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Posture and Energy Transfer in Martial Arts

Posted on Last updated on by joeharman8 | 6 min read | 114 views

The Back as a Spring: Energy Storage and Posture in Martial Arts

The back muscles are fundamental to maintaining upright posture and enabling efficient transfer of energy throughout the body. They counteract gravity’s natural tendency to compress us, allowing us to stand tall and balanced. So there is an upward extension of the posture against gravity. This frees us from becoming too pressurised. At the same time, without the downward pull of gravity there would be no me or you.

Understanding how the back functions as an energy reservoir is essential for mastering martial arts and cultivating both physical and emotional resilience.

Energy Storage and Posture

The back muscles play a key role in storing potential energy, which can be transferred dynamically during movement. This storage and release mechanism ensures that the body can perform powerful, coordinated actions. For the back to function optimally in this way, it must work effectively to hold the body in a relatively straight line. If the back fails to maintain alignment, slumping occurs, leading to postural imbalances and reduced energy transmission and efficiency.

Maintaining an upright posture ensures that the back muscles remain engaged, creating a stable energy line for movement. This alignment is not just a structural necessity but also an energy-saving strategy, allowing the body to respond fluidly to physical demands.

Posture and Striking in Martial Arts

In martial arts, striking requires a balance between forward motion and energy transfer. When extending a punch, there is a natural tendency to lean forward, compressing the chest muscles and abdomen. This compression relaxes the back and legs, facilitating the forward motion and transfer of energy. However, to prevent loss of balance and energy dissipation, martial artists counteract this motion by drawing the opposite shoulder back. This is one way to become more balanced.

For example, when punching with the left arm, the right shoulder extends backward. This creates a relatively straight line between the front and back shoulder, as one draws back and the other goes in. This coordinated action maintains structural integrity and ensures the efficient transfer of energy from the back to the striking limb. This concept of balanced motion reflects the broader principle of energy dynamics in martial arts.

Posture and Emotional Balance

Posture does more than support physical activity; it also influences emotional well-being. An excessive forward lean or slouched posture compresses the chest and abdomen, often heightening feelings of fear and vulnerability. Fear naturally encourages a closed, protective posture—a survival mechanism that can hinder both movement and emotional stability. At the same time, when the time is right one must be ready to fight for survival when necessary. What is not necessary is to make a way of life out of this need.

Actively maintaining upright posture counteracts this survival reaction, promoting a sense of calm and readiness. Martial arts has long emphasized the importance of balanced posture to mitigate the effects of fear. By aligning the body, practitioners align their minds, reducing emotional imbalance and fostering inner resilience.

The Spiral Motion in Martial Arts

An effective martial arts strike incorporates a spiraling motion through the body’s natural curves. When standing upright, the spine’s “S” shape facilitates this twist. For instance, striking involves a coordinated motion where one side of the body contracts while the other extends. This creates a dynamic, whole-body movement that channels energy efficiently.

This spiral motion can be compared to the actions of a javelin thrower, who loads their weight onto the leg opposite the throwing shoulder. By arching the back and extending the throwing shoulder behind them, the thrower stores potential energy, which is then transferred explosively during the throw. Similarly, in martial arts, this stored energy enables powerful, precise movements.

In martial arts, it is essential to maintain the right posture so that you are not unnecessarily aggressive and fearful. If you spend too much time in a reactive state of stress and aggression, you run this risk of shortening and disturbing the energy pathways which enhances one’s health and vitality. These energy pathways have to do with the connective tissues and fascia around the body, which works as an integrated whole for energy movement.

The Back as a Spring

The back and legs function as a spring, storing kinetic energy that can be transferred throughout the body. This principle is evident in both martial arts and biomechanics. While the back itself does not deliver the primary force—as in the case of a javelin throw, where the waist and core initiate the motion—it plays a pivotal role in energy storage and transfer. To counteract the any excessive arching of the back, martial artists often maintain a certain pressure within the abdomen, which becomes distended as they extend the back.

This energy dynamics concept applies in live martial arts practice, where rapid movements rely on this stored energy, and in meditative or stretching exercises. These practices allow practitioners to generate and store energy within the back and spine, which can then be distributed to other areas of the body, including the brain and internal organs, for enhanced vitality and health. Of course, energy is also stored elsewhere too, but proper stretching and extension of the spine greatly enhances this quality of energy transfer.

