Category Archives: Health

Flexibility for a lot of people implies stretching into weird positions that are only ever used by circus of gymnastic performers.  So it is perhaps not the best way to describe the desired effects we pursue during our training.  Mobility, healthy movement and correct posture are just a few of the more updated ways of thinking about flexibility.  What we really seek when chasing flexibility is our full range of motion within the context of that body part.  This means eliminating stiffness and soreness in muscles, working on freeing up the soft tissue around our joints without weakening it and moving through everyday and sporting activities with maximum performance, without pain.

For many years we have been told that we need to do long static stretching routines that take longer than the exercise you are about to do.  We’ve been told that if we don’t, we will injure ourselves, our performance will be impaired and we might get cramps.  Static stretching before an activity has been the only remedy on offer for.

One of the latest studies shows evidence that stretching one muscle beyond 60 seconds can have detrimental effects to performance.  Even if you keep stretches below 30 seconds as is normally recommended, it at best has “no detrimental effect”, and may even make injury more likely.  If I am going to do an exercise, I would like something a little better than “no detrimental effect.”

Warming up is however still important, the questions is how?  Another study shows that dynamic stretching or warm ups that involve more movement, instead of just holding one position within that limb’s full range, can increase explosive movement performance in some areas.

Dynamic stretches could include doing a Chi Kung Brocades much like those we do at the beginning of a class.  The combination of Chi Kung breathing techniques, good postural positions, movements that often resemble more complex combat techniques to help build muscle memory, and dynamic movements that move the body through it’s full range of motion is an ideal warm up.  The Chi Kung Brocades we use start out simple, in order to build a good base to work from, then increase in difficulty as you progress through the ranks (advanced brocades use specific dynamics that mirror the element being studied).

Controlled movement is also far superior to holding static positions because static positions don’t actually generate much heat or blood flow, which is the purpose of warming up.  One of the best ways to warm up is to do movements that closely resemble what you are about to do, but slower and with more control involving little to no explosive movements.

Some activities such as yoga and martial arts have always involved movements that push your full range of motion.  The emphasis here is on the words “your full range.”  We should be careful when comparing ourselves with some super flexible practitioner, as our maximum flexibility has a lot to do with our genetics.  We all have our own genetic limitations that determine, among other things, our maximum range of motion.  Most of us fall short of this personal maximum through simple lack of use and the problem is made worse by poor everyday habits such as prolonged sitting, but it must always only be our own person maximum.  Some people are born with hyper-mobility, which is very much a sliding scale from simply being very flexible up to presenting a real danger from over extension.  This just means that we all need to work within your personal range of movement and not try to copy some genetically gifted individual.  You might never be able to lean over backwards to touch your forehead to your bum so don’t set yourself unreasonable goals.

Now don’t throw out static stretches altogether.  They play a key role in many things such as physiotherapy and rehabilitation of ligament, tendons and muscles after injury.  We just need to expand our concept of flexibility to priorities more practical and dynamic uses of our full range of movement.

Over the last few blogs we’ve considered exercise in terms of fitness, fat loss and it’s limitations.  This blog is about using exercise to increase muscle strength.

You’ll notice I haven’t written “Muscle building” or “Muscle growth” and this is because only a few people can grow significantly large muscles.  I have trained with people who can put in relatively little effort, simply eat loads of extra food and their muscles grow huge.  Most others will put in hours, grow muscle slowly and then plateau.  After months of seeing no improvement, they either give up or they start considering trying the weird, the wonderful and the downright dangerous.  Let’s spell this out.  There is a gene whose job is to stop your muscles from growing too big, called growth differentiation factor 8 or abbreviated to GDF-8.  In evolutionary terms big muscles are a disadvantage.  Muscle is very calorie hungry and in a time of famine the biggest will starve first.  Rarely will excessive muscle size be an actual survival advantage.  So, this gene will only let you get so big.  There is a breed of cattle who lack this gene and a breed of whippet who also lack this gene; they look like over pumped body builders.  Those who lack this gene (actually the gene is there but is not being expressed) will grow huge muscle mass very easily.  For everyone else there will be a limit much closer to the norm.  When you plateau, you may well have reached your genetic limit.

So, let’s look at how to make the most of our genetic potential without injury or long term health risks.

