Heavy in the hands light in the feet

So recently we have had a couple of new guys join us and, as always, already have many, many years of previous experience.
Now the first two things I teach anyone coming from another dojo, regardless of style is:

1. How to relax, how to formulate and use Ju.
2. Connect the whole body, how to start to understand and use mass.
   

One defining attribute of some high-level martial artists is their ability to be 'Heavy'. Certainly, if you have ever interacted with high-level grapplers or Judo-ka you will have felt this attribute, and boxers will often talk about a fighter having 'heavy hands’. But far from being a natural gift, this quality of ‘weight’ is a skill that can be trained and has implications for both the practitioner's health as well as their combative potential.

In this brief article, we will explore some of the ways in which we can create what I call the ‘Heavy connected Body’ attribute and how this translates into martial practices.

The ability to efficiently use our body weight is closely related to our ability to relax and lower our centre of gravity. An easy example that highlights the relationship between tension and ‘apparent’ weight is trying to lift someone who is asleep or unconscious vs someone who is conscious. The total relaxation makes the unconscious person feel extremely heavy and it’s simply because whilst asleep or unconscious, the persons mass is completely let go; they aren’t holding the mass in any form. Similarly, when we train the heavy body concepts, we are looking to create an ability to control how we can use or not use the body's mass and turn on this relaxed state (Ju) at will, and completely control the body's mass enough to put it into the hands, feet, etc.

Physical training is often primarily focused on the ability to contract; in fact, almost every modern strength and conditioning program places the ability to ‘contract’ at its core (Gamaku). Be it contraction within the context of explosive motion or contraction within the context of strength. But very few systems will have a targeting form of training to 'release' (Chinkuchi) or relax’ (Ju) the tissues of the body. This is the focus of the heavy body training methods and the key aspect of being able to use our mass in a targeted and conscious way. To achieve relaxation and release, the practitioner must identify and remove muscular tensions that remain even when not in use. Identifying these tensions is often the whole point of the internal arts.

One exercise I teach to make people aware that they control mass, is I get them to walk usually barefoot, across a wooden floor and listen, most people are actually heavy footed, then I tell them to walk across the floor like creeping around the house in the early hours trying not to wake anyone, suddenly they walk very lightly, “ thus controlling the mass”, but of coarse the weight is still the same, I follow this up with the fact that if you can control the mass like that so easily then you can also put it into the hands.

Lowering the centre

Our weight is obviously a constant. We do not add or remove mass from ourselves during an encounter or training method, so it is fair to say that how heavy or light we feel is directly related to how we use our available mass. Firstly, as we have already discussed, it is the ability to efficiently use our mass via relaxation, but the other important point is our ability to connect with the gravity acting upon us. Our ability to release with the force of gravity, when combined with direction and use of breath (a topic I will cover in further posts), can produce startling effects. To help visualise the potential of utilizing all of your body mass, simply imagine laying on your back and someone dropping a stone the weight of a person onto your jaw, the damage would be ferocious. The stone does not hold itself up against gravity, via a network of bones and elastic tissues, it simply falls, with all its mass coming to bare on whatever it happens to hit. Once you find how to use this mass in a similar, un-obstructed, way, your apparent weight increases.

The ability to identify and connect with the mass is a core component of the heavy body. Again, there are a myriad of training methods in the martial arts that are entirely focused on this cause. From the basic way of setting up the frame so that the weight sinks cleanly through the leg bones, to traditional training methods like using the makiwara, iron palm bag, and other hojo undo tools, etc. the practitioner will often spend much of their ‘heavy’ training finding and connecting with the force of gravity in an unambiguous way. The ability to connect with and use the body weight is not one that is simply born into, as some would have you believe. It is absolutely a trainable skill and one that can increase and increase, the more we understand and the more it becomes innate into our muscle memory.

Available mass 

Another point I like to add to using the mass and being heavy in striking, is what actually is available to you.
An exercise to try for yourself is this:
Find an old-fashioned set of bathroom scales, the ones with a dial, rather than digital, (if you can these days)
Step on the scales and let them settle, now, suddenly drive your mass and breath down through the legs and into the floor,
Firstly the scale will go a little lighter (this is the wave effect), but then it will momentarily go to at least double your weight.
It’s this momentary weight that is your available mass. Now imagine if you could put the temporary weight of that mass into your strike, I think you would agree, not many could take that kind of force. This use of temporal mass is available to use if one trains the correct use of the body and breath. The use of this force at the end of a strike, and driven into the target, is called Atifa (shockwave) in Uchinaguchi (Okinawan language) and must be felt to be believed.

Written by Steve Lowe Sensei