Greetings..
Sometimes it’s just plain intent, the intention to have reasonably toned musclature for such simple tasks as lifting bags of dog food, cement, etc.. for moving furniture, or push-starting a car, etc.. i sense that there is a reasonable and beneficial balance between hulks and spindly or poorly toned persons.. i sense that any extreme is counter-productive, too much out of shape or too much “in-shape”.. The wisdom is knowing the balance, and what to do with it..
Be well..
“So here’s my problem with weight lifting. When you lift weights you are breaking body unity. Even if you are doing a mostly “whole body” excercise like a clean, snatch or dead lift you are still not LITERALLY using the “whole body” (ie every joint in the body simultaneously) in the same way that you would if you were doing Taiji.”
I beg to differ. I have limitted experience with IMA, but in a simple term it was basically unifying the body’s movement, breath, and concentration to deliver the largest amount of force possible to strike, rip, throw, etc.
In oly weight lifting (snatch & clean) you need to coordinate movements over your entire body with concentration, flawless form, and breath in order to deiliver the most amount of force possible to your hands (holding the barbell).
This is as much beauty in motion as a good tai chi form to me:
http://www.olympiclifting.citymax.com/page/page/547853.htm
SNATCH: Exhale, pull bar off ground slowly while maintaining an arched back (shoulders in front of bar), start picking up speed as barbell comes further up body until middle of thighs, exhale sharply, go up on your toes - shrug your shoulders - extend your hips exposively (can cause to jump) - and lift with your arms in a near simultaneous chain of coordinated movement, pull yourself under the bar to catch the barbell in an overhead position while in a full squat and arched back (this position alone takes good balance, strength and flexability in shoulders and hips), stand up.
That’s just a brief description too. That barbell that this 150 lbs guy is effortless throwing in the air and catching weighs about 375 lbs… Not too bad. Great display of coordinated movement and explosive strength.
Not to belabor the point of weather wt lifting is good or not, it seems to me that the point of wt lifting is to be able to move or lift more wt.
(That barbell that this 150 lbs guy is effortless throwing in the air and catching weighs about 375 lbs… Not too bad. Great display of coordinated movement and explosive strength)
this might be good for explosive strength but can he sense and use another’s or will he just use his own to overpower them? This seems at odds with something that is supposed to teach one the ability to barrow or use another’s force while applying or using very little of ones own.
We talk of shape meaning intent, with people that have practiced other arts for a while, and then switch to taiji you can feel this when pushing with them, its something they work to over come. It gets built into the body and mind. I would think that the idea of moveing things gets built into the body the same way.
If the idea of taiji is in accordance with the others movements, how does the body mind respond to following anothers movement after moving around wts according to ones own intent?
The expansion and contraction, that this post started off with has nothing to do with muscle usage but the ability to inflate and deflate the body using ones breath. Lifting will not help in this.
Learning how to deeply relax and how to breath useing your whole body will. 
just ideas that come to mind reading the post, not a diffintive right or wrong.
The only thing that moves your body are muscles. It doesn’t matter if you are “relaxed” or tense; it’s your muscles doing the moving.
This guy probably isn’t winning any curl competitions but the reason why he is winning medals in the olympics is because he has learned to coordinate a complex movement involving his entire body (ankle/calnves, knee/thighs, hip/hip extensors, spine/spinal erectors, shoulders/traps&delts, hands/forearms). If the power from being able to do this doesn’t come in handy, then the level of coordination and concentration needed for the lift do.
Pardon me, luoxuanjin
Greetings..
The expansion and contraction, that this post started off with has nothing to do with muscle usage but the ability to inflate and deflate the body using ones breath. Lifting will not help in this.
Perhaps not lifting, but.. working with weight can help coordinate inflating and deflating while under stress.. We get several (4-7) guys standing in a circle, backs facing inward (front facing away from the center) such that we can pass a medicine ball or bag of sand from one to another.. this permits us to work on many different principles like weight-shifting, turning, breath, gripping, posture, awareness, etc.. we routinely twist so that we receive the object from behind ( i twist to my right to recieve the weight from my left, then i twist to my left completely across the front and around behind myself to hand it to the next guy, who is twisted all the way to his right).. each reception has an inhale until it passes front mid point then becomes an exhale.. maintaining peng, posture, weight distribution, relaxed traps, etc.. are excellent focuses during this exercise.. and builds a coordinated movement with focus, intent and a level of resistence that one might reasonably expect to encounter in normal life conditions..
