Zhu Xiaomin
Department of Philosophy, Peking University / Research Center for Science Communication, Peking University
As a child, I was weak and often sick, so I was a frequent visitor to the hospital. I still remember the horrible experience of being woken up by the nurse in the middle of the night for an injection when I was hospitalized, and my two tonsils were removed due to repeated inflammation and hyperplasia. However, it was this experience that encouraged me to strengthen my body and improve my health with exercise. During my school years, I slowly built up my fitness through long-distance running, doing pullups, engaging in martial arts practice and participating in various track and field events at primary and secondary school sports meets, where I won the championship in the 100m, 800m and 4x100m races. When I was in college, I could put the 5kg shot as far as 11.8 meters, which exceeded the full score of 10.7m. (The other event where I beat the score of 100 was in the 50-meter race, where I got a time of 6.2 seconds.) I remember that the boys in my class had three chances to put the shot, but the sports teacher only allowed me to throw once, which made me quite depressed as that meant I didn’t have the chance to improve my performance and show off!
After I went to work at Peking University, in 2008, and as I grew older, there were more and more limitations on the kinds of fitness exercise I could choose. In athletic competitions, my favorite event was the shot put (plus a solid ball), while in martial arts, I started to practice traditional taijiquan, which is a sport that overcomes rigidity with flexibility.
So far, I have won 14 top-eight places in the university staff games (at most two events per year), among which my best result in shot put was 3rd place, and among the faculty, I got 1st place many times (once I was the only faculty in the top-eight members of solid ball). When I asked the department if there was any reward after I got two good grades, the head of the department office looked back at me carefully and said, “More than ten years ago, a teacher in our department won a prize in the sports competition, and I think the reward was a milk pot.” Prof. Lou Yulie was sitting on the sofa reading the newspaper, and after hearing this, he smiled and said, “One milk pot isn’t enough, give him more!”
The taijiquan class of the author of PKU Global Open Courses
In order to put the shot, I needed to do some systematic strength training, lifting dumbbells and barbells before the competition. However, after our traditional taijiquan practice, the teacher warned us many times not to practice weightlifting so that the muscles would not become hardened, which would not be conducive to relaxation and the operation of internal qi. Mr. Wang Peisheng, a famous Wu-style taijiquan master, explicitly warned that weight training is not needed at all to enhance the power of taijiquan. On the one hand, I was reluctant to give up my favorite shot-put project, and on the other hand, I wanted to practice the internal energy of taijiquan. In order to compromise between the two, I gradually shortened my weight-training time from 3–4 months to 1–2 months to prepare for the shot put , while traditional taijiquan was a daily workout. Gradually, with years of practice and perception, my shot-put performance has become stable. As long as I go through strength training, when I compete, I will be in the top five. I have been able to feel the internal energy of taijiquan more and more clearly in the past two years (according to the traditional masters, this means that the path is right), and I seem to have found the balance between shot put and taijiquan. For this reason, I have been very interested to compare the different sporting principles, power generation and fitness effects between the Western shot-put and the traditional Chinese taijiquan.
Shot Put: Higher, Faster, Stronger
When I was in high school and college, I was fascinated by track and field sports, especially the shot put. I thought it was amazing that in such a small circle (about 2 meters in diameter), the human body could explode with such great energy—“As quiet as a maiden when at rest, moving like a thunderbolt”. Whenever I walked on a road and saw a suitable stone or brick, I would attempt to put it. At that time, the Chinese women’s shot put was in the midst of the glorious era of Huang Zhihong, and her winning of the first world championship in track and field for China was very exciting for me.
For this reason, I read a lot of professional books on track and field training, and followed the scientific method of strength training in the books a few months before the competition, and I have been continuing to do that up until now. To make it easier to practice at home, I bought 4 or 5 pairs of detachable dumbbells and reassembled them into different weights, ranging from 10kg or 15kg to 20kg for a single dumbbell. For two years, I also tried to lift 25 kg dumbbells with one arm, but gave up due to lack of wrist strength and for fear of getting a contusion. My main exercise principles and methods are as follows.
The way to choose the maximum weight dumbbell: if you can easily lift it 12 times, it means that the weight is too light; if it is very hard to lift even 8 times, it means that the weight is too heavy. Of course, this maximum weight can always be adjusted as the level of training improves.
