MikeT
02-24-2004, 07:11 AM
Coach Sonnon
I frequently read this forum, but rarely post.
I have been working with Warrior Wellness daily for over a year, and have seen much benefit from it. Although I have been on the advanced series for several months, and have gradually felt more 'attuned' with these movements, I now feel that I have had blinkers on.
I recently received your Freedom by Degree course and have had chance to study it and apply it to my daily sessions. I would like to share some of the things which have struck me since doing so.
The best thing that I have done, I believe, was to watch these tapes with a pen and paper handy.
When I plotted the complex movements that are demonstrated - using four points of reference (forward, back, left, right), set out like compass points - the idea of 4 quadrants of movement and the progressions through them became obvious to me on the page.
Some observations :
- Moving through 4 quadrants seems far more applicable to those joints along the spine - i.e. neck, thorax, pelvis, spine. These joints seemed more orientated around a central axis than those of the limbs, which are free-er and can move through more planes (6 degrees of freedom!)
- Sequences that are not shown are obvious when plotted. For example, the first progression (once past the recovery stage of simple forward-back and left-right movements), is from circles to figure eights. Lateral and diagonal figure eights are demonstrated as different patterns - and indeed they are. However, it is clear when drawn that each of these figure eights has a complementary figure eight (I don't mean the reverse direction), across its other plane. There are in effect, then, four separate figure eights to cover all the points (eight if you were to count reverse directions). Whilst now seemingly over complex, either pair of figure eights seems to cover the 4 quadrants, albeit in a different manner. I therefore simply alternate them day to day.
- The next progression - cloverleaves - is again much clearer when plotted. It is also obvious that this too can be achieved in a different way - by combining the opposite figure eight pair. So, there are two separate cloverleaf patterns (four if you count opposite directions), which are quickly done and thoroughly work the four quadrants.
- These progressions are logical - but a jump of ingenuity was necessary to make them obvious. If anyone watches these tapes (and you ought to) - do so with a pen and paper. It no longer becomes necessary to remember what exercises to do, as, working down the body, the movement required decides it
- When working the limbs, the progression is different. It appears to me that in order to sophisticate these movements, movement through the six planes is linked - first from circles to figure eights in two planes, and then to 'chains' of movements from plane to plane. For example I have found that it is possible to move through all six planes on one arm (working shoulder) in a continuous plane, and then through the reverse direction without breaking the flow of the movement.
I have found that a nice chain for the shoulder circles moves from backward to forward to outside to inside to bottom to top – pause, and then reverse direction to start. With this, I needed to define a direction for each circle, as it was easy to mess up which directions I had already done. What I came up with was a way of defining clockwise and anticlockwise for the circles (which sounds obvious, but it isn’t when the arm is moving in all different planes!) – that definition being that a clockwise direction was one in which the end of the arm was moving towards the centre apex of the figure 8 when at the top of the movement. That sounds complicated, but makes sense when you try it. The chain described above would thus run through in a clockwise direction for each circle, then reverse through in an anticlockwise direction.
So far, I am doing this with one arm only, as it needs concentration ! However, once it has sunk in and become less of a challenge, it should be possible to work both arms together.
I imagine that elbow movements can be sophisticated in the same way, although I have not gotten that far yet. Nor have I properly looked at some of the other areas - walk before I can run!
The benefit of these sophistications is that it takes less time to do the session each day!
Sorry for the long, rambling post – I got quite excited with the possibilities that kept occurring to me on examination of this material, having received so much benefit from the initial Warrior Wellness series.
regards,
Mike Taylor
I frequently read this forum, but rarely post.
I have been working with Warrior Wellness daily for over a year, and have seen much benefit from it. Although I have been on the advanced series for several months, and have gradually felt more 'attuned' with these movements, I now feel that I have had blinkers on.
I recently received your Freedom by Degree course and have had chance to study it and apply it to my daily sessions. I would like to share some of the things which have struck me since doing so.
The best thing that I have done, I believe, was to watch these tapes with a pen and paper handy.
When I plotted the complex movements that are demonstrated - using four points of reference (forward, back, left, right), set out like compass points - the idea of 4 quadrants of movement and the progressions through them became obvious to me on the page.
Some observations :
- Moving through 4 quadrants seems far more applicable to those joints along the spine - i.e. neck, thorax, pelvis, spine. These joints seemed more orientated around a central axis than those of the limbs, which are free-er and can move through more planes (6 degrees of freedom!)
- Sequences that are not shown are obvious when plotted. For example, the first progression (once past the recovery stage of simple forward-back and left-right movements), is from circles to figure eights. Lateral and diagonal figure eights are demonstrated as different patterns - and indeed they are. However, it is clear when drawn that each of these figure eights has a complementary figure eight (I don't mean the reverse direction), across its other plane. There are in effect, then, four separate figure eights to cover all the points (eight if you were to count reverse directions). Whilst now seemingly over complex, either pair of figure eights seems to cover the 4 quadrants, albeit in a different manner. I therefore simply alternate them day to day.
- The next progression - cloverleaves - is again much clearer when plotted. It is also obvious that this too can be achieved in a different way - by combining the opposite figure eight pair. So, there are two separate cloverleaf patterns (four if you count opposite directions), which are quickly done and thoroughly work the four quadrants.
- These progressions are logical - but a jump of ingenuity was necessary to make them obvious. If anyone watches these tapes (and you ought to) - do so with a pen and paper. It no longer becomes necessary to remember what exercises to do, as, working down the body, the movement required decides it
- When working the limbs, the progression is different. It appears to me that in order to sophisticate these movements, movement through the six planes is linked - first from circles to figure eights in two planes, and then to 'chains' of movements from plane to plane. For example I have found that it is possible to move through all six planes on one arm (working shoulder) in a continuous plane, and then through the reverse direction without breaking the flow of the movement.
I have found that a nice chain for the shoulder circles moves from backward to forward to outside to inside to bottom to top – pause, and then reverse direction to start. With this, I needed to define a direction for each circle, as it was easy to mess up which directions I had already done. What I came up with was a way of defining clockwise and anticlockwise for the circles (which sounds obvious, but it isn’t when the arm is moving in all different planes!) – that definition being that a clockwise direction was one in which the end of the arm was moving towards the centre apex of the figure 8 when at the top of the movement. That sounds complicated, but makes sense when you try it. The chain described above would thus run through in a clockwise direction for each circle, then reverse through in an anticlockwise direction.
So far, I am doing this with one arm only, as it needs concentration ! However, once it has sunk in and become less of a challenge, it should be possible to work both arms together.
I imagine that elbow movements can be sophisticated in the same way, although I have not gotten that far yet. Nor have I properly looked at some of the other areas - walk before I can run!
The benefit of these sophistications is that it takes less time to do the session each day!
Sorry for the long, rambling post – I got quite excited with the possibilities that kept occurring to me on examination of this material, having received so much benefit from the initial Warrior Wellness series.
regards,
Mike Taylor