Lately have been focusing more on Chi Kung than Isometrics, and have been invited to place some of my posts re same on one of the forum's general threads on here.
I'll be posting quite a bit more on my Chi Kung practice and experiences over the years, but I think my posts may give some sort of a general idea how and why chi kung is my main focus at this time.
"Yes that's right Shen, Virtual Resistance Training.
"Virtual Reality Training" pertains to the imagining of serious weights, like your own KSHD instructions say, but with just enough effort to actually do the movements (your pec dec etc) not with tension.
It's a key method of proper chi kung, not so-called "hard chi kung" and is responsible with diligent practice for bricks being broken with unhardened hands, as an example.To be done slowly so your mind has a chance of visualizing the arms coming across the body against imagined resistance, physically relaxed but with focused intent.
I once did the beginning movement of Tai Chi 40 times in succession every night, the body and arms as relaxed as possible while concentrating on the movement. The next morning, I would feel as though a truck had hit me, but my nerves were soothed and after about a month, people were asking me if I had gone back to weight training again, my clothes were fitting tighter and I had retained all but max lifts part of my strength. Easily compared because I was engaged in heavy line work at the time.
Most people don't seem to believe in it, and of course that's okay. You gotta do what suits you, but at this time of your Earthly existence there is an opportunity to try it on. You could go through your upper body training exercises, presses, curls etc in a physically relaxed manner instead of tensing as per KSHD, the mind fully engaged in the movements and visuals (without gritting it mentally, it's a "relaxed concentration").
I think Royce touches on it in the "Training Publications etc" section, as true visualized resistance training. "
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" Just a suggestion for a visual. Grab the bumper of Mack truck and push the truck away with a vertical bench press/type movement, but with open palms, while just keeping enough in the muscles to do the movement, no more.
Then pull the truck towards you in a row/type movement with fists gently (but very deliberately) closed. Go back and forth for (say) twenty reps concentrating GENTLY all the time, then stop and completely relax. Do it every day, twice a day. Slowly.
Do it seated upright if possible, breath out while pushing, then take another breath then pull towards you breathing out. The breaths themselves should be abdominal, and gentle. No puffed up forced breathing or holding the breath. Everything has to be relaxed but mindful. No tension anywhere.
You've got few weeks up your sleeve, so you should begin to feel the energy in your hands after a week or so, building up as you go through your reps. By that time also, when you close your fists preparing to pull back, you should be able to feel the strength in your grip, even though your hands are physically relaxed."
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"Yes Magz. Pure visualization. I've got back more fully into my chi kung after quite some enjoyable time on overcoming isometrics, and I prefer some physical involvement with the visualization, even if it's static Zhan Zhuang type postures.
I've written about it before on the forum. Back in the 90's I performed a static 12-posture yi jin ching drill and after about 4-6 months I broke a handle in two places on my 5" sidecutters that I had been using for yonks, cutting 30-pr telephone cable with one snip. I had not trained my grip in the conventional manner, only visualized the energy continuously being led to the hands which with open palms were only very slightly stretched on the out breaths, on every position for about 8 breaths each.
It also got to the stage where if I was about 15ft or less from the TV and doing my drills, it would often switch off as though I had used a remote on it
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"After a time of everyday objects in your visualizations and getting used to something we are certainly not used to at all i.e. not using tension in our exercises, replace the truck with white mist (or another colour of your choice) and lead it into the hands when you're pushing out, then consolidate it into the abdomen in the pulling in.
The breathing changes to a relaxed breathing out while pushing out, breathing in while pulling in. As gentle as possible. Check for pockets of tension and ease off. Keep the mind on it.
The name for it all is Chi Kung or Qigong which ever way you want to write it.
Later after you recover your full capability for lifting the back end of your car while changing the wheel, carry on with your normal workouts and at the other end of the day, separated by some decent space, keep on with your chi kung. Then look up Baduanjin for a whole-body chi kung drill you may like. There's several styles.
