As long as you don’t learn something and become so exasperated that you quit, you’re doing what you should be doing!

Today’s WOD is going to be a “Posterior Chain” exercise day. Most folks focus on the muscles on the front of their body because they’re the ones they use the most, and more importantly, they’re the ones they can SEE.

I wondered about strength in the Internal Arts a lot too. And my “experimentation” led to me straining my lower back by “relaxing” under a 315lb squat. BAD IDEA!!!

One really strange period in my training (now looking back at it that is) was when I probably read up too much on a myth in the Internal arts: how you shouldn’t have to use muscle and how doing conditioning work like push ups and such will limit you.

Its funny how much of an idiot I can be. My teacher would never say anything of the sort. He would say he doesn’t do that sort of work now, but then turn around and do one legged squats or spinning jump kicks or forward stretches and plant his palms flat to the ground with no warm-up… Must have done that a ton when he was younger! Actually, I remember him mentioning some classic Chinese martial arts sayings before to me, like “strength can beat 10 techniques” or “when two high level fighters of equal skill contest, it is the one with the greater strength who will prevail.” He would also talk glowingly of Hong Yixiang’s and Zhang Zhunfeng’s great strength and jin - how Hong could tear skin off with his hands or how Zhang could snap a hardwood staff like a toothpick.

But nonetheless, I was an idiot. I spent way too much time not keeping up with my conditioning. I did tons of forms and tons of tiangan, but there are still certain muscle groups that those will not hit. Your body needs to be balanced out with some opposing movements too. I now know that that has limited me to an extent, and likely helped lead to a few injuries that I probably shouldn’t have developed. There was good development in that I emphasized skill building and not contesting force. But in retrospect, I would have served myself better in the long run by paying some more attention to balancing and conditioning my body more.

Ah well, live and learn.

I think one of the challenges most people face is goal-setting. Knowing what you want determines what you get…

Bagua has most of its own “conditioning” built in (as do most martial arts, I guess). But there are always different ways to “advance” yourself…Laoshi talked about it during the seminars - the difference between winning or losing is about .5 or .25 seconds, or less, dependin g on the skill of the competitors.

Conditioning helps give you that “edge.”