Check this out: http://www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode3/326/

A good article by probably the world's formost spine expert. I recently met Dr. McGill and learned a great deal from him as well as sharing alot of the stuff that we here train with. A very enlightening experience.

It got me thinking, in CMA the words "tension", Stiffness", "Hard" and the like are tantamount to curses in Church. While "soft", "relaxed", "lose" are the highest blessings. But why the polarization over it? If you really think about it, tension or stiffness has to be present some of the time. With out it, we break, or have no power or stability. on alomost every CMA blog outthere, people are calling others out on being stiff, and others for being relaxed. NEver is there any mixing of the two. (Some pay lip service to it, but it still seems to the biggest critisim out there.)

The article explains quite well what McGill has found when working with top level athletes. Its not wether you are hard or soft, but how quickly and effeciently you can go from soft to hard and back again.