A series of posts on the subject of softness and soft training in martial arts, wouldn't be in any way complete without the taiji (tai chi) perspective. In this fourth, and last, installment of the series, my good friend Glenn Gossling, Chen Taijiquan practitioner and instructor, offers his insight on the subject, viewing soft work as tool that allows for development without injury and accelerated recovery. A very big thank you to Glenn and the other three contributors to this collective post, Grigoris A. Miliaresis (who wrote about the Ju No Kata of Judo), Mark Lajhner (who wrote about soft training in MMA and combat sports), and Thong Nguyen (who wrote about the use of soft work as a tool to sharpen awareness of movement). I would also like to thank the readers of the Dynamo blog, whose enthusiastic response to this series of posts exceeded my expectations by far!
FEAR INOCULATION OR, LISTENING TO A SLIGHTLY SCARY STORY AGAIN AND AGAIN
Everyone knows that taijiquan is based around the principles of yin and yang, hard and soft. Still, it is comparatively rare to see taijiquan used as a martial art, or to see its hard side. Chen style taijiquan preserves both, but even when working with the ‘hard’ it is still important to maintain the principles of good posture, relaxation, and coordination between breath and movement.
My experience of taijiquan and other martial arts has shown me that achieving a balance between stress and relaxation is essential to all good martial arts training, both hard and soft. Taijiquan begins by teaching and emphasizing the soft, but it still leads to the hard. The methodology is that soft slow movements can be used to teach clear and precise principles and techniques while gradually conditioning the body. A similar principle is used in systema where the slow squat and the slow press up are core to body conditioning.
My approach to teaching is to focus on relaxation, or to put it another way, non-tension, as rather like Saussure’s structural linguistics, taiji is - from a philosophical point of view - a system of difference without positive terms. There are two aspects to non-tension, the physical and the mental.
Before doing ‘hard work’ the person has to be physically capable of doing it. A degree of physical conditioning is essential. It sounds obvious, but most of us have been gung ho enough at some stage or other to injure ourselves by trying to do something we weren’t ready for (remember the one arm hand stand push up craze? or is that next year?).
In simple physical terms, this means working within our capabilities, but at a sufficient level to challenge ourselves. How do we know what that level is? Tension is the indicator - for example, if someone goes rigid with tension and falls over while doing a pistol (a form of one legged squat), then to develop they should do an easier exercise – simple squats or negative pistols (ie just a controlled descent). Moving them to a harder exercise such as pistols with kettlebells may not be beneficial to them at this basic stage.
Digression 1 - Stress is a comparatively new concept first outlined by the Slovakian/Hungarian scientist Hans Selye in 1936 as a short hand for what he called General Adaptation Syndrome. The English word ‘stress’ is actually a bit misnomer as in mechanical terms the concept is closer to that of strain. A simple mechanical example may help explain what explain what Selye meant – if you apply a sufficient external force to a piece of steel, the steel will temporarily deform, but it will pop back into shape when released from that force with no great harm done. If a much too large force is applied the piece of steel will be permanently deformed. Similarly, if a repeated force is applied to the steel, microscopic stress fractures may occur that could lead to an eventual catastrophic failure. Biological entities such as humans are slightly different to a piece of steel in that they are able to adapt. If you apply an external stress to a bone it will flex or break. If you repeatedly stress a bone without breaking it the bone will adapt, build in density and be able to take greater degrees of stress. Selye’s work found an underlying pattern to stress which is illustrated in his 'human function curve'.
 |
| (image from www.stress.org) |
There are a number of key considerations here:
- Stress isn’t all bad
- Stress can help you develop
- Work at a level that is below the ‘breaking point’
- Allow sufficient time for recovery
The human function curve can be used to explain two of the ways that soft and hard work interrelate. First, soft work allows you to build incrementally towards hard work allowing development to occur without injury. Secondly, soft work can be used to accelerate recovery.
For example in Chen taijiquan we have a ‘hard’ form called the Pao Choi (‘Cannon Fist’). This form uses a lot of stamping and ‘fajin’ (‘explosive power’). It has been known to cause splits in the shin bones and strains to the tendons if progressed to too soon. The softer ‘Yilu’ form that you do first allows bone density to gradually develop by applying lesser stresses. It is important to be able to do the harder form without excess tension as if you do it while tense or in poor posture you are much more likely to injure yourself. Even when you know the Pao Choi it is still important to do the soft form as the prolonged interlinking of breathing and movement encourages a relaxed state that promotes recovery. As a rule of thumb it takes between three and five years to get to the Pao Choi.
