When Students Arrive at Culinary School, the Chef Doesn’t Say. “Do What’s Comfortable…
…That Will Be Best for Your Particular Body.”
They Say; “Here are The Proper Techniques, These Are The Skills That Experts Use, Practice them Correctly From the Beginning."
Proper Technique is NOT About Doing What’s Comfortable.
When We Practice Proper Technique, It BECOMES Comfortable.
When I say; “It’s Not about doing what’s comfortable.” I Don’t mean we should do what hurts. I Don’t mean that we should intentionally do what makes us uncomfortable.
What I mean is: It’s Not About Doing our Most Natural Feeling Motion.
Whether we’re running, cutting vegetables, or doing any other motion; We Have a Motion Particular to us that just “Feels the Most Natural.”
But the Motion that “Feels the Most Natural to Us” is RARELY the Same as the Motion that is Actually Healthy and Efficient for us Long Term, and Ultimately Gets the Job Done Well.
The Motion that “Feels Natural;” is based off of our current muscle development. But When Learning a New Skill, Our Current Muscle Development is: Not Well Developed for the New Skill. Our various muscles have various strengths. These various strengths Don’t Match the various levels of muscle strength required for the skill. So Our FEEL of the Motion is Not a good metric for what is Actually the Correct Motion.
The Motion that “Is Correct;” is based off of The Way We Want to Develop Our Muscles to Efficiently use Our Body Structure to Safely Operate. It is How our Body Structure Balances within the Physical World. Not Torqueing Joints to the Side, but rather bending them in line with our direction of movement. Not Setting ourselves up for Accidents, But Rather Using technique that makes it unlikely for us to have an accident. Not Setting ourselves up for Injuries when we do Slip, but rather using technique that makes it unlikely for us to hurt ourselves when we do slip. People slip on the Ground, Knives slip on vegetables, accidents happen, but our technique can change the likelihood of a resulting injury.
In Running, It is surprisingly common for “experts” to say “do what’s comfortable, everybody’s form is different.”
But when it comes to body mechanics, We’re Barely Different from each other. Our Skeletons and Muscular Systems are all organized the same way.
We are all Operating the Same Essential Structures with the Same Essential Restraints of Physics.
When students learn knife skills, they all learn the Same proper knife skills… as runners, or students of any other skill, We should have the same Thorough Dedication to Our Body Mechanics.
Our Body Mechanics Determines if we Wear Down our Body, or Build it Up. If We are Likely to Slip or Not. And if We are Likely to Injure Ourselves or Not.
