Looking over the comments on the amazon.com listing for Sifu Harry Wong's book, Dynamic Strength, the program sounds pretty appealing. Toning, definition and strength training (possibly derived from hung gar's iron wire form?) without the costs of a gym, weights or loss of flexibility. If you look up Sifu Harry Wong's book, Dynamic STrength, you will find that the book is most often mentioned on the heath & fitness forum. You will also find that all discussions of the book, and isometric training in general, takes place in the context of a raging debate about the relative efficacy of isometric exercises vs. weight training. I DO NOT want to reopen the raging debates on the Heath & Fitness forum concerning the efficacy of weight training and isometric systems like Sifu Wong's. PLease Do NOt RE-Open that debate here.. This question isn't necessarily for the serious weight trainers among us... rather it's for people who have some knowledge about isometrics and qigong, taiji and other internal styles: quite simply, is there any inherent conflict, between starting a regimen like Sifu Wongs, and an on-going practice of taijiquan (or xingyi or bagua, or qigong? Does the kind of muscle toning and definition work advocated by Wong (and presumably other southern shaolin stylists) and the cleansing and qi-bulding exercises of the chinese internal styles? At the risk of oversimplifing matters, one regimen emphasizes straining and tightening muscle groups, and the other emphasizes relaxing the same muscle groups. Do the two regimens work at cross purposes, or can they complement each other? Please advise, and once again, thanks,.....
I am all for weight training if you want. I do weightless exercises like handstands and such. What I don't practise is the tension stuff. Pavel Tsatsouline talks of it a lot, tensing up as hard as you can while doing pushups and such. I am sure it is great for building functional strength, but it is counter productive to what I want to achieve - a completley relaxed body. Doing pushhands or moving step with someone with stiff and tense arms is much easier than a loose relaxed person. In taichi relaxation is high on the agenda, I am for that. As I say, I do handstands and punching with weights, but these promote you to relax into it, not tense up. You can't do either for a prelonged time if you are tense. I don't go for the weights being counterproductive to taiji training in itself, but I think doing dynamic tension exercises may start posing problems.
I pretty much agree with Brido there. I think for IMA you want to avoid that kind of tensing on a regular basis. Through practices(even weights) in sung manner - the goal is to deepen tension not bring it to the surface . sung is not without tension, but it is very different I think to what you're talking about. I really don't know if it impedes or harms, but counter-productive it may well be.. in taiji or IMA context it is simply not a requirement. I'd also wager that after some time of practice most practitioners would deem it undesirable too.. There are complimentary practices in IMA that you can take on - nei gong or zhan zhuang for example. Tim Cartmells book on xingyi nei gong is good. It is possible then to take on what you learn from them and about your body - and transfer that to conditioning that falls outside the standard IMA remit if you wish. You may feel quicker 'gains' in short term. IMA though is not a short term, quick fix thingy at all. I think it does even take a couple of years to wrap your head round what's even really going on, and what staying sung does for you - if you mix this other thing in, this appreciation that further brings benefits may well be lost. And that really would be a shame.. In Ima it is not a matter of never bringing power and strength to the surface; through body/ through surface .. it's more a question of how you do it, and where it's coming from..
