the 3 states of intent

3.11. The 3 States of Intent — Transcript (English)

Summary:

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Transcript

We’ve just finished a practice lesson of a form with the spinal flexion, extension flexion movement dynamic with the inflect focus, which is all about mastering the correct movements of the spine, learning to identify the straight spine position and also using micro movements to reduce muscular tension.

But remember, I also mentioned that these forms always have another focus, intent.

So in this theoretical lesson, I will The name of this focus is related to the idea that we want to move more intentionally.

Movements require muscular contraction, and although it’s very easy to make this cognitive step and say “I can consciously control my movements, therefore I can consciously control my muscles”, it’s really not that simple at all.

For example, flexing your elbow requires contraction of your bicep muscle, but try to contract it without moving your arm.

When you do it, I can’t.

It might be a trainable skill, but it’s definitely not a typical relationship between your will and your muscles.

What happens is that we just decide how we want to rearrange our body parts and the brain translates this intention into a program of which muscles to contract, in which order, and how much.

And then it keeps monitoring the process and makes adjustments.

For example, if you hold your arm like this and either do it yourself or ask somebody to do these kinds of movements for you.

What happens is that it will result in changes in the forces required from the muscles to hold your arm in this position.

But can you say that you consciously decide how you contract your muscles here?

No.

So if we want to control the contraction of our muscles, we generally must be very clear about what kind of movement we intend to do.

So the intent focus is about learning to use this insight, that it is not the muscle contraction that we control with the position of the body.

And we can use this to develop flexibility.

You can potentially use this principle in relation to flexibility in anybody part, but the intent focus is about hip flexion and the movement of bending forward.

The range of motion here is often limited for many people due to modern lifestyles.

So a certain degree of flexibility improvement here is often desirable for many people.

And also the size of the muscle and also So the potential range of motion makes this a very obvious environment to talk about this principle.

But once you understand how to engage the muscles here, you can transfer this principle to any movement dynamics.

So in the practical lesson, for example, for the gravity focus, you’ve heard the instructions.

Make sure that there is no tension in your hamstrings.

We’re not stretching your hamstrings.

But we can definitely approach working on the flexibility of the hamstrings in an intelligent way.

So in this lesson, which is called the three states of intent, I’m going to show you the three states of the muscle in relation to my intention in the form which is called seated wide inflection, which you will practice in a couple of lessons from now.

Now, if you’re interested in techniques related to improving flexibility, you might have heard of the proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation, PNF, or about the technique where you contract the quadriceps, the muscles on the front of your thigh, to “relax your hamstrings”.

In this case, The theoretical explanation usually goes like this.

The contraction of the muscle on one side of the joint leads to relaxation of the opposing muscle group that lies on the other side of the joint.

So contracting the quadriceps relaxes the hamstrings and the proposed mechanism is related to the spinal reflexes, which means that the wiring for this is in your spinal cord that is below your neck and your head has nothing to do with it.

And you might have experienced it that, yes, if I try to contract my quads, it does allow me to go deeper into a forward bend, but studies have shown that the contraction of quadriceps does not lead to relaxation in hamstrings.

In fact, the effect is the opposite, the tension increases.

So this explanation about the spinal reflexes is simplistic and incomplete, and in some iterations plainly wrong.

So we are not going into the neurophysiological details here, but the key thing which is important is that the sensitivity of the spinal reflexes that affects how your muscles will react to elongation is very much affected by the instructions from your brain.

And those instructions are a mixture of what you intend to do and some unconscious additional programs that are meant to keep your muscles within a safe range of motion, basically to protect you from injury.

So when you bend over and you feel this unpleasant tightness in your hamstrings, This is your brain trying to tell you.

You’re stretching your muscles too much for what you’re trying to do.

So the key here is to do something different where your brain will have to agree with you and go a bit lower.

So I’m going to show you a practical demonstration here.

So I’m sitting here with the muscles relaxed.

My feet are completely relaxed.

Again, this is not something we typically do in Baseworks, but this is for demonstration purposes.

And I’m crossing my arms like this behind the head so that it is first of all easier to see what’s going on.

And so that it’s very clear that I’m not using my hands or my arms in the movement dynamics here.

But again, this movement is not something we would do in Baseworks in this case.

So I start with my muscles completely relaxed.

See, so I shake my feet like this to show that they’re floppy, no activation in the muscles.