The main purpose of the explosive-power strength exercise method: using two arms in turn, quickly lift 8-12 times in a single set, with each set repeated 6-12 times; meanwhile, different action exercises can be spaced. For example, for the maximum weight of dumbbells, I usually stand and push up (divided into straight arm and rotating arm lift), which helps to coordinate the strength of the whole body. Lighter dumbbells can be used to alternate between several back, shoulder, and abdominal muscle movements. Each strength exercise, from the preparation of warm-up activities to the end of finishing relaxation, lasts about 1.5 hours or more.
This systematic training requires that the interval between two training sessions should not be less than 24 hours in order to allow full muscle adaptation and recovery, but the training must be repeated within 72 hours to avoid degradation of the training effect. In this way, muscle strength can continue to grow and continue to accumulate progress.
In accordance with the above scientific and systematic training, 3 times a week for 3 to 4 months (or even 1-2 months in recent years), the effect is very obvious: responding to the weight of the dumbbells, the body feels tight, strong, and elastic, especially the strength and definition of the shoulder and arm muscles is clearly visible. As long as we train ourselves gradually by dumbbells, it’s certain that we will get increasingly satisfying results, which is quite inspiring. In the book “The Art of Expressing the Human Body”, Bruce Lee mentions that, after 14 weight-bearing exercises in 44 days (of course, the intensity of Bruce Lee’s exercises was much higher than mine), the growth of his left and right biceps and left forearm circumference was actually close to 2 cm.
One year, I went abroad as a visiting scholar during the winter vacation and came back just in time for the start of school, so I was extremely busy and did not do any systematic strength exercises. Thinking that my shot-put performance had been in the 4th or 5th place for many years, I thought it would not be a big problem to get a ranking even if I did not exercise. However, I have to admit bad luck always follows those who are unprepared! At the games in late April: we competitors in the 40-year-old age group were supposed to put a 5kg shot, but, by mistake, the referee brought out a standard shot, which weighted 7.26kg, and it was too late to adjust at the time. We just had to put the large shot. As soon as I put the shot to my shoulder, I felt very uncoordinated. But seeing that my ranking was hovering around 8th place, I pushed hard on the last throw, my legs stepping vigorously, but my waist, shoulders and arms could not coodinate coherently, which caused my body movements to be distorted by the heavy shot. I slid and turned, so that my right big toe hit the toe plate in front of the throwing circle directly, and I almost fell down. I was in sharp pain, and was very worried that a fracture had occurred. It was my worst performance that year, and I only got 7th place. Fortunately, my right big toe was not broken, but it was purple and swollen, and the nail cap was broken in half, and the black bruising under it took six months to heal. From this, I gained a deep understanding of the opposite aspect: If you want to participate in track and field sports like shot put, which challenges one’s limit (though it is an insignificant personal limit), you must do so in a scientific and systematic way, and must undergo sufficient training with a serious attitude and gradually improve your body’s ability to adapt in a step-by-step manner; otherwise, it is like a lazy farmer planting the land—he fools the land and the land fools him too with very poor products—not only do you not get the desired effect, but you could easily get injured.
Taijiquan: Loose, slow and even, soft
In contrast to the shot put, which requires intense, fast, vigorous training and explosive movements, the daily practice of traditional taijiquan requires the body to be relaxed and soft, and the movements to be slow and even. In the view of taijiquan, the active use of muscles (not to mention the special training of large muscles) will “injure the whole because of the small” and “harm the whole because of the partial”—restricting the natural and harmonious overall performance of the body.
I started getting involved in traditional taijiquan in 2008, and my understanding of taijiquan in the first few years was limited to the understanding of routine gymnastics-style body movements. After more than ten years of exploration and understanding, I slowly began to understand that the movement pattern of taijiquan is a relaxed and flexible state of the body, using qi to move the body, promoting the outside from within, and utilizing the body as a whole. For example, in the action of kicking the legs, the legs cannot be partially kicked out; rather, the action should commence through the dispersal of internal qi, when the whole body is loosened—in fact, the legs are automatically “loosened” out (so-called “open”). Similarly, when the legs are withdrawn, the legs are not singularly drawn back, but the action must be done the same way: the leg is not just drawn back when it is withdrawn, but through the convergence of internal qi and the coordinated retraction of the whole body, the leg is naturally “sucked” back (the so-called “together” or “closing”), and “an opening and a closing, the boxing art is complete.”
