History
After being bullied as a child, Charles Atlas joined the YMCA and began to do numerous exercise routines. He became obsessed with strength. He said that one day he watched a tiger stretching in the zoo and asked himself "How does Mr. Tiger keep in physical condition? Did you ever see a tiger with a barbell?" He concluded that lions and tigers became strong by pitting muscle against muscle. The validity of this story is questionable however and may be nothing more than an entertaining story to help sell his course. There were many other "isometric" courses available at the time and it wasn't until Atlas used the ad with the bully kicking sand in the weakling's face that the sales took off. Some other notable users of this method include Joe DiMaggio, Max Baer, Rocky Marciano, Joe Louis, Robert Ripley and Alan Wells.
Specifically, dynamic tension is a technique very commonly used within martial arts. This refers to the “dynamic tension” literally applied using a person’s movements. Tightening core muscles and applying dynamic tension allows a person to change the tempo of their movement. The reconstruction of such movements gives a person more power and speed. This especially becomes useful in performing or sparring. Taking a deep breath, and exhaling slowly while tightening the muscles, and sometimes even physically shaking the body part, portrays a stronger presence while performing. Following dynamic tension could be a series of quick movements to pick up the pace. Dynamic tension is a technique that is universal and could be used on any movement or any style.
Read more about this topic: Dynamic Tension
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)