Internal pangs; grinding sand?

[Ed Ladnar]

A series of questions regarding relaxation training: anyone ever experience catching or popping in tendons when training hard? Does anyone associate old injuries with the locations of catching and/or popping? Can that area experience soreness? And does that have anything to do with grinding sand?

Alternative possibility: am doing it wrong. But it's hard to see how you can go too wrong with just standing and trying to release tension.

Thoughts?

[wiesiek]

old qigongs fox swear , that strange internal sounds / popping in the joint area are associated with qi flow...
so:
hej
przeleciał robot
wydał z siebie chrobot...

don`t know about grinding the sand, dough
but
be natural and go with the flow are the basic.

[front]

You can go wrong with just standing. Otherwise everyone that practices standing will have the benefits, not just the strong legs. The reality is quite sobering.
Done correctly you should not feel soreness, nor pain, nor discomfort. If you feel any of these that means you are doing it wrong and you should stop. Strange and weird sensations in the body should not be taken too much into account as they will disappear.
Areas that have stiff, shortened tissues will gradually release the tension and the switch may be a bit noisy. One of my tendons in the knee (with decades old injury) relaxed with the sound of a snapping dry tree branch. Popping sounds in the joints come and disappear until finally are gone. These areas may not be associated with old injuries though.
And then what is "hard training" when you try to relax? This is a long process so initially we are doing it using too much muscles so it causes soreness, stiffness, pain in tendons. Better to do it in short intervals but not so intensely until you can figure out how to pump it up properly without stiffening the body.
Check this link for some interesting thoughts (sorry if it was shared here already): https://wulinmingshi.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/wang-jiwu-on-hidden-power/

[Activeghost]

I've heard that as well (that popping, etc. is normal) however if you slow your movement down to "slower than slow" speeds and listen to the body you may realize the popping is the result of accelerating through some tightness (the tissue feels "jumpy" at that point). In that case I would recommend moving through it at a pace that allows you to NOT feel that jump and work it out. I'm not sure it will completely work itself out over time even with correct training.

[front]

This kind of "jumping" in the tendons/muscles disappears after you start to move your bones as parts of the bows unlike originaly you move them as attached to hinges. Takes some time to get used to it.

[WVMark]

Check this link for some interesting thoughts (sorry if it was shared here already): https://wulinmingshi.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/wang-jiwu-on-hidden-power/

That was an interesting read. Let me pick one section:

At the same time, the lead arm must go forward as if pulled by a string, while the lagging arm is visualised as being pulled backwards. It should be as if there is a tug-of-war between the two hands: but this kind of visualisation shouldn’t be too forced, it should mainly remain at the level of ‘intent’. This is why xingyi is easy to practice but hard to master: at this stage, we work on the mental aspect, not power. Apart from training hard, you have to analyse and examine your art. When I reached this stage I went back to the 5 fists and 12 animals to re-evalutate them, to discover the ‘internal side’ to the forms.

It's not just a matter of physical movements for yin/yang. As noted, that's the basic level of training. It's all about "intent". That isn't defined as thinking about a movement. It's far more than that, but it makes physical body changes. In Japan, Sagawa noted that aiki was all about changing the body. He said that techniques were not the way to get there. As noted above, you can see that just training forms or techniques isn't the way to internal power. In fact, once you have internal power, the techniques are done differently ... or perhaps trained differently would be a better phrase.

[klonk]

You don't have a problem. My beard turned gray some years ago, and I sometimes get a bit of snap crackle pop just from getting out of bed.

Think of unequal loads on a rubber band. Did you ever fool with those rubber band airplanes when you were a child? You wind them up and the rubber band coils itself into knots. You release the propeller and there goes the plane! There is a pop-pop sound as the elastic unwinds.

[Ed Ladnar]

I think hard training is an appropriate term considering the difficulty of the exercise. I am skeptical that this kind of training should cause no discomfort or soreness. In my case I think I had some kind of hitch or scar tissue in my neck that didn't become apparent until I started training seriously. It's gotten better over the course of about two or three years. Still a bit sore though. I wondered whether anyone else had had a similar experience. It was clearly associated with training, but didn't happen during training, but rather at random times when moving my head. Initially it was so bad it could be triggered when I swallowed. As I said, now it's quite a bit better.

I've heard several times that you should feel no discomfort, and I wonder - the great masters were horribly abused by modern standards, and put their bodies through the wringer to gain their skills. I'm not willing to do that, but "changing the body" sure doesn't sound like a process devoid of pain.

