Blending western equipment

[cloudz]

bars are good, real good, not just the kind stocking rum
my most used equipment in recent times is yoga mat, pull up bar and paralletts. in that order.

[origami_itto]

Using the muscles the wrong way 100% leads to the wrong kind of development and keeps you away from authentic Taijiquan.

No. Mindless habit only forms when you do things repetitively without awareness. If you move with awareness you can do what you want, and those big, strong muscles you built doing "brute" exercise will still be just as able to power your fancy kung fu jin that you've practiced, except more powerfully. If you're moving without awareness, then chances are your gongfu sucks, anyways, so you might as well be strong to compensate. The real limitation is time and ability to recover, so like anything else, you have to understand what your goals are and choose accordingly.

It goes a bit beyond mindlessness and awareness.

Even awareness itself... awareness of WHAT? There's where the body is and where it's moving, but then so much more beyond that. Awareness of how we're thinking about the muscles changes how they are used.

So there's basic awareness that will allow you to repeat choreography that you are shown and perhaps make it look a certain way, but then many different ways within that framework to actually accomplish the work of moving.

The theory is the way you use your muscles affects the way the muscles grow. This seems to be proven by decades of research by western scientists. How you lift and what you lift controls how the muscles develop, definitively.

The power that I am attempting to cultivate through Taijiquan does not come from the direct action of muscle groups, individually or in coordination with the whole body.

It comes from loading muscles with potential energy through stretching and compressing and then releasing that energy kinetically. As I've said before and probably will again, these are not just empty words meant to sound profound. It's a direct description of the process. The energy stored in one movement is released to power the next movement while also storing energy for the movement to follow.

Muscular contraction and direct activity conceals this gathering and releasing of energy. It is not possible to be aware of it, much less manipulate it, if your body is riddled with tension. If your training involves strenuous contraction of large muscle groups to move, your body will carry enough residual tension (aka tone) to put this beyond your grasp.

But as you become aware of it and able to manipulate it, adding external resistance increases the clarity and strength of the jin. The key is to continue using it and not falling back on direct muscular strength.

Yes, muscles are involved in all movements, however in this case I believe what we are more concerned with building is the white tissue, which is much slower to grow, and maybe even the fascia if some theories are to be entertained.

[Bhassler]

If you have "residual tension" from conventional strength training, then that means you didn't understand how to relax those areas in the first place. If using muscles limits some aspect of sensation for an individual, that's a limitation of that individual, and not an inherent property of muscle activation or awareness. We feel everything all the time, anyways, it just comes down to your brain's ability to interpret that information. Like other skills, if you practice it, it gets better. Whether you think conventional methods of strength training are relevant to your own practice or not is entirely up to you, but to say that it's harmful for some reason like "it causes tension" or "develops the muscles wrong" or whatever is nonsense if someone has any understanding of how the brain/body works.

[origami_itto]

I am very likely ignorant and deluded, and you of course are absolutely correct.

[BruceP]

Shovel, rake, mop, broom...

[Bhassler]

I am very likely ignorant and deluded, and you of course are absolutely correct.

I don't know about ignorant and deluded, but certainly passive-aggressive.

[windwalker]

little off topic

If you have "residual tension" from conventional strength training, then that means you didn't understand how to relax those areas in the first place. If using muscles limits some aspect of sensation for an individual, that's a limitation of that individual, and not an inherent property of muscle activation or awareness. We feel everything all the time, anyways, it just comes down to your brain's ability to interpret that information. Like other skills, if you practice it, it gets better. Whether you think conventional methods of strength training are relevant to your own practice or not is entirely up to you, but to say that it's harmful for some reason like "it causes tension" or "develops the muscles wrong" or whatever is nonsense if someone has any understanding of how the brain/body works.

Interesting...
Really not about the tension it may cause or not..

As mentioned, more about conditioning the expectations of one's mind to how and why someone is moved or not...

If one practices lifting a heavy weight for example, and then attempts to move someone.

More than likely they will use the same mechanics and feedback mechanism that they practiced with moving the weight.

Quite different idea and practice than negating any type of direct physical contact causing another person to move acting on a different mechanism.
Reflected in the many clips people question

"kong jin" an extreme example of this..not really a goal or expected result...Just part of an overall development " for some"
from a method of practice based on a theory of practice....


There are levels of contact used in cultivating this...aspect.

[origami_itto]

I am very likely ignorant and deluded, and you of course are absolutely correct.

