Pillars and the Bamboo

練拳無樁步，房屋無立柱

Training boxing without the pillar steps, a house without stud.

練拳不溜腿，終究冒失鬼

Training boxing without kicking¹, this is imprudent after all.

要知拳精髓，首由站樁起

To know the quintessence of boxing, it starts from standing the pillars.

壓而不溜不中用，溜而不壓笨如牛

Pressing but not smoothing² is useless, smoothing but not pressing stupid as a bull.

練功不站樁，等於瞎晃蕩

Training skills without standing the pillars, it is as rocking aimlessly

拳以椿爲根，椿以拳顯神

Boxing has the pillars for roots, the pillars have boxing to manifest the spirit.

For a lot of martists and Qigong aficionados, 站樁 means holding a stance, often as long as possible. This is actually more an interpretation than a real translation, 站, meaning to stand (on one’s feet) or to halt as far as training is concerned, and 樁 pillar or stud. Hence, holding a posture is surely only one of the numerous training 站樁 refers to. Furthermore, this practice is often confused with rooting² while it is actually, first of all, balance which is sought. Indeed, following the usual method, an apprentice will first learn the proper angles, searching for straightness and verticality to remain stable, that’s balance². Then, as his body transforms to become more elastic and as he becomes able to keep the pelvis area always properly aligned whatever are the misalignments of the rest of the body, a student will train rooting, a part of the bamboo training.

I. Finding Balance

Holding a stance is, of course, not only about stability, it also encompasses training to fix the form and then the heart. However this was not called standing the pillars, 站樁, but standing the posture, 站姿 (sometimes 站勢). The two exercises, because often they are done in an identical way, lead to such a confusion. Yet their goals were distinct (externally alike but internally different…), finding balance or fixing one’s form. Their further evolution even more, finding rooting through misalignment for ‘standing the pillars’ and fixing the heart through a proper breathing while standing lower or longer for ‘standing the posture’.

As far as the pillars are concerned, they were trained while holding posture as well as in motion. Furthermore, tools could be used.

1.1 Holding Posture

Less is more, standing the pillars cornerstone training is on one leg. Indeed, if one can stand perfectly in balance, one leg all the way up in the air, it becomes very easy on two legs.

The idea behind this training is to reinforce the pelvic area, buttocks, perineum, waist and a flat stomach being especially targeted. The stronger it will be, the better one’s stability will become.

The ‘holding’ training used to be divided in two, against a wall and up in the air. One foot on the ground the other against the wall (pressing, see fourth quote) main aim was, of course, to train extreme suppleness. Still, like a bike with two training wheels on the back one, it was a necessary preparation to be able to fully train pillars after.

Nowadays, extreme flexibility being a feat not a lot of people can achieve, the idea is to lift up one leg as high as one can and stay in the posture as long as possible and then shift to the other leg. For those who practise changes, one will reshape his/her routine, form … standing on one leg instead of two.

1.2 In Motion

Basic training often refers to lifting up a leg in various motions (smoothing, see fourth quote) at a normal speed. In a similar way as what was just described above, it was also an exercise to prepare pillar training. Indeed, to train balance, one had to implement the same motions, but slowly. The final aim was to improve balance while walking, running… Again, less is more, if one can manage to keep his/her balance while executing all different kinds of high kicks, from straight to rounded, doing the same lifting slightly up the leg to take a step would become very easy.

Another part of the training would stress more on how to remain balanced while sliding the supporting foot or when landing on it. Hence, jumping or spinning kicks, or even both at the same time.

1.3 Tools

Two types of tools were used, weights for the lifted up leg and pole or bricks for the supporting one.

Training with weight, the leg had to be just perpendicular to the body, not all the way up. One would then learn how to stay balanced while having some weight pulling the body forwards. Furthermore, it was a way to totally straighten one’s legs and open the knee and ankle joints, a harder task compared to other joints in the body because they are most of the time compressed by gravity.

Trying to keep one’s balance on one or more bricks or on a pole was another type of training. With time, the surface area on which the feet would stand would be progressively reduced, until to reach the legendary ‘standing on the point of the sword’. 

Once balance was understood and the skill more or less owned, one would then move to rooting training.

II. Improved Roots

Training rooting is a tricky process because it puts the body, especially the spine, into angles that are normally detrimental, if not really dangerous for the backbone. Hence, it should only be trained first under supervision of a knowledgeable person. The prerequisite is to have a total control of the pelvic area. Simply described, tensed buttocks tucked in, a flat stomach and an opposite positioning of the neck and the head to the trunk are what one shall look for when training bamboo. As for balance, the training can be static and in motion. Tools may be used, but with nowadays lack of decent training for most people, it would not be reasonable to explore them.

2.1 Static

In the same spirit as balance, they were first stretch exercises to prepare the body for such feat. Backwards, two of the best known were what are often called the bridge and the wheel postures³. Front and side stretch in a similar way would be done with stances where the four limbs touch the ground.

Once the body was transformed through this kind of training, one was able to take postures were everything from the feet to the waist (which is considered as the roots part of the body for quite a few styles) would stay as upright as possible while the upper part (waist to head) would lean forwards, backwards, on the sides… The added pressure on the standing leg to keep the body from falling was what improved rooting.

2.2 Swaying

Motion was first trained with the legs still. The aim was to have the student search how to create the ballast within the waist so that when lean on one side the waist immediately was pulling towards the opposite side. This was called the swaying fist⁴. Once mastered, one would start the walks.

Walks were done by pushing the body in a very unsteady posture, letting it be carried away as if to fall and reversing the imbalanced state with the waist by using the ballast effect. Well done, it gives the impression to an outsider that one has stumbled on a stone. Some would also imitate limping walks to search for the sway.

The old practices trained a lot the legs, not for high kicks and other acrobatic performances, but to make them more agile and enduring. Rooting was more training to improve the spine and its flexibility. Training used to be very specific and detailed, a far cry from the exercises good for every and anything that one can find nowadays. It was not about holding a posture and things magically would fall into place, but more about how and to what purpose. That is why two people can externally appear to do the same exact exercise while they are actually totally different internally, 玲瓏變化布周身, exquisite changes spread all over the body. Those were not visible to the naked eye, those were what a teacher would not tell his student, what he had to steal from him…

1. The translation kicking in the first quote is not accurate. 溜腿 is a set of techniques considered as the basic ones for old styles in order to make the legs as agile as possible, to counteract the fact that, as evolution made us stand only on them, their motion range became reduced compared to what our arms can do. Hence, smoothing the legs (溜腿 as translated in the fourth quote) may be a translation closer to the literal meaning and more appropriate for those who understand the goal of such training.

2. Balance vs. Rooting for humans. The first one is the capacity, through correct angles, to stay stable and not fall on the ground. Rooting is the ability through misalignments to improve the ballast potential of the body. Therefore, one recovers balance while realigning properly his/her body, verticality being the major goal, while one stays rooted by keeping the elastic connection between the waist pelvis area and the upper part of the body, skew being the main mean.

3. In old schools, very young students would hold such posture for very long, way over thirty minutes, to durably and deeply transform their body. This is, of course, highly inadvisable for adults in the leisurely world.

4. The most related training is more famous under the name of drunken fist.