What should I be doing when standing. What physical alinement should I pay attention to, and what internal methods or requirements shuold I have. Any help welcome hanks

Ben Star

stand straight, relaxed
head pulled up from the crown (point at top of head between your ears)

Your alignment should be such that if all your muscles melted away your bones would remain in place because they're stacked perfectly on top of one another.

Do not imagine angry chickens pecking at your shins.

There are three things to consider in standing:
angle(posture), mind(intension), and time(length of a session).

There must be a gazillion posture requirements on standing. Fortunately a much smaller subset ough to be your primary focus in each of your development stage depending on what your goal is. Unfortunately even such subset will overwhelm you if you are getting started. The Number One requirement, IMHO, is to find a teacher who will push and pull you into the correct body position and whom you can visit often to get corrections.

Hopefully my experience can help you finding such teachers and pay special attention in their lessions. I will assume you are thinking about the "front/symmetrical stance" or "Health stance". There are a few strict principles in these stances, whichever approach you take:
1. your body is straight
2. your lower back is "flat"
3. your chest is relaxed
#1&2 can be corrected by your teacher.

If your goal is strictly health and spiritual development, you take the "high stance" approach. Follow the alignment requirement Bob#2 described above. Your weight is at the center of your feet.

If you are healthy and your goal is aiming at martial arts, you may take the low stance approach. The lower your stances, the more important it is to have a teacher watching over you. Your weight is at your heels.

Hope I am not misleading you.

Lacking an instructor, my experience has been to stay with it. Stay with a posture long enough and it will teach you what the alignments should be.

2. if your lower back is 'flat' you're screwing your spine into an unnatural position and messing up your alignment....

...don't listen to butt-tuckin' chi huggers.

(my previous post was in regards to 'Wuji' standing as in 'standing post'... legs straight.)

The same principles apply to TaiJi postures (with knees bent).

furthermore,

only a butt-tuckin' chi-chugger would suggest anyone ever put their weight in their heels. That's a quick way to lose a fight. Keep your weight spread over the entire foot, but a little more toward the ball(s) of the foot(feet)... whether standing or doing anything.

training your body to settle it's weight it the heel is just plain stooopid.

I am one of those who avoid use the term "Qi" whenever possible. Calling me a "chi hugger" may not be appropriate, and even if I deserve such reputation, please do consider that this is a technical discussion forum.

Training, combat and demonstration methods don't have to be the same and quite often they aren't. Just because one put the weight at the heels when doing a standing doesn't mean that's how he will handle the weight distribution in motion; in fact, there are times when one lift both heels up slightly. Some put their weight on the whole feet, some on the "outer" edge of the feet, some at the balls of the feet. Each has it's own reasons.

Ben, sorry if I have confused you. Be prepared to be confused even more down the road because martial arts training is full of contradictions. Cheers.

"Be prepared to be confused even more down the road because martial arts training is full of contradictions".

I think poor training is full of contradictions, sound training compliments all we do.

Bob #2,

In your description of standing I could clearly see Tim's teaching. Almost as though he said it up until the chi hugger part.

Regards
Bob Shores

"please do consider that this is a technical discussion forum"

will do, "IronMoose". Say hello to the IronFlyingSquirel for me, would ya?

Bob,

I will gladly send her your regards. Last I heard, she was doing scuba diving on Mars.

Help me out here. It was quite shocking for me to learn that somebody thought the "flat back" idea was wrong, I could only speculate that it was some school's view towards the Wuji posture. Afterall Wuji means nothing and for many people nothing means nothing, so if its requirements are relaxed to a a minimum, I won't dailling "911". Do you not subscribe to the "flat back" requirement in other more martial oriented postures , like Santi, for example?

I think that the issue here is the tuck/no tuck misnomer.

The central idea is a natural body posture, so if you have to "tuck" your lower spine to get that, then how natural is that?

If, however, you relax and release the lumbar spine to the coxcyx, something that takes quite a bit of standing I might add, and this section of the spine drops into a natural relaxed posture, thereby "flattening" the back, thats a horse of a different color.

My take:
Tuck-Bad

Natural position-Good

Relaxation to find natural position-good

Forcing lower back into flatness-bad

Completely releaxing lower spime into naturally relaxed position (maybe back flattens, maybe it doesn't, we're not all built exactly the same you know) - Good

Do you try and hold this posture when you fight? Hell no.

Does the ability to release your spine to this degree increase your ability to store and release power in that region?
I believe it does.

