Do women need different body mechanics?
This is an excerpt from the June 2018 House Lionesse panel on women's fighting. The panelists discuss whether women need different body mechanics to fight well.
Most of the training that I've gotten from people is to use your legs. Well, yeah, sometimes the legs and the hips work more and that tends to be the stronger part of a woman, but it doesn’t necessarily move into whatever they're trying to teach me. They can say one thing, but if they can't mechanically do it themselves it ends up getting really hard to translate or see. That's just kind of how it happens, at least what I've come across. I just go with instinct most of the time right now because--just--yeah, not a lot of training going on.
I've always felt that there wasn't really a lot of difference. In terms of things that we would need to learn that men wouldn't, there are certain things. Women's legs tend to be pretty strong. There is a difference in flexibility with the hips and things like that but it's never been--and this is the way the question came across to me--not in a negative way, but I don't see anything that women are behind on with body mechanics. I've actually heard kind of the opposite. A lot of shots that men need to learn or throw is throwing from their hips, and women on the whole in a generalizing sense tend to do that a little bit more in the first place. I've never felt like I couldn't do something or it was harder for me to do something body mechanics wise, because it's a full body movement for most things in the game and when it comes to all the full body stuff there's not that much of a difference between men and women. Anything the men can do I've been able to pull off just the same, with the the same amount of effort put in that anybody else would need to learn it.
Are different body mechanics needed for female fighters? Not at all. I feel that our fighters in general should all be benefiting from proper body mechanics. Guys, generally speaking, in our game can get away with sloppy body mechanics because they can power through shots just by nature of their upper arm strength. So, typically when they go to teach our female fighters how to throw their shots they're teaching them how to throw these shots the same way they know which is again generally speaking with a lot of upper arm strength. And that's not as great for most women in our game because we don't have that upper arm strength and for us I feel probably proper body mechanics is a lot more critical in making sure we get that proper power generation, keep that proper form reduce the likelihood of injury etc. So it's not that we have different fighting mechanics, it's that we benefit from having proper body mechanics. And the men do too! I'm not saying this is only for women. Everybody needs better body mechanics, and the best way to learn them is to find someone who's throwing their shots correctly. It should start as a full body movement, right? It's not like “swing from your hips,” it's that the power comes from the ground and there's this little movement here with your legs and then it comes like you're throwing with like the whole body here. It can be harder to find a teacher that not only understands those body mechanics but is willing to teach them to you and teach them correctly. But if nothing else, please just remember that it's not female body mechanics, it’s proper body mechanics and again that's something we all as fighters benefit from.
The only thing I really see different is your balance point. For girls, sometimes we have more of a weight difference up top, so how we stand--you just need to balance a little differently than a guy would. But, pretty much the same thing, right? It's not so much girl versus guy, it's more your body is different than this person's body and your position will be where your weight is. I think it's more of just how you're built, not how your gender’s built. You're still gonna have the same type of stance, you're still gonna have the same type of movements.