A few years ago, when a traditional master was teaching the movement of “Parting the Wild Horse’s Mane”, he told us to open both arms and the whole body from the heart “like a flower blooming”—this completely overturned my initial perception of the gymnastic practice of taijiquan. Imagine a flower blooming: its petals open from the inside out in an orderly fashion, small and soft, but full of life and vitality—this is also a case of “extremely soft but extremely hardness”. Each movement of taijiquan also requires natural coordination, from the inside out, flexible and round.
In contrast to the daily training of putting a lead ball, which focuses on the real and measurable growth of muscle strength, taijiquan promotes “empty and silent qi”. This internal qi is like an “energy flow” or “information flow” that has no material carrier; so far, it has been difficult to explain this by modern science. By emphasizing the loosening of the whole body to let the internal qi flow freely, the cold and crisp effect of “sending energy like releasing an arrow” can also be achieved. Someone once questioned Yang Jianhou face to face: How can a loose-looking taijiquan move and push people? The latter replied, “It is because of the loose and relaxed movements that people can be pushed.” It is difficult for many traditional taijiquan enthusiasts to understand and feel this internal energy and its use, even after many years of practice. Here I would like to present my own practice and perceptions, as follows.
Since 2008, I have studied Chen, Wu, Yang, and Wu/Hao styles of traditional taijiquan and started to practice stake-standing 6 or 7 years ago. During that time, a friend who preached martial arts enthusiastically told me that stake-standing should be done with hot air coming out from the soles of both feet, but I felt that I could not imagine this internal qi at all, and ignorantly laughed at his statement. But since New Year’s Day 2021, I have been surprised and amazed by the gusts of hot qi that often fall to the soles of my feet when I was practicing stake-standing. And I can feel obvious progress in my stake-standing in recent years . For example, the heat falling to my feet gradually changed from a clump to a steady stream of heat; the heat falling to the soles of my feet started to spread from the center of my feet to the whole soles of my feet and toes; the soles of my feet used to be only warm, but now they occasionally feel hot; the heat on the soles of my feet, which was only present during static stance, is now also present during dynamic exercising. Even when practicing in the cold winter wind, the hands and feet will be warm and comfortable. As some boxers have imaginatively and vividly described, standing in the snow and ice can also produce a “spring-like feeling”.
A traditional master once said that if the average person practices taijiquan in the correct way, the hands easily experience the heat because the two arms do not need to bear weight and are relatively easy to relax; but because of the body’s weight on them, the legs are very difficult to loosen, and experiencing the flow of internal qi is more difficult (ordinary people are used to using the right leg, so its muscles are more developed, and it’s relatively easier to loosen the left leg than the right leg, so that left leg will experience a sense of heat first). Some people may not find the right feeling even after 10 or 20 years of practice. This is another characteristic of traditional taijiquan practice: it is not like the strength training for putting a lead ball, where there must be a step-by-step improvement and the training standards and results are quite “objective” and reliable. Many people who practice taijiquan may spend their whole life doing partial body movement taiji exercises, and the more they practice, the more they move away from the core concept of taijiquan. No wonder Li Yaxuan said “99% of taijiquan practitioners are wrong”, and the number of real top taiji masters is even rare—“only a few in every generation”.
Therefore, not only is it impossible to unify the requirements of taijiquan, but even if the master teaches by his own words of mouth and movements of his own body, and according to the disciple’s talent and personal conditions, there are still a lot of cases where a father finds he cannot be pass on his taijiquan experience to his son, and a formal apprentice cannot learn true taijiquan from his master. Disciples who have completed their studies often have different styles and form their own schools. For example, of Yang Luchan’s three true disciples, Wan Chun got Yang’s “sinew“ and was good at hardness of strength, Ling Shan got Yang’s “bone“ and was good at pushing people, and Quan You got Yang’s “skin” and was good at flexibility. Yang family’s three generations of masters also had their own specialties: Yang Luchan broke into the world, Yang Banhou fought the world, Yang Jianhou raised the world, and Yang Chengfu spread the world. It can be said that “each tree is a unique bodhi, a person has his unique taiji”. Even if their master is the same person, each disciple may learn to perceive the path of taijiquan differently. As the painter Wu Changshuo once said: People who are similar at me are dead, people who break my record improve, people who make use of my style stay alive.
