A Bit Of A Stretch

練形者，又名曰展筋脫骨
He who trains the shape, also called spreading out the fascias and the bones coming off1.

Flexibility has been researched for over 100 years. Its track record is unimpressive, particularly when viewed in light of other components of physical fitness. Flexibility lacks predictive and concurrent validity value with meaningful health and performance outcomes. Consequently, it should be retired as a major component of fitness2.

Open societies in our times suffer from a never-ending flow of information on any and all subjects and coming from virtually anybody with a computer who decides to write on something. Adding the marketing, political and other agendas people tend to push through information, the result is more confusion or a return to just one’s own beliefs, even though they are totally false. Old oral transmission was all about self-discovery, which meant information was scarce and shared only when time was ripe. This cornerstone of the old training methods being totally forsaken nowadays, especially in the leisurely world, our capacity to understand where the principles of our practice come from has also been lost. Hence, we tend to train this and that, mixing often non compatible exercises without noticing. After all, everything goes in leisure, enjoyment and self-satisfaction often being the main aim.

The body and the mind are quite complex and there are, indeed, many ways to train them. Each method has its benefits and pitfalls, some can be complementary, some imply to make a choice, oil or water, ice or fire... Training the body is exactly like cooking, it is a question of timing, proportion and method, putting a lot of food and ingredients in a pot and baking them is not enough. 

Stretching may actually be a good example, since its outcome and training methods can be quite opposite whether one considers the external and internal practices.

As a sign of times, there are a lot of information on stretching and disagreements are more than numerous. Some scientific studies have also debunked some claims of the supposed benefits of stretching (see, above, the second quote). This is quite interesting because, as far as the external side of training3 in internal practices is concerned, stretching is actually more than even the cornerstone, it is more or less the whole training, every posture or move being a stretch. One may separate stretching into three types, static, in motion and pandiculation. When static stretching is mainly an exercise before or after training for external practices, nowadays being quite disputed, it was through postures the basics of internal practices. Motion stretching differs in external and internal practices as muscles contract in the first one while they extend in the second. Finally, pandiculation training seems to belong more to the internal practices though it may totally be possible to train it in external ones.

The next post will deal with static stretching.

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1 Fascias Change Canons, Stringed Together Vapours Secret, Training the Shape Discourse, 易筋經，貫氣訣，練形論

2 James L. Nuzzo, Sports Medicine, 01 May 2020.

3 To make it simple, in internal practices the body is the external part and the organs the internal. Training tendons and fascias is training the body, thus considered as the external training in internal practices.