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Muscle training in traditional Taoist bodymind practices works with light muscle tension by sending movement impulses into and activating every possible muscle in a sensitive way—instead of isolating body areas and working with them with a mechanistic mindset. Agility 柔 plays an important role. The fluid condensing / relaxing of muscles and narrowing / expanding of movements in Taoist movement practices is designed to increase liveliness and enhance communication between all bodily parts and functions.

You can not physically move and express yourself freely in your world and act in line with your potential if your movements are inhibited and strengthless. For this you need certain modes of muscle contraction and relaxation and a variety of ranges. To enable this, Taoist exercises use a combination of artful, partly dancelike intuitive 自然 movements with a clear functional orientation. You can not stress it enough, though: Functionality in a Taoist philosophy-oriented context is not seen within a narrow mechanistic physical framework (and a limited focus on appearances as, for instance, in bodybuilding). You do not do mechanistic movement repetitions with mechanistic one-dimensional purposes. Instead of narrowly focusing on the strengthening and the efficiency of individual muscles or (a limited number of) muscle groups, Taoist muscle training focuses on the activation and cooperation of the muscles of the whole body as a learning path and the basis for the exploration of ever more complex and deeper cooperation and transformation processes 化.

Functionality is seen in a systemic context. It is about community-building. You are building an ever-growing web of adaptive constructive multidimensional communities with the muscular networks as one of the physical foundations. You do not simply build up and release tension in the muscles in a mechanistic way. Always working with the muscular system of the whole body aims at supporting a wider framework. In a Taoist philosophical setting, muscle training is, therefore, also always combined with a peaceful systemic mindset and emotional stabilization and the goal of building substructures in general that can better enable more constructive internal and external interactions. Tensions, or the lack of them and their mutual coordination all over the body, create atmospheric conditions under which cooperation, radius of actions, and cooperative abilities can vary tremendously. Different body languages moreover also invite different kinds of external interactions.

In Taoist movement practices you want to make sure that the way you define and build up physical strength, the rhythms of tensing and relaxing muscles, and the pulses and vibrations they create coincide with the developmental goals of systemic personality development 化, giving new life/liveliness within oneself 生長育畜. The Taoists want a physical structure that supports a holistically healthy personality structure. This is how Taoist muscle training deals with movement, posture, attitudes, emotions, mindset, and the unfolding of nourishing potential 慈 養生.

Some notes on the background of this post

• The idea to write something on muscle training popped up in my mind when I listened to a podcast on muscle training in which a German sports professor was interviewed. He was saying that it is important to push up the heart rate to have satisfying training effects. Having explored the field of traditional Chinese movement practices for decades, I disagree, particularly when thinking of Taoist practices.
• When you work out with gym equipment, you usually train specific muscles, possibly a couple of muscle groups, but you will usually not consciously employ the whole body or integrate muscle groups of other parts of the body into your training activity. You will train specific muscles to be able to perform specific tasks more effectively. In working with gym equipment, you often try to push the limits and use maximum tension.
• In Taoist muscle training, you would train, for instance, the arm muscles not by exclusively focusing on the arms but by supporting the arms with the whole rest of the body. You try to integrate the arm movements better into the overall movements of the whole body. Moreover, you try to integrate the body movements better into the environment, particularly the ground below your feet. The approach to strength training is completely different. Integration, exploring, enlarging, and connecting networks is the essence of Taoist strength training.
• As an example of connecting networks, I have kept on exploring the hands and the feet. Hands and feet are complex entities. If I can further unfold the network of muscles in the hands and feet, I can more easily incorporate them in movements. I’m not doing a single arm movement in the Wing Chun forms anymore without connecting to the legs, the hands, the feet, the ground,….
• The different areas in the body that I’m exploring and trying to liberate are complex networks. I’m liberating networks with the help of other networks, and I’m trying to enhance the cooperation of different networks while enlarging the number of networks I’m working with.
• I used to work with much more tension in the Shaolin method for transforming the tendons. Now, following Taoist guidelines, I’m using markedly less tension, and I’m working with slow pulses moving through the whole body. All this is much easier to show than to only explain with words.
• On a macro level, shoulders and shoulder blades are important areas, network hubs, with many muscles that need to be „liberated“ if there are inhibitions. Within a wider network of muscle groups in the body, they are important for movement flows in the body to be possible.
• On a micro level, the acupuncture fields are important network hubs….
• Tai Chi movements, for instance, are very smooth but, on a profound level, generate enormous possible dynamics. You do not need maximum muscle contraction and forcing yourself 有為 to generate dynamic potential in your „training.“
• Then, you are also trying to establish better frameworks for the collaboration of conscious and autonomous movements, for instance, of the inner organs….
• In professional sports, where a good part of the inspiration for effective muscle training in sports in general comes from, you have narrowly defined goals. You want to win competitions. There is not a higher purpose, a systemic orientation. In external martial arts, you are also heavily focused on techniques and a narrow range of applications in your muscle training. The Taoist philosophical approach has a completely different orientation. It is broadly meaningful. It is both abstract and practical.
• I think this post is best seen in the context of my interest in issues of physical education and in integrating physical practices into educational frameworks in more meaningful and profound ways.