Stretching The Basics

未學功夫，先學跌打

Before studying skills one shall study acrobatics1

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.

三年樁，兩年拳

Postures for three years, boxing two years

The first quote apparently makes the link between practising martial arts and acrobatics, which become a prerequisite. Acrobatics and the extreme flexibility they require doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with using a sword or any weapon of the old times. So, why did it use to be a part of the basic training of a lot of styles until recently, shared by both internal and external methods? 

In order to understand it, one has to go back to 法是功能之基， (the) method is the foundation of (one’s) capacity. Indeed, it is not a question whether an exercise is good or bad, but when it has to be trained, for what purpose and where it may lead to. Nowadays, because the heart of ancient methods has been lost, people of all ages train indiscriminately exercises that were actually meant for a certain type of age, even sometimes body. Basically, childhood, puberty, young adulthood, maturity and old age all had specific training. Therefore, kids spending most of their training in static flexibility exercises and adults doing the same but just for five minutes as a warming-up are actually two entirely different things. Stated this way, it seems obvious but, in times of standardisation, kids and adults tend to train the same way as far as flexibility is concerned in most of the modern martial practices. That is why flexibility training as a basic for a lot of martial arts can only be understood under the condition it is first trained during childhood or puberty3.

Because we all tend to become more and more rigid with time, the first aim of any acrobatic flexibility was therefore seen as a means to slow down the losing fight against old age and a body getting stiffer. Starting from early age was meant to influence how the body would be formed4 while growing until it reached adulthood. Starting adult life with a much more flexible one than most people, the ageing rigidity would then come at a later time and with a lesser effect.

Furthermore, flexibility allowing a wider range of motion, it was also a way to prevent injuries due to a wrong move. Indeed, the body able to bend in any and all directions reduces the chances of pulling a muscle, for example.

Finally, exercises like the split (with correct angles) and more especially lifting one leg high and keeping it, were a way to reinforce the area between the waist and the hips, more especially the perinea. Such area is the heart of most of the martial arts training.

These basic qualities, because they were meant for kids or teenagers, only required a few months of training. Then, the body was ready to start learning skills, not before, hence the third quote.

It is interesting to notice that, whether external or internal, the first step of training was, indeed, to transform the body in order to make it as suitable as possible to the type of practice intended. This in the leisurely world has been all but lost, people just following more or less the same kind of training whatever the age. This is a far cry from old methods where kids, teenager and early adults had all kinds of training suited to their physical and mental state.

Internal styles went even further, devising a method where connective tissues became the main source of power while the muscles were mainly used to move. Furthermore, they also took into account organs. To do so, a great part of the training was to deeply transform the body through all kinds of stretching.

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1. The more traditional translation of this saying refers, of course, to the practice of bone-setter in Traditional Chinese Medicine. The contempt against acrobatics in some martial art circles has put aside tumbling, somersault... training which actually needed a lot of skill and flexibility. For this, 跌打 was also used as a term for all the tumbling and acrobatics related exercices. It was also used in his old meaning of taking a beating for some other extreme training meant to strengthen the body through beatings...

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

3. Even young adulthood would be considered too late unless the student is quite naturally flexible.

4. That is in such sense that some arts consider the term ‘body formation’, a deep transformation of tissues, bones, organs and so on…