Need we obsess over this.
Again, hell no.

Have a nice evening.

IronMoose,

next time you have the chance, watch the following
and pay super close attention to the curve of the lower backs of:
1- Olympic Divers.
2- Olympic Runners.
3- Olympic speed skaters and Skiers.
4- proboxer (get rent a DVD with footage of Ali)
5- a good ballet dancer
6- powerlifter.

When you study the best of the best-
that natural lower back curve is obvious. Sometimes (in the case of Mohammed Ali),the muscles of the lower back are so pronounced that the curve of the spine is a bit hidden.

There are some Chi kung excercises that require the lower back out (to flatten it) and even a couple that involve rolling the tailbone under.

But of the folks who have power, grace and poise.. the lower back isn't flattened.

By the way... 'Wuji' means WAY more than just 'nothing'.

I "gently push the tailbone forward". Does that make me a 'tucker'? I don't know, but hey, I don't really care for labels

One thing though - I do exactly the same thing when I fight. Doesn't make sense to me to train one way for standing, and another way for fighting.

"One thing though - I do exactly the same thing when I fight. Doesn't make sense to me to train one way for standing, and another way for fighting."

I'm not sure I agree with this line of thinking. There are many exercises/training methods/neigong I practice where the postures I use strengthen certain parts of my body that I will use in fighting, but the appearance in the application is different from the exact movement trained. I'm thinking of plucking and moving in the heavenly stems sets, and the turtle and deer in the eight pieces of brocade sets as extreme examples. And the idea that the movements in the changes, the circles and spirals become much smaller in application.

My point, simply put, is there is not always a direct and exact correspondence beteen the methods we use to strengthen/train our bodies to fight, and the postures we flow through as we fight.

Sorry Walter & Bob #2, I agree with IronMoose & tailfeather on this.

Ben,
The way I have been trained in TCC puts a BIG emphasis on tucking in. We tuck in in our horse stance, all throughout each of our forms, during push hands, applications, fighting, & riding the subway.

We have been over Tim's (& other folks) view of this before, but I'll just relate my experience in the hopes that it is helpful & to clear up what I think are misconceptions. (By the way I disagree with the notion that only bad teaching is full of contradictions & have recently posted on just that subject - for example there is always a little yin in your yang!).

When standing in wuji posture (which to my knowledge represents chaos as opposed to doing a TC form & separating things into yin/yang) we do not tuck. But as soon as we begin a horse stance, or form, or anything else for that matter we tuck in the tailbone (quite a bit I might add).

Our horse stance is done with toes slightly in, knees out, head suspended, chest concave, arms round, shoulders down, tucked in, & weight on the heels (yes Bob #2, the heels). Please realize at first that it might be difficult to tuck properly as the muscles are tight. I couldn't agree more with IronMoose regarding the importance of a good instructor to help align you properly. Bend forward more at first, & gradually over months or even years of training you can rock back a little & adopt more of a "sitting on an invisible stool" position.

Let me say that thousands of people have come through the doors of the school where I train & assist (with many sticking around) & all were asked to tuck in during their training. Nobody
ever hurt their back. In fact many came to fix problems with their backs & accomplished just that (back specialists tell you to do tucking in exercises after all). There is also IMHO nothing unnatural about tucking. By the time most people start TCC they have unnatural curves in their spine from sitting at desks, etc. This training fixes that. In this manner we get back to the natural state of straighter & more flexible backs. Children have better, healthier backs than we do (this is also true of people in in societies where they sit on the ground).

Weight on the heels & tucking are not something we do just when training. Take a punch for example. Power comes from the dan tien (center) goes down to the root in the heel and then up through the back to the arms & hands. If you don't tuck the connection to the heel is broken (just like if you lift your shoulder).

So you can (& IMO, should) think about heel power when punching. In fact we are taught push from the heel during applications and even twist it with downward force at the 50/50 point of impact (like YCF did in his earlier days before he was so portly). Does this mean you stay back weighted? No. But in Pa Kua & Hsing I you can so I don't see the problem anyway. And once again, we tuck throughout the punch, helping to connect to the ground (root) better.

When you first start tucking it seems like you will never be able to do so comfortably, naturally, & in a relaxed manner. But after long, arduous, correct training you can. Then you will see the results & tell me if it wasn't all worth it.

Walter, et al,

Tuck, or don't tuck - the choice is yours, so long as what you're doing works in a martial sense and you're happy with it it can't be wrong can it?

