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Hello all,
A colleague of mine recently took up Muay Thai, and regularly kicks a post with his shins to harden his bones. In the same way, I suppose, external martial arts harden the skull, knuckles or any other bone that proves useful for withstanding blows or inflicting maximum damage.
Do internal martial arts do the same things? I get the impression that they don’t, so how can they possibly compete in fighting with someone with such hard bones?
Hey Guy-
I asked Bruce about this once in a slightly different context….we run classes for the elderly at Brookline Tai Chi and osteoporosis is a big concern for an aging population. As far as strengthening bones for that popular, he explained how the weight shifting in tai chi would do a lot of the work — bones regenerate through a force acting on them.
When I pressed him to say more, he thought the twisting in the IMA, if it’s done deeply enough, would produce the same effect, aka Shaolin’s Tiger Bones.
Now, if he were answering in a different context, he might have more to say. We were certainly talking about what a less conditioned population could hope to achieve through tai chi.
All of the skilled practitioners I know have devastatingly hard bones when I make the mistake of hitting them full on, so there certainly is more going on in the training.
Dan
I would chime in here that my perception is that the word “hard” would not apply to the bones of an IMA practitioner so much as “heavy” or “durable” would. A tire is not necessarily “hard”, but it can surely take a blow. And one thing I have noticed about serious IMA people is that their bones are always heavy!
While I would love to read other, more experienced responses on this, I would guess that the IMA practices stimulate and rejuvenate the bone marrow, which results in this heavyness and durability.
Tiger bones??? What does that refer to?
As far as I know, it’s in line with what you said in the first post, about conditioning the bones.
O ok, well thanks for your comments
From Bruce’s blog:
The Year of the Tiger, Tiger Bones & Standing Qigong Practices
http://www.taichimaster.com/bruces-picks/the-year-of-the-tiger-tiger-bones-standing-qigong-practices/
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