Shot Putting and Taijiquan—The Beauty of Each
Many Western sports that share the same principles of shot-put training, such as strength exercise, outdoor walking and marathon running, have flourished in recent years in China, and their passionate goal of “higher, faster, stronger” that constantly challenges the limits of the body, their relatively objective and standard training methods, and the “immediate results” they offer are attracting more and more Chinese young people to participate in them. However, the traditional taijiquan’s neutral and peaceful fitness, health, and combat philosophy, such as internal and external cultivation, the unity of heaven and man, “Any raising hands and kicking feet can be taiji movements too” and “You need ten years practice of taiji before pushing with others/ You need ten years to get the right feeling of Taijiquan ”, is becoming more and more difficult for modern people to understand and accept.
In my taijiquan dissemination discussion class, a graduate student who had taken a class in 24-posture simplified Taijiquan bluntly said that Taijiquan was “ugly” and that some of the movements were “inexplicable”. One wonders if his knowledge and understanding of taijiquan were unknowingly influenced by his preconceptions of Western science and movement concepts, or “cultural pollution”. A student, when looking at the traditional master’s taijiquan photo, criticized his performance of the taijiquan movement “right kicking foot” for “not even straightening his leg”, and I immediately asked her, “Why do you think a straight leg must look good?” taijiquan is all about keeping the middle/center and using the middle/center, attacking and defending at the same time, kicking foot no higher than the waist, and “curving and saving” to avoid going too far. It seems that such traditional concepts are completely unfamiliar to young students nowadays, and it is difficult for them to identify with those concepts. In the past two years, I have started to arrange for students in my classes to go to the field to experience the teachings and real kungfu of folk taijiquan masters, and they all admitted with surprise that they would never have believed that there is such a relationship between kungfu and philosophy if they did not feel and experience it for themselves.
right kicking foot by Qiu Yiguo, a master of Yang style Taijiquan
A master’s student who was also a member of the basketball team at the College of Chemistry took my taijiquan class, and when we talked about how the palms would feel hot and swollen at the beginning of taijiquan practice, she blurted out, “My hands get hot when I play basketball too!” There was a sense of disdain in her words. Now that she is a doctoral student, I would like to ask her again if she gets hot on her soles when she plays basketball, as I occasionally run into her on campus.
A martial arts professor who teaches 24-posture simplified taijiquan lamented helplessly in a private conversation that he had no way to incorporate the traditional taijiquan practice into modern classroom teaching. At first, I had a hard time recognizing his point of view, but then I realized that the main way to show the results of the mandatory taijiquan class for college men is usually a large-group (that is, with hundreds of people) performance of 24-posture taijiquan at the opening ceremony of the field day in every April. The requirement for the performance is that the movements be uniform and standardized, with the taller students lowering their movements and the shorter ones stretching their arms and legs. Isn’t such a uniform teaching requirement like the bed of Procrustes, where the long legs are sawed short and the short legs are stretched long? How can we achieve the individualized presentation of traditional taijiquan, which is based on the principle of “finding comfort” by yourself?
Behind these simple superficial differences and cognitive differences, there is actually a vast difference between the paradigms of Chinese and Western sports and fitness, from the basic concept to the practice. How to perceive and coordinate the relationship between the two? Is it that “you can’t have both fish and bear’s paw“—that you can only choose one or the other, negating or replacing one with the other? Or can the two coexist peacefully and beautifully?