There are different types of muscle fibre.  There are four distinct types and at least three ways to classify them.  For our purposes we can think of them in generally three groups separated by their fatigue rate and correspondingly the amount of energy they use; slow, intermediate and fast.  The slow ones, fatigue slowly, use little energy, are not very powerful and recover very fast (they can be used again in as little as 90 seconds).  The fast ones, fatigue quickly, are the most powerful, and take the longest to recover (up to 10 days).  There are differences in the oxidative and glycolytic mechanisms of these cells that account for these behaviours, but you don’t need to understand the chemistry.

It does however help to understand the idea of the motor unit.  Picture 100 LED lights spread evenly around a room, all linked together so they come on as a unit; that would be your slow fibres.  Now picture 10,000 LEDs spread over the room and linked together as a unit; that would be your fast fibres.

A motor unit is a linked set of muscle cells that, though spread over the whole muscle, are linked to fire together.

When you begin any movement against resistance your brain will first engage the slow units.  It always attempts to use the minimum energy.  When these are exhausted it will then recruit the intermediate units.  If these are not sufficient, only then will the fast units be recruited.  This process can happen very quickly so as to be virtually simultaneous if you attempt to lift a weight that is the maximum you can manage, though the slow fibres (slow to fatigue) will not have exhausted themselves, before the others kick in.

To recruit all of these cells, and thus to signal an adaptation for increased strength, you need to perform an exercise continuously for at least 45 seconds and you need to reach complete failure.  If the exercise lasts more than 90 seconds, instead of recruiting the fast units (which expend the most glycogen) the slow cells will already have begun to recover and the first ones used will be engaged again.  This way you could run a marathon and never fully engage all the cells.  (by ‘failure’ I mean, if someone put a gun to your head and said, “one more lift,” you couldn’t)

Hence it is not about how many repetitions you complete of an exercise that matters, but the total continuous time under tension.

Remember, your body isn’t stupid.  If a muscle group hits failure once, why would you need to do it again?  Bear in mind, If your exercise lasts for only a continuous 20 seconds, and then you rest for another 30, you will be able to do several sets, but still possibly not using all of the muscle motor units.  If failure is achieved between 45 and 90 seconds, you will have activated all the units.  The last ones to be used can take a week to ten days to recover.

What does this mean in practice?  Let’s take a typical workout regime.  This is pretty much mine from when I was younger and I know many people who use something very much like it.  You will still find this sort of regime in any muscle mag.  Monday, you do an hour of Back and Biceps, perhaps ten different exercises done in 3 sets of 12 reps, 8 reps and 4 reps.  Or perhaps 3 sets of 10 reps but each set done with progressively less weight.  Tuesday you do Shoulders, Chest and Triceps.  Wednesday is Leg day.  Thursday is rest day.  Friday is Cardio when you do an hour of cycling, running or rowing.  Saturday is Core and Abs.  Sunday is a rest day and then you start again Monday.  I’m sure this sounds familiar and I’m sure lots of you have tried to do something like this, but you didn’t keep it up for long; either because you didn’t get much to show for it, or you did get results but plateaued at some point, or you never managed to find the time or various injuries put you off.  I have a number of ongoing injuries involving cartilage, bursar sacks, ligaments and tendons that I can definitely blame on this sort of exercise regime.  If this is how not to do it, in the light of I’ve said about muscles above, we can consider putting the science into practice.

Let me suggest another regime that will be effective, won’t cause injury or long-term wear and tear problems and, more relevant to most people, be something that you can fit into your lifestyle and maintain for many years.

