Power for your legs

Moshe Feldenkrais talked about potent effort as a muscle contraction that moves a bone. Impotent effort is a wasted contraction, like clenching your jaw, holding your belly, an excess of tension along the spine, or getting into a fight with a shortened muscle that is disorganized and uncoordinated.

Too many excess contractions and we can start to feel chronic pain or fatigue.

These lessons point out how to use appropriate work in the big muscles of the trunk to move your legs, clarifying efficient contractions for a lifetime of mobility and power.

This is a very cool lesson. It starts slow, just lifting the arms in a hoop overhead. Then, you cross one leg over the other and sink the knees down while keeping the arms overhead.

Eventually, you are asked to tilt the legs to the floor and then use the belly and the back to slide the legs to the side. There is no work in the legs, it’s all from the big muscles of the trunk.

In this twisted/extension position, you will lift the arms and head a few times, asking the ribs to fold. All these interesting questions for your muscle patterns will flatten out your back like crazy.

Always go within your range of comfort, even when using big muscles. Comfort doesn’t mean a floppy movement with no work, it means an efficient movement without strain or “umph.” There’s a difference.

TIP: If your arms are straining to be overhead, get a blanket to support them. Do not pull on your chest. Raise the arms as much as you need to allow your elbows and shoulders to fully rest.

AY265

This is a wonderful deconstruction of a very complex movement. You will eventually extend one leg in front and bend the other behind, like leaping over a hurdle.

But of course it’s very slow, one small shift at a time as you sense the power of the chest, integrate the head and neck, and invite interesting patterns in the abdomen. Here you bend the knees to the side and slide the hands down one at a time, finding new shapes of the ribs and upper back. Then you scissor the legs apart and together with many variations in the arms and chest.

It’s designed to challenge the places where you effort so take care of yourself in the tricky bits. Perhaps you say to yourself, “Look, there is that spot where I overwork–yet again!” Noticing that IS the lesson.

(Scissor lesson, Amherst, 1981 week 6, July 16)

For the rest of this series, see the Hurdle lessons in Longer series from trainings.

This lesson is amazing for your hips, low back, and pelvic floor. You slide the femur bone in the hip socket at a specific angle. You have to use the musculature around the back, hips, and belly to maintain this angle. Then, you learn how the whole spine and ribs participate in moving the hips and legs.

This lesson has a lot of forehead-to-knee movements, rounding the back, and shifting your weight to challenge the patterns. Feel how you walk after this.

TIP: Let the elbows bend as you round backwards.

For a complement to this lesson and more on the pelvic floor, see 524 Optimal lifting of knees, flattening back.

AY63

Here you learn to lever the leg from the middle of the spine. So often we move just from the joints and forget that the trunk produces so much power. Learn to stop straining in the neck as you clarify the sideways, backwards, and forwards planes of your spine.

Note: This lesson is done on the right side. If that is uncomfortable, do the other side

How do you use the trunk to straighten the leg? Did you think straightening only happened in the leg? For much of this lesson you sit with the hands behind the left thigh, shifting your weight as you unbend the knee. Then, at the end, you roll up to sit over the leg. You will learn how to use the trunk in relation to the leg. As you discover that you have a choice in how you move, do you repeat the hard way or find an easier way?

TIP: Do NOT stretch in this lesson. Only do what's easy for you in this moment, even if that means the leg is still quite bent.

For lessons that lengthen the back to straighten the legs, see:
283 Lengthen legs without stretching
20 Folding the spine, head between the knees
11 Lengthen the leg with an integrated hamstring
303 Lengthen spine, caress legs, swivel to sit
112 Lengthen leg by withdrawing pelvis

Use this lesson to stay mobile in all the joints, allowing the connection to feel fluid and enhance walking and running. It also helps release the low back.

Habits of the feet are profound. With our narrow base of support and high center of gravity, the brain, the vestibular system (balance), and sense of safety is wrapped up in how we use our feet. The second anything goes wrong with the feet, it throws us off in countless ways and can cause compensation patterns throughout the musculoskeletal system, especially in the knees, hips, and low back.

Here are Moshe's remarks from his book, Higher Judo, on Factor 1: Bare feet.

What to do with our constant need to stretch the hamstrings? Here Moshe shows how the back muscles are linked to the ability of the leg muscles to organize efficiently, appropriately, and intelligently.

With lots and lots of flexion, you lift the head and the leg and fold the spine. Now, your system wakes up to the possibility that maybe, one day, the foot could go behind the head. The possibility emerges where there was none before.

Only with a totally flexible spine in every position—on the back, to the side, and in sitting—can you conceive of this possibility. Test it out, and then see what happens. One day it might feel like nothing!