Bones and the Force

氣沉骨堅

Heavy vapours and strong bones

骨堅筋柔

Firm bones and supple fascias

As far as the body force is concerned, the external part, the most important was neither muscles nor even fascias for the internal arts, but it was the bones. Bones and force are the typical example of how internal arts work, body force was first about a stronger structure and, to achieve it, stronger organs.
It is also interesting that one of the common martial art exercises to make the bones harder, hitting something hard, had a different goal in internal practices, making the joints stronger.

Stronger Bones for a Stronger Structure

The skeleton being the internal framework of the human body, it was a priority for old practices. The idea was simple. By making bones stronger, one would make the whole body and everything supporting them stronger. The problem was, of course, how to make them stronger. Internal arts were not looking to make them harder by hitting or massaging them with something hard by example, the main work was to have them grow heavier through the use of weights. Of course, this type of training was mainly targeting children and teenagers by trying to influence the way they would grow. Hence the legendary Shaolin training with buckets having a hidden empty bottom to secretly add weight, or the iron body, weighted trousers and vest (starting very light and weight being added as little by little as possible), or simply weight lifting like using bigger and bigger weapons... Such exercises could only be done when one would understand how to use fascias instead of muscles. Otherwise, muscle mass would grow instead of bones.

But, of course, internal practices went further, they searched for the process behind bone growth.

Stronger Organs for Stronger Bones

For internal arts what was important in the bones was their soft part, not their hard one. Hence, they attached a particular value to bone marrow. According to Chinese Traditional Medicine, bone marrow is produced through the kidneys, another reason for the special importance always attached to them. Then, as mentioned in previous numerous posts (Health, Foggy Heart, Transforming First the Body, External Comes First), eating less and being able to take more from one's food, the kidneys would be able to concentrate more on the production of bone marrow. More bone marrow would not only fill up the bones, making them stronger, but force the hard part to grow and become rounder. For internal arts stronger bones had to come from their inside and supple part, indeed the motto of such practices, inner suppleness. People who started to train at an early age would have rounder bones and it was especially visible on shinbone, round and protruding instead of flat.

Bones made stronger, one had to consider their joints issue.

Pillar and the Joints

樁, pillar, refers to numerous training in martial arts, one of them being hitting on a pole. Such pole was often enveloped in a large layer of soft fabric and covered by dog skin, the inside of the skin facing outside. Dog skin was used for its inside layer of fat, which would grease the hands, or else, as they would hit, in order to avoid calluses, or even cuts which would make further practice impossible. Internal practices would use such training not to make bones harder, but to improve joints cartilage and synovial membranes in order to make them support harder shocks. Indeed, one can differentiate external practices which use such type of training to make the hard part of the bone harder from internal ones which focuses on the cartilage growth and synovial membrane elasticity. Different goals, different methods, different results. Indeed, if the tool and the necessity to hit were similar, the way it was done and the results expected were different, a higher pillar training being called the bell in internal practices.

The trainings described in this post were mainly focusing on children and teenagers, trying to actively influence their growth. Grownups can hardly reap any benefit from them, and definitively not if as a hobby, which makes this kind of training more legend than reality nowadays. Hence, one is justified to doubt the real transmission of techniques meant for much stronger bodies compared to our quite weak modern ones in comparison. Still, it is an interesting subject to develop as a further example of internal practices particular methods, how they were more interested in what is happening inside the body, not its visible parts like the muscles.