Internal Strength - how?

[Ian]

A spin on an old question - how do you, the reader, create internal strength? How do you train it?

[Mut]

good question... I just had an e-mail from someone wanting to learn internal strength.... not sure what that is.... for me it is simply the intellegent use of strength, utilizing leverage and borrowing in force. There is more to it than that but fucked if i know how to explain it

[Walk the Torque]

Training the intent has heaps to do with it.

For me, all the refining and investigation into learning how to bring your body under greater control, is kind of like getting a good grip on a bat. Learning to hit a home run is about aiming the ball on the other side of the boundry.

[Sprint]

Learn yi quan basics: zhan zhuang, sh li, mo ca bu, fa li, from a competent instructor. Take you about a year of 2/3 hours per day, then go learn the application to your own system.

[Ian]

Learn yi quan basics: zhan zhuang, sh li, mo ca bu, fa li, from a competent instructor. Take you about a year of 2/3 hours per day, then go learn the application to your own system.

Learn systema basics for a few years, then come back to me?

[C.J.Wang]

All traditional CMA systems have internal strength training incorporated in the forms. Just need a good teacher to point you in the right direction.

[Sprint]

"Learn systema basics for a few years, then come back to me?"

Maybe you know yi quan because you learned it in China? And then you learned systema and found it to be vastly superior? If so can you tell me because I like to learn new things, why should I learn systema instead of yi quan to develop internal strength? And why if it is so good did you ask the question in the first place?

[Ian]

Mr. Sprint, I'm just messing with you!

I've never learned yiquan, but I'm trying to get a discussion going where we can find some commonalities between styles and talk about training internal strength in general.

So when you say "do yiquan" it's about as helpful as me saying "do systema"

One thing we do is work each joint with resistance from our partners. For example, hands - play mercy with your partner, do it extremely slowly, try to use only what's needed, and try to move with your breath as much as possible.

I'm asking because I don't know everything and I want to steal your techniques! And also share something useful in return.

[Walter Joyce]

You might want to google Mike Sigman as he has focused on the internal strength aspect of training as a separate component for years, producing materials on the topic.

[Dmitri]

mind leading the body

[mixjourneyman]

Internal strength is a huge huge subject. Even if pertaining to only one style.

Take baguazhang for instance: simple explanation of bagua internal strength training is that the power comes from the hips and the back. But it really goes much deeper than that. People often mistake being able to use their hips and back (and maybe dan tien) as the only places where they put strength. But the truth is that you have to learn how to make EVERY part of your body strong to create bagua's force.
You have to make your hands strong, your shoulders strong, your upper and lower back strong, your chest strong, your neck strong, your legs, feet, toes, everything.
There are specific ways of practicing every part of your body from the bottom of your feet to the top of your head. Then as some others have mentioned, you have to make your mind strong with intent. Any good martial art, internal or external, will have similar training to achieve these goals. After you can make your whole body strong, you have to go out and test it. Even if you are strong inside your body, if you never hit anyone, how can you expect to be able to use your force?

[qiphlow]

Internal strength is a huge huge subject. Even if pertaining to only one style.

Take baguazhang for instance: simple explanation of bagua internal strength training is that the power comes from the hips and the back. But it really goes much deeper than that. People often mistake being able to use their hips and back (and maybe dan tien) as the only places where they put strength. But the truth is that you have to learn how to make EVERY part of your body strong to create bagua's force.
You have to make your hands strong, your shoulders strong, your upper and lower back strong, your chest strong, your neck strong, your legs, feet, toes, everything.
There are specific ways of practicing every part of your body from the bottom of your feet to the top of your head. Then as some others have mentioned, you have to make your mind strong with intent. Any good martial art, internal or external, will have similar training to achieve these goals. After you can make your whole body strong, you have to go out and test it. Even if you are strong inside your body, if you never hit anyone, how can you expect to be able to use your force?

agreed. and i would say that after you've made the body connections automatic, and you've trained the intent to be strong, then you've got to train to make the body follow the intention instantaneously.
and yes--maintaining connection during solo practice is not super difficult, but trying to do it while you're worried about getting puched in the face or tossed on your ass is a different animal entirely.

[Wuyizidi]

A spin on an old question - how do you, the reader, create internal strength? How do you train it?

The good first step for us would be to stop using incomplete, inaccurate translations like internal strength. The Chinese word used here is jin, which means trained force. So the correct translation is internal trained force. As the name suggests, it's not the kind of force you can produce or do very well naturally without special training. People can naturally have a lot of strength, but no one naturally has a lot of jin.

Martial art is fundamentally about how to use force (to cause incapacitation, injury, or death). We make use of many types of trained forces (in Taiji Quan we talk about 36 types, actually there are more), each has its advantages and disadvantages. For example, with external jins, the advantage is you can produce the biggest, fastest accelerating forces this way, but the disadvantage is once it's launched, it's very hard to stop and change course midway (it's ballistic), also, store and release are separate, distinct processes. With internal jin, just the opposite it true.

The quantitative aspects - speed, acceleration, duration, etc, are but part of the whole picture. Using a bigger force is not always the solution. Hence the objection to the word strength here, not only is it incorrect, it gives the false impression that with internal jin, "bigger is automatically better". It's not. With internal jin we're seeking a different type of quality.

Classic examples of activities involving a lot of jin are pool and golf: sometimes you need to use big external force to hit the ball very hard, sometimes you need to use very refined internal force to control the ball. As martial art students we want to have as complete an understanding on use of force (in all its aspects) as possible.

Here's a good intro on jin: http://www.ycgf.org/Articles/TJ_Jin/TJ_Jin1.html


Wuyizidi

[river rider]

following Wuyizidi's post, it would seem that the very question of how to obtain internal strength is misleading. there is no one such thing to obtain in the first place, rather a series of trained forces to develop. the words "internal strength" become an adjective, not a noun... describing a simple action (a punch, a deflection, breathing...) that now has greater content because of the refining action of proper practice, the layering of intent and spirit, the experencial knowledge of the larger pattern these acts are a part of, greater sensitivity, and a wide variety of technical details specific to each of the jins we are trying to develop. if there is such a one thing as internal strength, it would have to be a thing, a principle, that binds all these elements together, that could be understood well enough to train directly to develop, and that was in opposition to, or different than, its counterpart relating to external strength.

[onyomi]

Posted by: kenneth_fish Posted on: May 4th, 2008, 9:23pm
They were about the diameter of a nickel, maybe a bit larger, and raised. He called them rouqiu, literally "muscle balls". He said they were concentrations of qi under the skin. Master Hu Jiemin of Lohan Shaolin had the same skills. Speaking of whom - his neigong was incredible. His body would expand and contract visibly. Once he showed me a "kip up" unlike anything I had ever seen - he lay on the ground on his back, raised his feet about six inches off the ground. A wave seemed to run through his body, and without bending his knees he was suddenly standing upright.

I used to go visit the abbot Heng Yueh at Muzhi mountain outside of Taipei - he was just over 100 years old when I met him. He was still practicing Lohan kung fu. When he moved he too seemed to expand and contract visibly - his forearm would swell to half again its normal size, and his mid forearm to his fingertips would turn quite red.


To me, this is the kind of stuff that should be considered indicative of "internal strength." Just having good body mechanics or powerful intent is not it. Otherwise, we'd be right in saying that Western Boxers have some of the best "internal strength" around. How do you get this? With Qigong/Neigong/Yoga/Meditation and other such practices.