As martial arts practitioners, we are often told to relax. Tightening not only waste energy but can work against you by creating a leverage system to the benefit of your opponent. Furthermore, tightening can telegraph, slow you down and more.
What exactly does that mean?
What it is not:
- Become limp like ‘over-cooked’ spaghetti – you are not going to accomplish anything by non-purposeful type of limp. I see lots of people practicing internal style martial arts simply imitating the moves and ‘floating’ / ‘hanging’ their body from one pose to the next. While it may be a necessary experience, in my mind, it is not a valid training method.
- Not using any muscles – even standing up / lifting your arm requires muscles. So what is required is not about ‘not-using-the-muscles’.
- Against having muscles – I have heard of traditionalists believing that there should be absolutely no strength training at all. If martial art’s intent is to ‘protect what you hold dear in your heart’, then you need muscles and strength to help yourself and others in some situations (e.g. to lift someone out of danger).
- Relax may not even be the right word as it suggest something quite different than the common use of the word.
What it is:
- Purposeful – I often use the use of chopstick as an analogy of the type of looseness we are after. It is purposeful and with ‘just enough’ muscles to accomplish a specific task (purpose).
- Strip down only to what is essential to the task – for example, walking forward does not involve the tightening of the shoulders and that is considered as wasted energy. To hold up your guards does not require tensing up both the biceps and the triceps. Do understand the purpose of each move or pose as well as the bio-mechanics (and hence the minimum set of muscles) involved.
- Involves both body and mind – the body execute commands of the brain with/without you knowing explicitly. For example, the body language of somebody who is lying can be obvious to those who knows who to read it (unless you are specifically trained to suppress the little tell-tales).
- Adaptive – adaptive does not mean giving up your own goals at the first sign of challenge. It does mean trying to find ‘creative’ ways to achieve your own goal without being stubborn / programmed into a singular method of response. Uncontrolled emotions sometimes lock us into a single method of response too.
The following is just one of many unconventional training methods to get the body to be more adaptive. (Just in case you are not familiar with Conner Mcgregor, he is the current reigning UFC Lightweight Champion, and former UFC Featherweight Champion.)
Exercise
Try find some unconventional training methods on YouTube. It does not have to be directly related to martial arts – it can be anything unconventional to a totally differently discipline of sport/art.
Do you think you can find a better word than ‘relax’?