Background:
Surprised to see such a name in the title of a blog? Me too! As the story goes, I was digging up material for my sports science research projects when I came across different methods to develop and increase body awareness (Proprioception). Body awareness is an extremely important aspect in the process of developing an athlete. Let me explain what it does to the athlete:
- Good motor control
- Body awareness helps in preventing injuries
- Helps in reducing chances of recurring injuries
- Performance improvements due to all of the above points
Langdi, if used properly, can work wonders to train any sport involving legs!
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Imagine having equivalent control over both the sides of your body, your usability is doubled. It is equivalent to playing with 2 people at once and your profiling will show that weaknesses/functional deficits are reduced to a negligible extent.
What is Langdi exactly?
A traditional sport played across India (especially Maharashtra) for eons, it involves 2 teams with 12 players each and a rectangular area where a 1 vs 3 situation is formed. 1 ~ the player from chasing team who hops on one foot and tries to catch the 3 defenders in the area. The name Langdi(लंगडी in Marathi) is, as a word, derived from the situation of hopping on one foot.
36 mins is usually the time of the match. Played across 4 innings of 9 minutes each. This involves a couple of complexities too such as; if a defender commits line fault he is marked out, if a chaser commits line fault he can continue chasing as long as he is on one foot. The team that tags most of the defenders is declared the winner. The following video explains the sport in a bit more depth than me so give it a go! [If you have read the basics above, skip to 1:31 in this video to see the on-field footage]
What is so incredible about this sport?
Finally answering the reason why you are reading this article in this section. In the first section I discussed what is proprioception, right? This sport simply helps you to develop it. How, You may ask. It is pretty similar to “sink or swim” reasoning.
Basically developing proprioception involves the limb to be targeted to be the only one which is weight bearing. What that translates to is the shift of entire balance and weight transition of the body from a bipedal stance to an “unipedal” one. What difference does that make? you may ask.
In any walking posture, one leg is weight bearing while the other one can move forward/change direction/kick etc. The concept differentiates between a stable and moving leg. It can also be closely related to pivoting. In an “unipedal” stance there is no other leg! Every activity and stability have to be done by that single leg.
In langdi, we do all of the running-sprinting-stabilising-reaching out-bounding-hopping etc. on a single leg. The video above demonstrates the basics of langdi but in actuality, the environment transforms into a competitive one given that the catcher needs to tag defenders and that too within a speculated time limit.
Point to be noted: Langdi can improve single leg control and stability without even the person noticing it! As is seen in any competition; situations push the person into achieving their maximum! 🙂
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Imagine playing 4 games of langdi once a week not as a sport but as an exercise prescription. The amount of benefits the players will be getting will be based on scientific evidence itself and extremely helpful in enhancing their games. An example over here is football, single leg manoeuvring and pivoting (with the ball) are the cornerstones of the game and langdi does exactly that (without the ball).
Food for thought: The mere thought of using this game to enhance proprioception makes me wonder stuff I could target using such different and traditional Indian games. The history and folklore of India is laden with such gems and it is only a matter of time before we dig our hands in and pull these out.
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