In this regard, it is very important to deeply understand the essential differences between Chinese and Western movements and to avoid the simple and crude dichotomy of scientific or unscientific demarcation, or the forced over-interpretation of one paradigm by another. For the sake of space, I will only briefly discuss a few points here:
First of all, a Western research paradigm will affect or even mislead the understanding of traditional taijiquan. Two years ago, I attended an international conference on taijiquan, and I could see from the agenda of the conference that the topics of the presentations by the experts and scholars were as follows: the auxiliary treatment of coronary heart disease, the relief mechanism of taijiquan for frozen shoulder, the efficacy of taijiquan for hepatitis B, the rehabilitation of patients with nephritis, the recovery effect of taijiquan for patients with hypertension, the healing effect of taijiquan for patients with lumbar disc herniation, the benefits of taijiquan for pulmonary embolism, the healing effect of taijiquan for patients with lumbar disc herniation, the study of the effects of taijiquan on the prevention and treatment of pulmonary embolism, the improvement of insomnia by taijiquan ......, and so on. Although the original meaning of science is the “study of subdisciplines”, the perception of taijiquan may have the negative effect of becoming more and more detailed and fragmented—”seeing the trees but not the forest”, or even “You can’t even see Mount Taishan when your eyes are blinded by a leaf”. Some foreign taijiquan researchers at the meeting confessed that there is a great lack of research results on the humanistic aspects of taijiquan that can be grasped as a whole. Indeed, if each field of study is only dedicated to taijiquan in its own “acre of land”, then it will only bring a more and more fragmented understanding of taijiquan.
According to the American College of Sports Medicine, for healthy adults, the minimum intensity of exercise should be 50% of one’s maximum oxygen uptake, and the heart rate should be 130-135 times per minute in order to exercise the cardiovascular system and enhance physical fitness. In order to meet this Western exercise theory, some domestic experts have argued that those practicing taijiquan should try to reach or approach this heart rate, thus meeting the international standard for cardiovascular exercise. Imagine if a person’s heart rate reaches 130 to 135 beats per minute while practicing taijiquan, could he still be neutral and comfortable, breathe naturally, and be calm and relaxed? Isn’t this kind of blindly-introduced scientific research and deduction a little bit like cutting the foot to fit the shoe or adopting the foreign without incorporating it holistically? Indeed, quantitative data often only implies a certain degree of accuracy, which does not necessarily mean exactness, let alone correctness.
Secondly, we should pay attention to the difference between the two in terms of practical concepts, such as the difference between “inside” and “outside”. The Japanese writer Haruki Murakami mentioned in his book “What I Talk About When I Run” that he insisted on long-distance running for many years and had participated in all-marathon, ultra-marathon, and triathlons dozens of times. In order to challenge his limits, he even trained hard to specialize in running muscles. As a result, due to his long-term, strict, high-intensity practice, “all his muscles became tight and stiff”, and he compared his muscles to “eating leftover bread from a week ago, hard and stiff, such that it was difficult to imagine that these were actually his own muscles”. For this reason, he had to ask a professional fitness instructor to help him stretch and relax several times to avoid muscle overload or spasms. The fitness instructor, every time he saw Murakami’s “Bang Bang hard“ muscles, expressed amazement: “If it were anyone else, they would already have run into difficulties, yet you have managed to escape it so far!"
In my own strength training for the shot-put competition, I have also often felt muscle pain and stiffness. The daily practice of taijiquan requires that muscle pain and local stiffness be avoided as much as possible, and whenever any part of the body becomes sore or stiff, it must be soothed by fine-tuning the posture and intention and relaxing from the inside out—then the condition will disappear. Therefore, a boxing theory says: “In taijiquan practice, one must use the heart to practice qi; there must be no turbulence of mind, movements must be purely natural; no pain in the tendons and bones, no effort marring the skin.” Once the master looked at my boxing and criticized me, “You’re practicing too seriously”—”over seriousness” is actually a problem! It turns out that the “looseness” of taijiquan is “don’t try so hard to be loose!”—if one is too serious, it is easy to overload the idea and this will lead to restrained, rigid movements, far from the natural and smooth path one should be pursuing.
Nowadays, many people are keen on muscle lines, molding their outer appearance, super training for muscle gain, blindly following the trends for fashion, bodybuilding, and excessive dieting. As a result, they often attend to one thing and lose sight of another, going to extremes. For example, some bodybuilding professionals have an enviably strong appearance, but frequently suffer from sub-health, premature death, and even sudden death. It seems they have deviated from the way of health and longevity—as the saying goes, “something that looks beautiful from the outside, like gold or jade, may be filthy inside!” Traditional taijiquan’s theory of fitness and health care emphasizes harmony from the inside out and the whole. Through “flow of qi and blood, daily infusion, circulation throughout the entire body, without stagnation at any time”, the circulation of qi and blood in the five internal organs of the body is enhanced, and then qi fills the four extremities—radiating out, nourishing the limbs, making the five organs healthy and the five limbs strong (here, the head is also considered a limb). “Don’t ask for firm skin and thick flesh but for qi and bones to be firm”, the inner and outer are combined, the mind is comfortable and the body at ease, and the body and mind are coordinated to achieve the fitness and health effects of fullness of energy, spirit and relaxation.
