Recently, I have been training with my personal coach as I do twice every week, and it came that we were discussing the topic of symmetry. I enjoy this luxury of having a coach since I am suffering from pains in my foot that I cannot not control anymore. The pain keeps me away from running which really influences my mood negatively ;-)… sorry, I am zoning out!
Analyzing my body we found out that over decades I have developed a kind of a patchwork of asymmetry that disturbs economic and efficient movements. Compensatory actions and postures added up. The result is a mess that is extremely difficult to tackle. Symmetry, so my hypothesis, is an ideal state of a biological organism that facilitates optimal functionality, and is rarely achieved or never, as it would mean complete perfection.
Today I found a talk by Marcus du Sautoy about symmetry that just fits into my current deliberations.
Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy (born in London, 26 August 1965) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. His academic work concerns mainly group theory and number theory.And during our discussion Reinhard, my coach, and I came to the conclusion that if the hypothesis is applying the most symmetric athlete would the best. He or she is most capable of realizing the optimal movements, whether it refers to speed or strength. Now, we need to identify the parameters we have to look at to quantitate and measure the extent of symmetry or asymmetry an athlete’s body shows.
Seems that we are coming close to the Greek ideal of an athlete and their ideal of beauty?
We want to define parameters of relevance that make it possible to compare different athletes, and see whether our premises have some sort of practical relevance … let’s say we want to pursue a holistic approach to exercise and training which complies with our biestmilch way of thinking and allows us to measure complexity.
I am not sure whether this is just the crazy idea of a long working day, maybe. After all would like to measure our biest athletes and compare for example Chris McCormack with Sebastian Kienle or Ronnie Schildknecht.