Master Ren Guan Yi performing a shortened version of the Pao Choi form - his power generation is tremendous!
Humans, however, don’t only operate on a physical level. They are also subject to mental or psychological stress – and in particular fear. Again, as with physical stress, a degree of mental stress can lead to a positive adaptation, but excessive mental stress can lead to or reinforce negative adaptations. This is particularly the case when dealing with fear.
Digression 2 – The anatomy of fear: The amygdala, a small almond shaped part of the brain just above the brain stem, is the body’s alarm system. It is one of the oldest parts of the limbic system and as such is capable of emotionally ‘hijacking’ the brain. The amygdala monitors what is going on and decides on the body’s emotional response. The process by which it does this is profoundly unconscious and can happen very quickly. Sensory information from the eyes or ears goes to the thalamus, where the information is split. The main part of it goes to the neo-cortex for detailed analysis, and a smaller portion goes to the amygdala and hippocampus. If the hippocampus - using a quick but inaccurate memory system - recognizes the sight or sound as a threat, the amygdala prepares the body for action while waiting for more accurate confirmation from the neo-cortex to see if it really should be frightened. The amygdala sends impulses to the hypothalamus for activation of the sympathetic nervous system (which controls the fight or flight reaction). The metabolic rate rises and a variety of hormones are released: dopamine (for concentration) and noradrenaline (aka norepinephrine), adrenaline (aka epinephrine), CRF (the main stress hormone of the body) and endorphins (to dampen pain). If the neo-cortex agrees that there is something to be frightened of the body can then proceed to a full state of fear. It is around this moment that you may become aware of it. You may notice the increased heart and respiration rate, you may feel a tightening in the stomach, tunnel vision, tension around the throat and neck, trembling. This will all have occurred in under a second and most of it will have happened completely unconsciously. If on the other hand, the neo-cortex decides that there is nothing to fear the amygdala relaxes its responses. However, a number of hormones such as cortisol will already be in your system and can remain there for some hours. This can be problematic as a number of small stresses can have a cumulative effect. (for more info on the anatomy of fear see: www.absolutetaichi.co.uk/articles/an-anatomy-of-fear)
Again the concept of the stress curve is useful. A small amount of fear is good. It focuses the attention and encourages development. Larger amounts cause an emotional hijacking by the amygdala, which stops you using your cortex – the thinking part of the brain. Chances are you’ll already have experienced this at some point in your life (if you have ever done an exam where you read the test paper and could not remember what you read by the time get to the end of the first sentence, gone blank in an interview, or been at a loss for words in an argument with a loved one). You can monitor other people’s or your own stress levels during training from breathing patterns. Fast breathing correlates strongly with fast heart rates. Most people’s performance begins to break down at heart rates of between 115 and 145 beats per minute, with a severe breakdown of performance at above 175 bpm. There is an important difference between people breathing hard because they are working hard and breathing hard from stress – exercise makes you redden, fear makes you pale.
An emotional hijacking can happen during a fight or training, often just momentarily, but that can be enough. Your brain responds with shock at someone throwing a punch. You inhale sharply, hold your breath, tense up. One of the downsides of this is that being tense, when being hit, makes it hurt more. Another downside is that if you are tense you will move poorly making you easier to hit. Yet another down side is that your reactions may become exaggerated (bigger than necessary), easier to read, avoid and counter. And finally, if your cortex isn’t involved you will not be able to judge the situation or response accurately.
This is bad enough in a fight, but during training it is worse, because not only will you not be learning appropriate responses, but you may very well be ingraining poor ones. I regularly see this in people who have trained ‘hard styles’. You present a relatively soft or slow punch to them and you get a fear reaction from them – typified by big jumpy moves and large blocks – the problem with this is that the stress state becomes a habitual response that is easier and easier to slip into.
The point here is that if someone is physically capable of hard training, they can start it, but you may find that their stress levels can quite quickly stop them getting any benefit from it. If all that is happening is that they are getting hit, getting hurt and learning to be frightened of being hit this isn’t training.
