The
Iaido Journal May 2005
Aikido and Pilates Part 1
copyright © 2005 Janet Rosen, all rights reserved
Do aikido and Pilates complement each other? A middle-aged budobabe
with a chronic knee injury reports from two months into a Pilates rehab
program.
Introduction
My journey as a middle aged aikido student has not been a linear
progression: a severe knee injury, surgery and rehab, and changing
dojos a couple of times have taken my body off the mats for periods of
time, but have never diminished my love of the art and my commitment to
training.
In my ninth year of training in aikido, beginning to look towards my
first kyu test, a couple of minor knee reinjuries were a clear wake-up
call that “continuing as usual” was not an option. It seemed that
posture, body mechanics, soft tissue problems (muscle, fascia,
tendons), and various weaknesses and tensions were all contributing to
the problem, but I couldn’t figure out who to call for help.
My orthopedist only knows scoping and cutting. After two knee
procedures, I trusted his abilities to do those things quite well, but
doubted that a third procedure would be the solution to my
problems.
A physical therapist might evaluate my muscle strength and teach me
some new exercises and stretches, but I didn’t know how to find one who
could really evaluate my body use and work with me on structural
changes.
I had done some Feldenkrais http://www.feldenkrais-resources.com/backgroundinfo.htm
many years ago for a chronic neck problem, and had not found it very
helpful: it told me where my range of motion collided with my pain, but
not what to do about it.
The bodywork that I have found most helpful over the years is
myofascial trigger point therapy http://www.myofascialtherapy.org/
. It assesses posture, range of motion, and pain patterns to identify
muscles that are chronically holding tension, unable to either fully
contract or fully stretch. Unfortunately, my therapist has emigrated!
But we are in email contact. Will had always suggested that Pilates http://www.pilatesfoundation.com/whatis.php
would be a useful bridge between his work and my aikido, and as soon as
I described my situation, he referred me to a local Pilates rehab
specialist.
These are the issues I presented:
®) knee: 2000 acl allograft
http://www.jointhealing.com/pages/knee/acl1.html and medial meniscus
partial removal http://www.jointhealing.com/pages/knee/meniscus.html
I’ve had problems with the joint being a little loose, and in the
past year have had a couple of small reinjuries of the meniscus with
pain and swelling that took my off the mat. Long walks were enough to
give me pain across the tibial plateau. My right quads http://www.round-earth.com/kneepain-quadriceps.html
are chronically tight as a result of years of knee protectiveness.
Aikido training is effected, despite avoidance of specific techniques,
in that large lateral movements (sweeping tenkans, being moved quickly
around my partner) create pain and have the potential to reinjure the
meniscus quite severely.
A long-term, intermittent problem that can arise hours after training:
the left inner thigh goes into incredibly painful tetany/spasms. I’ve
never been able to tell if it was adductors or medial hamstrings. http://www.fitstep.com/Advanced/Anatomy/Hamstrings.htm
It does seem to be related to occasional carpopedal spasms,
arch/plantar fascia problems, and a chronic (L) hamstring tightness not
abated by stretching.
Getting Started
The rehab started with evaluation and neuromuscular re-education, in
order to start correcting problems before jumping into Pilates
exercises. This included hands-on work, which is exactly the kind of
myofascial trigger point work and proprioceptive neuromuscular
facilitation that I have found so effective for me in the past. I was
also taught how to work on my trigger points at home using a rubber
ball and a foam roller.
The evaluation of my gait and posture picked up some old problems I
hadn’t mentioned. While the knee injury is on the right, my left side
was tight, carrying most of my weight, and working harder than it needs
to. My upper body spiraled to the right. On walking, my right leg moved
normally, but my left leg stepped forward prematurely, not waiting for
my center to move. The left iliotibial band along my outer thigh http://www.rice.edu/~jenky/sports/itband.v2.html
was so tight that I used my low back to initiate leg-raising. Direct
work on the trigger points there felt like my femur was going to
fracture! Thanks to lots of aikido training, I pretended it was a
weirdly located nikkyo and just relaxed and breathed deeply into it.
In the days after the first session, I noted some new pain and
tightness patterns, and the pain in my right tibial plateau was a lot
more bothersome. I wondered if perhaps many abnormal holding patterns
on both sides of the body are knee-protective; if so, will there be a
transition phase during which I’ll be more, rather than less,
vulnerable to knee injury early on this rehab process?
