Balance

[PeaceWarrior]

Im curious how you all train for balance. In Martial Arts, I believe maintaining balance at all times is a necessity, especially when dealing with force being applied to the body. I have been learning a Tai Chi form outside of my regular training, and I have found that it is really helping me with my balance and "placing" my foot rather than "falling" onto my foot, but Im interested in other training methods for balance. Specifically, balance as required when moving in a spontanious fashion (like in a fight or sparring)

Anything creative is good! What works for you?

 

[Keikai]

An interesting question. I'm more interested in teaching people to unbalance others so spend little time on training balance for yourself.

For us I guess it comes by repetative training of the defencive movements and getting them fast, fluid, controlled and the attacker off balance. Balance for the defender comes as an indirect result of the training rather than being specifically trained for.

I look forward to other responses as I usually start seminars with the question "What is balance?" or "What physical factors mean that this person is balanced and this one unbalanced?"

Greg Palmer

Tsutsumi Ryu Ju Jutsu

 

[tshadowchaser]

proper body posistioning is the key
If your center of gravity is off or over to the side you will not be balanced
learning to sewt softly on your front or back foot (depending on which way you are going) is also part of keeping your body centered and balanced

 

[pstarr]

Correct breathing (reverse breathing) and spinal alignment are key to maintaining good balance and root -

 

[shesulsa]

There are all kinds of training and rehabilitative devices to train and re-train balance such as wobble boards in different gradations of difficulty, exercise balls ... you can get a small 4x4 scrap of wood and stand on its end ....

Interview a physical therapist or personal trainer and they can give you some excellent tips on training balance.

 

[exile]

There are some excellent balance exercises in one of Loren Christenson's books, Solo Training---LC is a very good, no-nonsense writer, with major expertise and knowledge (from a Karate perspective) whereof he speaks, and the whole book is full of terrific exercises for strength, accuracy, fluency of motion and the other requirements for competence in MA. Another good one is Sang Kim's Martial Arts after 40---he's coming to it from TKD and Hapkido---some very good exercises aimed at improving coordination, which is intimately connected to balance.

For developing balance in kicking---probably the toughest test of balance, by its very nature---a very good, very tough exercise is to do each type of basic kick very slowly, in perfect form. One of the things makes this hard is that when you kick at normal speed you typically use the momentum of the kick to power your smooth pivot on the balance leg. When you do the kick slowly, that's not gonna happen, but you're asking yourself to do the pivot smoothly anyway. If you work persistently on that particular exercise for rear leg side kick, turning kick and back kick, you'll find your balance skills will increase dramatically over a three-four month period. Try slowing the kick down, and when you get it right, slow it down more, and so on, till you can freeze at any point in the kick and maintain it for fifteen seconds in correct form.

It really works but it's bloody tough---keep a chair handy nearby to grab onto!

 

[Touch Of Death]

proper body posistioning is the key
If your center of gravity is off or over to the side you will not be balanced
learning to sewt softly on your front or back foot (depending on which way you are going) is also part of keeping your body centered and balanced

You are talking about stability. Balance is your ability to maintain that stability.
Sean

 

[PeaceWarrior]

interesting. Thanks for the book references exile, I always love to read MA books. I guess we should probably define some terms here - Stability and Balance. The definition as given by dictionary.com for stability is: firmness in position. The most useful definition I could find for balance is: A state of equilibrium or parity characterized by cancellation of all forces by equal opposing forces.

So in essense, stability would be the result of balance, and balance would be the result of cancelling out the forces of gravity by proper positioning and weight distribution?

A question for pstarr: How would breathing affect balance, whether correct or not? Im interested in the mechanics of this. I do understand spinal alignment as a key to maintaining balance.



I think balance in a fighting situation would be very much characterized by your ability to cancel or redirect your opponents force, and also your ability to move your entire body in harmony with his/hers. You could have balance say, when standing on one foot, but if someone pushes you, you must compensate for that addition of force or you would fall over, correct?

