just found this!
The Mechanics of Martial Arts
Eastern philosophy has not had a physical model for martial arts that a western trained mind could wrap a thought around. That is, not until biotensegrity.
The symbol of strength for western culture is the Greek god, Atlas. After a mythical war between the Olympians and Titans, Atlas, one of the losers, was condemned to stand as a pillar and support the universe on his shoulders for all eternity (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Atlas holding the world
Following this model, strength, in western thought, is characterized as a rigid, unyielding and unmovable column. Western thought has the rigid column, the lever, and brute force, all concepts familiar to us since childhood when we built our first stack of blocks, rode a seesaw and smashed our first toy. In eastern thought, strength comes from deep within and is flexible, yielding and mobile; it flows. This difference in philosophy of strength is expressed in a difference in approach to combat sports. But eastern philosophy has not had a physical model for martial arts that a western trained mind could wrap a thought around. That is, not until biotensegrity.
Biotensegrity is a mechanical model of biologic structure and function based on construction concepts introduced by Kenneth Snelson and Buckminster Fuller in the 1960’s. In these models, the compression struts or rods are enmeshed and ‘float’ in a structured network of continuously connected tension ‘tendons’ (Figure 2). The shafts constructed by tensegrity networks are as different from a conventional column as a wagon wheel differs from a wire spoke bicycle wheel. Let me explain.
Figure 2. Needle Tower, Snelson, Hirsshorn Museum, washington, DC. The compression spokes ‘float’ in a tension network.
A conventional column is vertically oriented, compression load resisting and immobile. It depends on gravity to hold it together. It can only function on land, in a gravity field. The heavy load above fixes it in place. It must have ground beneath it for support. The weight above crushes down on the support below and the bottom blocks must be thicker and stronger than what is above it.
If the spine is a conventional column, the arms and legs will cantilever off the body like flagpoles off a building. Moving an up-right, multiply hinged, flexible column, such as the spine as envisioned in conventional biomechanics, is more challenging than moving an upright Titan missile to its launch pad. Walking and running have been described as a ‘controlled fall’, a rather inelegant way to conceptualize movement. It certainly doesn’t describe the movement of a basketball player, a ballet dancer or a martial arts master. In the standard spine – column model, the model for mobilizing the spine and putting the body in motion would be a wagon wheel (Figure 3 A).
Figure 3. A. Wagon wheel. The compression spokes are thick and short. The rim is thick and heavy. The load vaults fro m one spoke to the next as the wheel rotates. B. Wire bicycle wheel. Long, thin tension spokes. The rim is thin and light. C. In a wire wheel, the hub is suspended by a tension spoke (a). It will belly out if not contrained by other tension spokes (b). Additional spokes distribute the load (c, d).
In a wagon wheel, each spoke, compressed between the heavy rim and the axle, acts as a column. The wheel vaults from one spoke/column to the next, loading and unloading each spoke in turn. The weight of the wagon compresses the single spoke that then squeezes the rim between the spoke and the ground. At any one time, only one spoke is loaded and the other spokes just stand there and wait their turn. The spoke must be rigid and strong enough to withstand the heavy compression load and short, thick spokes do better than long, thin ones. The rim must be thick and strong, as it would crush under heavy load as it, too, is locally loaded. The forces are generated from the outside to the center. Using the column, post and lintel model, in a standing body, the heel bone would have to be the strongest bone in the body instead of, as it is in life, one of the weakest and softest.
Biotensegrity bodies would be like a wire-spoke bicycle wheel (Figure 3B). In a wire wheel, the hub hangs from the rim by a thin, flexible spoke. The rim would then belly out if it were not for the other spokes that pull in toward the hub (Figure 3C). In this way, the load is carried by the tension of the many spokes, not the compression strength of one. The load gets distributed through the system and the hub is floating in a tension network like a fly caught in a spider web. All spokes are under tension all the time, doing their share to carry the load. They can be long and thin. Even loads at the rim become distributed through the system so the rim does not have to be thick and strong as in a wagon wheel (Figure 3A). The structure is omni-directional and functions independent of gravity. Unlike a conventional column, it is structurally stable and functional right side up, upside down or sideways. A tensegrity structure can function equally well on land, at sea, in air or space.
Now think of each cell in the body behaving structurally as if it were a three-dimensional bicycle wheel. Each wheel would connect to each adjacent wheel the cell level, up the scale to tissue, organ and organism, a wheel within a wheel within a wheel. In this system all connective tissues in the body work together, all the time. It known, by recent experimental work that all the connective tissue, muscles, tendons ligaments right down to the cells are interconnected in just this way (Figure 5).
Figure 5. Interconnected Fibroblasts (Courtesy H. Langevin)
The body model would be more like Snelson’s ‘Needle Tower’ (Figure 2) where the ‘bones’ of the tower are enmeshed in the wire ’tendons’, never touching or compressing one another. Unlike flagpoles attached to the side of a building, the limbs are integrated into the system. The energy flows from deep within the structure, chi, out to the tips of the fingers and toes.
The basic building block of the biotensegrity structures, the finite element, is the tensegrity icosahedron (Figure 6).
Figure 6. Tensegrity icosahedron
