The Athletics Hack

I believe there exists a secret hack for athletic motion. When we try to mimic a beautiful graceful motion we tend to focus on the movement of the obvious gross parts of the body such as the torso, arms, legs and head. I believe this leaves out a critical part of the solution. The clues lie in this picture. It shows the amount of brain power that is dedicated to different portions of our body. Note that the key areas are the hands and face. Do not ignore the areas over which you have precise and sensitive control. They have a profound impact on the movement of the rest of your body which can eventually be trained to be unconsciously responsive.

Don’t ignore the hands and face in your athletic motions. Rest of the body should be unconsciously responsive.

Athletic motion requires a connected kinetic chain. By default the chain is unlinked to allow for independent control and positioning for day to day life (e.g. sitting comfortably while writing). Athletic motion however requires a linked chain. A linked chain creates fluid power and allows for holistic control.

This article presents adjustments that are useful for most dynamic sports where you are moving and reacting. There is a separate configuration for precision sports with some time for setup that I hope to cover in the future.

The Hands

• Pressure the pinky metacarpals outwards.
• Angle the base of the middle fingers slightly higher than the base of the ring fingers.
• Adjust one or both of the middle fingers so that they overlap the corresponding ring finger. Different athletic motions require different configurations.

The Face

Now here is a very surprising fact. The other critical area to pay attention to for athletic performance is located in the face.

Pay attention especially to your tongue, jaw and lips. This sounds quite extreme I understand, but those muscles interact with muscles in the neck, abdominals and back and also are important for balance.

The hypothesis is that the face is responsible for creating muscle alignments and balance. Not only does the face need to be in harmony with the motion of the body, but it might be considered primary in developing your athletic motion.

Left: Image of Ben Hogan’s face at impact from his Life Magazine article revealing his secret. Right: My lol imitation.

For certain precision motions like those found in golf, darts, or billiards, it may be advantageous to consciously and precisely configure the face. For other more reactive situations, perhaps it may be better to allow the face to unconsciously configure itself. How can this be done? One key may be to use sharp exhalations as you perform your motion placed at precise moments. For example, imagine the sounds that a boxer makes as he is shadow boxing. Or consider the “kiai” in martial arts. Each breath or sound is an opportunity for the face to subconsciously configure itself for muscle alignment and balance.