Uechi-Ryu.com

The following two plays show great mechanics. These principles can be applied to your martial arts.

The first is Mike Napoli hitting the longest home run so far this year in Tiger stadium. Any home run is a combination of both power *and* precision - something that seems impossible to do. But if you apply the power with the core and the precision with the periphery, it's possible. Sequential summation of motion puts it all together.

Watch the legs and trunk drive. Watch the arms and hands as crack on the end of the body whip.

Mike Napoli hit a 460-foot home run off Anibal Sanchez (Video)

- Bill

This second principle is applying a "jousting" concept I speak of in Uechi Ryu when driving forward with the elbow. Here instead of sequential summation of motion, you have simultaneous summation of motion. Everything hits all at once.

Catcher Ross hits catcher Avila. Avila manages to hold on to the ball, so Ross is called out. But Avila will be on the DL (injured list) for an indefinite period of time. You too can do this, and your opponent will not have the benefit of a chest protector.

The gif video can be found at the below location. Watch the 3rd video/gif. I tried posting it as an image here, but the Forum crashes every time I try to do that. Interesting...

Watch: Early innings of ALCS Game 5 are the gifts that keeps on GIFing

- Bill

Excellent mechanics , not just what's going forward , but both halves of the circle , while theres obvious commitment and drive , this guy has his centre .

Even if I don't get the game of rounders

Great to have you aboard, Marcus - as always.

A few weeks ago I asked the students in class what it was that masters in Okinawa drew from when trying to understand how to make a physical movement work. A very bright young teenage girl (senior and soon to be college student) got it right away. It's all about what they do every day as farmers and fishermen. And if they don't understand those mechanics, they can't feed their families.

I do my own yard work because it is one of the best ways I can understand what they know. I do it right down to core aerating of the lawn and managing the trees at the edge of my woods. I do it right down to listening to Nature (I am on the edge of wetlands) and trying to get in harmony with the wildlife that comes right in my back yard.

I also talk about how easy it was for me to teach people who rode horses (my best female student ever), wrestle (one of my fastest to shodan), did gymnastics (ditto), or took ballet as a child (killer sokusens). I cannot teach what these activities teach us if we want to perform them even at an adequate level.

And as I am want to say, martial arts has no corner on the secrets of the human body. It's all the same. A good athlete, musician, dancer, and scientist finds this out pretty quickly. And what is shared is what's so special about principles that we all can identify with and grow from.


Glad you enjoyed it. I figured you would.


Well, my friend...

Perhaps you won't learn about the special American pastime that is baseball from a single clip. You won't get how to throw an unhittable pitch using principles of linear and nonlinear math/physics. You won't get how to hit the unhittable. You won't understand the chess match... you won't understand the underlying sabermetrics... you won't get how individuals come together to form a team, and how teams win...

But there is something special that you can learn about the passion of and for the game by watching classic moments. The below moment happened last night, and will be a permanent part of Red Sox lore. Squint your eyes... close the cognitive... listen to your amygdala. The video clip speaks volumes.

..... Watch: Shane Victorino’s grand slam sends Red Sox back to World Series

Where else can East (Uehara) meet (actually jump into the arms of) West (Ortiz) and show a side that few can understand on a cognitive level?



- Bill

P.S. Unlike Mike Napoli's homer, this one happened in front of the home crowd. As if you couldn't tell...

Couldn't agree more.

I disagree Some martial arts discover secrets that are only really relevant in the martial arts and only in specific martial arts.look at "Sticking hands" and "pushing hands" when you get the really,really top rate guys they are using knowledge that only really pertains to their styles.......if you mean on a simplistic level, i.e the very basic techniques, that there is only one truly efficient way to punch or kick then I sort of agree, but a lot of this stuff is kept secret for a reason

were discussing body mechanics and principles , principles by definition are primary to effectiveness



when your looking at the principles of human movement there is crossover period were all built the same , get anyone in anything pushing the limits of human potential and efficiency and you have an opportunity to learn.

after a few decades studying not just styles but movement and potential , the human structure etc then you cant help but appreciate the feats of others and the skill involved.

As for style tactics and techniques that's something different , however there's often crossover there too , and often only limited by your understanding and the purpose your trying to achieve , But of course no point trying to use a hammer as a screwdriver.




an interesting aside , I did read of some American football players using hubud drills , and I know some NRL Rugby league teams at one stage practicing BJJ to help in the tackle and pinning , an I know of rugby teams cross training from time to time in BJJ too.

So I guess some find things others don't

Some like the grey areas and learn from the commonalities and the differences and paint a larger picture.

Marcus
I was looking at this a bit differently than you were ........at the time I was thinking about sword fencing, they use their wrists a lot, they have tricks and techniques for it, as do I suppose table tennis players. Overall fitness will play a part in what they do, but their skillsets are so specialised i.e wrist development, that playing football will not make them better at their chosen sport.......same could be said of Uechi, iron shins etc.

No.

Rather than refute everything you're saying, Ray, I'm going to focus on what I clearly have the qualifications to comment on. One could possibly then step back and conclude that maybe there are no "special secrets", but rather "silos" of information that exist in many places.

I tried a number of times to start this thread, and a gif file kept causing the Forums to delete my entire post. It took many tries to find the line that was causing the original post to crash and lose a half hour of work (each post). So what got written was short and to the point. I will expand.

