Trick wrote:a taiji teacher in taiwan told me swimming is a good additional exercise to ones taiji practice, i agree swimming is a very good exercise.But swimming is a relatively new common exercise among chinese not long time ago few dared to jump into the pool, including gung fu masters...so lucky there was the martial arts around as an exercise to make them stronger
I am curious what additional exercises, sports, etc. would be especially appropriate for supplementing Taijiquan practice. I favor the idea that frequent repetition of an activity is usually the best for gaining the appropriate muscle development, nerve “priming” for actions, coordination, connections, etc., but I also recognize that supplemental training often can help (and can sometimes speed up the gains). Also, most sports have numerous weight room training and other exercises that are thought to give elite athletes an edge, and it seems like this should hold true for TJQ as well.
I do not think that solo TJQ forms practice is sufficient, but when one does not have a partner to train with, then it is better than nothing. So, when one does not have a partner to train with for the interactive aspects of TJQ (push-hands, sparring, etc.), then what solo activities could one do to improve (in addition to solo forms)?
LABOR? I think that the wiry strength/power and efficiency that many laborers have (and that many Chinese peasants that learned TJQ presumably had) complements what we want for TJQ. Assuming that people will not be willing to quit their current jobs to become laborers in physically demanding jobs, are there training regimes that could mimic and develop the wiry efficiency of laborers? Is this even desirable for TJQ?
FITNESS? While many training regimes for men seem to be more about bulking up, those designed for women’s fitness appear to be more whole body and more compatible with what we want for TJQ. Would women’s fitness programs be good supplemental training for TJQ?
SWIMMING? I used to be a swimmer (through High School) and do think that swimming would be good as a supplement for TJQ. The activity involves pulling and pushing oneself through resistance (the water) for the full ranges of the various strokes. While I was a swimmer long enough ago that weight training and other activities were probably not yet optimized for swimmers, at least not for the amateur level that I was at, we did do some preseason running as a supplement. However, running, skiing, skating and other winter activities done on a weekend would harm one’s swimming times and would require about a week to recover from. This indicates to me that the lengthened muscles beneficial for swimming would be tightened by winter sport activities to a detrimental degree. Swimming’s lengthened muscles and coordinated body actions done through resistance seem like they would benefit TJQ practitioners.
GYMNASTICS? Some personal trainers seem to really like the qualities that gymnastics develops, especially the balance and body control – especially the powerful explosiveness while having the control to suddenly stop or still the movements (e.g., for the landings), etc. While competitive gymnastics probably goes beyond what we would want for TJQ, and would likely be harmful for what we are trying to develop, would an amateur or recreational level of gymnastics be a good supplemental activity?
DANCING? I know that many dance schools supplement their training with TJQ in order to improve their dancing, but is the reverse also true? Would dancing help one’s TJQ? Dancing teaches body control (although often not always the unified, centered, stabile control of TJQ) as well as balance, flexibility, fluidity, and even power. Are these qualities developed in dance similar enough to what we want for TJQ, or are these qualitatively developed different between dancing and TJQ? Professional dance would probably not be good for TJQ, but perhaps recreationally it would be good?
SPORTS? There are various sports that have controlled body interactions, even in so called “non-contact” sports like basketball and soccer (football), which seem to involve actions that are similar enough to TJQ that they may be beneficial as supplemental activities for TJQ. Since I do not have much experience with these, however, I would not know which may be especially good.
Are there other disciplines that could be helpful and complementary supplemental activities for TJQ? Are there others that serious TJQ practitioners should avoid because they would harm what we are trying to develop (assuming that we know well enough to identify what physical qualities we are actually trying to develop in TJQ)?