the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Michael Phelps as a spokesperson for IMA? Not much surprising or new info, but a nice read nonetheless:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/healt ... ref=slogin

Very nice....I would claim that relaxation holds forth for any physical activity, not just sport or martial arts. The very same happens in music, dance, physical labor, painting, etc.

Chris McKinley wrote:Very nice....I would claim that relaxation holds forth for any physical activity, not just sport or martial arts. The very same happens in music, dance, physical labor, painting, etc.

I'd say that tension is very important in lots of styles of dance, and not just the minimum amount of tension required to stay upright.

YMMV, but I'm talking about keeping only enough tension to maintain the postures, rhythm and choreography of a dance. Any more than that is, like many other activities, wasted energy and will cause you to fatigue faster. Same as with neijia postures.

It's very true, for me at least. Even as a child I learned that if I calmed down my breathing while sprinting I could last much longer.

It doesn't take much experience to recognize that tensing and flexing one's muscles makes for stiffness and more difficulty moving. Across the board, relaxation makes for easier movement and motion, and creates the path through which energy can move unimpeded. However, it is only one element and aspect in the generation of power in IMA (a kind of body use that is not present in athletics).

While they didn't focus on it in the article, I think they are also pointing to a certain mental relaxation as well. For example, a swimming coach mentioned that while tense swimmers take more strokes per lap as the race wears on, a swimmer like Phelps maintains the same number of strokes per lap from start to finish. To me, that shows a mental relaxation as well, there is no panic, no necessary mental/emotional tension under pressure.

Cool article and Swede makes a good point also. I've been interested in this subject for a while. Being mentally relaxed feeding physical relaxation. I think that being relaxed not only helps one be physically faster and more coordinated, but I think being mentally relaxed helps one be mentally fast and aware also. I want to get good at moving slow and thinking fast when I train, lol.

The last part is interesting too, and kind points out the link between IMA and Taoist mysticism... and of course, even EMA(wai jia) and Buddhist mysticism. “At some level,” Dr. Joyner added, “everyone I know who has been a hard-core endurance athlete for many years is a covert religious mystic due to these types of experiences.”

I find that interesting. And I know what he's talking about in context outside of IMA, I'd get like that in my high school diving team years.

everyone I know who has been a hard-core endurance athlete for many years is a covert religious mystic due to these types of experiences.”

Yup.

Ahh....the old relaxation vs. tension discussion. The poor horse has been dead, beaten, buried, dug up, and beaten yet once again.

I'd say that anatomically speaking, without muscular tension, we'd all be lying on the ground like vegetables. So of course muscular tension is important, it's just that in IMA you learn how to tense muscle in ways that are, quoting Dr. Fish, "unnatural" and may feel relaxed to you or appear relaxed to bystanders.

C.J.Wang wrote:Ahh....the old relaxation vs. tension discussion. The poor horse has been dead, beaten, buried, dug up, and beaten yet once again.

I'd say that anatomically speaking, without muscular tension, we'd all be lying on the ground like vegetables. So of course muscular tension is important, it's just that in IMA you learn how to tense muscle in ways that are, quoting Dr. Fish, "unnatural" and may feel relaxed to you or appear relaxed to bystanders.

Is it tension that is a necessary component or is it a balance of muscular contraction and muscular extension that keeps us upright?

Do we need to be tense during contraction?

I've been wondering about this since the first time someone said that tension was a necessary component of remaining upright but just finally asked these questions now.


Food for discussion:

Tensiosn is defined as:

1 a: the act or action of stretching or the condition or degree of being stretched to stiffness : tautness b: stress 1b2 a: either of two balancing forces causing or tending to cause extension b: the stress resulting from the elongation of an elastic body3 a: inner striving, unrest, or imbalance often with physiological indication of emotion

So by this simple definition I'd posit that tension is NOT a prerequisite for remaining upright, tension occurs when elongation and contraction are out of balance.

A certain amount of muscular tension, or force, is necessary to stand and move about. I think the point is to minimize the excess and have motion pure to your intentions (aka in the zone).

Technically speaking, all muscles work via contraction. Skeletal, or voluntary, muscles are not capable of actively extending, per se. Either gravity, centrifugal force or contraction of antagonist muscles are responsible for the extension of any skeletal muscle(s). As a result, the objective of maintaining an upright posture in a human is a result of multiple skeletal muscles contracting in multiple antagonistic units in such a way that the average balance of force vectors keeps the skeleton aligned in a more or less perpendicular attitude with respect to the ground.

The condition of sustained muscular contraction, such as that which occurs in the creation/maintenance of upright posture, creates a condition of tension (by definition) in the muscle fibers, tendons and bones. Again by definition, it is not possible to eliminate all tension in the muscles and still remain upright (or even in a sitting posture). The goal, from a neijia standpoint, is to eliminate all muscular tension which is not absolutely necessary in the maintenance of a given posture. This condition, by definition, is known as "sung" with respect to a given static posture.

zenshiite wrote:The last part is interesting too, and kind points out the link between IMA and Taoist mysticism... and of course, even EMA(wai jia) and Buddhist mysticism. “At some level,” Dr. Joyner added, “everyone I know who has been a hard-core endurance athlete for many years is a covert religious mystic due to these types of experiences.”

I hang out with a fair amount of endurance athletes - runners, swimmers, cyclists - as I participate in that sort of thing, and this has not been my experience at all.

IMO this evidence is purely anecdotal and only useful for reaffirming one's biases.