Light Heavyweight

無力優力

No force is the better force

重裏觀輕勿梢留*

Watching lightness inside heaviness, leaving no extremities

練重不如練輕

Training heavy cannot match training light

Weights used to be a very important part of martial trainings, it was, after all, already part of the military exams during the reign of the first Chinese female emperor, Wu Zetian (AD 624–705), as well as later for higher levels examinations when military exams were taken seriously. Therefore, in the old days, training with weights would never have been an issue, just regular practice. Furthermore, it was also a way to further understand some of the meanings of the oxymoron of the first quote, being powerful without using force.

Training with Weights

The approach to training weights in internal arts is original in the sense that the charge has to be supported through the connective tissues elasticity and certainly not by muscle contraction, hence the precondition of having first transformed the body to the point it can master body mechanics through fascia elasticity. Failure to do so would result in just improving muscle contraction and not the connective tissues elasticity. 

Three particular methods where often used: 

Progressive

Influencing children growth by making them wear a suit in which was daily added an extremely light amount of extra weight (less than 20 grammes) is the typical example. Over then years, they would end up with a bone structure, connective tissues elasticity and organs made for up to the double of their body weight... Of course for adults and/or as a hobby, such training shall not be advised.

Naive

The example of the Shaolin buckets was given in previous posts (Method, Bones and the Force). The idea was to devise ways to secretly add weight to children trainings so that they would try to keep the same exercise at the same level of commitment even though it had become harder without their knowledge. Adults are too smart for their own good, such training is out of their reach.

Herculean

Opposite of the previous trainings, the idea is to have the student handle extremely heavy and unpractical objects, so that later handling light weapons in comparison would be very easy, the usual training and fighting principles opposition. Hence, a lot of schools used to have, as part of their basic training, a rather oversized and very heavy weapon, the remaining most famous ones nowadays maybe being the long spear, the long staff and the oversized single-edged sword. More generally, with the exception of chains-like weapons who followed the opposite principles, training any weapon would be done with a longer, broader and much heavier version of the one used in battle. Hence 練重使輕, "training heavy, using light" and 練長使短, "training in long, using short" had to be applied.

Still, weighted or not, the principle of not using force, which mainly was aiming at muscle contraction, had to be applied

The Non-Force

The principle of non-force is actually vast in martial arts because it applies to a lot of different practices, some of them even not compatible. Therefore, it goes from trying to have part or almost all the muscles lax to creating a tension through the stretch of connective tissues, through notions of using the opponent force, contracting only needed muscles or only upon impact, using more vitality than physical force... It seems, then, necessary to first reiterate what roughly the concept of non force means in internal practices, and how training the absence of sensation is a great part of its training.

Vitality and Elasticity

For Internal practices, strength comes from the elasticity of the connective tissues, as described in The Bow, Cornerstone of Elasticity and other posts, and from vitality as described in Vitaly and Strength and other posts. 

If muscles are lax in the beginning of the training in internal practices, it is just until the angles taken by the body have stretched them enough to allow the use of the connective tissues to generate elastic force. Hence the better force for internal practices is not just muscles getting lax but the body angles stretching them so that they actually tense up, it is an opposite relation where the laxer the tissues are the tenser they become through the angles taken by one's body, one of the meanings of 外剛內柔, "hard outside but supple inside" . So, if muscle contraction cannot ever be used, one can neither just loosen his/her muscles, every part of the body having to actually tense through relaxation. To take the simple example of the arm, the easiest way to create a tension through muscle contraction is to make a fist and bend the arm, while the easiest one to tense the fascias is to extend as much as possible the fingers of an open hand while straightening up the arm, quite the opposite.

Vitality is, of course, a much harder concept to describe. Let us just consider for the present demonstration that the more vitality one has, the more effortless he/she will do things. Just like carrying the same load can seem easier or harder whether in shape or not. In other words, the stronger one's organs, the more strength one will have, the less effort will have to be supported by the muscles, tendons, connectives tissues... A same logic could be followed with the indirect effect of having a stronger bone structure.

No Sensation

無感無覺我的功, "my skills know neither sensation nor feeling". Indeed, even before using weight, internal practices consider that where there is a sensation of force, there is an obstruction, force having to be expelled out of one's body. In other words, where there is a feeling of force, there is constipation. Therefore, one has to simply find ways to relax the part of the body which feels force until the feeling disappears.

The same process has to be made when dealing with weight, whether carrying or holding, one has to find a way to annihilate any sensation the weight gives. The ultimate goal is to train with weights as if they did not exist. That is why the preferred way to train weights in the old days was progressive and naive. Nowadays, in the hobby world, when one wants to train with weights following the methods of the internal arts, it is imperative to do it orderly. The first and foremost thing is to make sure that one's muscle structure has been transformed enough to allow working with the connective tissues elasticity and, it goes without saying, knowing how to move through fascia elasticity. Otherwise, since weights work as a boost, if one is still moving through muscle contraction, they will just improve it further, not help towards connective tissues elasticity. The second, being a hobby practiced by people too old to be naive, is to rather concentrate on adding very progressively weight, too quickly, even with proper muscle structure, one takes the risk to go back to contracting the muscles, old habits dying very hard, and very slowly. Finally, it would be best to work both arms at the same time and to avoid putting stress on only one part of the body if weights are placed on it.

Once again, old practices used to put method first, 法是功能之基, method is the foundation of capability, and the question is often not whether to do or not, but rather how and when. 

*Feminine and Masculine Principles Formula 陰陽訣