Coil

Just a couple of random sketches today. After doing a few, I noticed a trend in dynamic poses that there's often a curve or line of tension reaching through the body like a wound spring or coil, waiting to be released when the action is performed (be it a running step or a kick/punch etc). It probably has something to do with building up leverage in the opposite end of the body, in the form of mass that can drive and balance the motion to deliver maximum force in whatever is the key element (fist or foot for instance).

I imagine that a football player arches backwards, extending his abdominal muscles and moving the arm opposite his kicking leg back, before moments later compressing all his frontal muscles leading to an opposing contraction of the body, with the leg being thrust forward forcefully and balanced by the arm and upper torso bending forward at the same time.

Seen like that, most such "coil" action seems to happen diagonally through the body, across an arm and a leg. It makes for nice poses anyway (not really put to use in the larger sketches on this page, as they were drawn before I thought of this).
You have to play the action back and forth in your head to figure out what should happen before and after the imaged moment and thereby how the figure should be posed to appear most sensible. It's no doubt a healthy mental exercise, and stick figures are quick and painless to draw so I guess this should be a more common element in my sketch routine...