One (and only one) of the "secrets" (GOD do I hate that word!!!!) of Uechi lies in what I like to call "Uechi pointy things." Kanbun's original style had no seiken fist in it. Think about that... a style of infighting which relies on hand techniques that has no close-fisted punch in it. None. Zero. And it's mostly a striking style. What's up with that?

Well...

Most of these martial styles can be understood better if you go back to the context in which they were originally choreographed and later practiced. Kanbun's original style existed where people kept their rice in these jars, and there was a special way you carried them from point A to point B. Then it was practiced on Okinawa where the three main industries were farming, fishing, and trade. So what you end up with is a guy who had a killer grip studying fighting while understanding basic body mechanics from being in the field all day.

Fast forward to present.

I'm teaching Uechi's style in Raintree Swim and Racquet club, and trying to figure out how to get people there to do what Kanbun could do. I tried spending $$$$ on a half dozen pairs of custom jars made by a potter. They are delivered to me, and one of them falls over in the transaction period. That jar shattered in a dozen pieces. I thought about it... I'm teaching in a room where any tennis moron can come in after hours and play with our stuff. No... this isn't going to work. Then one day I'm thinking about it, and I look at the dumbbell rack right over on the side. Epiphany hits. The end of the dumbbell with the weight amount imprinted in the side creates the perfect surface to practice Kanbun's grip. Kanbun's toys that were available to him taught him to do something that my toys available to me could do equally well.

And then there is learning basic mechanics from working in the fields or on a boat vs. learning to swing a bat or throw a ball. Given that I once had a lawn care business (in high school) and still do my own yard, I know a thing or two about real work. And I remember some things were obvious to me in handling equipment because I learned the principles on the baseball field.

As Larry Tan - a phenomenal multi-style Chinese martial artist and author - used to tell me, "There are only so many ways to bend the human body. After a while you start repeating yourself."

I know I will never convince Ray of much of this. We have been through this dozens of times with the "THAT'S NOT UECHI!!!!!! " discussions. What-ever... A kung fu teacher often is in the business of creating mystique so he appears to have a corner of the market on something. I am a professional scientist. It is my job to demystify. They blow up the balloons; I apply the pin. BAM!!!

No magic.

Greater understanding.

As for iron shins... Come watch some American football some time, Ray. Send me your best iron shirt guy, and I'll send him out on the field with some college football players. We'll see who knows what about taking a hit.



It should be no surprise that years ago I went to the Varsity Strength Coach at UVa (former world heavyweight powerlifting champion John Gamble) to have my class training regimen reviewed. He first asked for a book about what we did; I gave him George's Uechi Ryu Karate Do as a gift. Then he came back to me and applied principles of training to what I was doing. They were tweaked a bit for what we did, but much of what I did looked like what the football players were doing.

Different applications; same basic principle. Good movement is good movement. Good body development is good body development. Unusual abilities are just that - something a rare few can do and we all admire.

Marty Dow used to tell me how his first teacher, Seiyu Shinjo, was always reading something. Books on different martial arts. Books about sports. Books about physical fitness. Read, read, read... Funny thing is... his son was nine time All Okinawa Champion and now has appeared on The History Channel showing principles of Classical Okinawan Karate. He's THE guy on Okinawa today.


..... "I know a good joke when I steal it."

- Bill

Seven Samurai (1954)

Quote
"I know I will never convince Ray of much of this. We have been through this dozens of times with the "THAT'S NOT UECHI!!!!!! " discussions. What-ever... A kung fu teacher often is in the business of creating mystique so he appears to have a corner of the market on something. I am a professional scientist. It is my job to demystify. They blow up the balloons; I apply the pin. BAM!!!

No magic.


Well I don't do Uechi so I'm not in a position to say what is or isn't Uechi..............the reason we probab;ly disagree is that I like terms to mean something, so to me "Uechi" will mean something, it is not an umbrella term for martial arts IMHO.
I think I have given the example of a Guy that I used to train with. We used to do Aikido in the Week and then a little bit extra at the weekends, he used to attend at the weekends only. after a time the Aiki got dropped at the weekends and we just practised punches and kicks, and especially kicks, and he was very good..at kicks.....I left the club and met this guy some years later. He said that he had his blackbelt and I asked what in?.he looked confused and then said Aikido .......so here you have a guy who thinks he has a blackbelt in Aikido yet he doesn't know any throws or how to do a breakfall ....now he could say that this is "his Aikido".but I can tell you if he went to any Aikido club they would tell him
" THAT'S NOT AIKIDO"!

Ponder this from Wikipedia.

"A straw man or straw person, also known in the UK as an Aunt Sally,[1][2] is a common type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[3] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and to refute it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.[3][4] This technique has been used throughout history in polemical debate, particularly in arguments about highly charged, emotional issues. In those cases the false victory is often loudly or conspicuously celebrated."


This is true.

You took one specific you knew a little bit about (I have a shodan in aikido by the way...) and applied it to another specific. That has nothing to do with anything.

The issue is how there are principles of movement and technique that "styles" follow. Once you finally assimilate the principles, you can then create new sequences that follow the principles of that style. And those sequences *might* be the exact same sequences in another style because those two styles share some (but not necessarily all) of the same principles.

We may also find that two disparate activities (e.g. martial arts and baseball or martial arts and dance) may involve very different movement and/or intent, but operate off the same principles. Thus it takes me very little time to teach a gymnast (done that), an equestrian (done that), a wrestler (done that), or a baseball player (I was that).

Or we can compartmentalize everything, and thus never learn very many things in life.

- Bill

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=22139

related thread I think , with some great sports science links from Van