Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Bagua standing strengthening practice--are you doing it right?

Apparently I don't post enough about Yin Style Baguazhang's standing strengthening (zhan zhuang-- sort of) practice. Guilty as charged. Let's see what I can say about it here to correct that, and in the process, we'll find out if you're doing it right or not.

Standing strengthening is a hard pillar of training in Yin Style, and not for any goofy reasons. It's just hard.

Make it intense

Essentially, we can sort of summarize an approximate, off-the-cuff "law of conservation of difficulty" principle for training in Yin Style (or many other things), and that conservation law would essentially dictate that given a fixed amount of development available, for every minute of time a particular aspect of training saves you, it makes up for that minute in intensity.

That said, I've run into two simple descriptions of the Yin Style standing strengthening practice. The first I cannot recall where I heard it, but my memory suggests it is a prescription that comes, at least, from Dr. Xie Peiqi and directly addresses the "conservation law" above.

For every unit of time training standing strengthening, to get equal development, you need to spend two units turning the circle and eight minutes practicing striking drills, including combinations and forms.

That, of course, presupposes you're doing each of the practices well, and it leaves vague what is meant by "development." Further, it doesn't address the point that each of those practices provides different kinds of development that have different uses. Still, this is a 1:2:8 ratio of standing, turning, and attack-method training.

The second precept is one that I understand He Jinbao has been known to recommend to beginners who ask how to structure their training. He commonly instructs beginners that want to train seriously to set aside an hour at a time several days a week, and he instructs them to divide that time this way to get a good spread of development.

Stand strengthening for ten minutes, drill strikes and forms for twenty, and turn the circle for thirty.

This works out slightly differently to a 1:3:2 ratio of standing, turning, and attack-method training, but I don't think it's intended to supplant the advice above. I don't even draw from this any conclusion about the relative importance of the different pillars of the art according to the Doctor and He Jinbao. To me, it seems that this is just a simple guideline for how to structure some training time, aimed particularly at beginners, and not a specific commentary on times for equal development.

We can conclude, though, that standing strengthening practice needs to make up in intensity what it does not demand in time in training. That said, this practice needs to be intense.

What is it and what's it for? 

Standing strengthening practice is a carefully designed practice with roots going very far back into Chinese martial arts (and other physical and "internal" practices) whereby development is sought by standing still, usually in some pre-set posture. In Yin Style Bagua, the goal is to adopt postures that help achieve the specific force-generating and applications/utility goals of the various aspects of the martial art, i.e. it is a practice designed to make your body better suited to fighting.

There are a lot of postures that Yin Style has to offer just within the eight animal martial systems, to say nothing of various additional postures or practices contained within the medical, physical development, and health-preserving sides of the art. In fact, there are nine representative postures per animal system, so with eight animal systems, that makes for 72 martially applicable representative standing strengthening postures in Yin Style Baguazhang.

Specifically, standing strengthening changes your body. Your muscles are made long and strong, your tendons are strengthened, and your connective tissue is pulled in ways that allow you to get better into fighting-useful positions. A simple example is that the connective tissue of the hips and lower back is slowly transformed by sitting in a middle-low horse stance with the back upright and the buttocks tucked so that it becomes easy to squat low without breaking your upright posture at the waist. Since standing strengthening practice uses isometric strength applied on muscles that are simultaneously being stretched long, a very unique, very profound type of strength is cultivated by long periods in this practice.

Additionally, standing strengthening is said to be the practice most suited to developing "internally." I've heard that the postures force your body's qi to flow in a particular way, stimulating certain pathways and working to help the body heal and become stronger. The practice is also profoundly still externally, allowing you to develop and draw in the spirit (shen). The ratio above suggests that it is somewhere around eight times as effective, minute for minute, as drilling martial techniques accurately (which is hard enough!). Of no small importance to note here, I was recently reminded that it is said that the highly sought-after shocking force of Yin Style Baguazhang is specifically cultivated by the standing strengthening practice.

A particular personal story to this effect was that I was having a very hard time at a workshop (in Fall 2008) making applications work. I was told repeatedly that I wasn't able to put heaviness into my arms and that I lacked the sensitivity needed to effectively work the applications. Try as I might, I couldn't correct these problems at the workshop. I asked for a prescription and was told, much to my disappointment and chagrin, "stand strengthening more." By Summer 2009, I had made so much improvement in those arenas, heaviness and sensitivity, that I was completely sold, much to my surprise. The development came by putting in long hours in standing strengthening and looking to develop that heaviness and the accurate use of body position and force required for the Lion System and some of its striking methods.

