Bamboo

武藝不學不通，雜技不練不精

Martial art skills cannot be understood if not studied, acrobatics are not outstanding if not practised.

勢如破竹

A posture totally like a bamboo¹.

Though a new realm, bamboo naturally follows what was achieved in the locks, starting to learn how to tense the whole body through fascias and muscle relaxation. Therefore, where one had to soften one’s body in straight and round, bamboo is all about hardening it, nonetheless by means of relaxation. Still, bamboo training is also finding means to enhance the spine flexibility as well as to reach deeper fascia webs. Finally, such training deals with ways to improve one’s grip and the flow of vapours.

I. A Whole Tensed Body

As it was already explained in this blog, working with fascia elasticity means that one does not use agonist and antagonist muscles but learns to tense any and all muscles through relaxation. Such feat starts within the locks training. Still, because straight and round training has actually lengthened some muscles, especially those around the shoulders, the down part of the back deltoids and their connected trapezius, as well as the pectoralis for example, it may be hard to have all the muscles tense. Another problem also remains with the pelvic area where reaching the lock which allows to tense all the muscles in the legs, particularly the thighs, is also an issue. Bamboo training, through patting, tries to solve such matters.

One can still find some remains of such exercise in some styles nowadays. The idea is to pat, eventually hit hard, any part of the body which isn’t tensed. First while holding a posture, then in slow motion.

Such exercise is, of course, best done with two people, one patting or hitting the still lax muscles and fascias. It is then up to the other person to find what is wrong in the lock or how to tense the patted part.

Obviously, this exercise is the first step before the harder patting-hitting skill practised during the so-called iron vest.

With the usual need to balance the Feminin and Masculin principles, Bamboo will also improve one’s body flexibility.

II. Acrobatics and The Swaying Fist

Putting the body in more acrobatics postures is a means to reach further and deeper fascia webs². If it is first done by changing the foot and the arm angles for the same posture, the most intense training being the Swaying Fist, where the torso, for example, will take extreme nonaligned postures. But first, it seems necessary to restate how the body has to be structured from straight to locked before learning how to deconstruct it.

2.1 Straight to Locked

Because bamboo training has a huge impact on the spine, understanding how one deeply transforms the body is of utmost importance. Such thing has already been explained in the Straightness and Roundness posts.

Basically, first one trains straightness, the upper part of the body stretched straight as a die for the least.

直

Straight

Then, the backbone, the fascias and the muscles becoming more flexible, one can naturally move on to being Round³,

圓

Round

Finally, rounding the body will reach a stop where it naturally, wholly or partly, locks.

鎖

Locked

This skill reached, to get further, one has no other choices than to change the basic alignment rules and use acrobatic postures to enhance even more fascia elasticity.

2.2 The Three-Step Method

The idea is to change the posture already shown in the previous chapter to adapt it and make it opened or closed for the least. As described in the three-step method, this is a way to stress on certain fascia webs and to stretch more and reach deeper tissues. Finally, being able to execute any kind of movement in any angle is an obvious enhancement of one’s agility.

順開

Along and Opened

逆開合

Against and Opened-Closed

The above pictures, for styles the cornerstone of which is change, are actually considered as variations of the same posture (see previous paragraph for the original one), not new or different postures. This method may be quite disturbing, especially when accustomed to try to reproduce exactly to the smallest detail. It may seem, then, that everything and any change are possible. It is not. Indeed, it abides by a very strict and hard to grasp method and is in spirit very similar to the Chinese characters cursive writing⁴, seemingly orderless for an outsider but still more or less following the original character stroke order or some cursive writing conventions⁵. In other words, one can write/practise one character/posture in many different ways but not any way he/she wants. 

Different cursive writing for 武, martial

Even further in variation also comes the Swaying Fist, far away from the alignment principles a beginner has to follow.

2.3 Swaying

The Swaying Fist is the embodiment of the bamboo training, it will be developed in detail in the next post on the subject. Apart from enabling the student to stretch deeper and harder, such training focuses on improving the spine but is, also, very strenuous for the backbone. It all comes down to being in a virtuous or vicious circle and ONE SHALL NOT PRACTISE ANY OF THE SWAYING FIST POSTURES AND EXERCISES IF HIS/HER SPINE IS NOT IN PERFECT SHAPE AND WITHOUT THE SUPERVISION OF A KNOWLEDGEABLE TEACHER.

搖竹

Swaying Bamboo

(going from one set of angles to another one in the same posture)

Bamboo training also knows other avenues of research such as improving the grip and the flow of vapours.

III. Improving

Since old practices were about handling weapons, improving the grip was of utmost importance. Furthermore, vitality playing a very crucial part for power, each and every training would always take it into consideration.

3.1 The Palm and The Grip

The Vermillion Palm was the way to improve one’s grip. There are a lot of different exercises under such name. Here what is is mainly sought is hitting red beans, hence the denomination, or playing with them. Still, the rule is “no lock, no palm”. Therefore, one has to first know how to lock the hand and make a harden tiger or eagle palm to finally be able to train the Vermillon Palm. The aim is not only to strengthen the palm and its fascias but also to improve the flow of vapours to the hands.

3.2 Improving The Flow

Two ways to improve the flow in bamboo training can be given as an example: the veins and the empty breathing.

a. Veins

Vapours following the blood, the idea is to get the veins more compressed inside one’s body. Hence, and that’s often a quite noticeable difference between muscle contraction and fascia elasticity, one’s veins have to slowly disappear inside the arms and the legs for the most obvious parts. In other words, the less apparent are one’s veins, the more he/she is creating power through muscle relaxation⁶. Of course, such skill has to be achieved while having the body tensed.

b. Empty Breathing

Empty breathing naturally follows the skill of compressing. The idea is to empty not only the lungs and then the stomach but, with time, the whole body. Such a process more or less the reverse of the accumulating one, stress will be put more on exhaling than inhaling. Done correctly, it is also a way to tense the whole body, very similar to what is sought when wearing compression clothes.

There are, of course, other avenues of research in the bamboo training, but the principle of tensing the whole body shall always be kept in mind. The next post on the subject will introduce the swaying fist, one of its emblematic exercises.

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1 Probably also a perfect example of how martial arts language can hijack writing. 勢如破竹 means “power like splitting a bamboo”, hence easily, like a hot knife cutting through butter, irresistible force. Martial arts turn it around when talking about posture in bamboo training, 勢 used not in its meaning of power but as posture and 破 in its less used meaning of completely instead of to split. Such revised meaning does not really exist in popular culture, it is just another trick teachers used to keep their knowledge to the happy few, adding keys to understand what they really meant when using a proverb with an actual totally different meaning.

2 Before bamboo, one should have gone from a two-dimensional side of fascias, with their lines, to a three-dimensional one, stretching each and every part of the body in what are called the six directions, understanding the web nature of the fascias.

3 功到取成, only when the body is transformed one can train a skill, not the opposite. Often people trying to round their body, still not made for such a feat, end up hurting it by forcing what is not doable.

4 草書, rough script.

5 See here for more details on the writing method.

6 This concerns people training regularly and intensively, not the result of lying on a couch eating crisps. Indeed, other activities, like the ones causing to be overweight, can also lead to having less apparent veins.