gongfu

 People talk alot of Schlitz about lifting weights in kung fu. Almost everyone that isn’t x-military/boxing/police/actual hardass, will repeat the well known mantra “Lifting weights makes the muscles too tight to properly lead Qi”. Most of the people who actually use that saying, have an “idea” of this Chinese word “Qi” that changes everyday. Most of them, in reality, are people who are physically weak and lazy and like the excuse.

 Qigong feels good. Leading “Qi” or doing relaxed body work led by the breath really feels wonderful, and it’s good for you. People that have done Yoga for long enough to really start to get some results will attest. In fact, the real root of Chinese kung fu’s “internal” principles, is Indian Yoga. It’s just been refined into something else.

 Qigong, is important to gong fu, and if you lift weights and do hard conditioning drills, it’s even better for you and your gong fu skill. Without a body, where is the kung fu? That thinking should lead to the stronger and healthier the body, the better the gong fu/qigong. Really. No ifs ands or buts.

 Now in gong fu, there are so many different moves, so many different punches and blocks, paries, fingertip strikes, elbow attacks, shoulder bumps, palm pushes, palm strikes. Really, there are thousands of different techniques. But in it’s simplist form, it can all literally be quantified into a handful of movements. This might seem ridiculous, but I’m not the first person in the United States to realize this, in fact, among the people practicing real gong fu out there, it is quite well known. With the upper body, mechanically, every single striking technique can be called a variant of one of five core techniques found in the gong fu style “Xing Yi Quan”. Xing Yi has some sketchy origins, but it is a miraculously simple and brutal fighting system. In this system of gong fu, there are five basic techniques: Split, Cross, Crush, Pound and Drill. Really, they are each found in eachother to some degree.

 For strengthening the body with weights, an age old gong fu practice, there isn’t anything better to use as a simple pattern. Here it is. Be careful, doing xing yi correctly will make you unaturally advantaged at fighting to begin with. Haha. Comment if you accidentally knock some fools out after doing this routine.

  Start with two dumbells that you can only curl for 5-8 reps. For most adult males that are just starting thats 20-40#s. Noone cares if you can lift more or less.

 Lay on your back, on your bench, or the floor if you dont have a bench, with the dumbells out at your sides parallel to your body so that you can pick them up if your on the floor, or obviouslly, you can hold them to lie on you bench.

 Carefully lift them over your torso, making sure not to drop them on yourself which could send you do the hospital quite humiliated.

 The first exercise strengthens the “splitting” technique. Turn your fists, as if you just snapped a pencil in half, so that they are 45 degrees down towards your feet from horizontal. Try this now sitting at your computer. Point both fist at the screen, so that the line of nuckles is parallel to the floor, and the elbows point straight down. Now rotate both the fists and the elbows 45 degrees towards eachother, so that the fist slopes downward 45 degrees to the pinky knuckle and the elbow points at the floor diagonally outward. The elbows should stay bent throughout the lifting. Point the elbows in this form at half way between their rotations. In other words, you’ve got out, and down, for normal elbow rotations, rotate them to the middle. Keep your fists spaced just to the outside of your ribs. Now just bring the fists down as far as the ribs if your on a bench, and the floor if your not. Repeat as many times as you can, take a short break and repeat again, do that 3-5 times.

 Te next position is drilling. Start with both fists down at your waist palms facing your feet. Rotate them as you lift them up, so that the palms face the same direction of the top of the head. Your arms will still be pretty bent at the apex of the move, since the weights only should go straight up and down away and toward the body.

 Next is crush. Start with palms facing eachother, with the arms bent 90 degrees. If your on your bench, the weights will be at your floating ribs, if your on the floor the elbows will be. Dont bring your arms up, the fists/weights move in a straight line, just semi straighten the arms.

 The last one is Cross, with which you only use one weight, and you may have to use a lighter one. Lay on your side, and do flys. That is, lay on the left side proped up with your left arm, with the weight in your right hand, on the floor or hanging by the bench and lift it as if you were pulling the cord on an old lawnmower.

 Thats all of them. Why no pound? It isn’t necessary. Pounds force is derived from the other four.

Try adding them to your existing workout for a couple weeks and see what happens.

 Peace.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS