Martial Man - Adam Mizner revisited

[origami_itto]

Ok, good reply.

I can't really understand how people can lift weights and at the same time achieve the level of relaxation necessary for T'ai Chi. I guess some people are just more gifted than me.

One of the scariest guys I've put my hands on so far was built like bolo yeung. The second I thought about attacking his shoulder I was flying around that contact point as a fulcrum. Was wearing muay thai shorts, even. Scary guy.

[willie]

Ok, good reply.

I can't really understand how people can lift weights and at the same time achieve the level of relaxation necessary for T'ai Chi. I guess some people are just more gifted than me.

hi Bao. Today I am constructing a very heavy steel frame for a machine for the Navy Yard. This requires heavy lifting in order to weld all of the pieces into one unit. Do you actually believe that having to do my job will actually take away from my taiji? If you had a 10 oz bicep and went to the gym and turned it into a 12 oz bicep do you really think that the 2 oz difference will destroy your understanding of taiji?

[Wanderingdragon]

It’s never about muscle, it’s about tension.

[Bao]

One of the scariest guys I've put my hands on so far was built like bolo yeung.

Btw, Bolo is an excellent tai chi practitioner.

Do you actually believe that having to do my job will actually take away from my taiji? If you had a 10 oz bicep and went to the gym and turned it into a 12 oz bicep do you really think that the 2 oz difference will destroy your understanding of taiji?

No, not really. Just want to hear your view. If your body is strong you should be able to relax good. It’s mostly when muscles are not strong that the body tries to compensate the weak muscles by tensing and stiffening. But I do believe that some certain types repetitive exercise can make your body stiff or make it harder to relax. I’ve been there, done that. OTOH, it was a very long time ago since I trained hard and I had had trouble with tension and stiffness a long time before I learned to not... uh... suck?

[origami_itto]

It's not bad to strengthen the body.

What's bad is strengthening practices that introduce and keep tension in the body. A lot of resistance training on its own isn't necessarily paired with sufficient pliability exercises, in my opinion. Also in my opinion things like most weight lifting and body sculpting practices build strength in particular ways that isn't necessarily directly translatable to where we want strength to be in taijiquan.

Personally, I'm more of a fan of resistance bands and whole body movements with relatively small free weights/kettlebells. Always engaging as much of the body as possible, which is generally "cheating" in your strength training/body building type practices.

Like take a medium resistance band with a doorway hook, set that up, step out till it's got minimum tension and then do your 1000 pi quan pulling that out to the max and stepping back to start on each side. You will build tremendous effective and smooth strength.

[kenneth fish]

Several points about strength training as it relates to Taiji:
1. The "old masters" never disparaged strength training - with one major exception - Zheng Manqing. Other schools of taiji (across the board - Ch'en, Yang, Hao, Wu) included strength training, stance training, resistance training (with a partner) and free fighting practice. I saw this in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Mainland China, and in the Chinatowns of New York and San Francisco.
2. The advent of the modern age has resulted in a steep decline of overall muscle strength in the general population. We no longer walk long distances on a daily basis, lift and carry heavy loads, chop wood to heat our homes or fire our stoves, tend to crops or clear acreage by hand. Just being alive in the 17th and 18th century required more physical strength than today.
3. All of my teachers, even those whose touch was light as a feather and soft as cotton, engaged in some form of strength training - including weights and weighted weaponry.

The entire question as to whether one should or should not engage in weight and/or strength training is , in my opinion, absurd. In fact, the older one gets the more important maintaining physical strength becomes.

[wayne hansen]

It's not about strength training or no strength training
It's about correct or in correct strength training

[Steve Rowe]

I think it depends on the mind, awareness, focus and sensitivity, you can either soften the right tissue or you can't. Strong supporting muscles will only be helpful.

[GrahamB]

Being strong makes you harder to kill - fact.

[wayne hansen]

No it does not

[GrahamB]

A good point, well argued.

[kenneth fish]

Well, I didn't come here for an argument.

[GrahamB]

I wasn't talking to you Ken.