[klonk]

I think hard training is an appropriate term considering the difficulty of the exercise. I am skeptical that this kind of training should cause no discomfort or soreness. In my case I think I had some kind of hitch or scar tissue in my neck that didn't become apparent until I started training seriously. It's gotten better over the course of about two or three years. Still a bit sore though. I wondered whether anyone else had had a similar experience. It was clearly associated with training, but didn't happen during training, but rather at random times when moving my head. Initially it was so bad it could be triggered when I swallowed. As I said, now it's quite a bit better.

I've heard several times that you should feel no discomfort, and I wonder - the great masters were horribly abused by modern standards, and put their bodies through the wringer to gain their skills. I'm not willing to do that, but "changing the body" sure doesn't sound like a process devoid of pain.

I trust that no one here told you that zhan zhuang is without discomfort.

[Ed Ladnar]

"Done correctly you should not feel soreness, nor pain, nor discomfort. If you feel any of these that means you are doing it wrong and you should stop."

[klonk]

I note that you are JMA in your previous training. They are very precise: sword exactly so. Ah, so. The sword, or the exercise, rules you. You are looking now at something rather different. Now, you want your body to control the sword, rather than the kata controlling your body. Does that make any sense at all? Sometimes I spout nonsense without knowing it. (Insert your favorite Seglerism here.)

[klonk]

"Done correctly you should not feel soreness, nor pain, nor discomfort. If you feel any of these that means you are doing it wrong and you should stop."

I think that is right for basic standing for relaxation (wuji and hug a tree). There is more to zhan zhuang than that, but the popping and shakes you are describing are hardly agonizing.

If you do Descending Dragon and get a sharp pain in your groin I suppose you have the wit to see there is a problem.

[front]

Well, there are different types of pain. There is the good pain when you stretch a healthy part of the body and the receptors in the connective tissue fire. This type of pain disappears after you stop stretching and your mind understands that it is not a big deal to keep with it if it must.
Then there is the bad type of pain when you just know it doesn't feel right. It may be piercing or throbbing but the feeling of danger comes with it.
So the good pain is just mechanical reaction to the increased internal tension in the connective tissue. You can safely ignore it in standing as it will disappear immediately after you stop.
So some sort of discomfort is present but is the kind that leaves no trace few seconds after the end. As this exercise requires that every time you push yourself beyond your level of comfort it creates these internal sensations that may be described as some sort of discomfort. But you just feel it is a good kind of temporary one. It changes literally after each practice and when you start to get the benefits of the exercise you will never label it as real discomfort.

[Ed Ladnar]

Yes, I agree with you about good and bad pain. In this case though "It was clearly associated with training, but didn't happen during training, but rather at random times when moving my head." But I agree that basic standing should not hurt in a bad way while doing it.

Kata - there is no one way to do kata. Taken too far, kata becomes odori, dance. Precision becomes ineffective formality. But done properly, kata are the boundaries within which you can test yourself without straying into making up crap. When it comes to koryu weapons, maybe a few people around today have gone through anything like a true musha shugyo, and are qualified to come up with their own take on things; the rest of us have to rely on tradition. But you can push yourself pretty hard within the confines of kata. When performed well and with correct intent, they illicit something on a spectrum of terror to joy. Pretty good training for stressful situations, really.

[front]

A friend of mine had to quit taiji because of the back pain he was suffering from. He persisted for more that 3 years in the hope that something good will happen. He has shortened lumbar fascia. He couldn't practice zhan zhuang the way it was shown to him without a lot of back pain.
Later he asked to join our small group and became so enthusiastic about the standing practice that he overworked his body and had to stop for few months... So now he is trying to be careful not to tense while doing the exercise and the effects are starting to manifest themselves. His back is starting to lose tension gradually and is pain decreases. We discuss every occurrence f pain and correct what he is doing until there is no pain at all. It is along process because initially it is not obvious what should be done to release the tension in the body. And the biggest issue is mistaking intent for slow muscle contraction. This just increases tension and at the end you a with sore muscles, cramps and quite possible some pain.
I would like to add that when the connective tissues are put under pressure they start to rebuild. The rebuilding first weakens the structure as collagen fibers are dissolved faster than new ones are created. It takes about 72 hours for the new fibers to resume fully the function of the old ones. So when you are starting on this journey of changing the structure of the body you are going through these periods of weakened structure until it is rebuild. As the process can be constant you will keep changing all the time and some connective tissues may regularly go through this cycle until they fit properly in the full body structure. While this process of rebuilding is taking place your tissues are weakened and muscles can damage them. You should be paying attention all the time and be careful not to damage your body. So some feeling similar to soreness in some tendons may be actually result of overworking them while they are going through the rebuilding process. Here again you can reduce the risk if you move your body in the more efficient way of the bows instead of the hinges.