I don't know about ignorant and deluded, but certainly passive-aggressive.

No point in arguing.

[origami_itto]

But to be more direct concerning your assertion in re: relaxation of the muscle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_tone

If a sudden pull or stretch occurs, the body responds by automatically increasing the muscle's tension, a reflex which helps guard against danger as well as helping maintain balance. Such near-continuous innervation can be thought of as a "default" or "steady state" condition for muscles. Both the extensor and flexor muscles are involved in the maintenance of a constant tone while at rest. In skeletal muscles, this helps maintain a normal posture.

Resting muscle tone varies along a bell-shaped curve. Low tone is perceived as "lax, flabby, floppy, mushy, dead weight" and high tone is perceived as "tight, light, strong". Muscles with high tone are not necessarily strong and muscles with low tone are not necessarily weak. In general, low tone does increase flexibility and decrease strength and high tone does decrease flexibility and increase strength, but with many exceptions. A person with low tone will most likely not be able to engage in "explosive" movement such as needed in a sprinter or high jumper. These athletes usually have high tone that is within normal limits. A person with high tone will usually not be flexible in activities such as dance and yoga. Joint laxity contributes greatly to flexibility, especially with flexibility in one or a few areas, instead of overall flexibility.

For example, a person can be high tone with normal to poor flexibility in most areas, but be able to put the palms of the hands on the floor with straight knees due to hypermobile sacroiliac joints.[citation needed] It is important to assess several areas before deciding if a person has high, low or normal muscle tone. A fairly reliable assessment item is how the person feels when picked up.[citation needed] For example, small children with low tone can feel heavy while larger, high tone children feel light, which corresponds with the description of "dead weight".

Although cardiac muscle and smooth muscle are not directly connected to the skeleton, they also have tonus in the sense that although their contractions are not matched with those of antagonist muscles, the non-contractile state is characterized by (sometimes random) enervation.[citation needed]

[Formosa Neijia]

I had asked Chin, Shifu about using "kettle bells". compared to wood locks,,,
He mentioned they were different even though superficially the training looks the same.
Maybe " Formosa Neijia " could share his thoughts on this....

Nearly everything in this thread isn't just wrong, it's exactly backwards so I don't have time to address all the nonsense. But since you were kind enough to ask, here are some points for people to ponder:
1. kettlebells are superior in every way to stone locks because iron and steel are denser than the concrete used to make locks at home. That means a denser tool in a smaller package. You know all those super-cool kungfu videos of tough looking kungfu guys swinging stone locks? None of those locks are very heavy.

My female students are swinging WAY heavier weights than the locks and the ladies don't weight over 45-50kg. I constantly see obese kungfu guys on facebook talking about swinging 12lbs locks cause "its good for qinna." Know what's better for your qinna? Not having 45% bodyfat because your training method got surpassed in 1890. Also stone locks have sharp edges due to being made of concrete. Try hitting the inside of your knee one time with that edge and you won't do it again.

2. I've already said the hop gar guys are tough, I sparred them so I know. But nothing in that clip impresses me except how tough the guy is. Kicking telephone poles and swinging heavy hand weights is a great way to get injured and that type of training can not be used by women, children, old people, or men of small stature to get powerful. Kettlebell training as jibengong can be used by everyone to build the body up. Again, I've personally instructed 1000's of people in how to do this of all ages so before anyone tells me I'm full of it, post your experience. Because I seriously doubt it will beat mine.

KB training is both safe and effective and build whole-body, connected power in everyone. Here's my 9 year-old son. showing how it's done.

3. martial arts people in general just can not mentally understand the difference between power and technique. Football players don't train with heavy footballs and tennis players don't just swing heavy rackets for their fitness training. But those are professional sports where the cream rises to the top, unlike kungfu where something else that floats tends to rise to the top. Using weights in your techniques overstresses even more connective tissues that are prone to damage by over-doing forms as it is. Look at the hop gar video and you'll see he can't control those weights many times. There is a high price to pay for that training when kettlebell training could get the job done with no injury.

4. people can talk all they want about full body power but having a 32-48kg kettlebell in front of you and doing a snatch with it will separate the men from the boys. If you can snatch it off the ground, then you MUST have connected, whole-body power. If don't have that power, then it won't go up over your head. But let's be honest: this type of training I'm advocating would be too clear in who has the goods and who doesn't. Kungfu no longer rewards doers, it rewards talkers.

