It’s been a while since I posted a video in my Movement of the Week series. Perhaps I should call this the “Movement of Indeterminate Time Frame.” Anyway the featured movement in this post is a very cool slow motion video of a vicious soccer shot.
I found this after Clifton Tarski commented on my “Best Athlete in the World” series. He argued that soccer players should not be deemed to be athletically superior to basketball players because they do not need to use their arms. Perhaps a fair point, but I replied that the arms of a soccer player need to do a lot of coordinated work to counterbalance to the activities of the legs. I thought the video below was a very interesting and awesome example of that.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to embed the video in this post, but if you click the link below, a separate window will open and you can watch it there. Then click back over here for my comments.
Awesome slow motion soccer kick video
There are many features of phenomenal movement demonstrated here but the one that caught my eye and that I wanted to talk about was the use of the arms to counterbalance the legs.
Watch the video again and compare the movements of the left arm to the right kicking leg. You will notice that there is a marvelous reciprocity there. As the right leg and left arm trace graceful circular arcs through the air, they are almost always parallel to one another.
Watch again and pick any one point in time, and compare the left hand to the right foot, the left forearm to the right lower leg, the left upper arm to the right thigh. They are almost always like mirror images of one another in their positioning relative to the other body parts. And the left hand and right foot are almost always equidistant from the center of gravity. On the follow through, note how the left hand and right foot slowly lower to the ground at the same pace. And then watch the video again and note similar patterns of counterbalance and reciprocity between the left stance leg and right arm. Totally cool.
When someone does something absolutely perfectly you can learn a lot about basic principles of good movement by watching. Especially in slow mo. Viva la youtube! (But c’mon man I need to embed!)
Beautiful. I love these sorts of things. Biomechanics is amazing. I’m also a fan of slo-mo pictures of cats jumping five times their height.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhVDFEW5348 This goal by Roberto Carlos is one of the most athletic displays I have ever seen. That being said, I think Anderson Silva is up there as one of the most athletic people alive today.
Great work as always Todd.
Hi Michael,
It was hard to write my best athlete series without resorting to that vid of Roberto. Anderson Silva is truly amazing. But MMA is a small pool. I would have to guess that if I mined the world of rugby, soccer and football I could find a few guys who could be trained up to his level in a year or two of practice. In fact, isn’t Jon Jones an example of that?
Todd,
I would like your thoughts on this, which is relevant to your post here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_KG-dwWvc0
I apologize that it is in Japanese, which isn’t terribly helpful. But the jist of it is that Kono claims that Japanese used to move without counterbalance or reciprocity betwen their arms and legs but rather with right arm and right leg, then left arm and left leg in conjunction. His claim is that this is easier and less tiring to the body, more efficient, and generates more power.
In the West (and in the East) people move, seemingly naturally with reciprocity, but that could be because of social modeling. Regardless, what do you think of the type of movement displayed here and of its value or lack of value?
Thanks for your input. If you want you can email me directly @ portus2010@gmail.com.
Hi Dean,
Thanks for the vid. Is this guy recommending that homolateral movement is more efficient than contralateral movement for gait? This claim is contrary to a massive amount of evidence. Try walking homolaterally yourself and then speed up and you will see that you must start to move contralaterally. This is not because of social conditioning but because of simple mechanics. Every runner and athlete and minimally functional human in the world uses contralateral not homolateral movements for walking and running. Now that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn something useful by regressing to a more primitive homolateral pattern once in a while. But we should understand that it is a regression not a progression. Like crawling compared to walking.
Thanks, Todd. This is a great blog. I wish there were Feldenkris in the Fort Wayne, Indiana area.