Category: BIOMECH Breakdown

Today’s BB is not about the KO that McDonald laid on Torres, despite it’s awesomeness…

I was watching the fights with my buddy Dan at a pub on the Danforth (Greek town in Toronto) and I was pretty pumped about the Torres/McDonald bout.

McDonald is a young fireball with a ton of potential and it looks like he’s about to go on a roller coaster as opposed to go into a fight – he’s always having a good time.

Anyway, study this for a moment then we’ll continue:

After looking at it what do you note?

Other than the age difference, the 6″ reach advantage that Torres has over McDonald is a big deal, especially since they’re the same height.

Now, check out this still image from their fight:

What do you notice?

OK, here’s what I see…

Miguel has an extremely exaggerated kyphotic (rounded) thoracic spine and forward head. It’s almost as if he doesn’t have a neck.

I call this the turtle posture for obvious reasons…

Compare this to McDonald, who many might say stands pretty straight up.

The turtle posture has a few benefits – such as making your body a smaller target and it helps you keep your chin tucked down.

But it also has some major drawbacks, such as moving your head and chin a bit closer towards your opponent. This totally negates Torres’ significant 6″ reach advantage in this fight. His chin is 2-3″ closer to McDonald compared to if he didn’t have forward head posture. This probably contributed to McDonald landing the big uppercut punch that lead to the KO.

I first made a note of this when watching Pacquiao vs. Margarito. Pacquiao gave up 4.5″ in height and 6″ in reach, but Margarito’s forward head posture helped Manny reach him a lot easier than if he’d stayed tall and used his range. Here’s pic showing you what I mean, look at the rounding in Margarito’s back:

When you’re in turtle posture, your abdominals (specifically rectus abdominis and external obliques) are contracted to bring your rib cage down and round you forward.

When they’re in this shortened position, they’re not as strong as when they’re in neutral position, thus, you can’t generate as much force form your core for your punches.

The other thing when you’re in turtle posture is that you’re basically in the worst possible posture for shoulder and neck health.

Excessive thoracic kyphosis and forward head are a part of something called Upper Cross syndrome, which I talk about and give you solutions for in my Ultimate MMA S&C Program. I also talked about this in the free INDESTRUCTIBLE Shoulder Injury guide.

The bottom line is that being in this posture not only makes you look like an old man, but it makes shoulder and neck problems very likely.

In fact, I just received this email from Chris, an amateur mixed martial artist who wants to have a pro fight:

First of all, from my vantage point of not knowing the extent of the degeneration, not having assessed you fully in person and I don’t know what your pain is like, I can’t say for certain. All I can do is talk in general terms, which may help if you apply them.

To my knowledge, you can’t really reverse disc degeneration. But you don’t necessarily need to. In fact, most people above the age of 30 have discs that would be classified as ‘degenerated’, yet are symptom free.

And it’s not really a disease, but a process that occurs naturally with age and is sped up through excessive stress on the discs when they’re in bad posture, like forward head.

The key thing is minimizing the stresses on the discs that are causing pain. You’ve obviously been paying attention since you’re  doing some things that will help, namely working your pull muscles more and stretching your chest, lats and neck. Thoracic spine mobilizations are also important. The chin tuck stretch I show you in the Shoulder guide is HUGE.

But you’re probably going to have to adapt your fighting style and training to minimize the stress on the neck by keeping the neck in neutral posture – that means no more turtle posture.

That means asking your training partners not to crank your neck, or rip you around the ring with a Thai clinch. Basically anything that really aggravates is out. You’ve got to remove all of these things for healing to occur, then only do them if they don’t aggravate you further.

You also might have to change your fighting stance to stand more upright. If you think this isn’t possible or is dangerous, just look at guys like Anderson Silva, GSP and Machida to realize that you can excel without the turtle posture. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, standing a little taller will help you generate more power with your hands because your abs are in a better position for generating force.

This is one of the hardest things for guys to do – change up their old, ingrained habits. But this situation might necessitate it – not everyone’s body can handle the torture that turtle posture wreaks on it.

Some more things to do include various yoga postures such as the bow pose that I show you in the video below (bow pose @ 5:59):

Yoga postures like this one are a part of my 3D Flexibility model, because they affect part the fascia component of soft tissue.

A fascinating book detailing fascia and its anatomy and functions in the body is Anatomy Trains by Tom Myers. The basic premise is that the fascia, which is the saran-wrap like cover over our muscles, runs from head to toe and there are various fascial lines, or trains.

Somehow, thousands of years ago, some Indian guy started moving his body into weird looking postures that just happen to specifically target these fascial lines.

An example is how the bow pose I show you above hits what Tom Myers calls the Superficial Front Line.

There are a ton of different postures in yoga and the best bet is to figure out what feels like it’s working well for you.

The only way to do that is to try out a bunch of different postures.

And here’s where I”m going to reveal what I’ve got planned for those who want to start working on their kick height right now.

*********** BIG ANNOUNCEMENT **********

I’ve decided to start a small group coaching program where over the next 4 weeks, I direct you to what you need to do to kick higher with more power.

It’s based on my 3D Flexibility model of addressing the 3 main factors of flexibility: soft tissue, neuromuscular and strength. 

I’m also all about value and making sure you get MORE than what you paid for.

I could easily charge $97 for this, but here’s what I’m going to do (this is ridiculous and I should kick my own ass for doing this)…

There are 3 steps to joining the VIP High Kick Coaching program:

Step 1 – Pickup the yoga program here (I even negotiated a discount for you)

Step 2 – Enter your invoice # on this page to verify that you picked up the program. 

Step 3 – Wait for the 1st email from me that will come Monday, April 30, 2012 to kick off the coaching program. 

Grabbing the yoga program here not only gives you your ticket to my VIP coaching program, but it also gives you a wealth of yoga moves that you can go through to determine where you may be limited by your fascia.

I’ll also be directing you to perform specific stretches from the program as part of the VIP coaching program.

PLUS – when I launch the 3D Flexibility program in a couple of months, you’ll get a discount equal to the value of the Yoga program! So it’s basically like getting the Yoga program and my coaching for FREE (if you’re planning on getting the 3D Flexibility program when I launch it).

Space is limited and the deadline for signing up is Thursday at midnight, so follow the instructions above and get in now!

Can’t wait to start coaching you to higher and more powerful kicks!

– Eric