Here I'm snatching 24kg 100x straight in 5:00, showing not only whole-body connected power but the endurance and cardio (and fat loss) that such training brings. The grip strength this builds will beat the heck out of any "jar training" as well.

Using the muscles the wrong way 100% leads to the wrong kind of development and keeps you away from authentic Taijiquan.

No. Mindless habit only forms when you do things repetitively without awareness. If you move with awareness you can do what you want, and those big, strong muscles you built doing "brute" exercise will still be just as able to power your fancy kung fu jin that you've practiced, except more powerfully. If you're moving without awareness, then chances are your gongfu sucks, anyways, so you might as well be strong to compensate. The real limitation is time and ability to recover, so like anything else, you have to understand what your goals are and choose accordingly.

This has been the only comment I agree with so far but why Brian chooses to agree now when he threw this idea under the bus in my jibengong thread is beyond me. My guess is he's a contrarian that argues against anything.

[windwalker]

Nearly everything in this thread isn't just wrong, it's exactly backwards so I don't have time to address all the nonsense. Here are some points to ponder:
1. kettlebells are superior in every way to stone locks because iron and steel are denser than the concrete used to make locks at home. That means a denser tool in a smaller package.

Thanks for the reply...
Needless to say we have different views on this...

An obvious difference would be the center of gravity of the stone locks or the wooden locks, vs kettle balls.

Regardless



Chin, shifu mentioned that he felt they weren't the same....not that that it matters to me at this point in my own practice,
just wondered what some one who trains with them might have felt about it..

I've already said the hop gar guys are tough, I sparred them so I know.
But nothing in that clip impresses me except how tough the guy is.

And you've won how many full contact matches....?

The clip was not meant to impress
only to show a type and method of training...

My point being that there are many methods reflecting teachers viewpoints and types of training...what was shown on the clip was "their or his"
agree or not...seems to provide them with the results they'er looking for...

Went through similar training as a young teenage under Mike Staples...One of the points of the training, to survive it,
in doing so building an inner and outer toughness. Was it healthy,,, probably not in the long run...
Like some infantry training in the military, the wash out rate was pretty high....

not really good as a commercial venture.

Did a lot of sparring with the long arm back in the day , kind of funny as at the time people doubted
the effectiveness of it.



Ron Dong--Shifu Gorge Long.

Shifu Long’s teacher Chan Hak Fu (陳克夫)
made famous by the White Crane vs Wu style taiji public match,
with teacher Wu Gongyi (吳公儀) of (Wu style taij)i.



Interesting style very useful

[Appledog]

If you have "residual tension" from conventional strength training, then that means you didn't understand how to relax those areas in the first place. If using muscles limits some aspect of sensation for an individual, that's a limitation of that individual, and not an inherent property of muscle activation or awareness. We feel everything all the time, anyways, it just comes down to your brain's ability to interpret that information. Like other skills, if you practice it, it gets better. Whether you think conventional methods of strength training are relevant to your own practice or not is entirely up to you, but to say that it's harmful for some reason like "it causes tension" or "develops the muscles wrong" or whatever is nonsense if someone has any understanding of how the brain/body works.

It's actually an inherent property of muscle activation and awareness.

I will shortly refer you to Davis' law of soft tissue, and the Kohnstamm phenomenon. Allow me to explain. Hidden inside each of our muscles is a tiny thing called a muscle spindle and this is like a miniature muscle which has nerve fibres in it and those nerve fibres can tell how much the muscle is being stretched or lengthened. When you put force through a muscle it's trying to register, 'how hard should I contract, am I contracting at the right rate?' If the muscle is contacting hard but not going anywhere then this spindle doesn't stretch and it keeps sending messages back to the muscle saying you're not getting any longer, work harder.

So when you're standing around your brain has actually set a 'map' of how your muscles should contract in the neutral state which is affected not only by your recent actions but by your actions over long periods of time. When you then go to try and do something else, you have to first fight against the neutral state. It's a reflex you have no control over. Now you know why there are jerks in martial arts. It's people realizing who they really are and the body can't handle it all at once. Also because the mind moves much faster than the body. Sometimes when you need to make a big change your mind realizes it but your body isn't quite ready yet. It's a process of unlearning. But you still have to try and smooth things out and make them slow and even.

[Bhassler]

As mentioned, more about conditioning the expectations of one's mind to how and why someone is moved or not...

