Recipe for some impressed fighters:
Step one:
Take an extremely fast kid and add years of stand up martial arts training.
Step two:
Take said fast kid as a busted up older guy, put him on PN (Precision Nutrition) as a moderator and have him read a post by Mike T Nelson about a Z-Health principle about levering your bones.
Step three:
Have busted up older guy mess with the idea with his jab and cross, but since he is busted up, he does it slowly and often over a couple of months.
Step four:
Have busted up older guy go for dinner with a bunch of fighters and explain the idea without showing the result. Then have bunch of fighters with blank looks on their faces say show me.
Step five:
Show the punch they have seen for years, then show the same punch with the added focus on levering the bones involved.
Step six:
Jaws drop as the speed was noticeably faster... way faster.
You likely are out of your tree most of the time, but no one in the tree ever made big changes, so Rock On!
I bet it's exciting to see the end of the tunnel with education. Exciting times ahead.
If I lived closer to you I'd camp out in your gym and on your couch. I think you're likely one of the most underrated people in this game.
Thanks Mike!!
Roland Fisher, CFT Canada
---Special thanks to Roland for all the super kind words. Be sure to check out Precision Nutrition where Roland and many other really bright people hang out and exchange great ideas. Thanks again!
Here is the information about Bone Rhythm from an older blog post I did. Eric Franklin talks about it also in his book Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery.
The Z Health Bone Rhythm method will revolutionize lifting as we know it today. Is that a bold statement--yes, and I stand behind it even though it sounds like I went swimming in the Z Kool Aid pool. It is the most radical change to lifting I have ever seen and my guess (I have no evidence of this yet) is that most elite lifters are already doing it and they probably don't realize it.
What is it? Basically you think about levering the bones in your skeleton to lift the weight. Wow, on a surface level that seems so darn simple. Let's take the squat as an example. For the squat you think about levering the femur (thigh bone) to move up the weight or bring it down. In a tall (neutral spine, that includes the head so no looking at the ceiling due to the extensor reflex--a whole different topic that I will cover soon), as you lower the weight you think about moving the top part of the femur near the hip back as you move the bottom part of the femur forward. Think of a teeter totter, as one end goes down, the other end MUST go up (assuming it is rigid and some fat ass did not break it). For optimal efficiency, BOTH ends MUST move at the same rate. This takes some practice and cueing for a coach to get it down, but it feels awesome.
Why is this so cool? You can lift more INSTANTLY and there is LESS stress on your joints! Read that again. Sounds like a win win to me if I have ever heard one. You can also increase your neural drive to the motion since your brain is only thinking of two things 1) neutral spine, 2) bone rhythm of the femur (in this case)! This allows you to use more of your brain (increased neural drive) to move the femur, thus moving the weight! You are much stronger than what you think you are.
Chad Watebury (1) pointed this out when he took athletes and had them do a set of squats normally, and then one other group that had to count backwards WHILE doing squats. Guess which one had their performance go into the hopper--yep, the ones counting backwards which makes perfect sense.
In this post is some more details and a before and after video HERE
Any questions?
Rock on!
Mike N
