Working in Movement

Mostly every long muscle in the body is connected to the pelvis. There's a lot of power in using the pelvis in an efficient and effective way. Movement education, martial arts, sports skill instruction, rehab; they all acknowledge the importance of the pelvis.

But I never associated the use of the pelvis with aviation. Not until I watched a program on the Wright Brothers on the History Channel last night. The program detailed the chronology of Orville and Wilbur's efforts to get off the ground a hundred years ago. The Wrights were bicycle mechanics by trade. As any child knows, bicycle riding depends on balance. The bicycle itself is an inherently unstable machine, so without the ability to balance it in motion, nothing much is possible. One of the first Wright discoveries was linking the importance of balance with the idea of a flying machine. Like a bicycle, any flying machine would be unbalanced, and would require the balance if it was going to get off the ground very far.

In developing gliders before attempting powered flight, they found that controlling the shape of the wings was hugely important. Their first attempts at controlling this was with a mechanism controlled with the feet. This proved too cumbersome to be consistently reliable. They then assembled a mechanism controlled by the pelvis -- a hip cradle. By shifting the hips, the pilot was able to control the aircraft. The PBS science program Nova has a wonderful summary of how it all worked, along with some great illustrations. Here's a look at the hip cradle from their site :