Yang and Yin: The Back and Front in Martial Arts

In martial arts philosophy, the back is considered yang, representing strength, tension, and outward energy, while the front is considered yin, symbolizing softness, receptivity, and inward energy. This balance is critical for maintaining harmony within the body.

Do not think that the front of the body cannot be yang. As I said earlier, there is a certain pressure held in the abdomen which prevents the front of the body becoming overly relaxed. This spot is known as the Hara Centre, which stores a lot of the body’s energy. So by enhancing the posture, the martial artists also enhances the energy generation and storage capability of the abdomen and Hara Centre.

Because the back is associated with yang energy, it has a natural tendency to become overly tense if energy is not properly released. This is why martial arts training emphasizes not only strengthening the back but also stretching it. Stretching helps release excess tension, restoring balance and preventing stiffness or energy stagnation. By keeping the back flexible and strong, practitioners ensure that energy can flow freely, supporting both physical performance and overall well-being.

Balancing Posture and Energy

The goal of martial arts has always been to bring balance—both physical and emotional—to the practitioner. By focusing on upright posture, martial artists can reduce the impact of fear and create a stable foundation for movement and energy transfer. The back, acting as a spring, not only supports the body but also ensures that energy is stored and released efficiently via the waist and abdomen, allowing for powerful, fluid motion.

Understanding and applying these principles in daily practice can transform martial arts from mere physical training into a holistic discipline that enhances overall well-being.

High Intensity Work and Balance

Posted on by joeharman8 | 9 min read | 132 views

One of the reasons for training is to develop strength and power through high intensity work. However it is often the case that those engaged in high intensity work completely over do it. High intensity work, by which I mean 100% effort, is actually a kind of stress on the body. But it does you good if it is performed in short bursts over a small time period. For example, a one hundred metre sprint takes an athlete just over, say ten seconds. However they would not do this over and over again or for much longer than ten seconds. And for good reason – it is hugely taxing on the body.

Now the most important aspect of fitness is health, or harmony within the body. In other words your strength, endurance, energy levels, and all other aspects of health should all be in accord. This is all achieved by living sensibly and actively. High intensity work improves your capacity to do this. Unfortunately, many people are completely out of tune with health, and have instead bolstered some aspects of fitness at the expense of overall health. This lack of balance eventually leads to wear and tear and a decline in capabilities. And therefore health. It is therefore wise to take care of all this before injury occurs and health declines.

What I do is, whenever I train I try to reach my highest intensity of work by doing no more than a few minutes on the heavy bag. I go for intensity over duration, and in short bursts. For example, I might do a minute or so and then rest, and then go for it again. Of course I warm up a bit and practice a few concepts and skills before getting to work. I then do all sorts of things like walking, everyday activities like gardening, and breathing exercises, sport, etc., to fill the day. Once again, high intensity work, or a short duration, improves my capacity to do everything else. You might say “Only a minute? That’s nothing, professionals do twelve 3 minute rounds!”.

Yes, I admit I’m nowhere near the fitness levels of some athletes, and I tell myself the same thing daily, as I am just as concerned as anyone of still not attaining my goals This forces me to work twice, or three times as hard within a small time frame, because I have other things to do. To do huge quantities of low level work is easy, to condense this down is another matter. All those people who want to be champions of this or that are obliged to push themselves towards performing huge amounts of intense work that can’t be maintained. They may get away with it for a while, but not for long. Of course they limit themselves and stagnate eventually, by getting worn out. And yet these are the people who everyone looks to for advice!

Many people talk of having survived life threatening situations, but I wonder how many of them have any idea of how to train for the urgency required. Having been in these situations myself, I can tell you that the experience is so intense and only lasts a few seconds before things get life threatening and you are killed. So I train to condense everything down to this time frame. Yes, you must condense it all down to a smaller time frame to increase the demand for quick decisive action. However nobody does this, or thinks its beneficial. Instead they go about doing whatever every other Tom, Dick, or Harry are doing.

