Centered Sliding - Page 2
By Todd Murchison, December 10, 2000

Stand Tall

Have you ever tried walking across the room with your knees deeply bent and hunched over? Try it for awhile and you’ll find out how tiring it is. When we stand tall our bodies weight is largely supported by our skeletal structure. The lower you stand the more your muscles have to pick up the load.

Sometime people feel safer when they get closer to the ground, they even justify it by saying "it lowers my center of gravity" – yes it does, but it makes you work harder and actually makes it harder to balance. Have you ever tried to balance something tall on the palm of your hand? A broom, ski pole, yardstick, or anything like that qualifies. If you have you probably found that its pretty easily accomplished. How about balancing something shorter like a pencil, or ruler? Its quite a bit more difficult. Why?

Well, there is a place called the ‘point of no return’, which is the maximum an object can be tilted over and still be brought back to center. The taller an object is, the higher its center of gravity is. The higher its center of gravity is, the more distance the object has to travel before reaching the point of no return. More distance gives you more time, thus you have more time to correct the instabilities of a balanced yardstick than a balanced pencil. Your body is the same way, a taller stance gives you more recovery time.

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