Maybe it's the weather, or maybe it's something about my cultural approach to training that I just can't shake, but at least a couple of times each year, despite things that I might write (and mean and stand behind) in high-press articles, I get all into researching "other" forms of "complementary" exercise. I'm not even sure why, and after doing it the other day and realizing something, it just seems kind of futile.
As far as cross-training goes, it can be a benefit to training in Yin Style Bagua or any martial art. The proper proportions, as indicated by those in-the-know are suggested by the following: Train what you are training for 2 hours for every 20 minutes of cross-training that you do. That way you can keep your focus on your training -- where training implies more than just working out, getting stronger, or getting in shape. Training implies skills-building. The thing is, with a martial art like Yin Style Baguazhang, I'm left strongly with the feeling "why bother" in regards to cross-training exercises when I really think about it.
You see, Yin Style Baguazhang is a very, very complete art that is very, very well thought-out. Not all arts are. The upshot of this completeness and intelligence in design is that YSB has everything in it that is needed for great development. You can add weights, stretching routines, cardio, caveman workouts, or what-have-you to your regimen, but the training is designed so that you don't even have to consider it, a major contrast with many arts.
Here's what got me the other night. I was hunting around on the web, researching wrist strengthening exercises since I and many other folks that talk with me seem to injure their wrists on the rock that is the bagua dadao. I've currently got some tendinitis (in the other wrist this time), and it's pretty common. If you've never hunted around for wrist-strengthening exercises, let me save you some time: not much that goes on in the gym does a whole hell of a lot for wrist strength. You can do forearm curls one way or the other, you can roll up a rope with a weight on it, you can rotate a dumbbell back and forth, and you can hold heavy things, particularly heavy things with thick bars. That's about it.
I was kind of pissed that all I could find about gaining wrist strength was a bunch of crap that I already knew that clearly didn't help with what I was needing help with. Then I thought about it for a minute... the saber's already perfect for this. Then I thought about it more. Do a hard seizing-palm-strengthening posture with one hand and feel the tendons and structure in the wrist with the other. I think we have a winner. Then think about grasping palm posture and all of the ox-tongue palm postures and all of the closed-fist postures. Compared with the silly stuff I was reading on the internet, the case was simply closed. YSB FTW.
So... pick your favorite exercise-related goal... think about it for a while. Yin Style trains that. You want stronger shoulders? stronger legs? stronger back? stronger arms? more endurance? more cardiovascular health? weight loss? (muscular) weight gain? enhanced tendon strength? functional strength and fitness? better grip? improved health? better balance? deeper flexibility? ass-kicking skills? to impress people with a giant-ass sword? Yin Style Baguazhang trains that, probably better than much else that you can find. One word comes to mind: superior.
Should you complement your training to develop certain goals more quickly? Sure, in relative proportions and if you really enjoy those complementary exercises and/or feel like you get a lot out of them. If you want a reason to avoid doing complementary exercises that you don't care for that much (or hate... read: running), then here's your excuse -- you can better use that time training something that Yin Style Bagua already offers and do it even better than you could with your complementary stuff.
2 comments:
Yin style bagua is an excellent art. I have a lot of respect for its practitioners and the physical grace they are able to achieve.
However, your description of the value of yin bagua training was news to me. I haven't plunged deeply enough into it to really understand the benefits that long term training in yin bagua can provide.
When you look at an art from a cross training perspective, as something you've dabbled with, it is difficult to see all the good it can do and all the depth it contains.
Sure your core art is going to look better and superior, why wouldn't it? You've spent extensive time in realizing the subtle ways it trains your body. Perhaps other arts have those subtleties too buried in them.
You know what I mean?
Depth is really the key word here, Matt. I've studied a few arts pretty deeply before I got to Yin Style, and I haven't found an art with the same thorough completeness on development that Yin Style offers. Still, that wasn't the original point of this post, which really was intended primarily for a Yin-Style audience.
The thing is, I look at cross-training for strength and flexibility using classic body-weight and some simple weight-training kinds of exercises, as well as some yoga for flexibility. What I'm finding again and again and again, though, is that no exercise I've read about or even that I can make up using weights or my own body weight achieves the same level of success in developing my body compared with what I can get from choosing the proper exercise in Yin Style.
The other interesting, surprising fact that I keep coming across is that if I feel like I need to get my [fill in the blank] stronger, Yin Style already has an exercise that's awesome for that: like just about everything has been thought of in terms of physical development. Again, primarily this post was intended to sway practitioners of Yin Style back toward choosing Yin Style exercises over "complementary" ones when they set out to choose their training methods.
As for other arts, I would encourage them to do the same thing. If you want to get good at [fill in the blank] as an art, 80-90% of your training needs to be in that art. If you feel like that offers you a complete package, once you look closely and hard at it, then great. If not, pick another art or be content living with what you've got. I feel lucky that I've found an art that seems to have that completeness to it -- many don't.
I guess I also find it a bit of a shame that a lot of the folks I know that train some art feel the need to do as much or more complementary stuff (usu. weight room) as they do training. Maybe something's lacking in their art or their level of understanding of it (though some of these folks are pretty "high-level" in their respective arts)? It's not to say that that kind of cross-training can't be beneficial; it's more to say that the art really should contain exercises that achieve those goals well, quickly, and functionally. Being that I'm a Westerner and filled with a "I want it NOW" Western desire, I find those kinds of exercises very alluring as well, which I also find a bit sad.
In part, I suppose, this post was for me as well to remember and make more poignant the value of the exercises that have been shown to me.
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