Learn to use your muscles

April 8th, 2008 at 17:28 · Filed Under Martial Arts, Medical, Sports 

The main basic goal of any martial art training is to learn the fundamental method of using our muscle effectively. During training, it is important to concentrate in the movement of every muscles and to feel exactly which muscles are moving.

By controlling the proper contraction of each muscles, one will gradually learn to use the muscles efficiently and to achieve motion economy. Many people neglects this part of training. A few of them learn to use their muscle without knowing it. If you start your training by learning to use your muscle, you will achieve better result much sooner than the others who don’t.

But how? I remembered my uncle used to talk about some training movement in Taijiquan when I was starting to learn karate. I felt boring listening to his stories. A couple of months ago, my interest sparked again. I talked to him regarding training and learn some secrets from him. Not because I don’t trust him, I reconfirm with dragon to make sure I have a more precise understanding of my uncle’s explanation. He used to brag a lot unnecessarily. :)

I will write a series of posts here for the methods to develop muscle, especially the waist, which is the most powerful and every martial artists rely so much.

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Comments

4 Responses to “Learn to use your muscles”

  • The true meaning of martial arts training : The Malaysia Uechiryū-Kosonken Kenkyūkai on April 8th, 2008 18:38 1

    [...] wrote a similar but not identical article here. It is about learning to use the [...]

  • 尉迟书贤 on September 23rd, 2008 23:25 2

    One of the main objective to learn to use your muscles is to shorten the refractory period before and after every contraction. Otherwise, the muscles will not be able to generate speed and explosive power.

  • Adrian Hoe on September 24th, 2008 7:17 3

    You are right. Other than a strong muscle, the muscle’s refractory period is the key component for generating explosive power in a fraction of a second. I have some data and plotted a graph about muscle contraction activities. The data was acquired using Allison’s MMG project. I will write a post when I find time to it.

  • Allison on September 24th, 2008 21:41 4

    That is called frequency summation, where greater strength of muscle contraction is resulted from increasing frequency of individual twitch contractions. At high frequency, new twitch occurs before the preceding one is over, thus the contractile force by individual twitch is added cumulatively. At a critical level, the twitches become so rapid that the muscle fiber does not relax at all in between. The overall contraction would then appear to be completely smooth and sustained. This is known as tetanization and at this stage, the muscle fiber remains in a constant and steady contractile state. This is when the maximum strength of contraction is achieved.

    I did not quite digest the article until I read Shuxian’s comment. I would say a greater objective is to shorten the time taken for the muscle to reach its tetanized state, and of course it means the refractory rate would be sufficiently high. As our muscles are continually remodeled to match the workload required from time to time, consistent training is a must to achieve these objectives.

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