On my second session, my left leg still worked too much. When I walked,
it moved forward before my center did. We did a variety of techniques
to address this:
I was taught a basic precept of Pilates: going into a “neutral spine”
posture by engaging the deep abdominals and -- in my case -- allowing
the upper sacrum to relax towards the navel. My chronically tight left
hamstrings have for years been pulling the pelvis in a way that
flattens the lumbar curve, and correcting this will be a critical part
of the rehab process. http://www.spineuniversity.com/public/print.asp?id=85
Other techniques are breathing and, by mental focus, slowly opening the
psoas http://www.fitstep.com/Advanced/Anatomy/Hip_flexors.htm
and subtly moving sacrum, pelvis and hips in a process that is like a
one person version of craniosacral “unwinding.”
Finally, I stood with the small rubber ball under one heel, balancing
on the heel and on the lateral and medial wide parts of the foot. I
made sure I was in neutral posture, and lifted my other foot off the
floor, for an exercise to promote vertical alignment. At the end of the
session, my right leg was finally under my center when walking, though
it still struck the floor harder and flatter than the right.
During the next few days, the right knee was very sore and the left
hamstrings very tight and sore. I continued to do at-home trigger point
therapy and exercises. At the dojo, two days after the second session,
I sat out 10 minutes during first one- hour basics class and then
bowed out just about an hour into advanced class. This is the best I’d
done in a month. It was not a feeling of improvement in aikido per se,
but my body seemed to be moving better. Overall I felt more balanced
and integrated, and walking much more over-the-feet, despite the
left hamstrings and the right knee still being more painful then
baseline.
At the third session, we continued with a lot of pressure point work on
the iliotibial band and stretching of hips, butt, and hamstrings. The
“clam” was added to the regimen; this sidelying exercise engages the
abdominal core and pelvis, then raises the knee of uppermost leg via
spiraling from the inner thigh (not engaging the hip to pull it). The
more work I did, the less correct it was. The focus was on grounding
and extending. This is the first time parallels with aikido struck me.
Changes, Good and Bad
Again, in the days that followed, there was some soreness and
tightness, but it was abating and the at-home program provided relief.
The next time at the dojo, I trained in both beginning and advanced
class, only sitting out during a short koshinage loading session. My
knee was barely aching, incredibly minimal. Over the next couple of
weeks, my ability to stay on the mat improved, attributable not to any
change in cardiovascular status, but to more efficient posture and
movement.
The fourth session was at my request mainly a consolidation of the
previous three. I explained that I could not release trigger points on
the iliotibial band, hamstrings and quads with the rubber ball, and
learned to use the foam roller instead. The whole program got
fine-tuned, with specific pointers for body positioning during
exercises.
Within days, a new problem arose. On the exercise bike one morning,
every time my left leg moved, I felt the left quadratus lumborum http://altmed.iatp.org.ua/pain/muscles/2_4.htm
fire (this is the big muscle in the lower back, running alongside the
spine down to the top of the pelvis and over to the hip). It was very
weird to not be able to figure out how to move the leg without engaging
the quadratus lumborum (QL). Working trigger points was not helpful. I
noticed when walking that the QL was working overtime, and that left
the leg, hip and spine felt like a single unit. It was very frustrating
not to be able to do anything about it.
Obviously, session five was spent looking at the QL problem. It turned
out that it was doing the work of the left medial glute, high on the
back hip, http://www.exrx.net/Muscles/GluteusMedius.html
which was intact but for some reason not being activated. We worked on
breathing/unwinding, followed by highly intensive hands on bodywork. At
one point, trying to relax between deep breaths, I had to ask if it was
time to bring out the thermonuclear devices. Finally, when everything
was somewhat beaten into submission, I was shown how to locate and fire
the medial glute. Trigger point work for the QL, plus two exercises to
isolate and fire the medial glutes, were added to my homework.
Progress Report
As the weeks go by, I find myself more and more often in neutral
posture. Walking becomes a form of training. From time to time the left
hip rises and falls as the QL acts up; it feels like an unnecessary
limp I cannot get rid of. I try to do “falling down” walking about our
flat, falling into each step, back in neutral posture, shoulders
relaxed down and back over the hips, head floating above, and a hand on
each medial glute to feel it fire. Subjectively it feels like I am
pitching forward Groucho Marx-style. My husband watches and swears my
posture looks just fine. When I focus on “falling down” walking, the QL
quiets down.
