I have read that lots of internal schools discourage the use of weights and weight training. I am visiting an internal style in a few days (hopefully) and so was curious on the subject. I like weight training a lot and would not give it up easily (only if the school insisted). I am curious why weights are looked down on in some internal schools. Or is it just a few schools that happen to be the ones I have read about?
Because weight training pulls you away from what you’re trying to learn in an internal ma. For example, you have to tense up your muscles to do weight training while you have to relax your muscles in internal martial arts.
I don’t see a problem with it. It certainly wont hurt you. Just make sure you don’t begin to rely on that extra strength.
If you’re properly weight-training (although of course, this is betraying my personal bias of what ‘proper’ means), you should be increasing your body’s flexibility and relaxation, and lowering RBP, etc.
If this is the case, you should be fine. If not, I think you should change your WT practice, regardless of interest in the internal arts.
All things in moderation.
That said, there are some pitfalls. Some specific areas (eg. lower back, inguinal folds, neck, trapezius) are very important and very hard to relax if there’s any tension in them at all - so you may have to adjust your weight-training. Also, if you ‘rely’ on your strength in your training, you will probably never learn to use your body properly for the internal arts.
Weights are gooood.
Weights won’t hurt if you give yourself time to rest by either going hard only twice a week per muscle group – or by doing short, heavy sets so that you don’t work to fatigue.
If you are still worried about holding tension in any particular muscle group, try focusing on lifts that use whole body movements: dead lifts, squats, chinups, side presses.
The other thing you can do are “cheats”. For example, by using your legs and back to do a shoulder press you are training the coordination of your whole body in a way that is more applicable to martial arts – but is a no-no if your “sport” is body building.
Don’t fear the wieghts, unless you are really stiff and awkward in your movements – be honest. If that’s the case, spend more time on relaxing while doing your style’s form. But that said, almost all internal teachers will give you something heavy to play with at some point in your training.
-crumble
Oh and you should know that some schools don’t like weight training because they’re sick of new guys coming to push hands class and flinging around their supposidly “advanced” students. Haha!
Really: if you already train with with wieghts, don’t stop. Maybe de-emphasize it while you’re learning to be soft. But don’t stop.
I would have to agree with Kumkuat…weight training could be couterproductive in internal martial arts because in weight training you are using you localized muscle to move objects and this is exactly what you will be trying to train yourself out of. Also as weight training tends to isolate, it is counterproductive because you are trying to get the body to work as a whole and rid yourself of isolating muscle groups. Also, weight training tends to make the muscle hold a little extra tension during the day. Especially at first, you will be trying to get very soft and relaxed. It is amazing how much tension is held in the normal body and I found weight training only makes it worse, especially at in the begining of internal martial art training.
I would say weight training is a bad idea when you start internal martial arts. If you want to continue, that is your choice; just remember that because of weight training you most likely will have a more difficult time learning internal martial arts - particularly at first.
My teacher has warned me against weight lifting…I go to the gym and run 5 or 6 times a week and I lift 15 lb dumbells in various exercises…He told me that this was OK, but no heavier…
I think the real question here is this:
As thinking beings, are we able to discern between different stimuli, or, after learning one way of moving the body, are we forced to do everything that way?
The reverse question would be, if you do internal arts, does it become impossible for you to take the lid off of the pickle jar?
“ almost all internal teachers will give you something heavy to play with at some point in your training. “
its called your mind.
‘Oh and you should know that some schools don’t like weight training because they’re sick of new guys coming to push hands class and flinging around their supposidly “advanced” students. Haha’
yep that’s the real point. To be able to push the other out using muscular force. Forget about learning any type of principles just go pump a bunch of iron get really strong and do what you want.
Amazing what a little 4oz ring and a little rope can do to a 1000lb bull. 
“The reverse question would be, if you do internal arts, does it become impossible for you to take the lid off of the pickle jar?”
Nope !!
But would you be able to do it using only the muscle required in a relaxed way?
I see nothing wrong with weight training in itself. But if you can’t do it with less then why add more 
I think “bigger,better.faster” it’s kind of an American thing. The problem I feel for most is that they try and approach TC with this same attitude reaching far above their present level and ability.
With out investing in the time and TC effort to really see how the hell dose he/she do that. It takes time, the training may even be conter intutive, but you won’t know it works unless you open your mind and give it a chance. (this assumes that you have faith in your teachers skills and abilities to beging with) 
Once you can do it then you will know what is good and what is not. What takes you deeper and what leads you away.