It is situations of extreme urgency which give you the intense desire to change and improve the mundane training practices adopted by the many. Perhaps quite a few experience this, perhaps without analysing it much, but they often abandon their new found motivation after a day or two.

If you cannot devote as much time to training as a professional athlete, or you think you’re not any good, you must try to achieve the same intensity of work. And then you will be able to achieve the same output as someone else who has more time to devote to one thing at the expense of everything else. Yes, you might not have the same capacity for repetitive work in one narrow discipline, but you will be able to work at the same intensity. Intensity is what counts. This is important because you will gain the same benefits of strength, and power.

The health benefits that come from high intensity work are numerous. Increased defence against disease, more vitality, higher energy levels, etc., but don’t over do it, because it will wear you down. It’s not enough to “leave it all in the gym” and then flop in front of the sofa. No, that just means you have stripped yourself of energy and probably lowered your immune systems defences. Instead go for quality over quantity. That way the high intensity work will increase the body’s demand for energy, which sets the ground for increased health. There will therefore be an increased supply of beneficial forces acting on the body’s capabilities, preparing it for greater work. It’s an inescapable cause and effect process.

As soon as you go beyond your limits in an attempt to go do what you’re not capable of doing, things fall apart. You pay the price, in injury or burnout. What else can be expected? Many people try to “push through” when they “hit a wall”, and at this point they’re not even interested really. Sapped of energy they lose motivation, which carries on to the next session, and the one after that. They then come to associate hard work with depletion of reserves and boredom. In that case walk away and come back to it another time revitalised. The only reason Martial arts becomes boring is because people lose motivation in this way. They practice for hours on end when they should have looked after their health and developed themselves before even attempting high intensity work. Instead they jump straight in!

And things often go from bad to worse. Training is increasingly moving away from a more balanced approach, and people are become more driven to overdo everything, whilst achieving nothing. Wherever you look people are mimicking some guru who insists they go beyond their limits. What usually happens of course is that people work at a very low intensity, because they have run out of energy. And then no amount of work can replace the energy which is not given time to replenish. They are forced to work at a slovenly pace because they haven’t put in the real work of maintaining health and balance. They are then congratulated for at least giving it a good go.

Don’t bother focusing on some magic exercise programme to do the work for you. There is no secret technique or wise sage to do this work for you. Focus on intensity, and then in one stroke you will have achieved health benefits as well as power and fitness. Sure you won’t be as big as some people in the gym, who, in any case are usually fatter than they are muscular, but you will be on the right track. And don’t bother learning loads of combinations in the hope that you can then perform them quickly with no effort. It can’t be done, and takes much too long, a whole lifetime would not be enough time to learn everything bit bit bit. You would have to pick one discipline, learn all the moves, and the other indispensable techniques would be neglected.

This is what I do: I don’t bother increasing my fitness by doing boxing combinations, and then Muay Thai drills, etc., it would be a waste of time. I’m interested only in intensity. I perform the basic skills, and sometimes I go over them more slowly and deliberately, but if my only goal is to work at one hundred percent effort, this forces me to put together any number of combinations within a very small time frame seamlessly. It happens naturally if the desire is there. This forces me to pick out the most important skills because every second counts. Just try being fast and powerful if you are exhausted and fatigued, you won’t succeed. And for no other reason than because you tried to push beyond your limits for too long.

I would leave all skills practice more or less alone. Don’t bother with the drills anymore, at least when doing high intensity work. “How can you give such bad advice”. Whilst no martial arts expert would advise this, I am a generalist, and therefore we aren’t singing from the same hymn sheet. Take a few moves here and there by all means, but son’t suppose you will perform them well without intent to work at one hundred percent effort. I cannot stress this enough, you must be intent on supply maximum effort. The technique will then take care of itself. Obviously there are people who don’t do this and still do well, but they could do better.

People often say to me “I used to do boxing”, or “I used to be good at such and such a martial art, but today I’m injured and don’t have the time”. The reason is that you devoted too much time to the wrong thing. I remember reading that Steve Morris, who is in a league of his own when it comes to martial arts, said that he thinks “intensity intensity intensity”. And that he trains for a few minutes at a time at maximum intensity. There you have it. Instead people get addicted to drudge work, which eventually erodes away their abilities, because it’s not intelligent work.

