Strong Legs

[Slim]

Personally, within the context of Wu style Taijiquan, there is a direct relation between how strong my legs are on any given day and my ability to use martial techniques. The stronger my legs are the more easily I can apply huajin, without which I might as well put on the Shuaijiao jacket.

From my own interactions with my Shifu and other Taijiquan teachers I have trained with over the years I have never heard of any route for ones practice that does not first address the lack of leg strength most of us bring to the table of Taijiquan training (can't comment on the other arts). The only thing that might resemble the understanding that leg strength should not be emphasized would be when my Shifu has illustrated that at higher levels the force of the body (both one's own force and the force of one's opponent) is 'sent' down through the bones of the leg and not through the 'jin' muscle/tissue of the leg, so that the leg remains completely 'song' loose even when drawing in or emitting. However it seems to me that this very high level of practice is only arrived at after a few decades of eating bitter, that is the building of ones foundation, the central component of which is leg strength, plain and simple.

[johnwang]

I have to admit that I find it funny that there are people on this forum who think they need to strengthen their legs ... Chinese Internal Martial Arts are just a way to make people really strong.

I have no idea how CIMA training can help me to achieve my goal. Developing my leg strength is the most important training that I do daily. There are many leg strength that we don't have since we were born and we don't use and develop it in our daily job. Try to ask a 5 to 8 year old kid to twist and lift a 50 lbs single head like this picture, you will know what kind of leg strenght that I'm talking about.



Here are the leg strength that I try to develop daily by using my single head.

- twist (like the above picture)
- sweep
- scoop
- bite
- inner hook
- outer hook
- horse back kick

A simple test for your leg strength, get your opponent by an under hook (hook your opponent's shoulder from underneath), try to use your leg to horseback kick both of his legs off the ground and still remain single leg balance. It may not be as easy as it looks.

http://johnswang.com/horse_back_kick.wmv

[meeks]

Well if this is Scott Phillips way of marketing to the chee huggers about relaxation will create chee will create skill, then he's feeding the sheep what they want to hear - those that actually read his blog, and I wish him well for that. The points raised have poor substance - the photo is that of a body builder that has developed large muscles as the PURPOSE of his training by using isolation exercises. Most fu zhu gong fa (supplementary exercises) are used to condition/strengthen areas of the body by coordinating/unifying the movement (as opposed to isolating the movement). Power does not equal huge muscle tissue - but come on - you don't really need US to tell you that... *silence*... do you?
But, he's preening to the readers that want to agree with him like Rush Limbaugh only preens to his extreme right wing groups.
My training in bagua left me unable to walk for the first few months from pain, tension and lactic acid - it eventually went away by working through it and learning lots of tui na which involved hitting parts of my legs with a rubber mallet.
Scott - I wish you the best while you're on your soap box. Hopefully the only people that put your skills to the test are those that buy in to what you say.


and ya - the guys carrying people up the mountains have massive calves. oops - don't want to ruin your sales pitch....


edit:
re:"don't get me started on the myth of core strength"
spoken like a true man that drops his pelvic floor to 'stay relaxed'
core strength is a valid concept - just not in the isolation exercises of Pilates. If you're interested I have numerous bagua specific exercises (fu zhu gong fa) for Cheng Bagua that unify the core/dan tian so the body moves as a functional unit - makes you strong as hell too, but I guess that would possibly be against your beliefs. And if your believers have to work hard and break a sweat that wouldn't be about leading your chee with your brain focus now, would it?

"think qi no real. no think qi, have qi"

[MartialDev]

As to me being condescending, well, I prefer to think of myself as having an arrogant streak. I think I'm right, and I suppose it shows, but I'm here to learn.

Scott - the arrogance won't help you learn, neither will thinking you're right. Seeking dissonance and insincere motives in discourse will only stand in the way of being a good man. You might be generous and sincere in real life - if so why not be congruent and extend it through your whole life. I think Shawn Segler once said something along the lines of 'If you're an asshole to the waiter - but good to your friends - you're still an asshole'

So, not that you are asking for any advice (to paraphrase a recent post of yours) - but I'd work on emptying your cup and being a good simple man.

