the peak hold

3.6. The Peak Hold — Transcript (English)

Summary:

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Transcript

Look at these two forms.

The main pattern, which controls the appearance of these forms in Baseworks, is called the peak.

You can see it here, two straight lines, forming an acute angle, elbow to the hip and knee to the hip.

The knee and ankle positions here are secondary and are a function of the body’s flexibility.

If somebody cannot create the peak shape, they will bend the knees and lift the heels of the floor.

And we also don’t want the peak shape to transform into any of these shapes.

Now, the focus of the peak pattern is converge.

The straight lines must keep converging towards each other to keep the acute angle.

You can think of it as holding something in the crease of your thigh.

Similar to the traditional Chinese character na for taking, holding, having a firm grasp, where you can see a peak pulled together by this line and holding an object, and also there is a radical which means a hand at the very bottom, you want to be able to hold something with your peak, for example a pen.

If we relax the hip flexion, the pen is going to drop.

So whenever in peak, the angle should always be acute enough to be able to hold a pen.

The second focus of this form is gravity.

The weight of the trunk wants to fall forward, resulting in losing the peak pattern.

To maintain the peak, we will be establishing a state of Distributed Activation by tractioning the hands forward.

The action of the elbow extension, as well as the action of bringing the shoulders further in line with the trunk, as well as the action of tractioning back with the soles of the feet or tiptoes if you need a bend, will apply external forces to the pig shape.

As a result, this reduces the load on the hip flexors, making the form more manageable if you have limitations in strength and flexibility.