Instead you should accept that intensity boosts your bodies defences and increases its durability. This is self defence against the greater enemies of overwork, burnout and stagnation. So what I recommend is to do all the exercises you want but focus on intensity within a short time frame. High intensity effort and work is the force that will boost all your capabilities to do all the other exercises. It is as if your body collective system says “We need to up our game!”. And then the adaptation to greater challenge takes places as time goes on. That is provided it is given proper rest afterwards and isn’t pushed beyond its capabilities too far or for too long.

Slow Harmonious exercise: 5 Minute Routine.

Posted on by joeharman8 | 2 min read | 76 views

This video is about slow and harmonious practice. During these exercises you should focus on matching your breathing to the pace of the movements. In other words, try to breathe in and out at the rate the move is performed, so that you draw breath in at the beginning and fully exhale by the end of each movement. Keep this rhythm and a steady pace. By the end you should feel your breathing and movements are synchronised.

You can follow along or do at your own pace. I recommend following along as I have modelled it in such a way that by focusing on me you should have a sense of serenity and calm wash over you. Just by observing I felt that way looking back on it! After going along with me, you can do it by yourself. Just gaze at the horizon and focus on your breathing once you have got the moves down. After a bit of practice they become automatic, and you’ll find they’re very intuitive. This is important, because if they’re complicated you’re always having to think about the details. Briefly, they are based on symbols and patterns of movement which have had intuitive meaning for thousands of years.

The first movement involves reaching up, around, and pushing out from the solar plexus, making a triangle shape with your hands.

The second exercise involves pushing out with the fingers extended. Alternating between hands.

The third movement involves pulling in and then also pushing out after that – to and from the solar plexus.

The last one involves stepping to the side as if to deflect an incoming punch.

The exercises are designed around actual movements fundamental to health, martial arts, breathing, and alignment. They also correspond to symbols our minds recognise as significant, for example the triangle and the circle. Although they can be performed at speed, as they have to apply to all settings, this is about practicing at a slow serene pace what underpins every day moves. Because you should keep in touch with those movements even under relaxation, as this keeps you in constant contact with authentic practice and reinforces what’s meaningful.

Which Moves?

Posted on by joeharman8 | 8 min read | 87 views

There are hundreds of martial arts styles out there each with thousands of different moves. It can be challenging to know which ones are the best to focus on. One things for sure though, you should focus on a few key skills and repeat them as often as you can so that they become part of who you are. Which particular skills you chose will depend on your background and experience, and developed capabilities. Personally, it would be no use me jumping around like a gymnast and doing head kicks. I’ve tried that and I’m simply not built that way. Instead I go for football style low kicks, as I have been playing football all my life, and boxing punches essentially. Boxing, as far as striking goes, contains the most true form of hand fighting.

Whichever you basis, these skills will serve as your simple exercises, through which to understand everything else properly. This will never happen if you do a bit of kick boxing here, and a bit of wrestling there, followed by some Juijisu after that. Your few daily exercises are a vehicle for practicing the truth if you like, they symbolise an idea representing the truth. For example, the jab in boxing represents the left hand being a kind of searching hand: quick and light. There is no “true” system, because truth is without form.

Often it’s the case that you’ve been doing a martial art for a long time but you’ve grown tired of its limitations. Great! You’ve just made further progress possible. Often people fear losing their abilities in one area by practicing something else. They reason that they might give up on their new discipline, so they just stick with the old one and practice the same old tired routines. But if you know one discipline well enough, the “essence” of it will remain in you. And you’ll never be bored of the truth, even if it’s limited to practicing just a few basics. Yes, it is by getting to the core of it that you learn the truth, not through the peripheral aspects. Peripheral aspects aren’t important.

Capturing the essence must be what Bruce Lee and others were talking about with the water and the cup. Lots of people thought he meant you must always be adaptable and change according to circumstance without form. This makes no sense on the physical level because we have a human form, it can’t change. This form of detachment would lead to death. In fact it is very dangerous to attempt to change the physical form and what it’s capable of beyond slight parameters. We must be Like water, but no ones saying anything about becoming water, taking the form of a wrestler at one moment, and then a mantis the next.