Zhan zhuang, sort of?

The practice of standing strengthening is called zhan zhuang, but in the lead-in to this post, I said "...sort of." What do I mean by that? To speak simply, zhan zhuang is often construed as being a practice done in a state of sung, which is like a profoundly relaxed state of little or no tension beyond the basic tensegrity required to maintain posture. The Yin Style Bagua standing strengthening requirements reject that utterly (not to say those practices don't have value of their own, they're just not part of what we call standing strengthening). Therefore, to avoid confusion, I adhere to calling the practice "standing strengthening" instead of "standing" or "zhan zhuang" to clearly differentiate that aspect of the training. It should make you strong, internally and externally.

100% effort, intelligently

Achieving that kind of development requires anyone practicing it to put in 100% physical effort and to do so intelligently. Someone new to the art should find training standing strengthening postures for more than a minute or two per side to be gruelling and outlandishly demanding. Advanced practitioners can often stand a bit longer per side, but because of the basic physiology of 100% effort, the amount of time is still substantially limited.

The effort is applied at 100%, which means at the maximum possible without causing yourself to shake (or become "turbid") from the effort. Usually, almost immediately, you should begin to sweat from this practice unless it is quite cool and dry. By the end of the session, you may notice that you're sweating profusely, particularly if you take on multiple long sets. It is also very tiring, although many find it invigorating at the same time.

On the other hand, 100% effort does not mean blind effort. The application of tensions is very scientific and precise, and it is entirely goal-oriented. Each posture was developed and chosen to help practitioners cultivate the strengths and flexibility required to accurately and effectively practice in that attack method and/or that animal system. Much of the body, then, stays relaxed while maximum effort is put into the proper goals, allowing the spirit to remain calm and the breathing to remain steady and smooth with a calm, indifferent appearance. Particularly the neck and chest should stay relaxed to facilitate natural, smooth breathing and to prevent injury, although much of the rest of the body, from the toes up, is engaged with 100% intelligent effort.

Isometric strengthening for specific goals

The method of development here is isometric (static) tension on muscles that are being pulled long by various twists and stretches. That means the muscles are fighting against each other to provide the tension, so certain parts of the body are working to turn one way while the opposing musculature is balancing that with an equal, full force. Again, these postures are goal-oriented, and despite their medical and "internal" applications, the proper way to develop is to meet those goals, all of which are designed around development for fighting.

If you want to get internal development as a main goal, then you must practice correctly. How are you to know if you're practicing correctly? You'll know because you're meeting the basic requirements while developing fighting ability.

Things not to do

  • Tense the body excessively or blindly. You can cause injuries, including "internal" injuries by stupid or careless practice. Notably, we can draw our attention to some of the dynamic tension exercises employed by many systems of karate and see many blood-pressure related problems (including strokes) that can develop by inappropriate uses of tension. Your tension in standing strengthening must be intelligent, appropriate, and goal-oriented, and it must not involve tensing the wrong parts of the body.
  • Stand limply. This is not a qigong exercise in the usual sense that people think of, where one is expected to hold a posture for a long time in a state of sung relaxation. These are fighting-oriented strengthening postures that employ isometric tension and stretch. Do not stand like a limp noodle. Put in strength and endure!
  • Slack off. As your strength wanes in the practice, you cannot put in as much, but that's no excuse to slack off. You still should employ 100% effort, as defined above. Though the absolute quantity of strength may be lower as the practice continues, the relative effort should be the same: 100%.
Train it!

That said, get up and train your standing strengthening. If you already know some YSB standing strengthening postures, go do your best with them, looking for the requirements and training seriously. If you do not, you can start here, where He Jinbao put a short introduction to the methods of standing strengthening in the Lion and Unicorn Systems' representational postures. I recommend the Lion's posture.

As always, I look forward to your questions and comments below.

6 comments:

Rob said...

Another great post. I feel I better practice my strengthening more!

The major issue I find is self discipline not to slack offf holding the posture with intention. Using a timer circumvents the issue of time as its unforgiving and its and active goal to reach.

Do you scan down reguarly to ensure your body components comply?

In terms of body sensations i have felt the follwoing-

-sense of heaviness and fullness
-sense of rooting
-sense of alertness and energy.

one perculiar one one which occured in the lion representational form is the feeling of a mild magnetic field between the two hands. This appears to occur when the alignments meet. The sensation is the same as when I do chi gung practice.

