Transcription
Now, I mentioned silk reeling, and just briefly, what silk reeling is, is it's an energy and Tai Chi, basically, that dictates a specific way of moving your body. And that way of moving your body is about spiraling down through the legs and spiraling out through the upper body. And the way that this can be done in Tai Chi, where it makes it more dangerous for the knees, is again, when that spiraling is focused at the knee, and it twists the knee into a position that's not safe for the knee. So it's very similar to what we've talked about before. And the fix for it is the same as what we've talked about before: maintain the knee alignment. And when you twist through the body, your hips are where the twisting happens for the lower legs, not the knees. And your torso is where that coiling is translated to the upper body, but it's never through the knees.
So I'll give you an example of that. We're going to do just a basic silk reeling exercise here. What can happen is this twist that goes through the legs. So this leg is supposed to twist this way. That's the closing leg. This is the opening leg if I'm going that way. So the lower body is doing this, the upper body is doing that. It's opposite directions, and that's what gives you your coiling motion through the body. All the movements coming from the lower down, Dan Tien, as you're doing this. I'll do it without the arms first here. Knee alignment stays the same. Knee alignment stays the same. Hip closes, hip opens. So it's this, and you twist through the torso. That's where your motion comes from here.
Now, what can happen is overdoing that twist through the legs, twist through the torso. So what happens is this knee buckles, this knee pushes out too far. So this kind of a thing can happen. Or if you're not doing it correctly, and this leg is pushing out this way as you're coming across, instead of closing, it's opening. Now you're putting strain on the outside of your knee, and you're pushing your knee from an aligned spot out here, where it's no longer supported by the structure of the leg. So ideally, when you come to the right, your right leg closes, your left leg opens. Your knees stay aligned. When you come back, the opposite happens. The left leg closes, the right leg opens, but the knees stay aligned. There's no pushing this way, there's no pushing that way. Alignment stays the same. You twist, twist. So when I'm going to the left, left leg closes, right leg opens, twist to the left. Come back across, right leg closes, left leg opens, twist, sink back, open.
So again, make sure any twisting, I know I've said this many times before, but make sure any twisting that's going through the legs as part of your silk reeling is not twisting at the knee. It's opening and closing at the hips.
The next thing that I want to discuss is where your weight is distributed on your feet is going to affect how safe your stance is for your knees. This is something that I spend a lot of time talking about again in the rooting fundamentals and footwork videos. So I would highly recommend you go check those videos out for more details on this. I'm going to cover it briefly here, but hopefully this will help. If you watch this in combination with those videos, it will help you understand those videos a little better.
So we're going to start by looking at a false step here. Now, what we're focused on here is this rooted leg. What's happening with that leg when you're standing? This is a model of a person's foot. Your weight should be directed directly below the shin bones, so coming straight down through here. This is where your weight is focused. Your weight's evenly spread on the bottom of the feet, but this is where the weight's centered. So if I shift my weight forward over the toe or the ball of the foot, then even though if the weight's even across the bottom of the feet, the weight is centered over this point. That's not ideal. You want to shift it back so that it's centered directly below the shin bones into the ground. You can think of expansion from the lower Dan Tien going all the way down the legs and extending into the floor there, straight through that spot.
So why is centering your weight over that spot important? Well, this is what we're going to talk about with this false step. What I would like you to do is get into a false step. And the first thing that I want you to do once you're in this step is to shift your weight forward toward the ball of the foot and toward the toes, and see what that does to the tension around your knee. Now, if you have knee problems, or if you're just worried about hurting your knee, or if you just don't want to try this, um, it's not a big deal if you don't try it because this is not a super safe thing to do for your knee. But unfortunately, it is something that is taught a lot in Tai Chi circles is to put your weight over the ball of the foot. And when you do that, it increases the tension and the strain on the front of your knee. It also puts your weight forward in a way where your toes have to grip the ground, and you're less stable. There's a lot of tension that builds up through the front of the leg.
Now, if you let go of that, shift your weight back so it's directly below the shin bones, or right in front of the heel on the bottom of the foot, what you notice is that tension relaxes out of the knee, and more of the leg can support this, instead of just the front locking up. So that leaves you open to more movement possibilities, but it also releases a lot of tension from the knee. So when you're in any stance, especially if you're standing on one foot, you want to make sure, of course, the knee is aligned with the toe. But then also your weight distribution is focused over the right part of the foot. If it's too far forward, that puts too much strain on your knee. And if you can shift that back and sit into that stance, then it helps the knee be safer in that posture.
And this is similar to what we were talking about in the 4-6 stance. So say I just did Pung and I'm shifting back into Lu into my 4-6 stance here. It's the same thing. I'm pushing that force straight down in front of the heel at the bottom of my foot. If I shift it forward to the ball of my foot, then tension builds up all through my knee and through my quads. Everything locks up, and it makes it more difficult to move, but it also makes it less safe for my knee. So even in this stance, a change of this, so I went from weight shifted to the ball of the foot to weight shifted to right in front of the heel. This is a stable stance. This is safe for my knee. This is not. What this does is it drives the force straight down this way to an area where there's no support. So this is just supporting my body weight over space, over nothing. If I push that back, then the function of the leg is more like pushing this way, and the leg is really strong at pushing that way. It's not so strong as supporting the whole body weight with an attempted extension through the knee, which is essentially what's going on here.
So you could think about it this way. When I have the weight on the ball of the foot, and my weight is dropping straight down through the knee into the floor, what's holding me up here is basically my knee extensors. So the muscles that are keeping me up right there are the muscles that are involved in just this motion, right? Just the extension of the knee. That's basically what's going on. If I'm here and my leg is tensed up here, what I'm really doing is pushing my leg like this into the floor to keep my body upright. If I shift that weight back and I put it right in front of the heel, what I'm doing is I'm pushing into the floor. So essentially, what my leg is doing is extending this way into the floor. That's the muscles that are engaged. And notice how many more muscle groups are involved in this than are involved in this. So extension of the knee basically hits the quads. Pushing down or extending the hip and the knee at the same time, this kind of motion involves a lot more muscle groups that can move in a way that's much safer for the knee.
I know that in Tai Chi, we're supposed to use intention and not muscular force, and that is a saying that's really also misunderstood in Tai Chi training. So I'll be making some videos to explain that a little bit more. But if we're just looking at the mechanics of this movement, what we're wanting to do is engage more muscles to stabilize all the joints in this without engaging just a few in a way that has to lock up. Because what we want to do in Tai Chi is when I shift back, I need, I need my joints able to move, but well supported. So I don't want to come back in a way that locks things up, because then I'm easy to take off balance. So if you put all your body weight on just a few muscles, those muscles have to really contract hard and hold on tight to make sure you can maintain your structure. If you spread that out over a larger group of muscles, what can happen is they can activate in a less intense way, which gives you more options for movement instead of being locked with just a small group of muscles.
So those are some of the main things that put people's knees at risk when they're practicing Tai Chi. So we're going to go through a quick recap. The first thing, make sure your knee stays aligned over the toe. Don't push the knee out to the side. Don't push the knee in. Either of those is bad for the knee. Always keep it aligned. When you twist the body or when you turn the leg, it doesn't matter if it's the leg that's turning on its own or the leg staying stationary and the body is what's turning, the knee stays in alignment with the foot, and it's the hip where the opening and closing happens. Make sure that your weight is shifted back so it's directly below the shin bones, right in front of the heel, so that you can direct your force down into the ground through the whole leg. When you're standing on one leg, or even if you're using both legs, both legs should be directed down into the ground in that same way so that stability can be maintained and that the knees are going to be safe in that. If you shift it forward to the toes, you risk locking up the quads, which is going to decrease your options for movement. It's going to lock you in place, and it's also going to add a lot of strain to the front of your knees.
The last thing I'm going to show you is something that you can do if you do tweak your knees while you're training. If you make it an absolute, unnegotiable habit that you are going to move your knees safely as you go through your training, it's really unlikely that you'll tweak your knees. That your knees will feel bad after training. The correct movement should make you feel better afterwards and not make you feel worse. But nobody's perfect in their movements, and especially in the beginning, it's easy for things to happen unintentionally and for knees to be tweaked slightly. And this is something that I learned while training Tai Chi that can be very helpful for your knees, and really for any joint in the body, if you use this type of exercise after you've tweaked something.
Before I show it to you, I do want to make sure that you understand, I am not a doctor. I'm not a healthcare professional. And this is something that I was shown, but I'm not showing it to you as something that you should do to treat or prevent any sort of illness or injury. This is basically for your information only. So what I learned, if you tweak a joint, whether that's elbow, knee, ankle, any of them, we're focusing on the knee in this video, so we'll, uh, just continue with focusing on the knees here. What you do is, if you tweak the knee, what you're going to do is take all the weight off of that leg, and you're going to extend down through the leg. So the idea is, it's like you're pushing something from the inside, from your lower belly, all the way down the leg. And as it's doing that, it's stretching the leg and making the leg tight and tense and taut as it's going through. It's like you're trying to reach all the way through the end of your foot, often to infinity. And so your leg is going to be very tense all the way around the knee, all the way around the leg, and you're just extending out. So you can either point the toes forward and reach out through the tips of the toes, or you can push out through the bottom of the foot. Either way is fine, but you push out, you lengthen the leg as much as possible, and you continue that intention of pushing out. The leg is tight, the muscles are tight, everything's locked, and you're pushing, pushing, pushing, and then you relax, shake it out a little, and you do the same thing. So you can go through the toes, reaching out, pushing, extending, extending, and relax. Or you can go through the bottom of the foot, push, extend, extend through the leg, lengthen the leg, imagine that your leg is growing as you're pushing through it, and then you relax. And you can do that a few times, and typically that will help your knee or whatever joint was tweaked while you were training, kind of relax and feel better afterwards.
The important thing to remember with this is that you're extending down through the leg. You're pushing through the leg this way. You're not extending the knee and locking the knee out as you do this, like you're trying to extend the knee and shorten this angle. It's not this, it's that.
I hope you found this information really helpful. I hope it really helps you protect your knees as you're practicing Tai Chi. If you have any questions about this topic, or if there's something that you've noticed people doing a lot in their Tai Chi training that's putting their knees at risk that I didn't cover in this video, please put it in the comments below. If you did enjoy this video and got something out of it, please like the video, subscribe to my channel, and also consider becoming a supporting member of this channel to help ensure more videos like this will be made available in the future. There's a link to becoming a supporting member down in the video description. Stay safe and healthy out there, and as always, thank you for watching.