Part 2 of 2
Your legs can either wind inward or wind outward. This is true of your foot too, where you can press more towards the inside or the outside of your foot. This action in the foot can be linked to and used to generate a similar twisting or rotating action of the muscles in the calves and in the thighs. These movements are more subtle and harder to see externally than shifting your weight, turning your hips, or stepping. Learning how to not only properly contact the ground with your feet and grip it, but also how to use the twisting power generated in your feet to initiate further twisting and coiling in the calf and thigh shows a dramatic increase in skill.
Doing this you create a link of coiled joints and muscles. With practice it feels as if your muscles wind around your bones a little either inward or outward as required. In any stance one leg can coil inward or outward depending on the rest of the movement and how and where power is generated. These winding and coiling movements are how you are developing power, so it is worthwhile to learn to tune into this level of awareness of your functional anatomy and movement. Having coiled your body like a snake or tiger waiting to strike you can then suddenly release this coiled force from all the joints and muscles simultaneously. The center of your body moves extremely forcefully and every joint and muscle contributes in generating force. This is terrific for learning how to have strong short power. Short power means striking forcefully with little or no wind up in a short or close space.
When you are exploring coiling or winding your legs it is easy to over do how much tension or strength is required. Since our goal is the sudden, explosive release of power we don’t want to lock our joints by over tightening our muscles. Instead focus on your body awareness and seek to explore how to sequence the interactions of the different parts of your body in both coiling and releasing.
The other thing to think about is over coiling. Avoid over closing or completely shutting your joints. Avoid grinding and pressurizing your joints and tendons. Keep your joints buoyant and expanded and resilient. Do not close any joint 100%. You won’t achieve more power by doing this. Instead, your put wear and tear on your joint. Only wind coil or compress to 80% or even 70%. Practice how you wind and learn how to sequence in which order and how much you coil your joints during your winding or coiling and during releasing. The coiling and releasing should both begin in your feet and work sequentially in terms of control, but nearly simultaneously in terms in of time, flowing upward and outward to your fingertips.