I feel too many people give up, they don’t understand the process and mistake the method for the end result. They seek to produce the same results in away that they understand but not actually what was done.
luck in training
What Mr. Leaf said.
Some people try to find victory in being stronger, faster, bigger. In truth, all martial arts are concerned with cultivating skill which allows you to defeat opponents when you are weaker, slower, smaller. Most martial arts accomplish this by training variations upon resisting and yielding to your opponent which effect the amount of strength, speed, and size you need to win. The chinese internal martial arts however seek to train a wholly other response which is neither resisting nor yielding (although you often hear the term ‘yielding’ in the IMAs, it has a very different definition than yielding in the colloquial sense - retreating parts or all of your body along the vector of a force; it is better called perhaps ‘recieving’); one of the goals of this new way of moving is that it doesn’t change the relationship combat has with your conditioning - it removes it completely.
This is not to say that conditioning is useless in combat, even for an accomplished internalist. Why? Because you will never, ever perfect this way of moving; and in the heat of defending your life and your loved ones, you should do anything to assure your victory. However, the goal of training and the goal of fighting are two different things. While training in the internal arts, you should be focused upon cultivating this unique skill - if you are martially oriented, you believe that through this cultivation you will become a better fighter.
The point of this is that, you may want to condition yourself (which is fine provided you train with regards to the potential pitfalls which have been mentioned), but this conditioning should be kept completely distinct from your internal training. Especially at the beginning levels, but even later, it is very easy to use your conditioning to ‘win’ during internal training. Perhaps sayings like ‘invest in loss’ and ‘noncompetitive’ warn us against this folly. For example, the push hands situation that has been brought up in this thread: the goal of push hands (especially as a beginner - but this is always true) is NOT to ‘win’ (eg. to push the guy off-balance) but rather to cooperate with your partner to explore each others ability to move spontaneously according to the ‘internal way of moving’ alluded to above. If in your training you rely on your conditioning, you will likely never find nor train this unique skill. This example is a common one, and an easy one to consider. However, the principle is universal in internal training, and often more subtle. My teacher often comments to me, ‘Yes, that would work. But only because you are tall and young and strong.’ If I didn’t know better, I would be content with the results, and train to reinforce what I was doing - thus never really finding the point of the internal arts. In fact, if I didn’t have him reminding me, I’d probably do exactly that!
There is not much point in using specifics here, but suffice to say that if you give yourself up to your practice, you will find a new way of moving which will be exciting and will definitely have martial value - but you have to find it and train it first! I don’t claim to be there myself, but I hope I’m on the right track, and I am lucky to have a good teacher who gives me personal, hands-on attention so that I can really feel the difference.
This is all just a long-winded way of expanding upon what has allready been said here. But I think it’s worth expanding upon! It’s also worth noting that all of these same concerns are present even for practitioners who do not do external conditioning exercises.
Oh yeah… and of course I could be wrong about all of this. I’ve neither been doing this as long, nor have been blessed with the talent for it that many others (even here! ) have. But this has been my impression so far.
I quit lifting (which I was doing along side kickboxing at the time) and took up aikido. I lost 15 lbs of muscle, mostly from my chest, and then gradually gained weight back in my legs ( mostly in the thighs) and my upper shoulders.
I can feel the difference though. I am weaker in some aspects, and honestly I miss my physique which I had trained so hard to gain.
It is true ofcourse that surrendering my strength has help me make big leaps in technique. But strength and size are good defenses again the unpredictable nature of the world. It sends a visual message to people and can help you avoid fights and protect you from injury.
I begin lifting again in the new year to hit the spots I have lost.
“The reverse question would be, if you do internal arts, does it become impossible for you to take the lid off of the pickle jar?”
No, but you would take the lid off of a pickle jar differently.
I liked Mike Sigman’s advice. Once you get the basics of internal strength, use it for everything to work it into body memory and normal use. Opening a door, flushing the toilet, lifting the lid off of a pickle jar, etc.
Resistance training was a basic part of most complete martial systems in the old days. Taijiquan has spear training and other apparatus. Bagauzhang is reknown for the use of extremely heavy weapons for training.
I believe the key is to maintain connection when training with weight. Western weight lifting routines are the antithesis of useful resistance. Isolation is the last thing you want in whole body connection. If you are going to isolate something I feel that it would be more useful to isolate an area with your awareness in the context of a form, rather than as a target for work.
