On Friday, 20 other people and I met in a sweaty, low cielinged basement in Narbeth, PA for a 2 hour Budokon 101 class. I was interested in the martial arts/ yoga/ quadruped crossover method to improve fluidity in my warm-ups and morning "mini-sessions."
I latched onto Yogi Adam Marcus' instructive comments about one of the movement series' start and endpoints, paraphrasing: "the middle, the transition, is where you develop strength, mobility, and stability." As he demonstrated point a and point b, he showed how you can just stay tucked up and tight, in a little ball, and hop from one position to another (think Golem) or you can find the full range of motion for the entire movement, by taking the transition as long and as powerfully as possible (think Cirque de Soleil). By taking the movement through it's full expression, you unlock your body's reflexive lengthening and shortening, relaxing in one area, contracting in another. Each person's body adjusts around their respective anthropometry and limitations, and therefore each movement looks different for everyone.
My AM routines usually involved several corrective exercises intended to mobilize joints, usually my hips as priority. Most exercise have reps with distinct start and endpoints that are intended to move the joint through full range or shortened ROM to emphasize a single configuration, eg. full hip ER and extension in the butterfly bridge. This Budokon class reminded me that we largely live in the middle of these ranges, and full body motions allow for reciporcal compensations via a series of cross patterns (front to back, side to side, top to bottom spiraling). Quadruped movements specifically unlock crisscrossing neural pathways (see Gray Cook, Postural Restoration Institute, Common Compensatory Pattern).
Beyond correctives, apply this contrast of Budokon to lifting barbells. Until I was 19 or so, most of the instruction I got on lifting was from books and especially bodybuilding mags, showing photos of the start and end positions with nothing in between. Even in my Crossfit days, the "points of performance for a movement" were the start and end of the movement. In powerlifting start and finish are essential, as they are the common standard of competition. Even for training purposes, you can contend that the beginning and the end of most lifts are paramount; for example, a deadlift starts with setting up and bracing (start) before entering the "loading tunnel, " where start position ideally stay constant (don't round your back as you pull) and finishes with full hip and knee extension (end). (Side note, you could contend that how you lift the weights in bodybuilding style training is also more important than the beginning and end point, but that's a whole other discussion). For Budokon, and probably by further extension practices that incorporate style points, eg, dance, the middle of the movement is key. It's not ending up at point B, but the "how" you do it. In Budokon, it's best to express the full transition between A and B. People can identify qualitatively the additional effort to cover that distance with more effort as style, fluidity. It will give you more total training benefit, especially as an adjunct to "I lift things up and put them down" style weight training and it just looks cooler.