Tai chi and weight lifting

[asrhea]

I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but I was wondering if weight lifting is detrimental to tai chi progress. I've heard from some people that it is not a good idea as it will cause tension in the muscles. Then there are others that would argue that in the early days of tai chi, many practitioners were already pretty muscular since most had manual labor jobs, and they would exercise carrying stones and other things. The thing is, I love tai chi and lifting weights, and I would really like some guidance on this issue. Thanks!

[Audi]

Hi asrhea,

My view is that if you love both, you should do both, unless high achievement in Tai Chi is one of the top priorities in your life. I know some people who lift weights and seem to do quite well with their Tai Chi for their purposes.

Some Tai Chi is generally better than no Tai Chi. More Tai Chi is generally better than less Tai Chi; however, if doing more Tai Chi threatens to unbalance your life and perhaps lead to doing no Tai Chi, I think that "less" is better than "more."

Take care,
Audi

[asrhea]

So you think if I lift weights, that I can't achieve a high level of Tai Chi?

[Audi]

I think that most weight lifting favors isolation of the muscles, whereas Tai Chi favors integration of muscles. Using free weights, natural whole-body movement, or core exercises is probably less of a concern.

I think that truly high-level Tai Chi takes such a commitment that practicing things inconsistent with its approach is problematic for those on that path. Most of us, however, do not need such achievement to learn wonderful skills, strengthen our bodies, improve our health, and nurture the spirit. If this is your goal and you love weightlifting, I would do it. I do not believe Tai Chi is all or nothing.

If high-level Tai Chi is really your priority, then the conversation should really be about more than just whether or not to engage in weight lifting.

Take care,
Audi

[sanitacharles]

he means you learn tai chi chuan is you are doing all of your movements slow within the starting paying shut attention to relaxation and truth of the moves and incorporating your whole body into the moves. Power is generated that means.
Most people did not stick with tai chi chuan long enough to find out the additional advanced tai chi chuan and thought is was almost about relaxations and feeling smart. Most of the corruption of real tai chi chuan was throughout the 60's and 70's once hippies got wedged in relaxation, love and peace and feeling smart. They weren't curious about learning the way to fight so that they stayed at the beginner stage and were proud of simply the start movements of tai chi chuan and ne'er learned any more than that. Mysticism of chi energy and principle and rule was additional presumably to cover the actual fact however very little the professional extremely understood tai chi chuan.


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[ChiDragon]

I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but I was wondering if weight lifting is detrimental to tai chi progress. I've heard from some people that it is not a good idea as it will cause tension in the muscles. Then there are others that would argue that in the early days of tai chi, many practitioners were already pretty muscular since most had manual labor jobs, and they would exercise carrying stones and other things. The thing is, I love tai chi and lifting weights, and I would really like some guidance on this issue. Thanks!

I would consider that tai chi is soft and weight lifting is hard. The weight in weight lifting may cause lots of tension in the muscles while Tai Chi has no tension at all. Weight lifting consumes lots of body energy, to begin with, which may lead to the cause of exhaustion. Tai Chi practice only consumes less energy while building up body energy. Weight lifting may cause muscle fatigue while Tai Chi is more energetic after the practice.

Tai Chi starts with the slow motion to adjust the muscles to get use to the tension which was applied by the slight contraction in each move. After a prolong practice, the muscles will be transformed to have more muscle tone which gives more strength and fast twitching response to an adversity. For instance, blocking something that is coming one's way.

[ChiDragon]

Lifting weight change to shape of the muscles while Tai Ji increase the muscle tone and transform a regular muscle to a twitching one for quick responses.

Tai Ji increase one's libido and weight lifting tends to make one sterile.

[ChiDragon]

There is a big difference in breathing between Tai Chi and weight lifting. If one understands the yin-yang principle, one might not want to practice the two at the same time. Tai Chi requires to inhale and exhale while weight lifting holds the breath until exhaustion. The former follows the yin-yang principle while the latter is in a constant yang state.

Weight lifting required to hold the breath until it was ran out. The energy collapse when one is out of breath. Thus the weight must to be laid down when the breath runs out. Otherwise, one will have a broken back. Indeed, the constant contraction of the muscles causing them to be shorten and become bulky.

The coordination between the breathing and the movements, in Tai Chi, which causing the muscles to be contracted and relaxed. Hence, if falls into the yin-yang effect for both the the breathing and the muscles.

The two sports have different methods in breathing. One follows the yin-yang principle while the other is not. IMMHO Therefore, it is better to practice one or the other but not both at the same time. I'll leave it up to you to use your discretion.

[fchai]

Hi asrhea,

If you mean weight lifting as in pumping iron, ie. hundreds of pounds/kilos, so as to build muscle bulk, then it is going to affect your taiji. If it is just about toning and some strength training such as body pump (Les Mills), where it is not about lifting massive weights then it is okay.

