Overload

铁杵成针

To grind an iron bar down to a fine needle

集腋成裘

Many a little makes a mickle (many hairs make a fur coat)

The use of weights in old practices is often a misunderstood issue. Indeed, it is often considered as either good or bad. Old practices were all about method, which means most of the time neither a total inclusion, nor exclusion, of any exercise. It was a question of opportunity, so of when, how and why. The first question to be answered was why one would use weight in training, then would come the when was it opportune and how to train with them. Since training was primarily customised for children and teenagers, whose body would transform very quickly, the opportunity to use weights in training would come very fast. Hence, as far as teenagers were concerned, weights were almost from the beginning a part of their training. Unfortunately, going from children professionally trained to leisurely adult changes totally the equation. Therefore, it may be interesting to describe how adults shall face the weight issue.

The two main aims of internal practices are to improve flexibility and the organs. Weights are considered as one of the training enhancers, the why. But enhancing is not a good or bad thing in itself, it all depends on the rightness of one's training. In other words, a good training will become even better but a bad one even worst. And since adults take much longer to recover, this becomes a key issue.

For adults, the opportunity to train weights lies in having a body adequately transformed, the when. Still, a transformed body is not enough, one has to understand where are the limits of weight training (a rule which also applied to children), the how. 

Since the needed transformation from a body ruled by muscle contraction to the one by fascia elasticity has been more than widely described in this blog, one can read the related posts to understand when one's body has become supple enough to train with weights. Otherwise, he/she will just improve contraction, the opposite of what is being sought. The present post will, therefore, concentrate on the how. To train weights correctly, one has to know what the breaking points are in order to avoid them at all costs. Then, there is a difference to be made between posture and motion.

I. Breaking Point

The weight training used to be very progressive in order to avoid any so-called breaking point, a method the idioms quoted are meant to describe. The idea was to start with something easy and then very gradually increase. Since they targeted children, not only there was plenty of time but it was also a way to influence their growth. Hence, their body would adapt much more easily. Adults, being very rigid in comparison, have to pay even more attention to avoid overloading, because they will end up hurting themselves otherwise. Furthermore, because of the hectic modern lifestyle, adult vitality can drastically change within a day, which means sometimes it becomes a question not of adding but of removing weight because the body cannot handle such load at this precise moment.

Basically, there are three main points to pay attention to: the muscles, the posture and the organs.

1.1 Back to Contraction

Long time imprinted reflexes are hard to lose. If the weight is too heavy and even though one's body has become supple enough, a too strong extra pressure may push it to revert to its old habits. Hence, when handling weights one shall make sure the body still stretches with lax muscles. Otherwise, it means the load is too important and shall be reduced. Indeed, because it is part of human nature, people do want to train with heavy weights, the heavier the better. This totally contradicts the "many a little to make a mickle" method, one of the basic principles when training internal arts. Furthermore, over-weighted training with arms straight will surely lead to tendinitis.

1.2 Posture Breaks

Training with weights is also meant to improve posture by strengthening the fascia elasticity and connectivity. Therefore, if one loses the correct angles over too heavy a weight, it will have the opposite effect. Then, under any pressure, whether weights or else, one would probably have imprinted the reflex to lose one's posture.

Hence, when using weights, one shall be sure to be able to maintain the same posture.

In this sense, the pelvic area is of utmost importance. Indeed, where external meets internal, any weight training is meant to reinforce such area and make it more and more firm. If the load is too important, it will have the opposite effect. This normally leads to the need to go to the bathroom while training or increase the everyday going to the toilet frequency. Being also one of the pitfalls of the abdominal breathing, the capacity to keep the pelvis in a correct posture, mainly tucking in the butt, is a priority. Still, the same rule applies, of course, to the chest, which shall remain contained. Indeed, lifting up the chest to support the weight is exactly the opposite of what internal practices search for, they use the back not the front.

