Make your strength equal all
over your body.
Your muscles must be able to contract, stretch, relax and become firm in
harmony with each other.
Your strength must come from inside you and then radiate out.
When moving, slowness excels over speed.
Be relaxed rather than impatient.
Your movement should be slight but your spirit should be full.
(Wang Xiang Zhai)
Exercise
It is easy to think of tai chi as just being about
qi and energy flow.
This is foolish.
Tai chi requires your
body
to be used in a physical manner.
As such, your bones, joints and muscles need to operate in a strong,
healthy
manner.
Muscles
The placement of your feet, and the position of your
pelvis and hips are all important.
A poorly aligned foot or knee will create difficulties.
An unstable pelvis will torque the
knee
joint.
Strong, healthy muscles are vital.
Flaccid muscles will not support your joints.
When
students are asked to adjust a badly positioned foot, they typically respond,
"But that is the way it has grown - it just goes like this."
They are of course correct, but that does not mean that the habitual position is
healthy.
The muscles of the legs and feet are responsible for the placement of
the bones, and faulty muscle use can be corrected; slowly and patiently.
Weak
We live in a
lazy
leisure-oriented culture. Most people are not in any way
fit.
Our
beginners syllabus builds your
strength up slowly and gradually, increasing the demand and range of strength
required.
A series of challenges will extend your ability to use your muscles without
tensing or tiring.
Growth
The tai chi will increase your muscle size to a certain degree, but
mainly the muscles just become more toned and dense.
If you want to deliberately grow larger muscles, you will need to do a lot more
training than average and perhaps work with heavy
weapons.
Over-training is not encouraged by our school because it can
over-work the joints and is unnecessary.
Remember that tai chi is not really about muscle-building; any growth is simply
a side effect of doing the standard training.
Tai chi is not
designed to bulk-up your muscles.
It is not body building.
Exaggerated usage
Exaggerated
scapula usage and closed postures can lead to over-development of the back
and shoulders and a weakening of the chest, stomach and abdomen.
Ideally, the front and back of the body must balance one another, creating a
strong, upright posture.
Breathing methods can also be bad.
An exaggerated use of the abdomen and sides when breathing from the
diaphragm can lead to a 'pot belly' appearance, where the muscles of the lower
abdomen are too large and abnormally shaped.
Let the breath be internal, and ensure that any conscious breathing practice is
barely discernable from the outside.
Whole-body?
Whole-body use is not simply an expression, nor is it purely intent or energy
work.
For each and every tai chi movement, the muscles of your body must work in unity
to produce the effect.
Not just the shoulders or arm.
Not just the waist.
You must feed power through the frame using every muscle of the body combined.
This is far harder than it sounds but well worth the effort.
Your muscles must never tense.
They need to remain soft and loose, with a subtle stretch.
Consider: imagine if there was a job to do and the work went to just one person.
Now imagine if that same volume of work was shared by an entire team of people?
That is what whole-body muscle use is about.
The purpose of whole-body use is not muscular… the muscles only serve to channel
jing.
Page created 25 October 2003