SINCERE words are not sweet,
Sweet words are not sincere.
Good men are not argumentative,
The argumentative are not good.
The wise are not erudite,
The erudite are not wise.

The Sage does not take to hoarding.
The more he lives for others, the fuller is his life.
The more he gives, the more he abounds.

The Way of Heaven is to benefit, not to harm.
The Way of the Sage is to do his duty, not to strive with anyone

Drop the Kung Fu Panda act plz...

Wu de is not about embracing equality and diversity; it is about dismissing with rubbish. And when that rubbish starts putting on airs, believing itself thereby "respected", wu de does not even bother to correct it.

So, when Scott stops in to correct some of you folks, it is not a sign of his arrogance. It is a show of compassion!



Actually, Scott is an exemplar of the first important lesson I learned in martial arts: make your mistakes with perfect confidence.

He who should record my idle talk as being to the prejudice of the pettiest law, opinion, or custom of his parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me much more; for, in what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but that 'tis what I had then in my thought, a tumultuous and wavering thought. All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice:

"Nec me pudet, ut istos fateri nescire, quod nesciam;"
["Neither am I ashamed, as they are, to confess my ignorance of what
I do not know."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 25.]

I should not speak so boldly, if it were my due to be believed; and so I told a great man, who complained of the tartness and contentiousness of my exhortations. Perceiving you to be ready and prepared on one part, I propose to you the other, with all the diligence and care I can, to clear your judgment, not to compel it.
~ Michel de Montaigne

[Void]

Drop the Kung Fu Panda act plz...

It wasn't the Panda I quoted it was 81 from the Dàodéjīng

[wiesiek]

Huge leg is not strong leg. A strong leg a leg that has nice shape, slim but not bulky.

In my opinion, her legs must be very strong.

+1
best post so far

i went thru this threat couple of times to get Scotts point,
and still
i don`t know...
mabu my intelligence is to low
but
me thinking, that strong legs are no.1 if we consider MA
however" strong legs" are "bypoduct" of correct practise, unless someone has very weak legs /compare to rest of his body/
then
some of suplemental exercises is nessesery

when i started my MA trainings i was unable to do one leg squat /pistols/,
after year or so, it wasn`t problem any more, / i didn`t trained "pistols' as single exercise at all during this time/

[Daniel]

Well if this is Scott Phillips way of marketing to the chee huggers about relaxation will create chee will create skill, then he's feeding the sheep what they want to hear - those that actually read his blog, and I wish him well for that. The points raised have poor substance - the photo is that of a body builder that has developed large muscles as the PURPOSE of his training by using isolation exercises. Most fu zhu gong fa (supplementary exercises) are used to condition/strengthen areas of the body by coordinating/unifying the movement (as opposed to isolating the movement). Power does not equal huge muscle tissue - but come on - you don't really need US to tell you that... *silence*... do you?
But, he's preening to the readers that want to agree with him like Rush Limbaugh only preens to his extreme right wing groups.
My training in bagua left me unable to walk for the first few months from pain, tension and lactic acid - it eventually went away by working through it and learning lots of tui na which involved hitting parts of my legs with a rubber mallet.
Scott - I wish you the best while you're on your soap box. Hopefully the only people that put your skills to the test are those that buy in to what you say.

I agree with the point that MA and IMA can become obsessed with creating stronger legs, which of course isn´t useful, that just means you´re stuck on a level in the training and can´t quite shift out of it. That you need good leg-strength, connections, structure, spine-connections, liuhe, connective tissue/tendon-work, stable lower jiao, a kang that is alive, songkua, the shift-points in the feet, the ankle-connections and the deeper liuhe between toes, legs and hands and arms, and the ability to change smoothly and fast in the legs etc. is a bit of a given.