Also great info re: training times, what is your split at the moment? You did a great article on training to a theme would you be able to expand on your current goals, are you influenced by the curriculum set out by He Jinbao? is this the one set out in the beijing intensive?

Rob

Jim said...

Thanks, Rob.

The timer is nice for standing strengthening practice, particularly for pushing yourself. I frequently use one for the practice, but sometimes I try to go by feel. Part of that is continually checking and rechecking the requirements, if that's what you mean by "scanning down." Is my chest concave and relaxed? Is my head upright. Can I put in more effort? Chest concave? Push out at the dantien? Strength in the legs? Chest concave?

I get varying sensations at varying times, but usually I don't get too many of the "qi" sensations when doing standing strengthening anymore. I only get those when I relax the posture or when I'm turning. I am familiar with the experience you're talking about. The only particular feeling I achieve now in the Lion posture, other than the proper tensions in the proper places, is a sense of being "one qi," which kind of translates into being a single, solid entity. Seeking heaviness and rootedness, though, is important, of course.

My split... hard to define. I don't train that way anymore. Lately, I turn every day, 30+ minutes, an hour or more if I have time. Standing strengthening I usually only do a couple of times a week, usually in repeated sessions that add up to about a half an hour or so. When I do strikes, I typically do them for a very long time, but I only train them seriously a couple of times a week right now. Saber is pretty much always an hour or more at a time, and that limits what else I can do, especially given all the turning. I've got to get on the ball about the straight sword....

My rough breakdown over any given week, though, is probably 35% turning, 35% striking/combos/forms/applications, 10% saber, 10% standing strengthening, 10% sundry (conditioning). Since I'm turning, on average, around 4 hours a week, you can kind of make guesses at how that would break down (not much more time than an hour a day, every day).

The real difference for me now is what I do when I train, particularly in terms of strike drilling and forms. I'll probably write a post about that sometime in the near future.

Rob said...

Thanks for the info Jim,

I am trying to sort out a training plan at the moment and experimenting with different approaches.

It seems it better to do one thing for a period of time rather than lots of things split over the same period. At the same time its trying to get a method of connecting the individual practices to maximise benefit (given the limited daily time that I have).

I will let you know how it progresses!

Jim said...

That's the thing: you've really got to find something that works for you. The other thing I've noticed is that you don't want to get caught in a rut by doing the same thing for too long.

If you have the discipline, the best strategy I've seen is to make a weekly plan, stick to it as well as possible, and then every month revise the strategy.

Turning at least 4 days a week is probably a big priority, standing strengthening at least 2 or 3 is as well. If you want to get good at fighting (you should if you do this), then you have to do strikes.

Another good strategy if planning by the week is to define certain days to be "striking days" or "saber days" or "conditioning days," and then to alternate turning and standing strengthening every day of the week. On "strike day," you might literally just go drill strikes for 1-2 or more hours (I've heard the Beijing crew does two striking days a week, 6 hours each day).

I just noticed that I didn't get to all of your questions, so I'll do that here and add some other info:
I usually try to stay abreast of what He Jinbao is putting out. Right now, it's taking a look, as well as I can, at what they covered in the Beijing intensive (which I did not attend). In the summer, we usually do a blend of what we can from the London intensive and the upcoming fall training. Through the winter, we review the workshop(s) we attended along with trying to cover some of the bases presented in the other workshops.

As for training to a theme, I'm not currently doing that so much in the way I wrote before. My strongest interest right now in my own training is developing use in a lively, realistic sense, so I drill a lot of combinations and try to get hands-on time with someone else whenever I can.

Keep me updated on your progress!

Tom said...

I'm running into some lower back issues with the flattening of the lumbar spine that occurs with the admonition to tuck (the coccyx). Lumbar discs, particularly at L5-S1, are compressed and held under compression for extended periods during YSB standing practice. It's one thing for a tuck to be a momentary phase during dynamic movement (of the spine), but to hold the tuck seems questionable to me.

Jim said...

Hi Tom, thanks for the comment! You'll find that I wrote a new post to reply to it. You can find it at the link below if you haven't already.

http://becomingthelion.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-question-about-lower-spine-alignment.html

"The most important thing when studying the martial arts is not to be lazy. These skills are not easily attained. For them, one must endure a lot of suffering." -He Jinbao