NO.NAME
www.patrickkellytaiji.com
Essentials of Elastic Power.
The elastic force of Taiji - by the quality of which master Huang Xingxian was known and respected throughout the Chinese martial arts world - is mentioned directly in the Taiji Classics but practised and understood by few. What has not been clearly and scientifically explained before to my knowledge, I offer as my personal contribution to Taiji theory.
Now how many people know that a stretching muscle is up to 10 times stronger than a contracting muscle? How many understand and utilise the information that the force produced by a contracting muscle decreases with increasing speed of contraction, while the force produced by a stretching muscle increases as the speed of stretching increases?
Who can claim to train the Taiji Form in such a way that the forces pass through the body in a wave of stretching muscles and who under the stress of an agressive force can be so internally relaxed that every active muscle in their body elongates and stretches under that pressure, rather than contracts and shortens in tense resistence?
Who truely knows what causes the energy (Qi), over an extended period of time, to permanently gather in and around the body.
Who understands the long training necessary to strengthen and deepen the Yi (intention).
Because only then does the true elastic force (jin) of Taiji appear; motivated by the Yi; energised by the Qi; issued from the root and transmitted through the body in a wave of stretching muscles.
Mechanics of Muscle Stretch.
The muscle stretching of which we talk is not the stretching movements of Yoga or Qigong. In fact those are just the opposite. In Yoga or Qigong the body (arms, legs or spine) is extended by actively contracting the extensor muscles, pulling the joints to their extreme thereby stretching the ligaments and muscle fibres of the relaxed muscles opposed to those that are being contracted.
`When we move the muscles cycle through the five steps of contract, relax, stretch, unstretch and holding. This muscle cycle is controlled instinctively and uncosciously in untrained people. Contract and relax produce large movements and small forces while stretch and unstretch produce small movements and large forces.
eccentric contraction; plyometrics; increasing pressure; elastic stretching; active stretching; passive stretching; stretch sensors; pressure sensors.
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