I hope Mr Phillips isn´t using this as some kind of marketing ploy. If we see a blog coming with "Yes, I predicted the reactions right on that unhinged RSF, and boy did they squirm" I guess he was.


D.

Sarcasm. Oh yeah, like that´ll work.

[Scott P. Phillips]

Believe me, if this was a marketing ploy, I'd have have fleeced you guys already.... Yeah, come study with me ladies, I'm weaker than you are...

Johnwang, thanks for that picture, I'd never seen that sort of shuijiao leg exercise with weights. The throw you linked to, however, does not require such training.

But look, I'm not making a stupid argument here. If you want be able to throw a skilled wrestler twice your weight in competition, without hurting her, at some point in your training you might want to consider adding weights.

I may be trying to have fun at your expense, but please don't take what I'm saying as criticism. I respect all of this training, hard work and discipline. I don't have a personal issue with people lifting weights or practicing "burn to earn" techniques--knock yourself out!

I am making the case that internal martial arts were heavily influenced, by design, by the wide spread notion in Chinese culture that cultivating weakness was a virtue. The Daoist concept of virtue (de) is unique for each person. We could say, your body has it's own unique virtue--which is to be discovered, or revealed, not forced. Thus the term Wude (martial virtue) is closely related to terms like xuande (mysterious or dark virtue).

I'm only asking that people ask themselves if it is possible that the widespread commitment to cultivate weakness had an influence on the development of their art? To come back with a claim that everyone you train with is like totally strong dude, misses the point.

OK, I'm asking a little more than that, I'm asking you to think about these arts from a different perspective. For instance, is it possible that someone who as a priest or a hermit did long periods of purification & emptying practices eating very little food for years on end-- and then went on to develop a martial art that could be done without increasing strength?
Or the other way around, is it possible that a glorious general with extraordinary skill and experience in fighting, became a hermit or a priest and through long periods of fasting, purification and emptying--found he could still fight...without strength?

The Daodejing, the Huainanzi, and hundreds of religious commentaries on those seed texts over the years elucidate the value of cultivating weakness. There were always people in Chinese culture who argued against Daoism, but it was always an important influence on everything. When the 20th Century hit, martial artists were viciously hammered politically and socially for being superstitious nut jobs who believed in gods and qi. The survivors were forced to discard much of the performing and ritual aspects of the arts --the comic, the mystical, and the obscure. But nothing suffered more than the notion of cultivating weakness. To be a martial artists in the 20th Century was to be a National Artist (guoshu), one who represented the strength of the Chinese people against the evil barbarians who had so humiliated China from the Opium Wars until the present (they are still complaining about us.)

[edededed]

Huge leg is not strong leg. A strong leg a leg that has nice shape, slim but not bulky.

In my opinion, her legs must be very strong.

+1
best post so far

Most definitely, I see lots of gongli here. I mean, her name is even Gongli!

[middleway]

Scott,

you are not really talking about 'weak legs' at all as far as i can see.

After all a Bridge arc is 'strong' but has no muscle .. it is completely aligned and using gravity to maintain itself ... yet it is extremely STRONG.

We have 'structural strength' ... that is STRONG. None of those things are 'weak' at all!!!!

so what your arguing is in fact .. body builder style muscularly strong legs vs CIMA structurally STRONG legs. The whole 'you dont need strong legs' is refuted entirely by most of what your saying ... if we define strength just as the arch or as structural ...

I am sure you agree that structurally Weak legs have no place in IMA training? ...surely.

So then its a case of determining what makes up the 'structure' of the legs. Well is is Muscle, fascia, bone, tendon, ligament, fat, skin, circulatory systems, nerves etc .... The ones that need to be developed through training are Muscle, fascia, bone, tendon, nerves, circulation and ligament. To say that there is NO use for any of these things is a complete misunderstanding of the nature of these tissues. Muscle for example does not have to be a huge mass of useless tight tissue ...

I think the definition of 'weak' and 'strong' needs to be laid out very clearly.