Lots of people attempt gymnastics style martial arts by leaping around all over the place. This usually ends with a hip replacement or knee surgery. Others learn mechanical routines resembling lizards, snakes, or robots, hoping to become super human. No, our core composition doesn’t change, but the way we use our form, the peripheral aspects, can. In the same way the arm is peripheral to the core stability. However, this doesn’t stop people building massive biceps in the gym hoping to improve their power. It might look good, but it’s far from optimal and it’s a huge waste of time away from what’s vitally important.

The peripheral aspects are merely symbolic of the core truth, and it’s varying forms. Let me explain. Using the analogy of the water and the cup, the style is the cup which varies in size, shape and composition. The water, or the “essence” fits into the cup but remains the same. In another Analogy, the molten iron is placed in the blacksmiths forge. It can be melded again and again by heating it up and recasting it to different shapes according to different weapons. This molten metal is the “essence” which doesn’t change it’s make up. The style it takes the form of is the weapon to be created. Never change the essence because it is the truth.

The true underlying fundamentals which govern all movements don’t vary from one discipline to another. This is the core. Importantly, according to these higher principles, every discipline is of the same nature. Get familiar with this nature. This nature will verify whether your technique is right or not, because they are subject to it. The skills themselves are just different ways of expressing this nature effectively and are dead without it. You don’t adapt the truth to the peripheral considerations, or if you like the details, represented by particular skills. The devil is in the details.

All too often I have had experts approach me in the gym to tell me that according to such and such an art my technique is incorrect. To be honest, I have usually benefitted from this advice on the peripheral level. In my experience, it is often highly experienced practitioners who give this kind of advice if they sense someone might be able to take it on board. You can quickly learn a lot about a skill from this kind of advice. However, beware, because many shrewd experts out there will try to give out a few “details” and then try to claim that it was them who were responsible for the improvement at the “core” level! You have to admire the tenacity! Shrewd business sense at it’s finest!

You’ve got to create a unified martial arts style, rather than trying to bring together a load of disparate skills from all different disciplines. Of course, some skill compliment others well, and as long as they share the same underlying principles then they are compatible. If you want everything to unify, it’s got to be in accord with these underlying principles, they come before everything else and the skills have to conform to them. This unity is the causes the skills to be effective, and it has to be experienced to be felt. It doesn’t matter how dazzling someone is at boxing, if what they doing completely limits there development in all other areas. They’ve cut themselves off from the source.

It’s when you try to entertain two, or three ways of fighting at the same time that you risk being seriously injured or worse. Sure, go and do, say, a boxing a course to get familiar with the basics so that you have a fairly stereotypical explanation of the basics. But once you’ve got that stereotypical model it must fit with a higher level of understanding beyond a separate and cut off system1. Trying to get them all to fit as they are already unified is extremely frustrating, and will eventually sap you of your motivation because it will never become second nature. This way only leads to mediocrity. The key ingredient is you. You’ve got to somehow pull together all the seemingly conflicting skills and make them converge to serve your purposes by reducing them to their essentials.

This is what I do. I’ve got the basic boxing punches, I then compliment them with a few low kicks, knees, etc., and some basic wrestling techniques. After that I’ve got a few ground moves. That’s basically it. I have practiced a lot of Steve Morris’s principles so that I know how to distribute my weight properly in everything I train, from walking, to sitting, to lying down. I can do this all day and this is the bulk of my training.

When you practice aligning yourself in the activities of everyday life, there’s no limit to the scope of your training. Everything becomes a training exercise. Because you don’t want to stand one way, punch another, and then sit down in a fundamentally different way. Instead practice aligning yourself, dropping your weight into things with dynamic stability, and breathing in sync with what you’re doing day to day. If it’s true of walking then it’s true of fighting.

There you have it, a few things to think about from an endless list of possibilities. The core, the truth, fundamentals, they are just different ways of expressing the same thing – The important points to keep in mind, the sign posts.

References

1 See Steve Morris http://morrisnoholdsbarred.com/ His method is by far the best. My advice is to ignore the other “practical” martial arts systems and focus on this. Steve shows you how to develop the fundamental skills, you can then play around with them, mixing up the tempo, applying them in thousands of ways achieving a wide range application within a small range.

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