Duration of Zhan Zhuang

[SPJ]

Quality is over quantity.

If we may really make our mind quiet, body relaxed, heart rate slowing down, breathing deeping and longer, then the time need not to be for too long.

Or we may also practice sitting in postures or pull a chair and sit on it, while the rest of the body still assuming whatever posture.

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depending on whatever results or criteria you want to achieve

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[maoshan]

Peace,

1hr atlest. And with all my postures(emphasizing low) standing or walking, there's always something else going on. You never just stand or walk.
Every posture emphasizes something, and over the years I've found no fault.

Peace

[Ivan]

Its getting the balance between relaxation and duration.

5 minutes in those low tiger postures is a good feeling.

[Daniel]

Friend of mine has started doing an Yiquan-lineage out of Hong Kong, a version that is much softer than the usual Dachengquan I have done and than the Yiquan you see most places. The HK-stuff he´s doing teaches that as soon as your arms get tired, you lower them a while, then raise them again and continue, lower them again, and so on. This is to avoid patterning your system with unnecessary tension.

There is always the balance of getting a good ratio between structure, relaxed root and good internal work vs. looseness, springiness and not to become one of those "wooden westerners" who stand there packing tension into themselves with a hopeful warrior´s grin...

Having the Peng of a Redwood and nothing else rarely helps against an opponent who has seriously good ability to listen and who can change really fast.

My version these days is to stand for as long as it´s reasonably comfortable, then shift and do other stuff. I used to stand long "because that´s what you do," as my Dachengquan/Tai Ki Ken-trained teacher said...until I realized that my whole body started to feel like a block of wood, no matter how much I relaxed. Then I got better teachers instead .

The version from Alex Kozma´s lineage in Xingyi is that they start out doing Santi in each of the Five Fists, and only when you have built up so much power in each of them that it moves you, only then do they teach the actual movements.

My Xingyi-teacher also has taught several version of the normal Santi, including a yang- and a yin-version, as well as one that has more of a 360 degree-feel to it.

It would actually be really interesting to hear what the different guys here on the Forum has heard from their respective Xingyi-teachers when it comes to how long you stand, what the feeling of it should be, what intention you should have, and how you balance it with other things. Especially of people like Ken Fish and other long-timers. If they would be so generous as to share it with us, I for one would be really interested to read it.

D.

[wiesiek]

i count breaths in dan tian not a time
10- 36 breaths in ea. pose
-9 basic hands positions in Riding the horse stance -
this is 30 min.- 1,5 h workout

[Muad'dib]

Long and low is the way to go.

[JoseFreitas]

My teacher here in Portugal, Sifu Wu Xuan, requires that we be ABLE to hold for 45-50 minutes a moderately low Santi posture, but this is not what he requires us to train with. Once you've trained yourself to be able to hold 45 mn, you reduce the amount of time you do it so that questions of tiredness, tension, pain and so on do not interfere with the session (he gives us little things to do while standing, such as breathing patterns, focusing on certain areas and so on). He recommends 20-25 mn per session, but says two sessions per day of 10-15 mn is also fine. He also teaches a Ma Bu Gong stance, VERY low, and asks us to work ourselves up to 10 minutes and keep it separate from San Ti.

At the Little Nine Heaven school with Sifu McNeil we'd hold five different postures as a single Zhang Zhuan session, separate from Santi, and we'd go through eight mn of each (ie 40 mn total). High stances but some of the postures were hard on the arms. Santi we did for 10-15 mn at the beginning of Xingyi training.

Nowadays I do Santi 4-5 times per week, for 15-20 minutes. I occasionally do longer sessions to not lose the habit, but when I do I consider it more as conditioning to be able to do the regular sessions as best as possible and as relaxed and focused as possible.

[Daniel]

Thanks, José. That´s the kind of detail that´s interesting for comparative research. Great.

Oh, by the way: does James MacNeil teach any standing-postures unique to the Xiao Jiu Tian-system? I met him in Sweden during a workshop back in ´97, but only saw him teach Santi back then.

D.

[wiesiek]

aha,
i forget to mention, that i dont count at all from time to time
this is
when
qigong became shen kung

[JoseFreitas]

Wiesiek is also right, I think, when he mentioned not counting. Sometimes I would notice my mind wandering off and I'd forget to count. I used to force myself to count again, but slowly noticed that not coming back to counting was good. Nowadays I cheat (ie. I use one of the little timers which beeps after 15mn and then keep on for a few minutes as a cool down sort of process).