Are you saying that with Structurally weak legs, weak tendons, weak ligaments, weak bones etc you can still have superb power and force? in fact i think you would simple fall to the ground.

Cheers
Chris

[ChiBelly]

After all a Bridge arc is 'strong' but has no muscle .. it is completely aligned and using gravity to maintain itself ... yet it is extremely STRONG.

We have 'structural strength' ... that is STRONG. None of those things are 'weak' at all!!!!

so what your arguing is in fact .. body builder style muscularly strong legs vs CIMA structurally STRONG legs. The whole 'you dont need strong legs' is refuted entirely by most of what your saying ... if we define strength just as the arch or as structural ...

Bridge arcs don't maintain themselves - you have to have cement between each stone, and at the top of the arc, there is usually a keystone which is bigger than the rest of the stones. The strength of an arc is due to its shape, but you have to ask, what maintains its shape? Arc bridges still collapse when their foundations become weak, because they are no longer strong enough to maintain their shape.

[middleway]

Bridge arcs don't maintain themselves - you have to have cement between each stone, and at the top of the arc, there is usually a keystone which is bigger than the rest of the stones.

this isnt correct. The keystone is what makes an arch stable as i discussed with a architect friend of mine only the other day ... it is stable due to its shape ... not the connection of the stones together by cement. There is a clip he showed me of someone who build an arch out of wood and stood on it with no connection between the blocks at all. Its the geometry of the arch that holds it together along with the butresses at the base to stop the horizontal force

The strength of an arc is due to its shape, but you have to ask, what maintains its shape? Arc bridges still collapse when their foundations become weak, because they are no longer strong enough to maintain their shape.

precisely what i addressed in the second part of my post ... what makes up the structure. What gives the structure its strength other than the shape. An arch of Jelly wouldnt work for example.

cheers
Chirs

[ChiBelly]

this isnt correct. The keystone is what makes an arch stable as i discussed with a architect friend of mine only the other day ... it is stable due to its shape ... not the connection of the stones together by cement. There is a clip he showed me of someone who build an arch out of wood and stood on it with no connection between the blocks at all. Its the geometry of the arch that holds it together.
s

The keystone only makes the arch stable in one direction. The arch made out of wood will not stand for long, nor will an arch of stones with no cement. All you have to do is bump into it or have the ground shake a little and it will all fall down. Even structures that are not "arch" shaped can be stable due to the way gravity causes items above to press on those below, but they are not maintainable structures if there is any force other than from above. If you have played Jenga, you'd know what I mean.

You can have the best arch in the world, nice open hips, etc., but this will easily collapse when someone pushes you if your leg muscles are weak. A horse stance with a nice arc doesn't maintain itself naturally - you have to use your leg muscles to hold it, which is why you get tired from doing it for long.

[middleway]

The keystone only makes the arch stable in one direction. The arch made out of wood will not stand for long, nor will an arch of stones with no cement. All you have to do is bump into it or have the ground shake a little and it will all fall down. Even structures that are not "arch" shaped can be stable due to the way gravity causes items above to press on those below, but they are not maintainable structures if there is any force other than from above. If you have played Jenga, you'd know what I mean.

Agreed! your focusing in on this point a little too much maybe. My point about the Arch was that it is a 'strong' shape for its purpose. Look at the architecture around the world still standing due to Arches ... the Colosseum in rome for instance. So strength in the structural sense is there for its purpose.

My argument was that the definition of strength used by Scott was extremely Narrow. meaning 'big muscles' and disregarding strength defined by other factors.

cheers
Chris

[johnwang]

CIMA guys don't have to be weak. They can be strong too. The stronger you are, the less you will need to borrow.

A strong leg should not have smooth surface but have the shape of individual muscle. You should be able to see each individual muscle in a nice long shape instead of like GongLi's smooth lady's leg or bulky man's leg. It should have unsmooth surface instead, like hills next to hills with deep trenches in between.