The reason an apple’s core is a
vertical central column, and that’s all, is the apple has no legs… and no arms.
This brings us to a new or different understanding of the human core. The
conventional core is thought of as the deep muscles surrounding the spine and
pelvis – not including the muscles that connect to the arms and legs. But
another way to think of the body’s core is simply the skeletal system – all of
it – from the tips of your fingers to your toes. After all, it is the skeleton
that forms the central structure throughout the body and provides the core
structural form. If you were to construct a model of the human body you would
need to create a skeletal structure that you then wrapped with soft tissue.
The deepest layer – the core of
the human body – is indeed the skeletal core. With this deeper understanding of
structural core, we can now look at Core Stability and Mobility in a new light.
In order for the body to be most efficient and most structurally stable (and
have the capacity for greatest mobility), the skeletal core must be aligned
optimally. Optimal bone alignment is unlike bricks or steel beams of a
building.
The truth is the bones actually
“float” within the body’s soft tissue or myofascia. The structural relationship
of the bones and myofascia is characterized by a term called Tensegrity (the
word derived from the combination of Tensional and Integrity). In Tensegrity,
the bones are compressive elements that are suspended (not stacked upon each
other) within the myofascia that are tension elements. It is a complex three
dimensional structure that is capable of dispersing forces with great
efficiency and facilitates efficient movement. Without Tensegrity, our bones
would be crushed under the impact of running or jumping.
WeckMethod is a system of
training that fully optimizes bone alignment through the hands. Because the
entire body is intimately linked and connected – each part of the body having
its effect on the global whole – the hands are critical to optimizing the
global Tensegrity throughout the body. This may be difficult to comprehend at
first.
After all the hands only
represent less than 2% of the body’s total weight – and they are way out there,
far away from the conventional core. But when you realize that the hands have
more than 25% of the body’s bones, and you combine this with the understanding
of the critical importance of optimizing bone alignment for optimizing the
body’s capacity to most efficiently stabilize and mobilize, the importance of
the hands becomes easier to grasp. By teaching you to create optimal bone
alignment through the hands – and combine this with optimal alignment of the
rest of the body – you will move and harness power like never before.