What is required is to build up to hard training with soft training so that bit by bit the mind can mentally adjust and realize that it is something that it can deal with. This is a process known to psychologists as ‘fear inoculation’. The repetition of set forms allows the brain to understand that there is a set story and that it has predictable and understandable patterns. This is why children like to hear the same slightly scary fairy tale over and over. So, the brain is programmed with a set of responses to being hit softly, how to move, avoid and deal with it. It has reference points. Then you can ramp it up, but it is important to try to work within limits that can be dealt with, moving in and out of the comfort zone. Bit by bit the limits increase and as the fear diminishes you can find that actually you can take a good hit. (for postmodern martial artists – an understanding of these narrative structures also is useful because then you can see how to disrupt them in unexpected ways)
It is necessary to understand that the cortex has no direct way to control the amygdala. The rational part of the brain has no direct means to tell the amygdala, a primal and unconscious part of the brain, to stop being frightened. What you have to do is work with your breathing. Your breathing connects to an even older part of the brain, the medulla oblongata in the brain stem. The medulla is the brain’s interface with the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system comprises the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) and the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). By slowing the breathing you can directly engage the sympathetic nervous system to encourage relaxation.
If you understand this from the outset you can train yourself to co-ordinate movements and breathing so that all your basic training works to create a state of relaxation. Thus when you start hard training, the body already has some ‘slack’ and it will take a bit longer to create stress reactions. Similarly, as the patterns are ingrained they become easier to use to recover from stress. By linking movement with breath it means that you can use movements to encourage good breathing patterns when it is difficult to breathe (such as when you are winded) This is another advantage of using set forms in training. Finally interlinking breathing and movement is demonstrably effective for power production (for more on this see: www.absolutetaichi.co.uk/articles/breathing).
However, even when you do all this, you will still occasionally come across something new, that takes you by surprise and you may still get that moment of panic where you inhale sharply and hold your breath, but from working through this many times in the past, hopefully you will have conditioned some good reactions to this response.
Thus, when looking at hard training overall, you can say that if the body is ready to do it the mind should be as well, but throughout the training attention should be paid to stress and excitement levels to keep the metabolism at a level where you can still work and learn through conscious engagement. Yes it is good to push. As students develop they may even come to quite like getting a good hit, after all it teaches you something about yourself. You learn exactly where you hold your fear and tension and so just as the soft work prepares you for hard work, the hard work deepens the soft work.
Digression 2 – The anatomy of fear: The amygdala, a small almond shaped part of the brain just above the brain stem, is the body’s alarm system. It is one of the oldest parts of the limbic system and as such is capable of emotionally ‘hijacking’ the brain. The amygdala monitors what is going on and decides on the body’s emotional response. The process by which it does this is profoundly unconscious and can happen very quickly. Sensory information from the eyes or ears goes to the thalamus, where the information is split. The main part of it goes to the neo-cortex for detailed analysis, and a smaller portion goes to the amygdala and hippocampus. If the hippocampus - using a quick but inaccurate memory system - recognizes the sight or sound as a threat, the amygdala prepares the body for action while waiting for more accurate confirmation from the neo-cortex to see if it really should be frightened. The amygdala sends impulses to the hypothalamus for activation of the sympathetic nervous system (which controls the fight or flight reaction). The metabolic rate rises and a variety of hormones are released: dopamine (for concentration) and noradrenaline (aka norepinephrine), adrenaline (aka epinephrine), CRF (the main stress hormone of the body) and endorphins (to dampen pain). If the neo-cortex agrees that there is something to be frightened of the body can then proceed to a full state of fear. It is around this moment that you may become aware of it. You may notice the increased heart and respiration rate, you may feel a tightening in the stomach, tunnel vision, tension around the throat and neck, trembling. This will all have occurred in under a second and most of it will have happened completely unconsciously. If on the other hand, the neo-cortex decides that there is nothing to fear the amygdala relaxes its responses. However, a number of hormones such as cortisol will already be in your system and can remain there for some hours. This can be problematic as a number of small stresses can have a cumulative effect. (for more info on the anatomy of fear see: www.absolutetaichi.co.uk/articles/an-anatomy-of-fear)
Again the concept of the stress curve is useful. A small amount of fear is good. It focuses the attention and encourages development. Larger amounts cause an emotional hijacking by the amygdala, which stops you using your cortex – the thinking part of the brain. Chances are you’ll already have experienced this at some point in your life (if you have ever done an exam where you read the test paper and could not remember what you read by the time get to the end of the first sentence, gone blank in an interview, or been at a loss for words in an argument with a loved one). You can monitor other people’s or your own stress levels during training from breathing patterns. Fast breathing correlates strongly with fast heart rates. Most people’s performance begins to break down at heart rates of between 115 and 145 beats per minute, with a severe breakdown of performance at above 175 bpm. There is an important difference between people breathing hard because they are working hard and breathing hard from stress – exercise makes you redden, fear makes you pale.
