You are currently browsing Robert Miller CPT CES's articles.
TKRI now has a Face Book page.
Click the link below to visit us or to become a “fan” (we are shallow that way).
Brachial Plexus and Subclavian Artery
Martial artists often train in a posture that I refer to as the “closed chest, inside fighting” position. This involves tightening the abs, flexing the pecs, serratus, teres major, lats, and obliques, while rotating the shoulders forward and pulling them down. This position makes the ribs much less vulnerable to strikes, and although it restricts breathing, it does make it much harder for someone to knock the wind out of you. In some schools this is the principal posture from which techniques are practiced and executed. While this sort of training can be very useful, it can cause or contribute to a number of problems including shoulder impingement, neck pain, head aches, carpal tunnel syndrome, and thoracic outlet syndrome. Falling, as when taking ukemi, can have similar consequences. Active measures should be employed to ensure that one can maintain good posture when off of the training floor, and to maintain mobility in the thoracic spine and shoulder girdle.
Thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) can cause chronic pain, weakness, or numbness in the arm and shoulder. Here are a couple TOS related sites that you should take a minute or two to read:
From the “Your Orthopaedic Connection” site.
Except:
Thoracic outlet syndrome gets its name from the space (the thoracic outlet) between your collarbone (clavicle) and your first rib. This narrow passageway is crowded with blood vessels, muscles, and nerves. If the shoulder muscles in your chest are not strong enough to hold the collarbone in place, it can slip down and forward, putting pressure on the nerves and blood vessels that lie under it.
Read the rest here.
Excerpt:
What is thoracic outlet syndrome?
Thoracic outlet syndrome is a condition whereby symptoms are produced from compression of nerves or blood vessels, or both, because of an inadequate passageway through an area (thoracic outlet) between the base of the neck and the armpit.
Read the rest here.
Thoracic Outlet Syndrome
From the VascularWeb.Org site.
Excerpt:
What is thoracic outlet syndrome?
Your thoracic outlet is a small space just behind and below your collarbone. The blood vessels and nerves that serve your arm are located in this space. Thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) is the presence of hand and arm symptoms due to pressure against the nerves or blood vessels in the thoracic outlet area.
Read the rest here.
Here are some videos of exercises that I recommend to my students to help them maintain good posture (the first one gets TKRI props for using tape and tennis balls):
Sometimes just kicking and hitting the old heavy bag gets a little boring. It is kind of nice to do something else with it from time to time. Here are a couple of ideas.
- Pick the heavy bag up on your shoulders, run a few steps and throw it hard on the ground. You get to work on your balance, you get to practice hard throws without breaking your training partners, and it breaks up all the hard bits where the stuffing has gotten packed together.
- Draw circles on the bag with chalk, try to quickly kick and hit the circles in some kind of order.
- Tie a rope or belt to the chain at the top and practice pulling the bag in and meeting it with punches, elbows, knees, and kicks. The other advantage of this one is that it gives you a reason to have a belt in the first place. Here are a couple of pics:
Working the bag and belt.
Want to improve your overall athleticism quickly? Add balance training to your workouts.
Balance Training and Proprioception
How to improve performance and reduce ankle sprains
from the About.Com Sports Medicine Page
Excerpt:
Pain caused by sprained ankles, and a variety of other injuries common to highly trained athletes, often have nothing to do with strength. They often have little to do with flexibility. And rarely do they have anything to do with endurance. More often than not, sprains and strains have to do with balance. Proprioception, to be exact.
Balance training better than tai chi at improving mobility among older adults.
From the Bio-Medicine website.
Excerpt:
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Physicians and physical therapists in recent years have explored whether tai chi, balance programs and fitness routines can help decrease the likelihood that older adults will fall and injure themselves. Many of these programs have shown promise, but their relative value is still open to debate.
Here are a few videos that can help you get started:
And one for Randy (our resident DIY expert):
Have fun.
Damn, I thought I had some skills on the double end bag, then I saw this guy. Take a look:
I know what I am going to be working on later today.
I thought I would post this video. I really like the drill. Have a look.
This is a series of basic drills we use at TKRI-MO to enhance student’s ability to move in relation to a threat while simultaneously motivating the importance of “getting inside” when it is strategically useful. The “LARP” stick is just padded PVC.
We do not pretend that this drill is at all sufficient for representing movement in relation to strong “motivated” attackers (either armed or unarmed). This set of drills is designed to begin getting students moving fluidly, and thinking about movement in relation to a threat.
Gradually we edit out less efficacious gestures, identify strategically useful ones, relate those to techniques, and then drill and integrate those techniques into more “realistic” and spirited encounters. This helps to establish for the students a “schema” or context for the techniques.
At TKRI we make a careful distinction between evasion, parrying, and blocking. This drill helps students experience first hand the difference in the metabolic challenges (to the defender) between evading (in which the entire body must move in relation to the attack), parrying (in which some redirection of the attack is allowed while simultaneously moving the intended target), and blocking (which requires one to either forcibly redirect the trajectory of the attack, or stop the momentum of the attack entirely).
Here is the video:
In response to some curious/critical e-mails:
Yes, one of the guys is wearing his old BJJ gi top in these videos. Do not worry we are not going all MMA/BJJ (although there are certainly worse things we could do). It is cold here and has been raining for days. The field we train in is pretty swampy. No one wants to muddy up their nice “whites”, and blue does not show grass stains as badly. The gi top is thick and warm.
Of course I am kind of proud of the guys for getting out there and training in the cold and rain. They train whenever they can, where ever they can, wear what seems appropriate for the conditions, make their own training tools, and they seem to like to hit anything that I explicitly do not tell them not to. They hit pretty hard too. Sort of like a “folk” art I think.
We occasionally use the drills in this video to enhance our balance, stability, and our ability to use our legs eccentrically to control ground reaction forces. A great many injuries in athletics result from poor balance, and from under developed eccentric and isometric control of the body. This is especially true when moving in the frontal and transverse planes. People tend to emphasize sagittal plane movements like squats, push ups, cable pulls, and bench presses in the gym while forgetting that fighting requires that we are able to control our movements in all three planes. These drills are designed to help address these issues prior to engaging in activities that emphasize agility and quickness.
Robert Miller CPT CES
Gillian Russell
Randy Simpson
tkriguest
Steve
Recent Comments