I tuck because I know it works better for fighting. This is my truth. Find your own and stick to it. You ain't gonna find it on the Net that's for sure.

Walter - I get what you're saying about exercises that strength/train the body, but I don't buy that when it comes to standing practice. Sure you aint ever going to fight somebody from a press-up position, but why would you ever think you would?

When it comes to an exercise that has a martial application - what's the point of practicing it any other way than the way it should work if you do it for real?

Same with forms - the way you do the move in a form should be more or less exactly the way you do it in a fight, surely? (ok, I'll allow a slight amount of artistic licence to produce a more flowing, better looking form )

One of the points of standing is to get that body alignment right - if you then change your posture (and hence your alighment) when you move (or fight) what's the point of spending all that time working on getting that specific alignment right?

Dragonprawn,

it doesn't bother me that you disagree.
And it makes me thrilled to know you "arduously" train yourself to tuck and keep your weight in your heels... cause that way, I'll more easily dominate you should we ever spar.

"Children have better, healthier backs" that's my point exactly... young children have excellent posture, the slump and tuck is a bad habit learned (and in your case arduously).

Bob #2

"One of the points of standing is to get that body alignment right - if you then change your posture (and hence your alighment) when you move (or fight) what's the point of spending all that time working on getting that specific alignment right?"

But you don't fight standing still, you fight moving. And you move carrying the alignment, but in carrying it in movement, it changes. If it didn't you couldn't move.

I don't think you get my point, perhaps it is my fault. Training is at best, an approximation of fighting. Fighting is spontaneous and unpredictable. Training conditions you, and prepares you hopefully, but there are many things you do in training of value, that only are shown in fighting indirectly. I believe looking for a direct correlation in everything is a mistake. Some things work more tangentally.

I don't look to the internet for the truth about fighting or training, I use these posts as a means to explore my understanding that is derived from my training. In doing so my understanding evolves. Words are a rough approximation that I use to express the things that I get from training, and reflecting on my training. And an interesting diversion.

As always, feel free to disagree, and to train as you see fit. I know I always have.

Bob #2,

You know it's not all that easy to keep your shoulders down when fighting (because we have developed "unnatural" bad habits?) but we know it is the correct way, so we go ahead & train. If the Tai Chi classics say to do it that is good enough for me.

The same may be said about tucking, though the old language & translations have obscured the exact meaning & left this one subject to contention. However, it is quite a leap from that to calling it incorrect or harmful. Hell, Wu style TCC is practically based on this principle so I'd be careful of going overboard in criticizing it.

When we were growing up they used to tell us don't slump in our seats or we'd get curvature of the spine. Now what type of curvature do you think people were worried about. It was the inward, big dent in the lower back type, that's what. By tucking in we undo damage, stretching the spine so that our backs are more naturally straighter & more flexible.

People come to our school with varying degrees of back problems. The harder it is for them to tuck the more they need it. It may take a long time for them to see improvement, but practice pays off. The payoff is in terms of health & the ability to reach a high enough level with their tai chi so as to be able to apply it if they want.

I really don't know why tucking is such a controversy that it gets people bothered enough to basically challenge people to fight. Even Tim says he doesn't not believe in tucking, he just has a different idea of it then say my teacher. I not only have better health & posture from what I do, but I know tucking has been a key to my self-defense capabilities.

Almost none of the tuckers from my school who have entered full contact tournament (all styles) has lost a match. And there have been some big ones over the decades. That should tell you something.

Walter,

I have often agreed with you in the past, but on this point I have to say I believe tailfeather is right.

For example, take the opening move (commencement) in Yang style (or maybe all styles). Here you sink down chest concave, head suspende, shoulder/elbows down, etc. You are not yet move your legs. Now, movement two (probably grasp sparrow's tail) you begin to move. You don't know suddenly change all the basic principles you just were adhering to in movement one.

At the end of single whip when it is all so tempting to stick your chest out you must still keep it concave. When you move your legs that should (eventually at least) also come from the dan tien. When you speed up movement to fight, it is still the same type of movement (though more of the whip-like qualities, etc. may become even more apparent. You must still breath correctly.

Another good illustration is the bow stance used in push hands. Take the horse stance I described in an earlier post. Move one leg back some & there you have your push hands bow stance. To me we do nei kung like we should do tai chi form, tai chi form like we push hands, push hands like we spar, etc. There are differences, but they are far, far outweighed by the similarities.