Core Core Core!....or lack of.....
After I got back from my Asia tour, I had to get my appendix removed. That came out of nowhere haha. However, the doctor told me, that I cannot do any exercise nor pick up something more than 10-15 lbs for about 6 weeks. Doctor said that since there were incisions in my stomach muscles, they'll be healing. If I tried anything strenuous, it could tear again (ouch!!) This killed me since I'm used to working out close to 5-6 days a week.....
After surgery for the first 2 weeks or so, it was very difficult to even move without some pull or when I was walking, or any thing I did that involved my core....which was EVERYTHING basically. Reaching up high, picking up a trash bag, brushing my teeth, keeping my back straight. Anytime that I did anything with my upper body, I would have to apply pressure with one of my hands to negate the pulling sensation a bit.
To not drive myself crazy, anytime I have an injury of some sort, I always try to isolate and find something to work on. But when it's your core, hard to do anything. However I figured I would work on legs. I would just walk up and down the stairs to get my cardio in and then these super slow motion squats where I did my best to not pull on my core (that was super super tough).
Something occurred to me. Man, I use my upper body a lot unnecessarily! When I went to pick something up (within 10-15lbs!!) I was using my upper body when I could just use my lower. When I was going up the stairs, how much I actually pulled my body up instead of using my legs to push myself up to the next step.
Since I was going crazy from not working out. I tried to build workouts that I normally do and tried to apply these new revelations to them. Couple of examples.
1) Going up stairs. Since I needed the cardio without any bouncing or impact, I would just go up and down 50 flights of stairs. I noticed that when I pulled my body up instead of pushing my body up with my legs, I felt the pull. Here are somethings I worked on to fix this.
- Plant my front foot on the next step and learn how to push off the back foot to transfer weight over using the front foot as a pivot.
- To properly transfer without the help of my upper body, I had to keep my posture straight (you're going to see the word posture a lot in this post..).
- At first, I had to do this slowly because as soon as I started pulling with my upper body, it would pull and start to hurt. This forced me to ONLY use my lower body (or at least a high percentage).
2) Lunges. We do lunges all the time for class. I teach the kendo exercise where you basically lunge across the whole floor. In kendo, when you do this, you try to keep your posture as straight as possible. However, sometimes you don't realize that you actually lean forward and "pull" yourself up to get that back foot up to meet your front foot. As soon as I leaned forward, felt that damn pull again.
- Keep your posture straight. Feel like you're almost lifting yourself from underneath you rather than pulling up. Harder to do as you do more, but that's usually because you're using unnecessary energy since you're using your whole body instead of using just the part you really need.
- When you're stepping down, no one steps down leaning forward, because you're not using your upper body to step down.
3) Squats while holding a light weight hanging your arms. This one is pretty easy to explain. However, when you do a squat incorrectly going upwards, this one probably hurt the most actually.
- First, I would do the entire squat (up and down) slowly just to make sure I don't injure myself. If you use your legs more, your legs will be shaking in no time going slow.
- Once again, when you go up, imagine being lifted from underneath instead of being pulled up.
- Since you're holding the hanging weight, it's easy to lean forward to pull the weight up with you. That's how you involve unnecessary upper body motion again. Keep your posture straight and just hang on, let your legs do the rest.
As I started to heal up, I tried to use these ideas to practice. I always say that your cut is only as strong as your connection to the ground. Starts from the feet, to the legs, to the hips and your upper body being an extension of that. I tried swinging the sword a few times, and I could tell when I was actually using core to cut because there was a slight pull haha. I tried swinging with my upper body, instead of a pull, I felt more of a crunch, but I felt my lower body being pulled upward. This would "disconnect" me from the surface. This made me realize the right way to use your core vs the wrong way to use your core (from my perspective anyways).
Because my lower body became stronger and I understood more of how to use my core, I was able to swing the sword in a more fluid loose motion. This helped my continuous cuts (mizu gaeshi etc.) still maintain tip weight throughout the whole cut. It reinforced my posture so I would keep my core always in connection with my lower body. Also I noticed in gekken, it would lower my tells since I didn't have any extra shoulder movements to move forward. Also when I recently cut, the cuts felt smoother and easier than before!
