Thank you for joining me!

Welcome to the Happy Grappler. The key to a consistent practice is joy. As an aging athlete, I continue to seek out methods that help to keep a smile on my face, relatively fit and pain free. This is my mental graffiti. Enjoy!

Thursday, May 16, 2013

OK, I admit it, this post is a little strange



A couple of weeks ago, I received Kstar's book, "Becoming a Supple Leopard", which should now be considered the Magnum Opus on the maintenance required for human performance. Both myself and Professor Bill have been fans of Kelly and the MobilityWOD for a couple years now and the book organizes his material in a way that the youtube videos never could. And while I have certainly used the material for maintenance and prevention purposes, the past couple of days gave me opportunity to apply the principles for acute pain and soreness. Tuesday night I trained pretty hard and ended up tweaking my lower back. At first I thought it was a minimal tweak, then as the night progressed the soreness, stiffness and pain became significant. So I went through the protocols for low back pain which included smashing the area with the single and double LaX ball, rumble rolling the obliques and T-spine, utilizing lateral openings for the hips and obliques, banded distraction for torso twisting and then I did some extra work for the anterior hip. I did it twice, once in the morning and once in the everning and my lower back stiffness and pain is about 90% removed.

Crazy.

Since my post about geezers and Kelly's material about systems, I have been thinking about the connection of human movement and how aging can either make movement more subtle and graceful or some as they age become more brittle. My supervisor at work informed me that getting up off of the ground is a major chore for him. We may not be able to stop the hands of time, but by utilizing methods like Kelly's we can delay it significantly.

Speaking of human movement and connection, jiujitsu is the art of movement in connection with another human being. A lot of my most recent video study has been of Rickson and two of his students, Pedro Sauer and Henry Akins. They often speak of hidden jiujitsu and how true connection in human movement is often subtle and yielding, but there is power underneath it. Henry posted a video in his facebook group explaining connection and the concept of kuzushi explained in reference to aikido here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwnGBLSFg7s (sorry, don't know how to embed it.) Next is an example of this in a bjj context while seing Pedro Sauer roll with one of his students. Note the subtle use of balance disruption, always utilizing fundamental movement and always attacking a submission.


We should all be attempting to become like wine and cheese. Smoother and stronger with age.

Oss.




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