To kinda morph this question a bit, Do you think that one must attain balance in ones life/mind to truly attain balance in martial arts? That is, is it possible to be truly physically balanced if my mindset is imbalanced? (say in the case of extreme anger or aggression).

 

[Kacey]

So in essense, stability would be the result of balance, and balance would be the result of cancelling out the forces of gravity by proper positioning and weight distribution?

That sounds about right to me.

A question for pstarr: How would breathing affect balance, whether correct or not? Im interested in the mechanics of this. I do understand spinal alignment as a key to maintaining balance.

I'm not pstarr, but I'll take a swing at it anyway. If you don't breathe properly as you move, you will upset your balance; likewise, holding your breath at the wrong time can effect you muscles and their alignment, also affecting your balance.

I think balance in a fighting situation would be very much characterized by your ability to cancel or redirect your opponents force, and also your ability to move your entire body in harmony with his/hers. You could have balance say, when standing on one foot, but if someone pushes you, you must compensate for that addition of force or you would fall over, correct?

Yes. The factor that I think has not been discuseed directly yet is knowing where your center of gravity is, and how to move it and adjust for forces outside you that move your center of gravity. If your center of gravity is moved - either by your own movements or your opponent(s) - you have to be able to adjust for that through, as you said "proper positioning and weight distribution".

To kinda morph this question a bit, Do you think that one must attain balance in ones life/mind to truly attain balance in martial arts? That is, is it possible to be truly physically balanced if my mindset is imbalanced? (say in the case of extreme anger or aggression).

I think you could get as many answers to this question as there are posters responding. For myself, I find TKD to be a big part of what keeps my life in balance. However, I can also think of quite a few other things that could cause sufficient stress to unbalance my muscles, and thus my body - graduate school, middle school students, etc.

 

[FearlessFreep]

Don't forget strength training on the muscles that maintain balance

 

[bushidomartialarts]

in class, competitive exercises like whatever they call indian wrestling now work well. an active opponent will find your weaknesses faster than the sharpest-eyed instructor.

for personal training, go fall down. seriously. find a soft place and keep falling down. throw yourself. once you successfully fall, position yourself so you can't fall that direction. throw yourself another way. repeat.

you'll be amazed what this does for instilling good basic stance and balance.

another fun one is doing kata about knee deep in the ocean...

 

[exile]

Don't forget strength training on the muscles that maintain balance

Very good point, Fearless. If your muscles are really tired from having been worked hard in some other exercise, balance that depends upon those muscles is especially hard to achieve. The difference between doing a `freeze size kick' with your right striking leg after just a light warm up, and doing one after you've thrown fifty to a hundred right-leg side kicks is... well, there's no comparison. That's one reason why I think of strength training as important not just for generating power but also for most of the other dynamic requirements in the MAs.

 

[Cthulhu]

I've got pretty good balance, but I don't conciously train it. I'd have to say it came about by always trying to move from my center when training.

Cthulhu

 

[exile]

I had a sudden realization last night while doing a kicking workout that ties in with what Freep wrote. For a long time, I've been puzzled by the fact that although I'm very strongly right-sided, I actually balance way better on my left leg doing side kicks than on my right leg. I couldn't figure it out... but at one point, when I was doing these rear-leg sidekicks in quick succession, it suddenly occurred to me that the balance difference arises not from the balance component of my dominant right/subordinate left difference, but from the strength component. I actually do balance better on my right leg than my left. But the strength difference between the two is so great that that balance superiority on the right leg is more than cancelled out by the fact that to get a reasonably high rear-leg left leg side kick, I have to do body positioning stuff to compensate for the relative weakness of my left leg that I don't have to do when I'm kicking with my right leg. The relative strength deficiency forces my upper body to assume more of an angle off the vertical on the left-side kicks, so even though I'm on the better-balanced leg, the task is much more demanding. It probably seems obvious, but after thinking about what Freep had been saying it suddenly made sense... duhhhh!