References

There are tons of martial art school web pages out there. Unfortunately most of them simply contain information about themselves and usually some history of the style. But some web pages do contain descriptions of techniques and some have some interesting articles. Here are some that I have come across. Please let me know if you find other valuable articles or sites.

Essence of Evolution This web site contains an outline of the concepts I have been studying lately, but it is a little hard to read. I will attempt to elucidate some of the content at a later date. This site sells 3 incredibly usefull videos. I have tried to learn from videos before with little sucess, theses videos make it easy. They are sturctured like a textbook and provide great illustrations of relative balance. The editing is very bad but the material is so good that it doesn't matter. Anyone with a decent amount of experience in any martial art could use these as a curriculum of study for themselves along with a partner. I can't wait for Master Su's latest two videos, he has one on Tai Chi and one on the Process of Kung Fu. I have seen exerpts of them in Japanese. The quality of the footage is excellent, the concepts are grand.

The Essence of Martial Art has a good description of what reasearching a martial art should be about.

True Balance Dynamics This article gives an intersting description of a balanced posture. Unfortunately it does not seem to talk about relative balance.

CMIA Reflexology Article This article is failry low on content (the text it is short, but there are pictures which make it seem longer). The descriptions of the two types of kicks seem good. Also, the toe-heel lift exercise on page 5 looks awfully a lot like the up-down leg method. I would suggest the leg method instead of their excercise, follwing their logic, it is better to have an excersie that is more natural, a form of walking. Also, I think it would be better to enhance your full body balance instead of isolating the excercise to your foot by holding onto something.

Analyse some of the articles here

Analyse fighting rules purely from a technical standpoint. Explain the good points, counter the bad points. There are plenty of other articles here too (not nec. good).

Although I understand the distinction that many people want to make between combat and a fight, I'm not really sure that one can make that distinction until after the fact. From a safety standpoint, it would be foolish to assume that a fight is just a fight and not combat, but yet as many others have pointed out, it might be devastating from a legal standpoint to react to a fight as if it were combat.

Knife Attack Statistics. Any training against knives should seriously consider this and, although interesting, not this

Convincing arguments about tactics and strategies of an inmate: Gladiator School

A very good point about not training to adapt

I have not, but should analyze fighting in a car seat

Judo chokes

How Pressure Points' work

Zhang Lu Ping on Leveraging Internal Power An intersting, but very abstract and hard to understand article. I think that when he states:

"You have to find out which part of the bottom of his base is most important to him. Find out where the weight is centered at the lowest part of the body. Then apply the lever there. Of course, he may change that center all the time, so you must use your sensitivity to find it and scoop him out."

that he is talking about the Center of Pressure which is where our balance is restored from. Now when he says:

"T'ai Chi's goal of becoming soft, or supple, Zhang said, is a recognition of the need to create this leverage. If a person is stiff, he said, then the length of the lever in that person's body is stopped at the point of tension, whether it be the elbows, shoulders, back or hips."

"Properly done", he said, looseness allows an internal connection from the hand or wrist or even the fingers down to the bottom of the foot. The longer the connection, the more leverage the individual can exert on his opponent. Using spiral movements gives an added advantage over straight line movements, because the spirals create a longer lever.

I know the feeling he is talking about with tension, but I do not understand how it is lengthening my lever from a physics point of view. Also, how does the spiral motion lengthen my lever is there a cam effect? ( more on Lu Ping) His Math PHD You can buy some of his articles in Tai Chi magazine. Huan is his son.

Sports & Martial Arts

Since sports deal intimately with the mechanics of the human body, they should be an obvious place to look to gain knowledge and understanding of human mechanical principles. Of primary importance in most sports: balance, speed and power.

• Walking on a balance beam

• Slackrope Walking

Take steps like you are walking down steps two at a time, i.e., put your foot out in front, find your footing and then and only then transfer your weight to the front foot. (This is unlike walking normally, where you transfer your weight as you put your foot down)

• Throwing a baseball.
• Throwing a discuss.
• Cutting wood with an ax.
• Skiing, Primary Movements Teaching System
• Archery
• Functional weight lifting (not body building), kettle bells Walking, climbing (a pole/stairs), running, double poling (in skiing)

Balance

Improve your balance with an Indo board? Wow, I can't confirm that this will translate to other movements, but this is a really neat idea. I tried this with a 4" PVC pipe and a 2x6 decking board. I saw imeadiate improvement and felt like much more could be gained. I was surprised when I noticed that it felt much easier when I brought my feet from about 20" inches apart to only about 12" apart. Standing longitudinaly is rather challenging and, uh... dangerous. :) What a workout for your calves too!

Training for agility instead of strength. More Balance Training exercises.

As John VonPischke has pointed out, our resilient shoes may be the worst thing for our balance, and they may even cause more injuries.

I'm not sure how usefull knowing that vibrations' in our shoes can improve our sense of balance is, but this quote is intersting:

  "balance tested during swaying does not correlate 
   well with balance during walking"

Arch support improves your balance.