One night, after doing a lengthy trigger point and exercise regimen, I
find myself sitting on the floor, legs apart, first sitting upright,
then leaning forward. This has always been my least flexible posture. I
still cannot open my legs widely, nor can I lean forward very far. But
I am sitting solidly on my sitz bones for the first time since I was a
teenager, and my hips feel very open and at ease.
Last week, for the first time in many years, I was at the dojo training
four days in a row. My knee, despite still hurting with prolonged
walking, barely bothers me on the mat, and I have to remind myself that
I’m still at-risk for acute meniscus reinjury. I have not had an
episode of left inner thigh muscle spasm in six weeks. My iliotibial
bands, left hamstrings and right quadriceps are looser, and when they
tighten up, I’ve got the tools to address the problem. My posture and
gait are improving, and I’m slowly becoming more adept at breathing,
visualization and other tools for self-unwinding of problem areas.
Three Ways Aikido and Pilates Complement Each Other
1. Using breathing and relaxed extension to find the most efficient way
to move
There can be several neuromuscular paths available to do any particular
action in the body. There is really only one efficient way, though.
Many of us, due to old injuries, emotional patterning, structural
defects, etc, have learned to use alternate routes that might have been
useful at one time, but over the years have become ingrained bad habits.
Lying on my right side, my task is to raise my straightened left leg.
My automatic first choice was to use low back muscles. It is awkward;
after a few repetitions, it is just plain uncomfortable, and it is
clear that with more repetitions, I’d be heading for an episode of
acute low back pain. I am taught how to fire the medial glute to
initiate the action. It is hard to isolate; we work together and I am
intermittently successful, then more so. It clearly takes less physical
effort than using the low back. We go another step: I integrate
breathing so that on the exhale I engage the deep lower abdominals, let
my pelvis to into a neutral position, and then extend down, lengthening
the leg to allow it to rise. It felt effortless.
In aikido, we’d call it “kokyu.”
2. Go up to go down, and vice versa
In the above example, before I could easily raise the leg, I extended
down it, a feeling of lengthening to and past the foot.
In the dojo around that time, our exercise was to do a tenkan blend
(tai no henko) variation that would extend upward, taking uke’s balance
up onto her toes. Exploring with my partner, most of the time it was
not quite working. I relaxed, recentered with her grabbing me, extended
down and forward, and found the up in a natural spiral from this. Uke
went up on her toes. It was hard to replicate, because (naturally!) I
began working on it too much, but at least I had an example in the body
to learn from.
Waves go up, crest, and naturally go down. I think that this is a
principle we use a lot on the mat, explicitly or not, playing with
space and direction.
3. “Allow the system.”
That’s one of Nadeau Sensei’s most often used phrases. I like it as a
shorthand on the mat to remind myself not to work at technique. The
minute I do, I’ve blown it. When you remove your struggle, your
conflict, and are just present and engaged, what remains is allowing
“technique” to happen.
Over and over again, this happens in my Pilates rehab sessions: I am
asked to do a certain task, as large a movement as lifting a leg, or as
subtle as opening a hip joint. My first attempt uses ancillary muscles,
pushing and working, just like the aikido newbie who tries to use
contracting biceps to move her partner. I start paring away muscles,
finding more direct routes, disengaging unneeded muscles. Eventually,
it is all breathing, extending, not even thinking about muscles at all,
and allowing the movement to happen.
Conclusion
My limited personal experience finds many parallels between aikido and
Pilates that allow a certain degree of cross-learning to occur. This
certainly enhances the value of Pilates for an aikidoka who either has
a specific rehab goal or who is looking for an exercise regimen to
complement her budo training.
Just as no one martial art will serve all students, no one form of
rehab or exercise will serve all who are in pain. I am happy with my
results so far and will be continuing this path. It may not be the
right one for you...but it is worth serious consideration.
You cannot learn a martial art correctly, fully or deeply from a video,
only mimic the grossest forms of it. The same applies to rehab and
exercise. If you are interested enough to look into Pilates as
exercise, find a certified instructor. And if your needs include rehab
for a specific problem, look for an instructor who is further certified
to do rehab that includes myofascial therapy and neuromuscular
education.