Making Connections

Learning martial arts should be a practical (if rarely used) tool – if you get attacked, you should be able to defend yourself.  Learning martial arts should provide a broad set of problem solving tools – if you learn in class that good posture helps you deliver a solid strike, you hopefully make other connections about what having good posture helps with.

For the kids class today, we spent most of class monkeying around with our posture.  The students practiced punching and kicking with crummy posture (arched backs) and then punching and kicking with good posture (neutral backs).  They also practiced the idea of being put into a crummy posture (getting hit or pushed) and then recovering to a good posture.

At the end of class, we asked them, “what else would having a good posture be helpful for?”  They answered the question by naming various sports (football, running) and naming various social situations (meeting someone new, giving a speech).  No doubt many of them already (on a rational level) understood that good posture is a helpful tool in many situations and today’s class hopefully strengthened that connection but if any of them hadn’t made that connection before today, maybe we planted a seed.