If one practices lifting a heavy weight for example, and then attempts to move someone.

More than likely they will use the same mechanics and feedback mechanism that they practiced with moving the weight.

Quite different idea and practice than negating any type of direct physical contact causing another person to move acting on a different mechanism.

Well, as you said, that's talking about something different. What you're talking about is a matter of learned response and not physiology. In most cases, learned responses from one area (exercise) are not that hard to get around if you're specifically addressing something else (either intent or technique)-- at least if the teacher has any skill at teaching. You could certainly argue that a heavy deadlift is not going to help you work with intent, and therefore it is not interesting to you or takes valuable training time away from what your goal is, and I would have no argument against that.

But to be more direct concerning your assertion in re: relaxation of the muscle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_tone

If a sudden pull or stretch occurs, the body responds by automatically increasing the muscle's tension, a reflex which helps guard against danger as well as helping maintain balance. Such near-continuous innervation can be thought of as a "default" or "steady state" condition for muscles. Both the extensor and flexor muscles are involved in the maintenance of a constant tone while at rest. In skeletal muscles, this helps maintain a normal posture.

Resting muscle tone varies along a bell-shaped curve. Low tone is perceived as "lax, flabby, floppy, mushy, dead weight" and high tone is perceived as "tight, light, strong". Muscles with high tone are not necessarily strong and muscles with low tone are not necessarily weak. In general, low tone does increase flexibility and decrease strength and high tone does decrease flexibility and increase strength, but with many exceptions. A person with low tone will most likely not be able to engage in "explosive" movement such as needed in a sprinter or high jumper. These athletes usually have high tone that is within normal limits. A person with high tone will usually not be flexible in activities such as dance and yoga. Joint laxity contributes greatly to flexibility, especially with flexibility in one or a few areas, instead of overall flexibility.

For example, a person can be high tone with normal to poor flexibility in most areas, but be able to put the palms of the hands on the floor with straight knees due to hypermobile sacroiliac joints.[citation needed] It is important to assess several areas before deciding if a person has high, low or normal muscle tone. A fairly reliable assessment item is how the person feels when picked up.[citation needed] For example, small children with low tone can feel heavy while larger, high tone children feel light, which corresponds with the description of "dead weight".

Although cardiac muscle and smooth muscle are not directly connected to the skeleton, they also have tonus in the sense that although their contractions are not matched with those of antagonist muscles, the non-contractile state is characterized by (sometimes random) enervation.[citation needed]

That's a different domain. The article is talking about default tonus of muscles globally throughout the body, which would be determined by genetics, or in some cases, early developmental impacts. It specifically says that this does not correlate with strength.

Using the muscles the wrong way 100% leads to the wrong kind of development and keeps you away from authentic Taijiquan.

No. Mindless habit only forms when you do things repetitively without awareness. If you move with awareness you can do what you want, and those big, strong muscles you built doing "brute" exercise will still be just as able to power your fancy kung fu jin that you've practiced, except more powerfully. If you're moving without awareness, then chances are your gongfu sucks, anyways, so you might as well be strong to compensate. The real limitation is time and ability to recover, so like anything else, you have to understand what your goals are and choose accordingly.

This has been the only comment I agree with so far but why Brian chooses to agree now when he threw this idea under the bus in my jibengong thread is beyond me.

Are you talking about the Yang Jwing Ming thread? I was not arguing against strength training or jibengong, I was:
a) arguing against the notion that what he was doing was somehow original or that he was "leading the way" as you put it
b) not impressed by the quality of the specific activities shown. There are, in my opinion, much better and more efficient ways to build strength than hammering your joints running with a weight vest or LARPing your way through a Shaw Brothers inspired obstacle course in the woods. Whether or not there are more *fun* ways to get in shape is debatable
c) arguing against the notion that unweighted jibengong or ancillary exercises (like silk-reeling done properly) are empty arm waving or only suitable for refining existing strength. There is a long history in eastern, western, and non-human (i.e. animal pandiculation) traditions of dynamic tension exercises, etc.

My guess is he's a contrarian that argues against anything.

This may be true.

[origami_itto]

Muscle tone is a byproduct of conditioning.
Some people speak about arms like iron wrapped in cotton. If you've ever met somebody like that they probably had pretty good Taijiquan.

[wayne hansen]

The shape and weight distribution of the lama blocks is very specific
The stone lock is a whole different thing