A big contribution which
Asian martial arts can make to Western Sports Training is on
the subject of Explosive Impact.
If we ask, How do you create the most speed over the shortest
possible distance?, then the Asian arts give us a very interesting
response.
Bruce Lee made the so-called “One Inch Punch” famous.
Let’s look at this punch and see how it might relate
to golf.
In the one inch punch the arm is not retracted and expanded.
So it looks like the fist is only moving one inch.
But the energy behind the punch is traveling from the ground
right up through the whole body and out the hand.
The whole body has to be trained to act in a whip-like or wave-like
manner. You learn to store the feeling of impact energy in your
body core. With continued practice this feeling of impact energy
in your body core can become more powerful. You learn how to “ripple
it up” and out through the hands.
So the muscular strength in the arms plays very little role
in this one inch punch.
I struggled for a long time to make the connection between the
Asian martial arts and Western Sports Training. Then I began
to realize that the concepts expressed in current golf terms
such “Kinematic Sequence,” “The X-Factor,” and “Clubhead
Lag” are really very similar, from another point of view,
to the concepts behind the “One Inch Punch” or what
is sometimes called “Iron Palm.”
I understood that the unique body movement patterns that are
taught by these advanced fighting arts- those same fighting arts
which make heavy use of the One Inch Punch or Iron Palm- are
the same body movement patterns in use on a subtle level in the
swings of the game’s greatest ball strikers.
Ordinary strength is about contracting muscle groups. But extraordinary
striking strength is about opening and expanding and releasing
the joints and tendons and ligaments that sustain the body’s
skeletal structure –that sustain the body’s interaction
with gravity.
The first is a piston, the second is a wave. When Bruce Lee
pulls off that punch of his, he’s using a highly trained
kinematic sequence. He’s going from his feet in one unbroken
chain through his hips and shoulders and out his hands.
The piston uses linear force.
The
whip uses a rotational or a “torquing” force,
which is a turning or twisting of the body against itself.
Torque is what generates acceleration through impact. If the
rotation stops for even an instant, then you’ve surrendered
your extraordinary force and you only have ordinary, linear force.
Then it’s just the strength in your arms and hands and
shoulders that creates clubhead speed.
And it just so happens that the Asian fighting arts have a wealth
of training programs that develop this rotational, torquing strength
and speed. So now it only becomes a matter of figuring out how
to “translate” these training programs so that they
can be used by us.
Let’s face it…these programs have been nurtured
and grown in a culture that’s very alien to ours. But the
source or the essence of these programs is universal. As humans
we are far more alike than different.
So all I’m doing is trying to present these programs to
athletes and in particular golfers. I’m not unique. I don’t
claim to be a master of either martial arts or golf. I have both
martial arts teachers and golf teachers who are masters. I’m
their student.
I see myself as a diplomat, as someone sitting at the table
trying to get the two sides to communicate. I know that if they
communicate, something really amazing will occur. That’s
what I’m really hoping for.
This is the 1st Routine of a Ten Routine System. The routines
will build on one another in complexity and sophistication.
Good luck, and I hope you enjoy the site.
Trainer Joe Scuderi