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"You keep on talking about KSHD which is not chi kung. Chi kung is Energy Work. Life force/chi/prana. There's nothing mystical about that either, it's plain bio-electricity, something the ancients didn't know about specifically, but were able to trace its courses and centres throughout the body, times of the day when it was most noticeable, organ emotions etc. Some of that has found it way into common language like the negative energy of the liver is anger (positive is kindness) which you hear people say someone is in a "shitty liver", he's "venting his spleen" etc. It's easy to see the connections with this stuff after a while. Look at the negative energy of the lungs, grief and depression. Someone weeping will be breathing in more than they are breathing out. Anger will be in reverse, quick inbreaths and long invective-laden outbreaths. TCM has chi as it's working protocols. All illness is blocked chi in some area of the body. Chi kung is the conscious exercising of chi as a focus.
With KSHD you're tensing the muscles as though you are lifting weights. Visualization can be complex, or simply "going with the flow" as you say. Certainly a KSHD curl can be enhanced by visualizing an Olympic barbell in your mitts. It makes it much harder to curl.
Chi Kung is much different. You can start off visualizing familiar objects, which I presented an example of (the Mack truck), to get you used to NOT tensing the muscles any more than necessary to perform the movement while pushing and pulling a truck. The first movement of pushing your palms away from the body is indeed called Pushing The Mountain and is an important visual for beginning chi kung practitioners.
But eventually the visualization is of the energy itself, moving from the lower belly where it is stored (abdominal breathing, not forced) under the body and up the back to the shoulder blades and then through the arms and in and out of the hands. THAT's chi kung.
Many there are who have performed what they fondly regard as chi kung, for years, but all they've been doing is mild calisthenics, maybe with some benefit, but never building up the power that advanced chi kung exponents can muster.
The trouble is, the whole thing is plagued by bullshit youtubes "hard chi kung" and outright misinformation by people who are either frauds or do not understand what chi kung really is.
Even many Chinese have no idea, but over the past few decades, chi kung has been scientifically studied and there are hospitals in China that give their patients various s chi kung drills to help them recover. Up until then, there were many Chinese who practiced Tai Chi and after achieving no viable energy, took up other styles, believing it was the style itself that was at fault. Nobody told them about chi and how to gather it into the lower belly area.
A static drill one can do is simply to sit, stand, or lay down and breath QUIETLY and calmly into the lower belly area, visualizing a ball of light (colour of your choice but usually white or gold) building up. That can be done anytime, and if you try that on say three times a day for 20 breaths at a time, you will begin to feel a heat inside the belly after a while (everybody's different) and a "centered robust feeling" that is calming at the same time, the excess energy lowered out of the head and chest, the thinking more ordered and less stressed.
That is precisely the drill that kept my sanity over 17 years of looking after my wife, who was progressively getting more ill until her death in 2008. It was 24/7 for most of the last seven or so years and getting up at least twice a night out of deep sleeps. That "centering" kept me focused all that time. I only fainted once (momentarily, I recovered quickly) towards the last months of her life, all the other time I was up and running to tend to her and clean up after her.
If you collect the energy there, then start leading it around according to your drills involving the legs and arms, in a physically relaxed state, you will certainly begin to feel the energy after a time, depending on how focused you are, without grinding your mental images, and you will realize that it's not a case of whether you believe it or not, you know it to be true now. That is why many chi kung masters/tutors say that you need to try it for yourself.
It's been proven in scientific experiments with bacteria, meters, and even light physical objects being moved without touching. It's not bullshit, I've seen and done some of it myself. After I had done a few years of it in late 80's, I could get my wife to stand steady but unbraced with her back to me and I would detect the edge of her energy field (aura or whatever you want to call it) then I would gently push and tug at it, without her knowing what I was doing, eventually either pulling her back towards me or forcing her to take a step forward to stop falling over.
The most difficult thing that is so hard to accept is that you will grow stronger in a unified way, both physically and mentally, your focus on everyday tasks will improve, and you'll feel soothed and relaxed at the same time. Building muscle is not the goal of chi kung, but you may build up a little. Give it three months and see if it works for you, or not. Always relax, smile into yourself, have fun.
