key points ascend and torsion

3.4. Key points: Ascend and Torsion — Transcript (English)

Summary:

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Transcript

Welcome to the Keypoint lesson dedicated to the foresight, a sand and torsion.

As I mentioned, in these foresight, we really use the principle of Fixing-Separating-Isolating.

So in the movement dynamics with the practice with these foresight, you will see that there’s the certain part of the body which we fix, so it has to stop moving.

And then some other part of the body is going to move in relation to this fixed part.

And often we refer to this part of the body which is not moving as the foundation.

So it’s kind of like in architecture, where if you want to build a stable building, you need to first grade a stable foundation.

So let’s take a look.

So what Patrick is doing here at the very beginning, he bends his knees and he tilts forward a little bit so that he can bring one of his legs back.

He shifts his weight onto the right leg and then he brings his left leg in this case back on the tiptoe.

Now, Patrick has really long legs and also strong legs.

The distance between the legs will be different from person to person.

And also, if doing this movement makes you feel tired, if your front leg gets tired, you can really reduce the stance because another focus of this form is transit and we will be talking about it a couple of segments from now.

So when we work with transit, we eventually want to start working on bringing the legs farther and farther apart, but right now we don’t care about transit, okay?

Right now we want to understand the ascend and the torsion for size.

So at this point, the distance can really be short.

But what’s important here is that the back knee has to be absolutely extended.

The back heel has to be as high as you can.

So it’s a little bit like wearing really high heels, that type of foot position, which may be a little bit unusual for men, but this is what we often do in Baseworks.

So you can see here that he pulls the legs away to create the foundation to make the legs active and stable.

And also the front knee is above the heel.

So we don’t want to allow for the front knee to come above the toe or much farther.

So in Baseworks, when we do this, what we call high lunch, so it’s a lunging position and you’re high, your back knee is not touching the floor.

So it’s a high lunch.

In a high lunch, the front knee is above the heel and your ability to keep your knee position and feel whether or not it’s above the heel, it’s also part of building the skills in awareness and control of your body.

So the key points in this position is the front knee is above the heel.

The back heel is really high, so you want to extend your back ankle as much as possible.

The left knee in this case or the back knee is extended and you’re pulling the legs away to create foundation.

You can see also that the front knee is above the foot and it’s not opening to the side.

It’s not collapsing in and it’s not opening to the side.

And legs are roughly hip widths apart.

So we don’t want the feet to come on one line.

It becomes less stable.

So one line is completely unstable.

Then the easiest is maybe this position.

But in Baseworks we’re trying to keep the feet on these imaginary hip width apart lines.

So Patrick is showing here that his pelvis is facing forward and imagine there is a line going through his nose, the belly button, the pubis, so we’re very aware of the midline here and he pulls the legs away.

And so then this shape of the legs, front foot, front knee, the pelvis, the knee, the heel and the tiptoe, they form the foundation in this form.

So when the upper body is going to move from here, it will move on top of the foundation.

The foundation will be stable and the movement will occur on top.

So he shows that his back leg is extended and he’s going to briefly show what we don’t want to see is the bent back knee.

Watch him carefully.

See, he dropped the knee for a moment.

We don’t want to see that.

The back leg is as straight as possible.

And to keep it straight, you want to pull the legs away.

So he shows that the legs are very strong.

We created the foundation.

He pulls the legs away.

And his upper body is in line with the leg at this point.

So you can also think of this as the gravity focus.

So he continues to pull the legs away.

And then he brings the arms forward.

And then from here, and he opens them a little bit to allow the arms to come in line with the body.

And then from here we begin the movement with the ascent focus.

We begin to ascend.

So as he wiggles his ribcage, he begins to slowly lift his upper body, C, in relation to the foundation of the leg.

So you can see that if you imagine this straight line, which will be the extension of the legs.

The upper body now has gone beyond that line.

But the front knee stays as it.

So his legs don’t move.

It’s only his upper body that is moving on top of the foundation.

He continues to pull the legs away.

He is moving the ribcage a little bit.

He’s drawing the shoulders down. see he spreads his finger so his upper body very active.

He just showed that you don’t want to drop the back knee.

So we don’t want to do that.

We don’t want to drop the knee.

And we’re moving the ribcage, trying to lift the ribcage a little bit.

So here we leave the stacked position, rib cage pelvis stacked and we lift the upper body allowing it to separate from the lower body.

So this is why we say fix separate isolate.

We fix the foundation, we separate the upper body and the lower body and by doing that we’re isolating the movement between those two parts.

And then to return, he shifts the weight to the front leg and just returns to standing position.

So this is going to be the first form that we’re going to do.

And then without coming back, like what Patrick did right now, you will immediately move into a form with a torsion focus.

So I’m going to demonstrate it for you right now.

So the position of the legs is going to be identical as in the previous form.

We don’t want the back knee to bend like this, so we pull the legs away.

So we find a straight position.

The leg is completely extended and the upper body is an extension of the back leg.

This is also the principle of grid lines and symmetry.

We don’t open the hip to the side what Patrick is showing.

The pelvis wants to look forward.

Direction of the pelvis is the same as when we’re standing on two feet.

We pull the legs away.

And then we will bring the arms to the shoulder height, similar how we did in the star form.

So we want to find this completely straight line in line with the shoulders, we spread the fingers, activate the arms.

And you can see that here we still have the straight line.

So here because of the camera angle, it may look like Patrick’s arm is a little bit higher than the shoulder level, but it’s just the camera angle and his arms are in line with the shoulders.

And so what we do from here is that we have this completely straight line between the leg and the spine.

And then we imagine that the spine is the axis of rotation.

And we start to rotate in the chest without breaking the line of the arms while keeping the foundation of the legs stable and immobile.

So see what it looks like.

So as you can see, Patrick’s pelvis doesn’t move, his legs don’t move.

He only twists from the center of his chest and he keeps the arm line.

It’s not broken.

He does not allow the arms to go kind of separately like that in relation to his shoulders.

And then he just returns to center and he releases his arms, shifts the weight to the front foot and he returns to the front where he started.

And then when you’re going to do this in the next lesson, you’re going to perform, obviously, this movement on two sides, we’ll do one side, then you will return to the front, and then you will perform the other side.

So as I mentioned, at the beginning, because we don’t think about the transit focus right now, don’t try to bring the leg far back, just determine this position as the one where your front leg doesn’t get too tired, but also keep in mind that if this distance is too short, like I don’t know if it’s one meter, for example, one meter is a little bit too short.

If it’s too short, it’s difficult to grip the legs away.

Okay, so bring the leg back as far as you can, which still allows you not to get too tired.

And focus on the ascent focus and the torsion focus.

So we build the foundation on the legs and then the upper body moves separately from that foundation.

So this is essentially what the ascent focus and torsion focus are all about.

And here I’d like to show you a couple of more clips.

The first clip shows a very clear separation from the lower body and the upper body.

So I’m just going to play it back and forth so that you can really see that it’s only the upper body that is moving.

So you can see that the front knee doesn’t move.

Okay, so this is the quality of movement that we want to see.

And now I’m going to show you another clip which shows what very often happens and why we need this ascent focus in the first place.

So this clip is going to show what people tend to do if they allow themselves to move naturally.

So we start in the same position where the front knee is above the heel and then there’s a straight line between the leg and the upper body.

Then look what happens.

See, the tendency is that people tend to interpret the goal of a lunge as bringing the upper body more or less upright.

But what happens as a result, I’m gonna play it again back and forth and look at what happens with the front knee and the legs.

So you can see what happens that in order to bring the upper body up, I have to marginally extend the front knee.

So I completely let go of my foundation and just allow it to follow the rest of the body.

This is natural movement for humans, but this is something that we want to avoid in Baseworks, build awareness of it and control over it.

So that’s it.

And in the next practice lesson, you’re going to try to do these two forms with the focus of a sand and torsion.

Give it a try.