Crane Stands Tall

In the practice of martial arts, studying animal movement can provide deep insights into your own training.

For example:

Look at how this bird is just chilling on one leg

I’ve seen geese and flamingo in that same posture.

They often sleep in that pose.

I find this super interesting.

Because I struggle like hell to hold that pose.

I certainly can’t sleep on one leg.

Here’s the thing: it’s a pose I do all the time.

I do a variation of that exact posture every time I do a kick.

There might be a lesson Crane can teach me.

Standing on one leg should be comfortable

This is the first lesson I receive from Crane.

Look at that dinosaur flamingo again: It is not stressing its muscles to be in that position.

Why?

Because Its body is perfectly stacked on top of its leg.

More specifically, its center of gravity is perfectly aligned from ankle to crown.

Crane turns itself into a pillar.

Humans also form a pillar- along with every other animal with a spine.

The spine itself is literally a pillar of stacked disks.

If you stack a spine to balance on one leg, you want a single unbroken line.

You don’t want a bend where the spine meets the leg.

That would require you to put constant energy into your muscles to maintain balance.

The more energy you put into holding a pose the less comfortable it is.

That being said, we’re more than just a spine on legs.

That dinosaur flamingo shows something else- look at its long beak.

It’s a tool Crane uses to interact with the world, protruding well away from its center of gravity.

Its body-weight is a counter-acting force on the beak, allowing the crane to retain the structural alignment to comfortably lift one leg.

Muscles throughout the cranes body pull towards its center of gravity, which is perfectly stacked atop the pillar of its leg.

The picture above shows an abstract example of Crane on one leg: a triangle whose point balances on a line.

I imagine the beak on the top right point of the triangle, its tail feathers on the left.

The muscles in your body are designed to contract to your center of gravity.

The muscles of your body also pulls towards your center of gravity while in a stance.

Leg muscles pull up into your center.

Chest and shoulders pull down.

If Crane is triangle balanced atop a line, Human is an hourglass:

A triangle balanced atop a triangle.

Left and right shoulders form the top of the hourglass, left and right foot form the bottom.

The belly button is where the two triangles meet.

This hourglass is clever design, because it allows for rotation at the center point without compromising the strength of the pillar.

More importantly, it clearly shows the single, unbroken line from left shoulder to right foot (and vice-versa).

This structural alignment means that when you punch with your right hand, you are punching with your left foot.

Meditate on this.

Here’s the thing, we have to train our muscles to properly pull into structural alignment.

In our culture, there are many forces pulling us to uncomfortable misalignment.

As an example, hunching your shoulders over your phone/computer/tool/instrument.

Do that for several hours a day, you’re going to have sore shoulders.

Align Yourself Feet First

My body has a handicap where most of my joints over-extend.

Like, when I give you a thumbs up, my thumb points at me instead of the sky.

As far as handicaps go, weird thumbs are not a big deal.

But hyper-extending your knees is a big deal.

I have suffered from a bad back for years, primarily because my body will naturally hyper-extend at the knees.

That hyper-extension cants my center of gravity forward, putting strain on my lower back.

I constantly have to keep correcting my stance, else my back will fall out.

Thats literally what it feels like- like one of those stacked disks of my spine falling out of alignment with the others.

I can’t get out of bed when that happens.

So I must keep training my body to hold correct structural alignment.

Structural Alignment starts at the foot.

Am I too far forward on the balls of my feet, or is my weight even distributed above the ankle?

I bend my knees, just enough to be unlocked, stacking each knee atop each ankle.

That bend forces my hips to rotate forward.

That pelvic thrust forces my stomach to clench.

That clench pushes my chest up,

Which forces my shoulders to roll back.

Which makes me pull up my chin.

I start at the base of the pillar.

I align each joint with the one below it until I reach my crown.

Putting my body in perfect structural alignment.

When I am aligned, lifting my foot is really quite comfortable.

I can stand on one leg comfortably for a few minutes.

Crane tells me to keep practicing until I can sleep on one leg.

Perhaps then Crane will teach me how to fly.