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Using your hips to initiate and end a body movement
This has been my most significant discovery recently. In any long stance (back stance or long forward stance), it can be very hard to move whilst maintaining good posture. The difficult part of moving forwards, is not the second half of the movement, where the back leg reaches forwards past your body; rather it is the initial part of the movement where you must move your centre of gravity from a point between both legs, to a point where your body weight is supported and balanced on just one leg. Ideally, whenever you move forwards or backwards, your shoulders would remain perfectly above your hips. I used to think that this was solely achieved by the strength of your legs and ankles to pull or push you forwards. When you are not strong enough, you throw your shoulders forwards to generate forward momentum. This creates a much more visible movement for your opponents, and presents your head as a target. When moving backwards, weak people tend to lead with their backsides, which again, lowers the head and weakens the posture. I now understand that although the legs and ankles are a vital part of the equation, by far the most significant factor is what you do with your hips. Instead of thinking to yourself “step forwards”, a more useful instruction would be, “square your hips up”. When you square your hips, in addition to your thighs, you use your stomach and abdominal muscles. These are massive structures and they impart great vigour to any movements. They also enable you to move much more smoothly and subtly than using your legs alone. Once you get used to isolating and using your hips as the driving force for forwards and backwards movement, you can start to re-introduce your leg muscles: butt (gluteous maximus), thigh (hamstring), and calf (gastroc nemeus). Of course, it’s the perfect synchronisation of all of these muscle groups, along with the determination not to lean, that produces the most powerful forwards and backwards movements. When you are able to effortlessly and without conscious thought, utilise your hips to generate forwards and backwards motion from very long stances, it should be a piece of cake to apply the principle to short stances. I'll let you know when I reach that stage! Using your hips to end a body movement
I’ve already talked about using your hips to add weight to a technique, and when doing that, you hold your hip turn off till the end of the movement. However, there’s another advantage in many cases, to using your hips at the end of a movement – to extend your reach. Whether you are delivering a front hand strike, a front kick, a round kick, or a side kick, adding a hip rotation or extension can add inches to your reach. An inch may not sound like much (ooer missus!) but as Sensei Jason always reminds us – it’s plenty if the strike is embedded in your face or groin!
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