Be well..
i sense that there is a reasonable and beneficial balance between hulks and spindly or poorly toned persons.. i sense that any extreme is counter-productive, too much out of shape or too much “in-shape”.. The wisdom is knowing the balance, and what to do with it..
Agreed. Very ‘taiji’
I asked several different people on this subject one master and two senior students that I know. They say that it depends on your age. Well not literally but hear me out. When you’re younger say between 8-25ish doing all sorts of martial arts internal and external should not be a problem because no matter what happens you will generally have good flexibility when doing whatever so long as you keep training. However in your later years your muscles start to contract and you need to stretch even more especially for weight lifters who might not stretch as much. Being older and practiscing tai chi may cause that imbalance that people talk about. that’s why children are amazing material for martial arts because their tendons and muscles are still very loose and they can do all sorts of excercises and still benefit from all of them in their respects with hinderance to others
I think the idea that you can’t lift weights, get strong or have big muscles is ignorant and stems from a series of dead ideas from an ancient culture.
Essentially, IMA requires a call to your structure, basically, in order to work the way it is supposed to. Large muscle doesn’t get in the way of this, and there is no reason why you can’t have appreciable muscle mass and still learn to use your structure, and not your muscle, when it comes to doing an IMA.
Devils advocate
The reason I am against weight lifting is two fold:
It teaches you to fight against the weight
Its investing wrongly. You have a ceiling on how much you can lift, and whatever that ceiling is it is still less than the bigger, stronger, younger college guy. So you train to push against a heavy force but what happens when the force is bigger.
With that said, I believe two-man strenght building sets and using a heavy pole or sword are important. But the difference is that you USE the weight instead of FIGHT AGAINST the weight.
This is my opiniona and whatever anyone chooses is fine and good luck.
I view it like this: you’re 145lbs and skinny and have trouble with the 150lbs guy. So you go and lift and take Rip Fuel or whatever and get stronger and bulk up to a muscle-filled 160lbs. You can now beat the 150 guy no problem. But what about me? I’m 205 lbs with 25+ years of training. How much more muscle mass can you put on?
I’d rather put that time in training a better way, learning the knife, ect.
Of course, let’s not bull$hit ourselves, all this weight lifting talk is really about girls.
A lot of these MMA types have body builder bodies, not fighter bodies, and have a bit of that guido juice-head in them. That Russian guy, Igor, he looks tubby and not ripped as most of these guys but is tough.
So its a matter of what one wants. These MMA guys are good fighters who happen to body build. But at the same time they are putting stress on their body and doing internal damage playing with the juice. I’d like to see a 50+ UFC. I’d also like to see steroid testing.
With that said, I believe two-man strenght building sets and using a heavy pole or sword are important. But the difference is that you USE the weight instead of FIGHT AGAINST the weight.
Good point.
However, you might also consider that you could be in a fighting scenario where you cannot use solely your internal “strength.”
Demonstrating your internal strength in Push hands is one thing but actual street combat is another.
You could find yourself in a scenario where having some localized muscular strength would be an advantage, for example, ground fighting.
Also, having some external muscle mass tends to protect you against strikes.
So as someone mentioned before perhaps it is a matter of striking a balance between internal and external development.
The key is then, how do you get the mind/body to
“switch gears” from external muscle active (external) to external muscle passive (internal).
…clueless…
If you were lying on a bench and someone dropped the bar (with weights on it) on you, and you sort of deflected the bar to the side so it fell on the ground and didn’t crush you…that’d be using peng with weights.
Originally posted by looking_up
If you were lying on a bench and someone dropped the bar (with weights on it) on you, and you sort of deflected the bar to the side so it fell on the ground and didn’t crush you…that’d be using peng with weights.
Peng Jin is not simply deflection. Most martial arts have this concept. Peng Jin is like “sticky deflection.”