the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Hat tip to Graham for sharing this channel.

Three techniques were demonstrated in the video below:



1. Circling and pressing a bowling ball against the wall
2. Curling up a water bottle on a string
3. Group bean bag toss

Has anyone trained these, and if so, what are your thoughts?

And do you have other videos/ exercises for developing power/ strength?

Best,
Greg

Ziranmen does variations on these. They are pretty self explanatory. The trick is to start gentle with low weight but do a LOT of repetitions and very slowly increase weight / resistance over time. The idea is to develop grip and strength naturally over time with a lot of repeated movement. If you want to get real benefit don't assign a specific time during the week to train these. Just pick a couple and train them whenever you have a spare moment instead of looking at your phone.

In these videos you will find ball rolling and the bean bag toss. We do the weight on the string too, but I'm not sure if that is shown. You will also find a whole stack of other exercises. The not so obvious one is tapping the stone ball lightly with the fingers and knuckles. The idea behind this is to develop a powerful but relaxed "knock". It's good for knocking loudly on doors or for rapping somebody on the head with.

I love these ziranmen basics. Some similarities to the xylh methods.

Greg J - I did not do the ball basics but my sifu had a metalworker who trained with us make a large hollow metal ball with a screw on lid. It was heavy empty but I imagine it could be very heavy when it was filled with sand.

The water bottle string was similar to a wrist roller found in karate. I didn't do it much because it was too static. In chinna we just used a stick to twist it to build the wrists.

The bean bag we did do a lot and I've got one that is filled with steel ball bearings and special herbs. It's heavy at about 13kg and was excellent to do catch and throw both solo or with partners. If I was to start someone in this I would use a lighter 5kg bag and build up slowly with lots of repetitions.

My favourite was the bag but the other one was the heavy pole.

wrist rollers are some of the greatest forearm/wrist strengtheners out there. Regular progressive use can do amazing things.

[quote="zrm"]Ziranmen does variations on these. They are pretty self explanatory. The trick is to start gentle with low weight but do a LOT of repetitions and very slowly increase weight / resistance over time.

Agree with most posters here. Really good exercises that should form part of most CMA (and desperately needed in many cases might I say).

I would start with weight that makes one a little uncomfortable, not too light. Effort is required for real benefit.

Thanks everyone! I appreciate the feedback.

Best,
Greg