THE WORST CHOICE IN ANATOMICAL WORDS

In our bodies you can’t create movement through one muscle. Even though, when you bend your elbow, the biceps brachii is called the “Prime Mover” - which already confers upon it excessively god-like status (LOL) - the fact is the biceps can’t bend the elbow unless the triceps let go.

So two muscles always form a kind of circuit through which movement happens. One contracts and another simultaneously lengthens. Or as Ida Rolf said, “when flexors flex, extensors have to extend.” It takes two. Yin and Yang.

Now what are these muscles usually called? "Agonist and antagonist" - fighter and opponent. The etymology of agonist is from the Greek, “agonia” “to struggle for victory” (same root by the way for “agony”).

So does the biceps really “struggle for victory” over the triceps? I don’t think so. Rather they are circuit partners, collaborators, both equally indispensable for movement.

As a matter of fact, antagonists in general are the primary source of gracefulness in our movement. If you bend your elbow and concentrate on letting go of the triceps, the movement will feel easier, smoother, and more graceful because you are focusing on the lengthening component of your movement. If on the other hand, you concentrate of bending your elbow by contracting the biceps, the movement takes more effort, you may feel more “strength” but you are now visualizing yourself as moving by shortening. Graceful athletes, yogis, massage therapists, dancers, martial artists, all have learned, consciously or not, to move by lengthening and letting go as well as by contracting, but only as much as they have to.

It is both a kinesiological and existential life lesson to learn to move more by letting go than just by contracting. Indeed how helpful is it to try to achieve our goals by contraction? For sure, both are necessary, shortening and lengthening, but our misnamed “antagonists” remind us, that letting go is essential to all movement in our body as well emotion, mind and spirit.

illustration by Julia Bancroft from Lauterstein - “Putting the Soul Back in the Body”