We’ve started our pre-season training for wrestling. Wrestling is a wonderful sport that requires an athlete to work on variety of skills. One of the most important is referred to as hip awareness. Gaining an awareness of your hips and how to position them is really important in all of the martial arts – but particularly the grappling arts (wrestling, judo, jui-jit-su, etc.). In fact, in my opinion, it’s the most important aspect of learning how to perform in any of the martial arts. Power for all kicks and punches is transferred through the hips. When you’re countering or defending against your opponent, the best way to figure out what they’re doing is to concentrate on their hips. You can see everything…and I mean everything…from someone’s hips. Whether they’re attacking or retreating…reaching, punching, blocking, kicking, rising up, settling back…whatever…I can tell by concentrating my attention on a person’s hips exactly what they’re up to. The hips tell me everything…
In the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel/God in Genesis, the story ends with Jacob limping away because his hip was injured. This story gathers together so many elements of how our struggle with God affects us at the center of our being. No other injury captures so much about our struggle as a hip injury. And that struggle affects everything. All relationships are touched by the struggle…and will show the signs forever. We all limp…because we have to – we’ve been affected by our struggle…in our relationship with God…and that history…will show visible signs in some way or another…
Todd Rivetti 