As for the idea of being weak, it seems a bit suspect to me. So much of internal martial arts is structure, relaxed structure. Much of the teaching methodology that people have been exposed to, both here and in China, is focussed on the building of relaxed structure. Hence the idealization of softness in many internal practices. However we can’t spend all of our time in kindergarten. At some point you need to explore the filling up of that structure. Empty all of the time is just as pathological as full all of the time. Yin Yang balance.
How, once the structure is relaxed, do you dig out more power? If two excellent structures meet, the one that can change will have the advantage of initiative, and the one that can dig out more power will have the advantage of being able to finish the encounter.
The peasants of the Chen village farmed all day. If they were half as strong as my Grandfather then they would have been formidable fighters with an understanding of structure. In the Chen lineage that I study in there are many kinds of power training, from Qigong to weights to certain kinds of partner work.
Just thought I might bring up the issue of Peng in regards to weight lifting. It seems like weight lifting would be counterproductive to this important Taiji skill.
(A note to beginners: Peng is a relaxed coordination of the muscles and a way to lengthen internally. Or you might look it at as a creating a unified structure. It is the most important Taiji skill.)
Flexing isolated muscle groups is not conducive to Peng.
But I guess you theoretically you could get into Peng “mode” before doing internal practice even if you did lift weights.
But in actuality this is very hard to do. My personal experience has been that it is hard enough switching from an external art where the muscles are shortening to and internal art where the muscles are lengthening. I imagine with weight lifting it would be even harder.
Braden brings ups an interesting question though. Does weight lifting actually help your muscles to relax? It this really true? I don’t know enough about muscle physiology to say if this is right or not.
Weighty subject
For sure doing too much weight lifting will definitely slow down and impair your internal development. Fact!!!. If you have muscle mass it will be more dificult to cut the the amassed layers and truley relax properly to invigorate a smooth unhindered flow of Qi. It is a tricky one to be honest, if it were down to personal experience and opinions I would say reduce your weight lifting definitely. Persoanlly I would endorese weight lifting and Internal arts too much, its just that they seem so diametrically opposed to each other. One seems to undo the good work of the other.
old argument…
Hehe, do I get troll points for mentioning the push hands senario? 
I think that if you read through this thread, you’ll see that there are varying degrees of HOW MUCH weight training people think that you can do.
Some say none is appropriate, but no one says that weight lifting is a substitute for learning internal, coordinated movements (despite people arguing as if someone did say it.)
I think most people would agree that strength, per se, is not a hindrance to coordinated movement. Right? But stiffness is, for sure. The interesting thing about strength is that it takes a lot of weight work to obtain it, but then you can keep it by training at about 60% of your max.
So I ask you, doesn’t it make sense for the guy who is already weight training to reduce his weightlifting to about 60% - but not stop - while he is learning the basics of coordinated movement?
I await people’s replies.
- crumble
P.S. I mentioned the push-hands example as sort of an inside joke to people who have witnessed so-called senior students or instructors getting dusted by strong beginners. When I saw that it made me think. Of course the point of push hands is not to “push”, but on the other hands, what does it mean if senior students or instructors get pushed around?
Weight training with internal arts is fine, but only if it is done properly. I have always been taught to use the 70% rule. eg; while streching tendons strech 70% of how much you could strech. It applies to more than just that and personally i would apply that to the extent of your endurance during weight training.As for the HOW of doing the weight training properly, i cant say. simply because i dont do it .
“what does it mean if senior students or instructors get pushed around?”
I experienced that when pushing hands with this huge guy during my short lived tai chi practise. He was a senior student and he also looked like GI Joe, so i was quite intimidated to begin with.I didnt push him around per say but i did better him on many occasions, as he did me.But i was a beginner; so i believe that shouldnt of happened.Anyway i think it just came down to him underestimating me and letting his ego get in the way. Once he realised that he kicked my ass
Quote lifted from a Bagua instructor in Taiwan:
“Four oz. -can- deflect a thousand pounds, but just in case it doesn’t, you better have a thousand pounds at your disposal.”
The problem with the weight training as I see it.
Is that you don’t need it if you really have true listening skills.
Your time would be better spent in training gaining the real skill. Then if you feel that this is needed for what ever reason you can pursue it.
Not having listening skills will lead into all types of misconceptions about how things are done.
Not being able to give up the idea of strength or overcoming the other will also hinder development.
Pushing is not done for pushing per say, it’s to gain the ability to really listen and follow. It is better to get pushed then to push, only then can one really feel what is happening.
once you can listen you will see its more following and helping then leading and preventing.
The next step is gaining an understanding of how this is happening. In most cases it’s because
Of not really being relaxed, you use force or you didn’t hear.