Take care,
Frank

[fchai]

Oops, just realised that this is a very old thread.

[Bob Ashmore]

Each person would need to define what they want out of "weight lifting" and what they want out of Tai Chi Chuan, only then can there be a productive discussion on whether each person should do only one, only the other, or both together.
If all you want is very large muscles and have no interest in integrating their use throughout your entire body then you would want to do heavy and hard weight lifting. While you can still practice Tai Chi Chuan when doing so you will most likely not reach a high level of TCC prowess but that does not in any way mean you couldn't do it at all or that it would have no benefit for you.
If you want a very high level of TCC ability and don't care very much about large muscles to show off to the world then why worry about lifting weights in the first place? Still, if it's something important to you there are various methods that can be used to "lift weights", even to the point of having nice showy muscles, and not have that impact your TCC ability very much, if at all.
Then there's the happy middle ground where you do both of these things and incorporate the best of each, for you, until you reach your goals in each art. Despite what certain "know it all's" want you to believe there is no such thing as mutually exclusive physical training disciplines, there are may ways to integrate any physical training into another without totally ruining any advancement in either.

What I'm trying say here, in my usual clumsy way, is that there are various ways to go about doing both of these disciplines, neither discipline has an absolute "this is how it's done and there's no other way it will ever work" principle to it, so it's entirely up to you how you want to approach this in your training.
Only you can decide if you want to keep them mutually exclusive or if they can be fully integrated one with the other in your training. In the end it is entirely up to you what you want from each and how you then go about working them together to achieve that.

[global village idiot]

For my part, I do "bodyweight" exercises as well as light cardio. I've had bypass surgery and the strength training/cardio (walking, cycling, elliptical, cross-country skiiing when possible, etc) are specifically recommended for someone like me with a bum ticker.

But moreso, I do this all with an eye toward being more-or-less as active as I reckon someone would be in the circumstances during which tai chi was developed (late 19th/early 20th century China).

I don't think it's terribly controversial to assert that the average tai chi player in late Qing-dynasty China did more walking and more carrying-stuff-about than we do now. If I try - without getting too "wrapped around the axle" about it - to be as active as we can assume such a person was, I don't think we go far wrong.

gvi

[Bob Ashmore]

I currently do many different types of calisthenics using only body weight for resistance, also I ride either my exercise bike or my real bicycle almost daily to keep up my cardio system. I have to keep up a certain level of resistance training because I used to do quite a bit of "body building" in my youth, before I began to study TCC, so my body has a certain muscular size to it from about a decade of doing heavy lifting to build up muscular bulk. If I don't maintain at least the body weight type of resistance training my muscle turns very, very quickly to fat. I used to also do some free weight training along with that but found over time that as long as I do the calisthenics that isn't necessary.
Which is nice, I don't have to maintain a "weight room" with all that equipment in it anymore so now I have a TCC room where I can keep and practice with my weapons and such instead.
Now, how can I do that much "exercise" and still manage to be the Tai Chi martial arts god that I am today?
Simple.
I learned how to do TCC.
I use it when I do anything, at all, exercise is no exception.
In fact, it's where I concentrate on doing proper TCC the most.
Because if you're doing anything using proper TCC technique then everything you do is just another expression of TCC.
GVI mentions the founders of this art and their level of physical activity, he's not wrong.
Early TCC training treatises show that people used to train it and still do full time farm work, that's HEAVY work nowadays with all the access we have now to farming equipment. Back in feudal China it was all done by hand or with teams of domesticated animals such as horse or ox, that was HEAVY work. Lifting, bending, stooping, carrying, tilling, hoeing, raking, driving teams, all of it heavy hard work.
Yet they reached the heights of martial prowess and went on to become the premier martial artists of their time.
Clearly there's a way to do heavy physical labor and still be the best TCC martial artist you can be.
Well, it took me a couple of decades but I figured it out.
It's not even hard.
Now I sit back and laugh long and hard at the "know it alls" who state, like they actually know what they're talking about, that hard physical exercise and performing TCC are mutually exclusive and you can't do both at the same time.
Which is, and always has been, a huge steaming pile of bilge wash.

[Cultivator]

Muscles tension/contrast = inflammation vs taichi sung

Weight lifting is good for strengthening your body and better taichi quan martial applications (external side).

Taichi is great destress the body aka inflammation from workkng out. Taichi improve dantian cultivation by sink chi into it and improve chi circulation upon sung vs muscles contraction.

As for me, I like to workout first then finish with taichi practice. I mainly focus on sung (not hippie style), sink chi to dantian, ding jing( feel like current qi holding me up) and Yi.

I’m a personal trainer POV

[ChiDragon]

If one is doing Tai Chi and weight lifting at the same time, then, one does not understand Tai Chi nor does it for its purpose.