Naturally Contracted or Natural Elasticity

優力無力

No force is the better force

In theory, the difference between contraction and elasticity seems not too complicated. On one hand muscles contract and/or become loose while, in the other hand, facias extend and retract. In practice, and especially nowadays where muscle contraction is the main solution used to generate force for most humans*, it is a more complicated problem, a lot of practices advertising not using muscle contraction, either for marketing purposes or earnestly, while they still do.
This is a bit like something a lot of people have experienced, being at the doctor, who tells you to fully relax. You execute yourself and earnestly think you are, but only to be proved wrong. This is just because for your body and its long term habits, what seems to be relax compared to your usual self remains far away from real relaxation.

That is why it seems necessary to describe what makes elasticity different from muscle contraction. Furthermore, the transition from one to the other is quite problematic if trained as a hobby for grown-ups.

Elasticity Versus Contraction

Basically, the use of fascia elasticity, some of it having been already mentioned in earlier posts, differs from muscle contraction on the following points:

- The quality of the muscle fibres, which have to be tender, like a good steak, when they are either hard or loose (if using the soft methods or not exercising a lot) with muscle contraction.

- The motion required to generate power, which is logically linked to elasticity rules, is a move in two tensed and linked sequences (hence some styles do divide their moves into two sequences), all and any part of the body tensing as a whole while one is either loose or contracted and, when contracted, some parts are and other not (like agonist and antagonist muscles) with muscle contraction.

- The breathing, never panting, even very slightly, during any physical activity while muscle contraction leads to being out of breath.

- The absence of sensations, a feeling of being powerless when using fascia elasticity while muscle contraction goes with the sensation of force. Hence one of the extended meanings of 優力無力: not feeling one's force is the better force. 

- No sore muscles due to an excess of lactose after a heavy physical activity, fascia elasticity only bringing tiredness and a little discomfort.

Described like this, it seems simple, but to put it in practice is quite difficult and even more nowadays where most of the students are grownups.

Issues Faced by Adults

Indeed, in the old days, because the training was mainly meant for teenagers with a twenty-four hours seven days a week practice, it was quite easy to change one's body structure and learn how to use the fascia lines once the body had become elastic enough. The body not being already formatted, the changes and their consequences would come naturally to the students, being shown one time was more than sufficient.

Nowadays, when most of the students are adults already, mostly practicing a hobby and used for years to contract their muscles with all the consequences it has on motion, the change becomes quite problematic. To reformat one's body is a real hard process, hence the saying "練拳易, 改拳難", learning boxing is easy, changing the way one boxes difficult. The problem is not only the older adults get, the longer it takes the body to change, what is a matter of months for teenagers becoming years for grownups. It also lies in the fact that, even transformed, the body has been so formatted in its old ways that it keeps naturally reverting to them even though they are not efficient anymore. Indeed, tender muscles cannot contract as well as hard ones. So, contrary to a teenager, an adult not only has to transform his body to make it more elastic, but also to extensively learn how to use such elasticity. Finally, transforming from hard muscles to tender ones undergoes a transition period where they are neither hard enough anymore to contract efficiently nor tender enough to tense elastically, where the student actually becomes physically weaker. For teenagers, it is a short period greatly helped by the great vitality, the other component of power, they possess. Adults having much less vitality and the period of transition being longer, sometimes too long at an advanced age, it is very hard for them to reap the real benefits of old practices insisting on fascia elasticity. Hence, a lot of people practicing internal arts nowadays are yo-yoing between muscle relaxation and contraction, often mixing both, never really finding what they are looking for, being somehow stuck in this transition phase where nothing can work at its best.

The old practices researched great many and different ways to use the body, fascia elasticity being the one chosen by a lot of internal practices, but other would work to improve the nervous impulse for example. However, because they mainly were meant to be trained by teenagers, it is a challenge to apply them to adults training only a couple of hours a week. Further posts will try to introduce more in details how to obtain and use fascia elasticity in order to make the logic as understandable as possible.

*And it might have been the same in the old days, mainly because muscle contraction bring sensations, a way to feel that power is used, while good fascias elasticity brings no sensation at all. And humans are all about sensations.