Monday, you do a press up that is hard enough to cause you to fail between 45 and 90 seconds.  (if you get to 90 seconds and are still going strong, find a harder version.  The exercise regime in the Kung Fu Living App shows several).  Then you pull something towards you like a rowing movement for 45-90 secs (bent over rowers with a bar or a machine, or hang under a table!).  Then you do a shoulder press of some sort, lifting something above your head, for 45-90 seconds.  Then pull something down for 45-90 secs (pull ups are great only if you can manage at least 45 seconds, otherwise a machine might be the easiest thing).  Guess how long your squat is going to last, yep, 45-90 seconds (again, if 90 seconds is easy, grab some weight to add).  Remember none of these need to be done fast and don’t bother to count, just time them.  I tend to favour 2-3 seconds in each direction and aim for around 12 reps if I don’t have a clock I can see. Another little trick is to remember that failure isn’t when you can’t fully do a lift, it’s when you can’t even hold it.  Let’s say, you’re doing a shoulder press and you get to the point when you lift it half way and stop, you just can’t get it any higher.  Don’t stop, hold that position for a few more seconds until all you can do is slow its descent with all your effort fighting it.  Now you need to do a sprint (or two, with a minute in between to recover, the evidence of whether 1 or 2 sprints is better is inconclusive) and I don’t necessarily mean running.  Perhaps 60 seconds on a punch bag, or 30 seconds flat out on a cycle machine, perhaps 45 seconds on a rowing machine.  Grab yourself a drink of water and hit the showers.  You’ve done a total of less than 10 minutes exercise though it might have taken you 20 if you had to wait for a machine or you had to change the weight on a bar.  Repeat next Monday.  When you first do this routine, it will take you a while to work out the right weights if you are using machines or free weights.  Be warned, they might be surprisingly low if you are used to the idea of doing 10 fast reps. But once you get a sense of what works for you, you’ll be done very quickly and you might not even need that shower, but if you have to pay full price gym membership for your 40 minutes per month of exercise, at least use some of their hot water!  Of course, some of these exercises will be done along with your Kung Fu lessons, although as you mainly won’t reach failure, only close to it, you’ll recover faster and twice a week will work fine.  If you do really reach failure in, for example, a press up, then until a week has passed, only do an easier version of the exercise.

This regime will optimise the adaptation response with negligible risk of injury or long-term health problems.  But more importantly, you can fit it in.  No-one has a lifestyle too full to do this amount of exercise and that means you’ll continue to do it.  Try it for 2 months and you’ll see if it works.  After the first few weeks you may well be thinking, this is too easy it can’t possibly be enough, so give it 2 months.  If it works, you’ll keep it up easily.  However, if after a year you are not looking like a Mr. Universe contender blame your ancestors.

It’s January and you want to lose some fat, particularly after nearly a year of lockdown or at least limited activities.  You know that cutting out sugars and the low fibre carbs generally will do most of the heavy lifting in this process, but you want to know the best exercise to help.

In the last blog about how much exercise to do to get fit I said that the evidence suggested that short bursts of sprinting looked like being the best option and in this blog I want to explain how this helps in fat burning too.  Remember, when I say sprint, that could involve, running, but could also be rowing, squatting, punch-bag work or any other activity that you do flat out.

For you to understand this properly, I have to delve into the science.  I think it is important for motivation and long-term commitment to any exercise regime that you understand, as well as you can, why a particular regime works.

This is why I was keen to explain why a high intensity exercise, a sprint that is, produced prolonged period of fat burning.  The problem is that while I could repeat what the text books say, I don’t understand it.  My personal grasp of biochemistry is not sufficient.  For those who are familiar with the functions of adipocytes, triacylglycerol mobilisation, adrenaline, glucagon, hormone sensitive lipase, albumin, beta-oxidation and glycerol to glucose conversion in the liver, then the metabolism of fatty acids is obvious.  For the rest of us less educated folks, a simple description will have to suffice.  So here is, as detailed as I can understand it, the process by which high intensity training causes a high level of fat burning.

The process is call glycogenolysis which means it is about how sugar is processed.

Some glycogen (a form of sugar) is stored in muscles for on-site use only.  In an emergency, or high intensity exercise this is used.

Some glycogen is stored in the liver, which is used to maintain a balance of it in the blood.

When the glycogen in the muscle is used (not significantly in gentler exercise) insulin carries more glucose into the muscle.

This causes a knock-on effect of fatty acids being mobilised for energy.

Unlike gentler forms of exercise and a careful diet, that cause a one for one cell chain effect. (So one molecule of glucagon releases one molecule of glucose off glycogen). High intensity exercise convinces the body that it needs to prepare for a fight or flight response.  So one enzyme instead activates up to a hundred of the next step, in a multi-step process.  The enzyme process is amplified exponentially, so that you’re now cleaving thousands of molecules of glucose simultaneously for immediate and emergency use.

The same system that amplifies the release of energy, also impairs the process of energy storage.

The effect lasts several days, as the receptors on the muscle cells become more sensitive to insulin as they need to replenish the energy used.  If your muscle stores remain full, you stack up glucose and it gets stored as fat.

That means that high intensity exercise, in addition to making you feel more energetic, also means you won’t be storing fat.

