Tricky Things- Legs

[poliphilo]

I took Fabrizio out the back to kick a ball around. He was up for that, but even more interested in the big stone step between our yard and the path that runs along the back of the houses. He could get up it by himself- no problem- but getting down again was a challenge- and he had to hold my hand or he'd have fallen flat on his face. So what is the secret? What do you have to do with your legs to get safely from A (up here) to B (down there)? We practised the manoeuvre over and over and over.

Comments

[jfs.livejournal.com]

It's the difference between flying and falling.

When we climb up, we secretly hope we'll soar. When we climb down, we fear falling flat on our face.

Slightly less poetically, when we step up, we transfer our body weight onto the raised leg and then use that to lift us. It's a pretty stable movement as we're moving our centre of gravity forwards onto a higher place. When we step down, we're keeping our body weight on the higher leg and lowering the other one to meet the ground - it's far less stable as we're moving our centre of gravity forwards and dropping it at the same time.

Humans are much better at going up than down.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We forget that these things are skills and that they have to be learned. It's fascinating to watch someone trying to master them.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Helping a little one learn life skills...you're such a good granddad!

I've always found climbing stairs (or scaling rocks) much easier than descending.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. One of the most important parts of my job, and of being a trainer in general, is remembering what's called 'beginner's mind' - what was it like before you had the skill you're trying to show someone?

It (hopefully) stops me saying things like "Now, it's obvious that ..." because from a beginner's mind, it often _isn't_ obvious.

I'm getting the same thrill from climbing (though there, it's me learning how to 'walk' again).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"Beginner's mind"- I like that. At the beginning everything has to be done deliberately- then it becomes instinctive. They say it's like that with driving a car- but I never got beyond the stage where I was having to think about every move.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It's a fascinating process.

Going down you're facing the drop- and gravity is against you.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

When I was learning and teaching Aikido, we used to express it like this.

First you learn it in your head.

Then you pull it down to centre and forget it in your head.

If you want to teach, you have to pull it back up to your head, while still keeping it in centre.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of this:

http://www.businessballs.com/consciouscompetencelearningmodel.htm

It's essentially what Donald Rumsfeld was wittering on about when he started talking about "unknown unknowns".

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think that's really difficult- pulling things back to the head once they've become instinctive. I believe I can write, I know I've worked very hard at learning to write- but I don't think I could teach writing to save my life.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

God knows I'm not a fan of Rummy's but I always thought that "unknown unknown" thing of his was pretty smart.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Ha! I actually know the answer to this, because this is something that I'm working on personally. (I live a mostly flat life, but there are inexorably times when you need to do stairs.)

The secret is to know where the step is, and then hold your head up, look straight forward and NOT look at the step. This allows your head, spine, and hips to be aligned, which means that your core muscles will be engaged.

I think that the reason it's so hard is because you want to look at the step, but that actually makes the process physically more difficult.

Relearning how to go up and down steps was one of my personal projects for 2009, and it was surprisingly difficult. There's a lot going on in your body. (What prompted it is that I had to climb steps to take my elephant ride in August.)

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Actually, gravity is WITH you. Going up stairs, you are fighting gravity.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

So there's a degree of faith involved- faith that the step you aren't looking at will actually be there to receive your foot.

I hadn't thought of this, but the child who is taking his or her first steps in the material world is still aquiring that faith.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

With you, but not necessarily your friend. :)

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

No. I'm not sure anyone our age who has a mirror still believes that gravity is their friend!

I don't really think of it as a matter of faith, more a matter of judging distance accurately and understanding what that means in terms of movement. It's a complex calculation, for sure.

One of the things I really like about Pilates is that it plays with gravity. You do the same movement orthogonal to gravity and parallel to gravity, and it feels completely different.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Whoops, I addressed the faith question above. I think of it as the child who is taking his or her first steps is still learning how to make those calculations.:) (Which goes back to the beginner mind discussion above.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

For the adult it's about calculating distance.

But the child is still developing the tools to calculate distance. Everything about the material world is a mystery to him- and that's why I jumped at the word "faith".

Of course the child is neither scientist nor theologian...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Here's something else that happened yesterday. We were walking down the back yard and Fabrizio halted in from of a large clump of grass and wouldn't go past it. He didn't know what it was, whether it was animate or inanimate, friend or foe- he just saw it came up to his waist and that it had blades- and decided he wasn't taking any risks.