An emotional hijacking can happen during a fight or training, often just momentarily, but that can be enough. Your brain responds with shock at someone throwing a punch. You inhale sharply, hold your breath, tense up. One of the downsides of this is that being tense, when being hit, makes it hurt more. Another downside is that if you are tense you will move poorly making you easier to hit. Yet another down side is that your reactions may become exaggerated (bigger than necessary), easier to read, avoid and counter. And finally, if your cortex isn’t involved you will not be able to judge the situation or response accurately.
This is bad enough in a fight, but during training it is worse, because not only will you not be learning appropriate responses, but you may very well be ingraining poor ones. I regularly see this in people who have trained ‘hard styles’. You present a relatively soft or slow punch to them and you get a fear reaction from them – typified by big jumpy moves and large blocks – the problem with this is that the stress state becomes a habitual response that is easier and easier to slip into.
The point here is that if someone is physically capable of hard training, they can start it, but you may find that their stress levels can quite quickly stop them getting any benefit from it. If all that is happening is that they are getting hit, getting hurt and learning to be frightened of being hit this isn’t training.
What is required is to build up to hard training with soft training so that bit by bit the mind can mentally adjust and realize that it is something that it can deal with. This is a process known to psychologists as ‘fear inoculation’. The repetition of set forms allows the brain to understand that there is a set story and that it has predictable and understandable patterns. This is why children like to hear the same slightly scary fairy tale over and over. So, the brain is programmed with a set of responses to being hit softly, how to move, avoid and deal with it. It has reference points. Then you can ramp it up, but it is important to try to work within limits that can be dealt with, moving in and out of the comfort zone. Bit by bit the limits increase and as the fear diminishes you can find that actually you can take a good hit. (for postmodern martial artists – an understanding of these narrative structures also is useful because then you can see how to disrupt them in unexpected ways)
It is necessary to understand that the cortex has no direct way to control the amygdala. The rational part of the brain has no direct means to tell the amygdala, a primal and unconscious part of the brain, to stop being frightened. What you have to do is work with your breathing. Your breathing connects to an even older part of the brain, the medulla oblongata in the brain stem. The medulla is the brain’s interface with the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system comprises the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) and the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). By slowing the breathing you can directly engage the sympathetic nervous system to encourage relaxation.
If you understand this from the outset you can train yourself to co-ordinate movements and breathing so that all your basic training works to create a state of relaxation. Thus when you start hard training, the body already has some ‘slack’ and it will take a bit longer to create stress reactions. Similarly, as the patterns are ingrained they become easier to use to recover from stress. By linking movement with breath it means that you can use movements to encourage good breathing patterns when it is difficult to breathe (such as when you are winded) This is another advantage of using set forms in training. Finally interlinking breathing and movement is demonstrably effective for power production (for more on this see: www.absolutetaichi.co.uk/articles/breathing).
However, even when you do all this, you will still occasionally come across something new, that takes you by surprise and you may still get that moment of panic where you inhale sharply and hold your breath, but from working through this many times in the past, hopefully you will have conditioned some good reactions to this response.
Thus, when looking at hard training overall, you can say that if the body is ready to do it the mind should be as well, but throughout the training attention should be paid to stress and excitement levels to keep the metabolism at a level where you can still work and learn through conscious engagement. Yes it is good to push. As students develop they may even come to quite like getting a good hit, after all it teaches you something about yourself. You learn exactly where you hold your fear and tension and so just as the soft work prepares you for hard work, the hard work deepens the soft work.
Glenn Gossling
No comments:
Post a Comment