Michael Jordan has had a profound effect on recent American culture. It’s impossible to measure, but one indicator of his permeation is, when trying to describe the ‘best’ anything: surgeon, engineer, accountant, etc. one would say, he/she was the ‘Michael Jordan’ of Surgery, Engineering, Accounting, etc. Millions of people were dazzled by what he had trained himself to do, and for those who wanted to emulate his success, a pair of Air Jordans was the priceless product that could take U anywhere b/c ur took them everywhere. Thus began the intensification of the infatuation between people and their feet. “Being like Mike” was close being like god, and many of the people bought his shoes and tried to play basketball, shoot, jump, and walk like MJ. The problem was that, he moved w/ such precision on the court, that many a young man incorrectly adopted postures that were hyper-relaxed and inhibitory of physiological potential. Kobe & Usain are the two most recent, dominant athletes that who exhibit(ed) the handicaps of the body & breath, but excelled at the highest levels. Evan’s body is a more severe case and his genetics are obviously not as ‘Southern’. but there’s also a lot of a special connection. They’re either 6 feet 6 inches tall, like Evan, or they exhibiting some quality relating to “Cool/Atrophy Syndrome.” CAS is caused by incomplete/shallow breathing. Visually it’s characterized by slouching, slumped shoulders, sunken chests & protruding throats. This is, Evan believes, the result of atrophied muscles throughout the neck & rib cage. If people breathe incorrectly (incompletely), the body won’t wither and die, but the imbalance will persist, the potential won’t be maximized, and the degeneration will accelerate. Michael’s posture exudes relaxed confidence & security, but his skeletal structure could support muscular relaxation. When people operate their lives in extreme relaxation, or extreme embarrassment & anxiety, or extreme opposition to authority & structures of power (for Evan it was a combination of all 3), it causes cervical-vertebrae to develop in an imbalanced way, affecting the development of the all the musculature in the upper-body, neck, & face. Continued below…
Success silences critics, and if someone is continuing to win, we’re reluctant to challenge them b/c their body is working somehow to win, but if we are planning for long-term health of the body, the imbalances need to mitigated and reversed as soon as they’re apparent. If there’s too much relaxation, the breathing becomes shallow and that reduces rib-cage expansion, which lowers the center-of-gravity in the body, rounding shoulders, & pushes forward the neck, & drooping head.
For many of the examples here, their mid-line muscles haven’t developed nearly as much as the rest of their body – not b/c they didn’t do bench-press but b/c their breathing wasn’t focused around the mid-line of their chest cavity. ‘Completer’ breathing was, is, and forever will be the best way to mitigate those problems. It’s amazing how few therapists & trainers emphasize the role that internal-breathing, specifically Ujjayi breathing (aka Darth Vader breathing), plays in the formation and maintenance of the human body over our lifetimes. It provides the force to counter the pressure of the weights & the weight of the world.
Breathing is the first and last thing each of us will do in this life, which is why it’s such an integral part of the uThrones System & its philosophical approach to training. It’s also the main reason why Evan believes that uThrones have an important role to play in everyone’s life.
That’s all I’ve got for today, the moral is “Breath more completely, let that make ur posture work for U and help U be ur best self. Thanks for reading. #EnhanceAndEmpower #uThrones #Posture #ujjayibreath #Taiqi #Lordosis #Kyphosis #Scoliosis