And then, so what’s happening here is that I’m trying to bounce with my back completely straight to go slightly beyond the comfortable level of flexibility at this point.

And the elasticity of the tissues throws me back.

And also I’m using an animation with a sound to refer to a moment where I subjectively experience this uncomfortable tension in the back of my legs, in my hamstrings.

And if there is no animation or sound, it means that there is no uncomfortable sensation.

Okay, so only when you see those electrical animation, this is where I feel tension.

So let’s play.

So, without any warm-up or activating my muscles and with my legs open like this, on that particular day the angle of my spine was 53 degrees to the floor.

And we refer to this state as state one, the state of maximal comfortable angle with relaxed muscles before engaging the muscles.

Now I’m going to engage the muscles as we do in Baseworks.

And we will discuss the concrete key points later.

So I engage my muscles and I’m going to do the same thing as I do the micro movements as we do in Baseworks.

I’m going to try to go lower only to the point where I still feel no tension because in base works we want to avoid feeling the tension in the muscles.

We never stretch muscles in Baseworks. see I’m using the Baseworks movement patterns.

At this point, I still don’t feel any tension in my hamstrings.

And then I arrive here, and this is where I begin to feel it.

And then once I’ve arrived to that position, so now I don’t feel anything.

And again, I try to bounce and the elasticity of the tissues helps me to return to the position where I don’t feel anything.

And muscles, and even if I relax my muscles here, as long as they don’t bounce anymore, I actually don’t feel any tension at this angle.

This is very comfortable.

So only when I bounce their extension.

And we refer to this as state two, the maximal comfortable angle with relaxed muscles after engaging the muscles.

So you can see that in just about four seconds by engaging the muscles, I was able to go from 53 degrees to 26 degrees, and it is still comfortable.

So see what I do next.

I come out and I shake my legs.

Now muscles are relaxed again, and I’m going to try to bounce again.

And you can see that I almost returned to the initial angle.

Maybe it’s a little bit sharper right now.

And this last state is the maximal comfortable angle with relaxed muscles after engaging and then actively disengaging muscles.

So the state three is pretty close to the state one.

And it reflects the length of the muscle that my nervous system currently thinks is the optimal length of the muscle. if I don’t use any special techniques.

So these are the three states of the muscle that we can discuss in relation to the intent focus in Baseworks.

This video shows something that we don’t actually do in class.

It is only intended to demonstrate the principles, but what are the takeaways here?

So first of all, the numerical values of the angles here are very dynamic.

On a different day with a different position of the legs, they will be different for me, for each person.

However, the trend is that the difference between state one and state two depends on your skills and is trainable.

So very often if you try for the first time, you will not have a 27 degrees difference in four seconds.

However, if you learn how to engage the muscles, eventually you will get there.

And also your state one flexibility will gradually increase, which is the goal.

But in order to increase the state one flexibility, we need to learn how to move into the direction of state two.

The second very important point here is that we’re not actually trying to get you to state two.

As I said, the angle you can achieve in state two will increase with training, but at any point in your training, if you go to state two, it is going to hurt a couple of days later, because you will have delayed onset muscle soreness, just from doing this one movement, because the state two is the limit.

And although it’s not dangerous, you probably don’t want to be so sore.

So you want to moderate the intensity of your practice and stays somewhere between the state three and state two, but the feedback will be delayed because the delayed onset muscle soreness is delayed.

So without experience, it’s very difficult to tell at this very moment, how close am I to state two?

You will know only two days later.

And even two days, there’s no pain, maybe you can be a little bit less conservative next time, but if you have pain, you overdid it.

So with regular practice, you will learn to adjust the intensity to avoid soreness while increasing gains in flexibility.

But in terms of the technique, you have to make sure that both your legs and your flattened upper body are activated when you’re trying to reduce this angle between the upper body and the legs, because when you’re engaging the muscles, you’re telling your brain, “It’s really how I wanna be using my muscles right now, so don’t try to overwrite my decisions with other movement programs.”

So I hope this demonstration serves two functions.

First, I hope it makes a clear case that the way you think about movement can change how the muscles will respond.

And two, it shows that with skilled contraction, you can actually perform a movement comfortably without any tension.

But if you’re not careful, the soreness may catch up.

This is why Intensity Modification is very important.

So we have to be intelligent and careful in how we use these techniques.

And in the next lesson, we’ll discuss the key points in practice with the intent focus.

So see you in the next lesson.