Many a Little Makes a Mickle

一日練一日功，一日不練十日空

A day spoil for a day training, ten empty days for a day without training

藕斷絲連

The lotus root snaps but its fibres don't break

An old saying states that Taoists avoid violent exercises. This is often confused with intense exercises. Violence actually refers to something too harsh for one’s body and/or health.
Therefore, it is not the actual hardness of an exercise which matters but the relative hardship it brings to a certain body and health. Basically, violence is imposing too strong an effort for one’s body at the time of the training. Hence, even for teenagers, the rule was to raise relatively slowly, gradually and with no interruption the intensity as it was described for weights in Overload. Training teenagers was relatively easy because it was 24/7, hence almost textbook. As a hobby, regularity is an issue because it has an impact on gradualness, hence the quote.

Even when our work and/or lifestyle don’t leave a lot of spare time, it remains important to keep the gradualness spirit of old practices in order not only to keep our body from injuries but to also reap the benefits of an uninterrupted link with the training.

Training as a hobby, the first issue is to maintain at all cost an everyday training, even if it may look useless because too short and/or not intense. The second issue is, of course, gradualness, which shall be even more gradual in order to avoid injuries.

I. Keeping an Everyday Link

Performance often implies long and/or very intense sessions while searching for endurance implies keeping a link which will allow to get back to a heavier training when one’s schedule allows it. Therefore, five minutes a day will always be better than an hour three times a week, it is a question of method and will.

Hijacking the second quote can express what is searched for. Indeed, the different parts of the lotus root represents the time of intense and/or long training which can be kept linked through daily micro-training, the non-breaking fibres. To keep such link, three methods have to be used concomitantly, everyday short routine, anytime posture and stretching whenever possible.

1.1 Routine

If training before sleeping or just after walking up are the best times, whenever would do. The routine one chooses does not have to be settled in stone and can change according to one’s needs or desires. The most important thing is that it shall be not too strenuous, only exercises one is accustomed to. The main idea is to give one’s body, organs and mind an everyday reminder of what is expected of them as far as one’s training is concerned.

1.2 Posture

As it was described very early in this blog in Method, posture training is meant to change one’s posture on a 24/7 basis, not just something one does a little bit during training. Therefore, if one cannot spend all his/her time concentrated on one’s posture, he/she shall still try to do so as often as possible. A correct posture was also why the old martists would be able to keep a 24-hours training because, sitting, walking or even sleeping, they were keeping a correct posture*. Hence, when sitting or walking, trying to keep the body in the postural angles dictated by the school is a way to keep an everyday link with training.

1.3 Stretching

Since internal arts are all about fascia elasticity, keeping such elasticity by stretching any and all parts of the body is one of the cornerstones of training. Hence, as a hobby, it is up to the student to find any kind of trick which allows him/her to stretch while doing something else. Such everyday stretches will allow to maintain the source of one’s external power as far as internal arts are concerned.

The link kept, one can contemplate how to progressively increase training intensity

II. Slowly but Steady

Training professional teenagers was close to following a textbook, how many grams to add every day as far weight was concerned, for example. Training adults as a hobby bring quite some complexity, the pace cannot obviously match the one of children and health may even hinder progression.

2.1 Different Paces

Training all the time every day allows an exponential progression, once in a while for a few hours can only be linear. This very logical and simple fact is often forgotten in nowadays leisurely training, which has kept an exponential spirit leading to performance but betrayed the endurance principle. Not only training once a while doesn’t allow an exponential progress but implies ups and downs in one’s progress. Therefore adding harshness to an exercise has to be done even more gradually.

There, what was a simple question of adding a bit every time becomes a complex matter where one has to consider that before pushing the body any further, the present capacity trained has to have become something achievable under any circumstances. The example of never breathless fast walking training may help to understand such logic. 

A professional teenager would start from how far he/she would be able to walk fast without becoming out of breath and then add ten steps every day as long as it could keep up with not being out of breath (not even a little). Then, he might start to add more, fifteen, twenty... according to its progress, breathing being the ultimate judge, to finally add as much as he could**. An adult doing a hobby cannot efficiently follow such method. First of all, an adult body being much slower in its transformation, it will take quite some time before he/she can walk fast while avoiding being out of breath. For an adult, the “even slightly” will become even more a crucial issue. Indeed, before pushing the body further, adding steps to the fast walk, one has to reach the level where he/she walks fast but can talk as if sitting. Then it will be more about adding one or two steps at first and keeping the distance until the effective time of training and body improvement will allow to walk fast such longer distance while having a normal speech pace.

2.2 Health Factor

What makes the rate of progress even more troublesome, and was already introduced in Ride Like the Wind, is that the modern hectic life had an impact on our health, i.e. on our organs which are the basis of internal power.

Therefore, the same exercise, usually harmless for the body, will become violent one day or even at a precise time when one's vitality is reduced. Hence, the need to even reduce the number of steps to be walked, as far as the example of fast walking is concerned, when one’s lifestyle and other issues have temporarily reduced one’s vitality. Otherwise, one’s organs may not deal well with what would be added pressure for them, a kind of vitality/intensity ratio, which leads to coughing, feeling nausea or even throwing up.

If dealing with progressiveness in the leisure world makes the issues much more complicated, timing becomes almost impossible to achieve.

*Old masters used to sit, indeed, in a certain way to show their skills, very old pictures sometimes being a tribute to those skills and not just a certain way to pose.

**Comparing never breathless fast walking with usual modern running is also a good way to understand the difference between endurance and performance training.