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"Then Sir, that is exactly what you should do. You are committed to muscle development and maintenance (and what's wrong with that ?!) and your passion re the weights and Hook etc should be followed without reservation.
Your KSHD course (generously presented to the world for free) is the best possible muscle tensing course I've seen, and I've seen quite a few, in various guises.
It may be worth mentioning at this point that there are some chi kung drills, usually for "inner" power for kung fu combat styles, but also for health and recovery from illness, that do NOT include visualizing the chi/energy/life-force.
Instead they instruct a clear mind free as possible of any thoughts, sometimes equally as difficult as actually visualizing something like white or golden mist etc.
There are some instructors who recommend also watching TV while performing (say) a static stance which I do not agree with. The whole process of chi kung is Mind first in a meditation state, the development and leading of chi, the body follows with some form or other, sometimes a therapy form, or a combat form, of which there are hundreds.
In 1980-81 (either of those two years) I had waited for a book on Pakua Chang boxing, one of the three classical "internal" styles of kung fu (along with Hsing I and Tai Chi). Such books were unknown in this country in those days, Pakua itself was unknown even among martial artists of other styles. Even Karate in this country was still regarded as some sort of mysterious art in some quarters despite the admirable efforts of Bruce Tegner et al.
I had read Robert Smith's previous book and had been filled with his discussions on various forms of kung fu he had encountered and trained in while in Taiwan in the 60's, and the circling methods described in his Pakua book (complete with photos and diagrams of footwork) came directly from two of the greatest masters of the day, Paul Kuo, and Wang Shu-chin.
I absorbed the details and "walked the circle" for one month, performing about four/five static upper body positions while walking, and doing the Single Change (of direction, with an open-palm blow directed at the centre of the circle ) while remaining as relaxed as possible. The Mind was kept on the lower belly (Dantien) and on "someone coming up to you from behind".
The effect of only one month training in this manner was profound. Once again, the morning after the previous day's 35-minute circling dawned with yours truly getting out of bed feeling as though a truck had hit me. The muscles were not sore (I was relaxed) but it was felt in the nervous system, the nerves at the same time feeling strangely soothed.
My wife remarked that I was becoming more distant from her and my daughter, but for me I never felt closer. Nevertheless, they came first and I stopped the practice, and went back to weight training in my garage three times a week and helping out at her day-centre gym later when she got a job there.
But things had happened in my mind after one month of the toughest form of Mind-body exercise I had ever trained in, then and now. The Universe was very close. I could walk up the road and without warning suddenly turn back and look directly at someone 50 metres astern peeping at me through their curtains.
In a sense, I had swallowed the Red Pill, and despite all the years since then, going back to various forms of "conventional" exercise which I had always loved, and still do, things were never the same.
In 1986 I popped a hernia and stopped the weight training, immediately taking up Baduanjin (google it, there are many styles, all of them effective) and for the next few years built up an inner core of chi energy which stood me in good stead for the years later in my ministrations to my wife.
The next eight or so years I had many "Wonderland" moments, and even today I can hardly believe what happened at times. Distant healing became a reality and brought solid results, both on adults and children especially. Btw I have never advised the dropping of conventional medicines, I would be a hypocrite if I did.
Even after my wife's passing with chi kung holding me together all those years, I rediscovered strandpulling and bought The Hook, a piece of equipment that I found hard to leave alone. Overcoming isometrics, something I was fascinated in when I was a teenage boy in early 60's, came again and only recently have I dropped them, possibly for good. But heck, years of isometric fun and information shared, a great hobby as well as a training method, not the "ultimate" but certainly very worthwhile with some advantages (as always) not shared by other forms of exercise, which have their own advantages as well.
So far since I started moving in and out of the Matrix again, I have been able to help a few ladies with chronic disorders including long-standing emotional problems that have vanished once they took up Ping Shuai (Swinging Arms chi kung) plus a few Baduanjin drills.