As for L9H postures, I think the postures were from the system, which is not to mean that they don't exist in other systems: we used 1) arms straight out parallel to the ground 2) "carrying piglet" as if you had something under your arm, fingers pointing at your hips, arms rounded 3) standard "embracing tree" 4) and 5) ... duh.... don't remember. I believe Steve Cotter posted a list somewhere about it from what he learned from Carl Kao, the differences are minimal.

Zenshiite: one exhalation/inhalation in 2 seconds? Did you get it wrong, isn't it 20 secs? It sounds as if you're breathing damn fast, if you want my opinion!

As a final note: I think we should also state what we got from zhang zhuan, instead of what we practiced mechanically because teachers told us to (it doesn't mean we wouldn't do it, but it's nice to be able to observe results). I have to say I never observed dramatic, splendid, amazing results from zhang zhuan, it was mostly boring, hard work, and I basically got results in two main areas: some conditioning results in terms of stance work and some relaxation results with the additional benefits that it tended to give me a better insight on my body, areas of tension, some better integration of separate parts, etc... all somewhat elusive. But when it comes Santi, because it was so closely connected to the moving practice of Xingyi and because of some very perceptive instruction from my teacher, I think it basically was instrumental in allowing me to develop the kind of attention to detail that's required when teachers give you seemingly impossible corrections ("Yes, but now as you stomp you must coordinate with a rotation of the forearm, while dropping the ribcage and hips, and you must try to feel the double wave that propagates as you...." etc...). Coming from a background of Karate, this sort of detail seemed simply impossible. It's one thing to do it when doing a Taiji form, you're going slowly, but with Xingyi it seemed just impossible. That's why I think I got a lot of Santi.

[SPJ]

standing practice is something that is done gradually or longer over time.

There is no overnite success.

as far as how long is enough, it really depends on what is main focus.

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in the old time, it is usually said the time that an incense finished burning.

or yi zhu xiang.

[qiphlow]

i've pretty much held to "keep standing until you want to quit, then stand a lillte bit longer than that."

[wiesiek]

standing practice is something that is done gradually or longer over time.


in the old time, it is usually said the time that an incense finished burning.

this is ~~90 minutes for big one
and ~~40 min. for small

[Inner_man]

Im with you SPJ, our school is the same - quality foremost, timing is by counting breaths with express aim to keep the heartrate under control.

Absolute noobs start at about 3-5 breaths per side for no longer than 10mins

Experienced students aim for 15 to 20 or more breaths at 20-30mins daily - its important that it is really DAILY practise

Shifu has been up 49 breaths for 1hr but its too stressful to do too often he reckons

Most importantly is that that its all single leg pracitise (100:0) the yin foot can lift at anytime without shifting weight or losing balance. And we should never train unless prepared with Zhan Zhuang 1st.

[Pandrews1982]

Just out of curiosity what do you guys think you gain from doing long standing sessions? I'd like to have some examples of specific gains in ability which people directly attribute to standing practice. For those that stand longer than say 20mins what do you think you gain from standing longer? Josefreitas gave a good answer but surely there are other reasons, even if its just "because sifu says so" I'd like to know.

Personally I don't think holding any one stance longer than 15-20 mins is going to develop any further physical or structural benefit so long as you are doing the stance correctly and if you aren't then long periods of standing is going to mess you up anyway. I do think occasional longer sessions may have other benefits in other areas.

My usual standing will be various postures including san-ti-shi, chicken step, all wu xing san-ti postures, different weight distributions including 100:0, until it starts to shake, hold it for one minute longer or until I feel definite muscular tension and then switch sides. Average time for me will be 5 to 10 minutes in each posture on each side maybe dong 3/4 postures so all in all about 30-40minutes if I have time. I try to do at least some each day but inevitably I don't get time to train each and every day. I usually end up doing a bit of standing in the toilets of my office during my lunch break because I don't get much other chance throughout the day.

I only very rarely do standing training in class and only very rarely make my students (who are all beginners) do it in class, if we do its usualy for about a minute or two on each side of a stance. I see this as a persona/own timel training exercise because I'd rather be teaching or training actual Xing Yi in class as opposed to standing around. I don't charge for classes and my teacher doesn't either but I think I'd get a bit pissed off after a maybe a month if I paid for classes and my teacher made me stand there doing bugger all for the majority of the lesson.

and we should never train unless prepared with Zhan Zhuang 1st.

Why?

bsolute noobs start at about 3-5 breaths per side for no longer than 10mins

Man you guys must be hardcore, absolute noobs who can go for ten minutes on 3 breaths! I can hold my breath for about 2-3minutes if I need to but that's not really natural breathing. I'm only poking a bit of fun, but really how long is 3-5 breaths? I've just tried to count while I do a deep natural breath and inhale and exhale took about 15-20seconds so max 10 seconds in and 10 seconds out, 3 breaths would be 1minute.