Thirdly, in the specific practice methods, we should also pay attention to the differences between the two, such as the difference between “local” and “overall”. Compared to shot-put strength training, which focuses on the leg muscles, shoulder muscles, arm muscles, and other “local” parts, taijiquan is concerned first with the overall smoothness and unobstructed breath. For example, not only the hands and feet, elbows and knees, shoulders and hips (the external triad), but also all parts of the body (the entire body as a “family” or a symphony); not only the heart and mind, mind and qi, qi and strength (the internal triad), but also the internal and external must be combined (six in one). In order to avoid too much emphasis on local muscles, I have stopped the practice of sitting and lifting dumbbells to strengthen the shoulder and arm muscles in recent years and changed to a standing weightlifting method of coordinatiing the whole body to exert force.
In conclusion, the concept of “higher, faster, stronger” in Western sports has encouraged the advancement of various fields, and the scientific means and quantitative methods are improving day by day, constantly challenging the limits of human beings, while gradually leaving the general public far behind, and gradually moving away from people’s daily fitness. The method of taijiquan, on the other hand, regards physical fitness, technique, and body cultivation as a trinity, which is self-suficient and self-fulfilling. There is no need to prove anything by competing with each other, defeating others, and conquering nature. “There is no fixed law in the application of law, any movement itself is the law; every move should be integrated both inside and outside, both in form and spirit; reality is not completely hardness or full, emptiness is not completely powerless or nothing; yin and yang grind on, from which all laws are derived.” Because of this, “a thousand words cannot explain the wonder of even a single movement in taijiquan”. There is no need to distinguish between these two completely different sports and fitness concepts, and there is no need to choose one over the other. “The ways of the Dao runs parallel but are not contradictory.” We should have both the magnanimity to appreciate the beauty of others, and also the self-confidence to affirm the beauty of each one.
There is a taijiquan teacher in Taiwan who is a master of kung fu and is highly respected. When he was young, he worked in the underground warehouse of a bank, where his time was relatively flexible and the warehouse space was large, so he could practice taijiquan there whenever he wanted. Later, due to his conscientious and responsible work, the bank offered him a promotion and salary increase and transferred him to the administration department, but he refused and insisted on working in the warehouse until his retirement to facilitate his practice of taijiquan. Wu Tu’nan, a famous master of Wu style, once said that he taught his disciples in strict accordance with the traditional way of practicing taijiquan of his predecessors, and would not change even if all his disciples ran away. Wang Yongquan, an orthodox master of Yang style, also proposed to the relevant authorities that he could spend three years teaching the unique training methods of traditional taijiquan to improve the technical skills of casual fighters, but received no response. It is saddening to see that, on the one hand, traditional taijiquan masters are dedicated to asking questions and sticking to their traditions while their living environment is becoming increasingly constrained and marginalized; on the other hand, some so-called modern management, research, and teaching institutions are quite unfamiliar with China’s own cultural traditions, either treating them as if they were nothing, or rejecting them. Because of this, there is an urgent need for a paradigmatically systematic and comprehensive understanding and recognition of traditional taijiquan transmission methods and the different philosophies behind them, especially the need to respect their independent, autonomous, and sustainable development space.
Interestingly, through the long-term practice of shot put and taijiquan, I have found that there seems to be some “similarity” between the two: the “tightness” of the shot put, in turn, has led me to better understand the “looseness” of taiji. The thoroughness of the set of taijiquan movements also helps me to put the shot in a more coordinated way. The “stillness like a virgin, movement like a thunderbolt” of shot put and the “extreme softness and then extreme hardness” of taijiquan are in fact similar. To be able enjoy the beauty of both these two sports, what a pleasure it is!
Translated by: Wu Tianpeng
