Talk:Activities - Muscle Actions

From SenseThinkAct

ACT - questions on exercises categories

I have noticed that not many links or books reflect the fairly logical and elemental sets of muscle action used in STA - lying down, sitting, standing, walking, running (plus manual dexterity and the oral act of eating - mastication). Why? I think it is probably because the exercise of muscle action is almost always an integrated affair as in any skilled manual job or sport. However these integrated applicatons of muscle action may have elemental breakdowns in their training programmes or warm ups.

In the Tai Chi classes taught to me by Gordo (also the webmaster of this and other Mediawikis) the warm up is a systematic use of muscle groups that gird the body in the standing position i.e.

• Arm swings vertical - arms raised forward and allowed to swing down with an effect, amongst several, of loosening the shoulders.

• Arm swings horizontal - more correctly waist turns accompanied by arm swings

Having started with arms and centre we then we start at the top and work down...

• Head circular rolls - loosening the neck muscles

• Shoulder circles to front and then to back

• Hip Rotations in both directions - loosening spine and working internal muscles effecting posture

• Knee rotations in both directions Loosening knee and ankle ligaments.

• The warm-up then continues to completion with a series of more integrated Tai Do exercises

So here is another possible act sequence - neck, shoulders, (arms & waist), hips, knees & ankles - that follows the main joint groups down the body from top to toe. (By the way each of these exercises has distinct therapeutic value relieving headaches, stomach disorders, backache and weak knees, amongst other things). As muscles can only articulate their power through joints this is another approach to ordering our elemental thinking about muscle action.

So in summary we could order act exercises elementally by action type or by joint group. A third ordering might be by a consideration of an elemental range of skill applications from throwing a ball to typing. Szczels 09:39, 29 Apr 2005 (GMT)