Injuries suck, but it's interesting how it can reveal things that we take for granted all the time. Just gotta take advantage of it to see what you can learn from it!
After surgery for the first 2 weeks or so, it was very difficult to even move without some pull or when I was walking, or any thing I did that involved my core....which was EVERYTHING basically. Reaching up high, picking up a trash bag, brushing my teeth, keeping my back straight. Anytime that I did anything with my upper body, I would have to apply pressure with one of my hands to negate the pulling sensation a bit.
To not drive myself crazy, anytime I have an injury of some sort, I always try to isolate and find something to work on. But when it's your core, hard to do anything. However I figured I would work on legs. I would just walk up and down the stairs to get my cardio in and then these super slow motion squats where I did my best to not pull on my core (that was super super tough).
Something occurred to me. Man, I use my upper body a lot unnecessarily! When I went to pick something up (within 10-15lbs!!) I was using my upper body when I could just use my lower. When I was going up the stairs, how much I actually pulled my body up instead of using my legs to push myself up to the next step.
Since I was going crazy from not working out. I tried to build workouts that I normally do and tried to apply these new revelations to them. Couple of examples.
1) Going up stairs. Since I needed the cardio without any bouncing or impact, I would just go up and down 50 flights of stairs. I noticed that when I pulled my body up instead of pushing my body up with my legs, I felt the pull. Here are somethings I worked on to fix this.
- Plant my front foot on the next step and learn how to push off the back foot to transfer weight over using the front foot as a pivot.
- To properly transfer without the help of my upper body, I had to keep my posture straight (you're going to see the word posture a lot in this post..).
- At first, I had to do this slowly because as soon as I started pulling with my upper body, it would pull and start to hurt. This forced me to ONLY use my lower body (or at least a high percentage).
2) Lunges. We do lunges all the time for class. I teach the kendo exercise where you basically lunge across the whole floor. In kendo, when you do this, you try to keep your posture as straight as possible. However, sometimes you don't realize that you actually lean forward and "pull" yourself up to get that back foot up to meet your front foot. As soon as I leaned forward, felt that damn pull again.
- Keep your posture straight. Feel like you're almost lifting yourself from underneath you rather than pulling up. Harder to do as you do more, but that's usually because you're using unnecessary energy since you're using your whole body instead of using just the part you really need.
- When you're stepping down, no one steps down leaning forward, because you're not using your upper body to step down.
3) Squats while holding a light weight hanging your arms. This one is pretty easy to explain. However, when you do a squat incorrectly going upwards, this one probably hurt the most actually.
- First, I would do the entire squat (up and down) slowly just to make sure I don't injure myself. If you use your legs more, your legs will be shaking in no time going slow.
- Once again, when you go up, imagine being lifted from underneath instead of being pulled up.
- Since you're holding the hanging weight, it's easy to lean forward to pull the weight up with you. That's how you involve unnecessary upper body motion again. Keep your posture straight and just hang on, let your legs do the rest.
As I started to heal up, I tried to use these ideas to practice. I always say that your cut is only as strong as your connection to the ground. Starts from the feet, to the legs, to the hips and your upper body being an extension of that. I tried swinging the sword a few times, and I could tell when I was actually using core to cut because there was a slight pull haha. I tried swinging with my upper body, instead of a pull, I felt more of a crunch, but I felt my lower body being pulled upward. This would "disconnect" me from the surface. This made me realize the right way to use your core vs the wrong way to use your core (from my perspective anyways).
Because my lower body became stronger and I understood more of how to use my core, I was able to swing the sword in a more fluid loose motion. This helped my continuous cuts (mizu gaeshi etc.) still maintain tip weight throughout the whole cut. It reinforced my posture so I would keep my core always in connection with my lower body. Also I noticed in gekken, it would lower my tells since I didn't have any extra shoulder movements to move forward. Also when I recently cut, the cuts felt smoother and easier than before!
Injuries suck, but it's interesting how it can reveal things that we take for granted all the time. Just gotta take advantage of it to see what you can learn from it!
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