A text book will explain how the phosphofructokinase enzyme gets inhibited so the glucose can only go to the level of fructose-6-phosphate on the glycolysis cycle, thus getting shunted over to the pentose phosphate pathway, converting the glucose glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate (also known as triose phosphate or 3-phosphoglyceraldehyde) which is a fat precursor.

But as that sound like so much gobbledygook to me, (yes, I copied it exactly) I’ll just say that if your sugar stores are full and you then eat more carbohydrates (another form of sugar) it will stimulate the production of fatty acids, particularly in the liver, which drives up the very low-density lipoproteins, which are converted to LDL cholesterol, a marker for cardiac risk factors.

Low-intensity exercise, aerobics, steady-state, often referred to as “cardio” activity does not tap the fast-twitch muscle fibres that possess the most glycogen.  Consequently, the muscles are not emptied of significant levels of glucose, with the result that the circulating glucose has nowhere to be stored, except as body fat.

Also, muscle cell walls lose their sensitivity to insulin but become inflamed by the high levels of insulin that the body has produced to deal with the high level of circulating glucose.  The body uses the LDL cholesterol to mortar up this inflammation, putting the low intensity exerciser at risk of cardiovascular problems, especially if they then eat extra carbs.  (something we are all tempted to do after a long workout)

In case anyone thinks that “at least hours of low intensity exercise will burn a lot of calories”.  Well, not really, no exercise really burns a lot of calories.  Running 35 miles will burn about a pound of fat.  An hour workout might burn an extra 200 calories, but the resulting increased appetite can very easily put that back.

However high intensity exercise will activate hormone sensitive lipase.  This permits mobilisation of body fat.  If insulin levels are high, (typically the case with high carbs and no high intensity exercise) even in the face of calorie deficit, hormone sensitive lipase will be inhibited and mobilising fat will be essentially impossible.  Hence people who diet and take up jogging will find it very difficult to lose body fat.  Especially if they have dropped fats in favour of carbs.

With any serious commentary about any topic, it is important to know what the words you are using actually mean. 

People often use the terms ‘fitness’ and ‘health’ synonymously, but they are not the same thing.  And it is easy to mistakenly assume that one will automatically lead to the other.

Obviously there is a link between fitness and health.  If you do no exercise at the moment, then a little of almost any exercise will make you fitter and this will likely make you healthier.

At this point let’s define our terms.  It is amazing how many people, health professionals included, use these terms in very vague and imprecise ways.  So here are the definitions that I am using; taken principally from Dr. McDuff and Dr. Little in their book ‘Body by Science’.

HEALTH. A physiological state in which there is an absence of disease or pathology and that maintains the necessary biologic balance between the catabolic and anabolic state.

FITNESS. The bodily state of being physiologically capable of handling challenges that exist above a resting threshold of activity.

EXERCISE.  Exercise is a specific activity that stimulates a positive physiological adaptation that enhances fitness.

I hear people say things like, “I don’t need to do more exercise I already walk a couple of miles a day to and from work and play a sport at the week end.”  This is merely physical activity, which is not necessarily exercise!

Exercise, according this definition, has to push your limit, not merely operate within it.  Your body will respond to what you ask of it.  If you ask your body to perform at fitness level A, which it is already capable of, then it will oblige by continuing to remain at fitness level A.  However, if you push yourself beyond A to the point of failure, the point where your body is unable to do what you ask of it, it will respond by adapting (or trying to) to be able to do what you asked.  You will become able to do A+.  This is exercise.

Now we need to look at optimisation of exercise and understand practically why health and fitness are different.

If I do an exercise to failure so that my body responds, will it respond more if I do that exercise again? Simply put – no.

There have been a number studies comparing groups doing the same set of exercises for varying numbers of times.  For example, one group might do a set of squats to failure once a week, while another group, rests for a short time then does a second set, and another group does a third.  In all cases there has been no significant increased performance with increased sets.  It seems our bodies are smart enough to get the message that an adaption is called for the first time.  Will an hour per week of just bicep work with a dozen different exercises and multiple set of each, all aimed at that one muscle work?  Of course, but it seems that so would one set of one exercise (done right) also work as well.  The difference is that the hour felt like it would work better; made you feel dedicated so you deserved great results, and put so much wear and tear on your joints that you are on the road to all sorts of joint problems sooner or later.  In other words, you have sacrificed your health to gain no extra fitness.  Any activity that is highly repetitive has wear and tear consequences that will sooner or later override the body’s ability to recover and repair itself.  To put it another way, if I send you a message requesting you do something once, if you get the message and are willing to do what I request, the job is done.  If I send you the same message 50 times, you aren’t going to do what I asked any more than you were after the first message; though you might get a bit pissed off with my asking.  And so will your body!

