadako is showing here that she’s pulling the legs away to activate the muscles around the hips.

Then she puts her hands onto the hips, and she brings her elbows back but without arching her lower back.

So in this movement, when you bring the elbows back.

There’s a tendency to want to flare the chest out, but we keep the chest in.

And then she hinges.

Again, the hinging movement is familiar from the squat.

Rib cage and pelvis stay stacked.

And we do the flexion extension flexion movement here.

So she rounds the upper spine.

Notice that her elbows are still together.

So she doesn’t open the elbows to to the side like this, they are behind her.

She continues to pull the legs away and she wiggles her spine a little bit from side to side.

Now again, Sadako is very flexible, so she’s able to bring her head very close to the floor.

But if you are not able to bend forward this much, it doesn’t matter.

Also her knees are completely straight here.

For many people, if they were to try to come this position, the hamstrings will be very, very tight and it will be uncomfortable.

So again, this is not the focus of this form.

As she’s going to show, see if you feel any tension in your hamstrings, you will bend the knees and again, maybe you will have to come up with your upper body a little bit.

You need to find a position where you are comfortable with the knees maybe bent.

And you continue to pull the legs away.

So Satoko is comfortable to extend the knees, so she extends them, but you don’t have to.

So she’s wiggling the ribcage from side to side.

She continues to pull the legs away.

She shows that her elbows should stay together and not out.

The neck is relaxed.

And then she begins to extend the spine.

So she extends the spine to find a position where the neck, the ribcage and the lower back are in one line. being able to extend your spine and keep your shoulders open.

So find this completely flat upper body position is the gravity focus of this form.

That’s the main goal, right?

And the position how high your upper body is in relation to the floor, how bent your knees are, this is all secondary.

All those are the adjustments you need to make in order to achieve the primary goal of this form, which is to have your rib cage and the pelvis stacked.

This is why we call it a focus, you know, the main objective.

So when she is here again, she is trying to extend her spine, she is wiggling the rib cage, she’s drawing the shoulders down, she keeps pulling the legs away, and then she brings the chin in, runs the spine, and by pressing the top of the feet into the floor, she begins to extend starting from her pelvis.

So as you see how she rolls up, you can imagine that it’s the pelvis that goes up first and the rest of the body follows as we do that.

So her head and the neck, they come up at the very, very end.

And then she releases the arms.

So that’s it.

In the next lesson, you’re going to perform these two forms, the wide squat and the suspended star inflection.

And in doing this, we’re going to have the focus of gravity, which means that you don’t hold the squat for too long if it’s tiring or you don’t go too low when you bend forward or you bend your knees because we don’t want to burn your hamstrings.

But the primary focus of the form is to keep the relationship between the ribcage and the pelvis and to keep your chest open as they are when you’re So we’re comparing how you feel in a structure form when you’re just standing and how you feel when you are tilted in these gravity forms.