LMA Approach to Walking (Patreon)

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So far, we've covered breathing, seeing, easing, and tempo. The next movement theory and practice is walking.

Priming was the count-in for our moving and breathing. Now, we will express this tempo through the consistent swaying of our legs and arms: walking.

In the video, I'm walking and breathing with intention. I use a metronome as a guide to decrease conscious effort. A lot is happening here that needs unpacking.

LMA walking

Walking sets the movement and tempo for the rest of training. In fact, everything else we do is modified walking. Regardless of how spirited our training and sparring games become, it's always rooted in our walking tempo, momentum, and inertia.

As you begin walking and moving through space, feel your connection with the ground. In physical terms, connection is your body's attachment to a surface—in this case, the ground. Rooting is a deep and firm connection for support.

Surface contact is a broader way to think about ground connection. It's the connection between two surfaces. Even when two objects touch, only a certain portion of their surface areas will be in contact with each other. A surface contact describes the connection between parallel surfaces. In LMA, we call this a seal. Surface contact and feeling what that feels like in the body is important because, later on, you will also be connecting with other people.

Base of support is the ground surface supporting your body. It's your points of contact with the ground surface and everything in between. A chair's base of support is the four legs and the area in between. If you're standing evenly, it's the length of your feet from front to back, the width of the outside edges of your feet, and the area in between. If you stand staggered, it's the length between the lead foot and rear foot, the width between them, and everything in between. The longer and wider apart your feet are the more base of support. The closer your feet are, the less base of support.

Friction is the resisting force between two surfaces. The ground surface resists against you; otherwise, you'd sink or slide. The more surface contact, the more friction.

Movement is support and balance

Walking is not an act of power; it's an act of balance. Unlike a jump, where you push into the ground, and the ground reaction force pushes you into the air, walking is an inverted pendulum movement in which the body vaults over the stiff limb with each step. You connect, post, balance, lean your body over the base of support, and the other leg acts as a post to catch you as you fall. Scientists understand walking as "controlled falling."

Swaying is a rhythmical, smooth, and extended back-and-forth movement pattern. In LMA, rather than controlled falls, walking is a smooth series of falls where your legs, body, and arms sway in rhythm.

Swinging is pronounced swaying that can be abrupt, uneven, and arrhythmic. Rather than a repeated series of movements, it can be a single movement. Swinging is swaying with added force.

As you breathe and walk, connect to your relative tempo (timing) or your preferred pace. Your relative tempo is tempo relative to you. It requires less cognitive resources to maintain because it's natural. It also consumes the least amount of energy.

When you walk with someone faster or slower than you, you can keep pace with them, but it takes conscious effort and energy because you're deviating from your default. You are most at ease when you go at your pace. If you work out or play at someone else's relative tempo, you can quickly burn out. By attuning to your own tempo and learning to maintain it throughout an activity, you'll maximize your energy efficiency and movement. (This is why a metronome can be useful.)

Acceleration is the rate of speed change. Momentum is the force of your body in motion. Inertia is the tendency for a body in motion to stay in motion or a body at rest to stay at rest.

There's an acceleration period during walking until you find your relative tempo. The force of your forward movement is your momentum. Inertia is the quality of staying in motion. It's why once you start moving, it's easy to stay moving. Getting things done is easier when you're already up. Once you stop, you lose your inertia. Once you're at rest, it's easiest to stay at rest. Moving again means consuming a lot of physical and mental resources.

Phase transitions occur when a system undergoes a change of state. The sharper the transition, the more energy it consumes. Warm-ups are critical for competition or spirited training because it's easier to transition from movement to faster movement. Going from sleeping to being abruptly woken up is an unhealthy and sometimes dangerous shock to your system.

Sitting to running is a much harder transition than walking to running. After a run, it makes sense to walk for a while because it's less shocking and stressful than completely stopping. Many athletes stay standing during rest periods because of the cost of phase transitions. However, depending on your level of fatigue, you might not have the energy to remain standing. If your heart rate is too elevated, sitting down makes sense.

Kinetic linking

Kinetic linking is when momentum from one part of the body transfers to adjacent parts, creating a domino effect. By walking and swaying our legs, we transfer energy to our arms, causing them to also sway. You don't need to sway your arms to walk, but it costs energy to keep them still. The cause for not swaying your arms might be neurological, where energy is being leaked, and you can no longer naturally coordinate kinetic timing. The other reason might be tension where energy is being blocked. Tension halts kinetic linking and efficient movement. Energy blockage or tension leads to pain and injury because it's absorbing all that energy rather than distributing it.

