Re: Is fitness the ultimate key?
Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2016 7:53 am
grzegorz wrote:Yes, but you also stated in "many cases" which is where we disagree. If you do 12 hours of manual labor a day you find ways to "relax" while doing it otherwise the work would be impossible.
IMO, relaxation has little to do with it. It's about how typical manual labor will not necessarily better prepare/condition one's body for TCMA/IMA.
If your line of reasoning is correct, then farmers, construction workers, lumberjacks, and miners should all be able to excel in TCMA/IMA and pick it up much faster than an average joe. Would you say that's true?
My Fujian White Crane teacher was in his 90s when I trained with him, and he told me how he used to teach FWC in the countryside of central Taiwan back in the 1950s and 60s. The town was a farming community, and the majority of his students were farmers in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. He said he hated teaching them because years of robotic and repetitive manual labor in the fields had left their muscles "dead" and ingrained bad habits into their movement. It was very difficult to "undo" and "rewire" their bodies to move in the manner required of a crane style practitioner.