Lengthening and Shortening
Some experiential contrasts
With what have you had a chance to play with lengthening,
eccentric contractions?
Here's some of the things I've been doing with
walking: (each numbered item is something I do for the
length of a long wall at least, sometimes a full lap.)
set 1 ~ lengthening the back of the legs
- with one leg, for maybe 100 steps or so, as my leg
swings forward, in front of the plumb line, I notice how
the hamstring lengthens, pushing the calf away about the
time my leg is upright, and then the calf lengthens pushing the heel forward and away, and
there's even a lengthening along the bottom of the foot.
when I first started doing this, I noticed there were
areas of one hamstring that got bunchier!
I played with different images ... sometimes it helped
to imagine a rolling pin going down the back of my leg.
- switch legs and notice how the same dynamic occurs (or
not!) in the other leg.
I played with this until I could reliably track a
lengthening starting at the top of the muscle, traveling
down the length of the muscle towards my foot, then into
the next muscle, through it, and downward.
- now that I've got some awareness of both legs
independently, I play with seeing them alternating the
lengthening. Lengthen left, lengthen right,
lengthen left, lengthen right, etc.
(so, total side note, there is a ton of incorrect
illustrations out there about how people walk! the
best site I found is this one: https://doctorlib.info/anatomy/classic-human-anatomy-motion/14.html)
set 2 ~ lengthening the front of the legs
- with one leg, for maybe 100 steps or so, as my foot
connects with the ground, I notice how the quad
lengthens, from the top down, and as my femur travels
over the shins, pushes the shin away, lengthening the
tibialis anterior muscle (the one on the front of the
shin!) which continues the lengthening into the top of
the foot pushing the ball against the ground, creating a
solid column of support and in essence lifting my hips
in an arc over my foot, carrying my body forward through
space.
Okay, did you brain just freeze?!?!? the true way
out of this is to just go walk around a lot paying
attention to lengthening the muscles on the front of
your leg, starting at hip and traveling down to the
foot. Notice when it makes sense to do the
lengthening for you.
- switch legs and notice how the same dynamic occurs (or
not!) in the other leg.
- go for gold and put them together! Lengthen
left, lengthen right, lengthen left, lengthen right,
etc.
set 3 ~ coordinating lengthening of the front and back
of the same leg
- with one leg, for maybe 100 steps or so, as my leg
swings forward, in front of the plumb line, I notice how
the hamstring lengthens, pushing the calf away, which
then lengthens pushing the heel forward and away, and
there's even a lengthening along the bottom of the foot.
- with the same leg, I switch my awareness to the lengthening
along the front, which occurs 'opposite' to when the
lengthening on the back occurs.
As my foot connects with the ground, I notice how the
quad lengthens, from the top down, and as my femur
travels over the shins, pushes the shin away,
lengthening the tibialis anterior muscle (the one on the
front of the shin!) which continues the lengthening into
the top of the foot pushing the ball against the ground,
creating a solid column of support and in essence
lifting my hips in an arc over my foot, carrying my body
forward through space.
- continuing with the same leg, I now switch between the
lengthening in back and the lengthening in
front. Lengthen back, lengthen front,
lengthen back, lengthen front, etc.
- of course, gotta do the other leg! so I pay
attention to it exclusively until I can coordinate
awareness taken to the front and back lengthenings.
set 4 ~ coordinating front of one and back of the other.
(!)
- with one leg, for maybe 100 steps or so, as my leg
swings forward, in front of the plumb line, I notice how
the hamstring lengthens, pushing the calf away, which
then lengthens pushing the heel forward and away, and
there's even a lengthening along the bottom of the foot.
- with the other leg, I switch my awareness to
the lengthening along the front. This is happening
at the same time as the lengthening of the back on the
first leg, but I'm not trying to track both things at
this time. I'm only trying to track the lengthening
on the front of the second leg.
ie As my foot connects with the ground, I notice how the
quad lengthens, from the top down, and as my femur
travels over the shins, pushes the shin away,
lengthening the tibialis anterior muscle (the one on the
front of the shin!) which continues the lengthening into
the top of the foot pushing the ball against the ground,
creating a solid column of support and in essence
lifting my hips in an arc over my foot, carrying my body
forward through space.
- Now I do what I can to track both of these at the same
time.
For me, this is a colored line which starts at the top
and travels down both legs at the same time, ironing out
the front of one and the back of the other.
- When I've got this sorted in one direction, I switch
legs and do it the other way.
This can kind of go on forever. And, you can start
to find lots of different patterns. The question to
ask yourself is: is that muscle getting long and lean or
short and bunchy? Your perceptions may change.
I will cryptically say, what you see in our legs is a lot
like what you see in the horse's forelegs. When you
get this sorted in your own body, you can transfer this
awareness to what is going on in the horse's forelegs --
complete with noticing when things get bunchy or when the
muscles lengthen out of order.
When you are beginning to play with the horse's
hind legs, it helps to do these same sets adding in
the gluteal muscles and the psoas so that the
lengthening comes from higher up in our body and gives
you a better idea of the muscles that are moving the
horse forward.
Which, as a brief mention, these muscles are the
'shallow' muscles and they are the ones that move us
forward. When we were learning to crawl as
babies, our arms were doing very similar things.
These muscles carried 'us', our torso through space.
So there is a way to play with the arms as well, and
you can even play with reversing everything.
Knowing that these muscles are the shallow,
external, close-to-the-outside muscles that move us is
an element you can add to any of the experiments and
it will help sort out the role of these muscles from
the role of the deep muscles.
....
Did you give this a whirl? Was
that totally a mind bender? Basically, it's
about lengthening two different things independently
and then tracking them as a pair.
What
did you discover?!? Share if you like!
More to come!
Lynn
4/20/20
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