Kinetic linking is not something you can see; it can only be felt. Your eyes aren't connected to a CCTV camera that's surveilling you; they're pointed at your environment, and your perspective is first-person. Kinetic linking begins with feeling the weight of your limbs and body as they move through space and connect with the ground.

Everything I've described so far happens quickly in a walk. The rest of the walk involves feeling the kinetic link transmitting energy from the ground through your body to your limbs. Nothing gets wasted. Priming helps us transmit smoothly. Kinetic linking should not only be smooth but also feel smooth.

Smooth means ease and timing, which goes back to relative tempo. Through walking, you find your timing. Once your arms sway, it costs less energy for your legs to sway. It's a bidirectional domino effect. Leg sway leads to body sway leads to arm sway leads to body sway leads to leg sway. As long as there is no break or interruption in the kinetic link or with inertia, the domino effect keeps the momentum going.

The invisible magic is the timing of events and easing the doors for energy flow. It's all done unconsciously. Rather than forcing the energy flow, you're trying to feel it and get out of its way. This is the elegance of efficiency.

Describing my walk

Depending on how I feel going into the walk, it might take a minute to loosen up and feel at ease. As my legs and arms sway, my trunk rotates for free. I accentuate my trunk rotation and the swaying of my arms, leading to arm swing. I rely mostly on the weight of my hands and let my arms extend with minimal energy. If you're wearing gloves, the weight of the gloves will do most of the work. Likewise with kicks, let the weight of your legs or equipment do much of the work.

Much of my movements will be driven by kinetic linking, energy efficiency, and free-riding the weight of my limbs. The LMA approach to movement means conserving energy, steadying your gaze and breath, maintaining inertia and relative tempo, and avoiding sharp phase transitions. Allow your walk to guide your other movements.

The starting LMA walk goes from walking to walking with arm extensions. Swinging your arms will balance and aid the swinging of your legs. LMA walking helps build that intuition.

How leg movement leads to arm movement and vice versa

Next, I demonstrate the air squat as another example of kinetic linking. The motion of my legs drives my arms, and the motion of my arms drives my legs. Less energy is consumed.

Whenever you're on your feet, you're balancing. The swaying or swinging of your arms helps you balance.

I then add a jump. My arm swing is not only a byproduct of the jump but also provides stability and saves energy. Swinging my arms down drives my hip forward, and swinging my arms forward drives my hips back.

During marching, my arm swing helps me balance. Losing balance costs energy and safety.

Lack of kinetic linking

Then I squat where my arms swing in the opposite direction as before. This requires more energy and costs stability. However, kinetic linking can still be applied, just without the same efficiency. This is more about deliberate arm swing rather than the arms getting a free ride. You often see this when interacting with an object, like during a kettlebell swing, where you're moving around an object rather than moving freely.

I next incorporate a jump, which focuses less on energy efficiency or stability and more on utilizing the arms and interacting with an object, such as shooting or catching a ball or jumping onto a box.

I then march with ipsilateral arm swings, which cause more tension and energy consumption. I'm unstable because I'm balancing on one side with no counterbalance. Staying on my feet takes work. Some people might do this as they deliberately think about arm swing rather than syncing their arms with their legs. In other words, they're so focused on their arms that they're swinging them in isolation from their legs. Being in sync is not something you can see, you have to develop a feel for it. It's not about telling your body what to do but listening to what it's telling you.

Natural kinetic linking

When you stumble forward, your arms will swing to maintain your balance.

When you run, your arms swing to keep you running straight and efficiently. If your arms swing ipsilaterally, you'll be pulled from side to side, increasing injury risk.

When you crisscross laterally, the rotational momentum will swing your arms and help you balance, mimicking the arm swing of a kick. If your upper torso doesn't rotate, you will either lose your balance or stop rotating your hips at the cost of your knees.

Swaying in action

You might already notice this with pro fighters. They use swaying to maintain inertia, relative tempo, and store energy for kinetic linking, often resembling a metronome in their movements.

In Liberation Martial Arts, movements begin with the walk. The transition from walking to sparring games is smooth rather than abrupt because it's all wayfinding, which entails smooth and efficient navigation of space.

– Sam