One of the reasons I like to follow the Dragon Door crew is that, besides the fact that they know their stuff where sports performance is concerned, they also often provide some tantalizing food for thought about martial arts, especially the so called "internal martial arts".

In a recent issue of the "Power by Pavel" newsletter an article by Franz Snideman RKC TL, CK-FMS on the pistol squat got me thinking about the potential relevance to I-Liq Chuan, and what we call "the mechanism of body movement", or Liq Hok in Hakka.

Before I go any further, I should point out that, one thing I haven't been able to figure out is if Pavel's bag of neurological "tricks" is actually as relevant to the power of internal martial arts as they seem, or if it's the handiwork of Dragon Door editor-in-chief John Du Cane trying to make the connections in order to sell his books to a wider audience.

At any rate, the mechanism of body movement is a whole set of interrelated concepts that essentially explain to the student of I-Liq Chuan "how to move the body", or more correctly, how to recognize "the way the body works".

The thing that caught my eye in the pistol squat article was the elaboration by the author on the importance of maintaining the different parts of the foot in contact with the floor. For reader convenience I'll just "quote" the relevant portion of the article here;

What makes this so interesting is that this very nearly duplicates (in essence) the I-Liq Chuan concept of "nine solid and one empty", which is one of our "six physical principles" that, in part, define the mechanism of body movement.

"Nine solid and one empty" refers to points on the bottom of the feet; all five toes, the "big and small balls" of the foot, the side of the foot and the heel, should all remain in contact with the ground. The big toe is then "wrapped" isometrically to the small toe, which has the effect of drawing the arch slightly higher off the ground. The nine are "solid" because they remain in contact with the earth, and are thus yang, while the center of the arch becomes yin, or "empty". Like many Chinese martial arts I-Liq Chuan is based on Zen and Tai Chi principles, so we talk a lot about solid and empty, yin and yang and relate those terms to the body.

According to our view of tai chi principles, all the extending muscles are yang, and project and expand away from the ming men. All the flexing muscles are yin and draw and condense toward the dan tien.

The article's implication that maintaining the "big ball" of the foot in contact with the floor activates the quads is mirrored in the theory of the mechanism in that we say that the "extending" muscles are yang (in this case quads) and that in the legs you should feel the yang "energy" pressing down to the big toe.

Remember that I mentioned that the big toe "wraps" isometrically to the little toe, which then curls under and wraps the "energy" back around to the empty point at the center of the foot and then back to the dan tien. You can see this reflected in the Dragon Door diagram which states that the "small ball" of the foot (which lies directly behind the little toe) in contact with the floor helps to activate the hamstrings and IT bands, which, according to I-Liq Chuan's theory of the mechanism, would be yin muscles, and again, draw to the dan tien.

Previously, I had mostly thought of the 9/1 concept in terms of balance and stability as it relates to maintaining relaxation. My Sifu (Master Sam F.S. Chin) has often explained that if you maintain the center of gravity force too far to the toe or heel, then the body becomes tense since you need to use more and more muscle tension to hold the body upright. The result is a severe reduction in the amount of force you can generate against an opponent, since power is actually generated out of relaxation.

The article got me thinking of the 9/1 as it applies to the tai chi balance in the entire body (i.e. balance of yin and yang) and how that might possibly relate to the extraordinary power that long time practitioners of martial arts can generate by coordinating the entire body as a whole.

At any rate, it's an interesting reminder about just how important a role the feet and their relationship with the ground play as our base in human movement and the generation of power.

If you'd like to learn more about I-Liq Chuan's approach to tai chi principles or the mechanism of body movement and our basic exercises, you can browse our instructional DVDs here.