Yet chi kung is a very practical method for self-and-others improvement. Nevertheless I only suggest it as an alternative method of Mind-body drill, certainly not insist upon it with those that are wedded to their own methods. That is what they should definitely be doing at this time of their evolution, and it is better not to interfere with that with something they may only take on in a luke-warm fashion. It's better to either get right into chi kung, or leave it along and continue with weights, strands, isometrics etc.
They are proven, highly-visible methods of exercise that can absorb one for life, and that is the way it is.
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" Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for science. I'm not going to get on an aircraft that is expected to fly at 500+ mph at 32,000ft built on "intuition", "feelings" "hunches" etc. I expect solid science behind the plane's construction and high training in its piloting, also backed by science.
But much of the human condition is not known. Especially the Mind. That's why psychiatry is largely anecdotal consensus. It's been criticized more than enough for its unscientific diagnosis, and what lays further into the Mind seems to be only tapped occasionally by (genuine) mystics and highly trained meditators that may have spent more than one lifetime unlocking aspects of the Mind which are widely regarded as hokum.
There is a school of thought that I subscribe to that believes that everything possible that we have speculated about such as telepathy, clairvoyance, the ability to interpret objects histories, healing from a distance, is already in the Mind, and instead of one "gaining certain powers", one unlocks them according to one's natural progress and evolution, as not a body with a spirit, but rather a spirit having a bodily experience.
Mind you, one's EM system must have a sturdy fusebox, wiring and circuit breakers. You can't lead the 11kv into the house that's only wired for 240v/15amps (NZ) without building up the whole thing. Some mental patients indeed have the 11kv without the necessary safety measures and that is why they are under care, and constantly drugged by Quieteners.
A mental hospital was on my beat back in the 80's re telephones and I was out there at least once a fortnight repairing phones that had come under the attention of the patients, and I saw a guy my size (180lbs) having to have seven male nurses bring him under control sufficiently to get a needle into him to control him. Someone had missed his morning meds and he had already broken through what was effectively a jail door (with broken frame and without injury) to gain access into the main building, where he proceeding to rip things to pieces that are normally the level of trained (and large) strongmen.
Where did he get that strength from ? There would be hundreds of karate and kung fu hard stylists that would very much like to know.
Chi kung is ONE way to ramp up the gizmo, not so much for the acquisition/unlocking of powers deliberately (although one or two may unlock as a natural consequence of one's training) but rather a quietening of the restless mind by visuals or "no-mind" sessions enhanced or not by physical movements or static positions, seated or standing.
The variety of chi kung drills is almost endless, and combat styles like Tai Chi and Pakua rely heavily on chi kung, being "internal" styles that promote mostly relaxation, not tension as training protocols.
In saying that, in the years I was training almost exclusively with a style of Baduanjin, a simple set of chi kung drills, my arms could be as soft as a women's, or as hard as ever they have been in my life, instantly one or the other, at Will, something that "hard" stylists refuse to believe in, their drills mainly tensed and forced breathing.
It is significant that John McSweeney may have had "great chi" but he died of a massive heart attack at only 74. When we examine his Tiger Moves they are described as having great inner tension. Take a look at Karate masters who used their Tensho drill with great tension, both with massive forced breathing as well, And of course Bruce Tegner, dead at 56 from a heart attack, his forced breathing advocated through (at least) his isometric course. In McSweeney's last interview, he stated that at his age, he could still hit as hard as he always could, and a short while later was dead through a massive heart attack.
They were formidable fighters, hard men who were top martial artists, rock-hard muscles from years of Dynamic Tension training, but compromised on the inside, suddenly and decisively. Was it the muscular tension, or the forced breathing, or both ?
There are masters of kung fu who do not have to depend on muscular tension to break a brick or someone's head. Their students number among them small ladies who have to be able to match bigger stronger opponents. They will never have the bones or muscle to do this unless they have another weapon. That weapon is relaxed chi kung. I've already written at least twice of my experience with a pair of 5" sidecutters where I broke one of the handles in two places, after training a Yi Jin Jing 12-static posture relaxed form for a few months. They were good quality sidecutters that I had used for years. They didn't break because of a massive conventionally-trained grip.
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