1.3 Organs Failure

The way for internalists to check out if something has a bad impact on the organs is very simple and quite known: dark rings. Therefore, if after training weights, or the next day, one tends to get dark or much darker rings around the eyes, it is a sign for the old practices that the organs have been hurt. Indeed, if the load is too important or the change too violent, the organs will end up hurting themselves exactly like a muscle dealing with a too strong exercise.

Another way is wanting to throw up, or even throwing up. Indeed, as the muscles end up cramping if submitted to a too strong effort, forcing the body to stop, organs in the same way make people throw up because they cannot stand the effort any more. Therefore if while training weights one feels like throwing up, it is a sign that the load is too strong for his/her present vitality, or organ health status.

Pitfalls avoided, one shall still understand the difference between posture and motion training.

II. Weights in Posture and in Motion

The basic rule was that one can have targeted weighted areas while training postures but, in motion, weight should be spread evenly all over the body to avoid injuries due to a lack of a balanced body, but with the exception of weapons.

1.1 Targeting while in Posture

The use of weights in posture is mainly aimed at improving fascia flexibility, often focusing on the tendons and the ligaments, the less flexible part of the fascias. Still, as far as adults are concerned, it also can be used to further stretch any needed part of the body. As it has been mentioned times and times already in this blog, such exercises can only be beneficial if one's muscles are totally lax when doing it. Otherwise, one may end up hurting oneself.

The following examples can give an idea of the kind of weight training in postures used in old practices:

Wei Tuo Presenting the Pestle II

• While stretching the legs, one leg standing and the other one up, putting a weight on either on the knee of the one up or on the foot sole if one is so flexible he can lift his/her leg vertical.
• Putting weights on the top of the shoulders joints while holding a posture similar to "Wei Tuo Presenting the Pestle II" in order to push them even downer.
•  
• Putting weights on the trapezius while holding the same kind of posture in order to improve the stretch and the straightness of the neck.
• ...

1.2 Evenly Spread in Motion

What posture allows, motion forbids. Indeed, when putting targeted weights on one's body, it imbalances it, which most of the time will lead to injuries. Since old practices considered, and especially when dealing with adults, that injuries weaken the body in the short and the long term, they tried their best to avoid them, especially when training. Therefore, the rule was to spread the weight as evenly as possible. Hence, one would train with a special often leathery body suit made of a lot of pockets, hundred of them, to be very gradually filled with iron dust or something similar. "Literature for the impoverished, martial arts for the wealthy"*, an old proverb, a reminder of the fact that training old practices needed a lot of special equipment. Nowadays, most of this specialised equipment is not only no more available, but also the knowledge of such training has mostly disappeared.

Adults and leisure training cannot, unfortunately, contemplate such training.  

1.3 Heavy Weapons

Since one of the ultimate aims of training was to handle weapons, the evenly spread methods knew an obvious exception, the hands. Indeed, they followed the training heavy and long, using short and light principle**. One had no other choices but to deal with the imbalance handling a weapon would bring. Therefore, it was a custom among a lot of practices to train with oversized and heavy weapons***. Progressive training was still the rule and one would start with a light weapon and little by little train with longer and heavier ones. The remains of such method can still be found in styles having a heavy weapon as part of their basic training, the most famous nowadays being the pole, the long spear and the oversized broadsword.

As far as the grip was concerned, the aim of heavy weapons was to train the fingers and the wrist. As far as whole-body motion was, it was meant to put it in the most imbalanced posture and uneasy handling. Able to handle such impractical weapon, going for a much lighter and shorter one would be then easy and the awkwardness coming from handling a weapon would totally disappear.

Nowadays, if training internal arts as leisure, working on flexibility should be more a priority than handling weights or weapons one will never actually use. In any case, any training should try to follow the principles dictated by the two idioms quoted, regular and very progressive. One shall always keep in mind that it is the body as a whole, whatever the exercise is, which is targeted in internal practices. Hence, an invisible progress all over one's body is definitively more beneficial than a visible one on whatever part of it. Internal arts, after all, deal with what the eyes cannot see.

*窮文富武

**練長使短，練重使輕

***Chains like weapons being the exceptions. Indeed, in that case, training reactivity was more important and the lighter the chain, the harder it was to handle.