[windwalker]

Several points about strength training as it relates to Taiji:
1. The "old masters" never disparaged strength training - with one major exception - Zheng Manqing. Other schools of taiji (across the board - Ch'en, Yang, Hao, Wu) included strength training, stance training, resistance training (with a partner) and free fighting practice. I saw this in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Mainland China, and in the Chinatowns of New York and San Francisco.

The entire question as to whether one should or should not engage in weight and/or strength training is , in my opinion, absurd. In fact, the older one gets the more important maintaining physical strength becomes.

You must have missed Ben Lo's classes...lots of very fit people could not play taiji as he instructed them. It was to hard..
In China. of those I've met it was the same story..The training itself was extremely had to do, lifting weights would not have helped in the process.

so while you saw some things others might have seen and experienced different things.

The mistake is to feel that ones own view is the only view...I've had mine changed a couple of times depending on who I met....In some cases allowing me to see what I had thought was on the wrong path...


I've lifted before in my early yrs,,,, but not something I would advocate as something that would help ones taiji practice...the practice itself if true is hard enough with out adding to it.

Its pretty hard to use the body to move a mass, and then try to move a mass with out using the body...The idea and training is very different which is why on many clips posted people have a hard time understanding the how and what is going on...

[windwalker]

I didn't get to see the long video, But I did view the shorter one. I wasn't overly impressed with it.
It wasn't bad, but nothing like my teachers stuff.
There was some very differences of opinion as well.
In the video he speaks of poeple who try to look better by lifting weights or doing push-ups.
He claims that if practitioners do these types of activities, Then they will never get it.
In my opinion, It's total B.S. I weight lift and I have good taiji.
I understand that many masters of old had said the same thing, So I guess that I don't really fault him for saying so.
But, It's simply not true. So I will ask a simple question as an example for consideration.
If a practitioner, like himself or anyone else, had achieved a certain level of skill, would that skill just simply
cease to exist just because they when to gym and got back in good shape? I hope not...
The truth is that I often wonder how people can be so pedantic.

Your skill is good because you had good teachers, and you followed what they said

Muscle atrophy is definitely a very bad thing and for some strange reason many taiji players endorse it???
Here is another example. If someone truly understood what taiji is and how it is used, then why would it be
necessary to waste away? After all, that's against nature. It's the mind that controls the body, not the other way around.

While this is true, it is also true that the the body gets conditioned into moving objects in a certain way.
Depending on how much its conditioned it may not be possible to move something using any another method as in when someone says dont
use force.

Even if someone allowed much of their normal muscle to waste away, would they still have the capability of
muscle contraction? Of-coarse they would. Just not as much power as someone who lifts weights. So this proves that
the mind is the controller and not how much muscle someone has. It's a choice.

The question should be asked as to what makes a better conductor and not actor of force. The answer will determine ones out look
on how force is used and expressed.
In my opinion, the only drawback of weightlifting is if someone got too big and became muscle bound, which limited his range of motion.
Even in that case, having extra power never hurt in self defense situations. It's a good equalizer.
Its not only range of motion its body balance and the way a body can express force on another body.
ie

Consider a common phenomenon observed at a softball game - the collision of a bat with a ball. A batter is able to transport energy from her to the softball by means of a bat. The batter applies a force to the bat, thus imparting energy to the bat in the form of kinetic energy. The bat then carries this energy to the softball and transports the energy to the softball upon collision. In this example, a bat is used to transport energy from the player to the softball. However, unlike wave phenomena, this phenomenon involves the transport of matter. The bat must move from its starting location to the contact location in order to transport energy. In a wave phenomenon, energy can move from one location to another, yet the particles of matter in the medium return to their fixed position. A wave transports its energy without transporting matter.

There was a couple more things that I didn't like either, But hey to each his own.
I still like him and his style. I just think that I have outgrown it.

I like Adams work, but also one should understand he has a back ground in s-mantis...this may have influenced a lot of
his own development not represented by his current teachings..

as they say "to each his own" all depends on what one wants to do


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3ubr1Z ... e=youtu.be