So, what is the optimum level? The exercise that will see us make steady progress in fitness, that only enhances our health.  The level that produces only an improvement without any negative results.

A number of studies have shown that a short intense effort (sprinting) has a massive impact of stamina.  In one example one group performed short bursts of ‘flat out’ activity for 30 seconds, repeated a few times with a couple of minutes recovery, done 3 times a week.  After only 2 weeks this produced up to a doubling of aerobic fitness.  (A measured increase of 38% in the activity of the mitochondrial enzyme citrate synthase)

Another group exercised for 90-120 minutes at 65% of flat out, 3 times a week, also for 2 weeks.  This group had similar increase in endurance, but no more.  They however did have a massive increase in damage to joints and injury risk.  Not to mention the huge amount of lost time and the decreased chance that they would maintain this level of commitment over any length of time.

So in terms of muscle enzymes (essential for preventing type two diabetes) overall fitness including heart and lungs.  You could train for six hours per week (with massive increase in wear and tear) or six minutes a week.

Incidentally it doesn’t matter if your short bursts of flat-out effort are done rowing, cycling, running or on a punch bag. When the study director was asked if one could get the same results with even less training sessions, like once a week, he basic said, probably yes.

This is the first in a series of blog articles about fitness.

The most common argument put forward in adverts for any particular training programme or supplement is the ‘testimonial.’  And the best results are mostly placebo effect and the fact that anything will have some effect.

We see super shaped people demonstrating a piece of equipment that has only just come on the market, and we are expected to infer that they got in shape using it.

We see some huge guy telling us what he does to get huge.  Or a lean woman telling us that she does a particular routine.

The logic is up there with ‘I smoke Marlboro cigarettes and I’m now an airline pilot and women dream of me.  So smoking Marlboro cigarettes will do the same for you’

Unless a training method has been tested for a period of time with a large group of people who are demographically diverse, the testimonial advert tells us no more than what some person does.

The suggestions we will be making are only ones based on just such clinical trials.

Bear in mind that if you are starting from a position of doing no exercise, bad diet etc. Almost any exercise regime will deliver some improvement in fitness, and any control of what you eat will see an improvement in body shape.  But that is very different from finding the optimal, healthiest regime.

Let’s give some thought to hereditary factors.  If we give our Poodle/Jack Russell cross the same diet and exercise regime as our Lurcher, it will never, NEVER, have the same physique.  And if you take the same £100 per month supplement pills and do the same exercises as Dwayne Johnson you will never NEVER, have the same physique. (Unless you also have his parents)

There is a normal distribution curve (bell shaped) for every human feature: hight, muscular development, etc.  Some people will be at the ends and unless a trial sample is huge, they can totally screw with the results.  A protein shake manufacturer who gives free samples to 20 top bodybuilders and then bases its claims for results on them is simply conning you.

We’ve all been told that if you train like a swimmer, you’ll get a swimmer’s shape. Train like a power lifter and you’ll have a power lifter’s shape.  We are encouraged to believe that if we do Zumba, we’ll have the Zumba instructor’s shape (or at least that of the model they use for the posters).  I’m afraid it is the other way round.  If you have the genetic predisposition for a swimmer’s shape, you’ll excel at swimming.  If you have the genetic predisposition for a power lifter’s shape, you’ll excel at power lifting.  And the model?  Does anyone really think she has that shape from doing Zumba?  The short stocky mother who sends her short stocky three-year-old daughter to ballet classes believing that she will thereby grow to be a willowy, silf-like graceful woman is destined to be disappointed.

Now does that mean that if your parents are fat, weak and very unfit, that you need to be?  Check out the black and white photos in the family’s oldest album.  I bet your great grandparents weren’t fat and unfit.  It just means that if you do the same level of exercise and have the same diet as your parents you will also be weak and fat!

But if you do differently, you’ll get different results and the ideal gene expression that you can achieve would impress the hell out of you if you saw it.

So, we start with the understanding that our expectations must be in line with the potential of our genes.  If you are five feet tall, no amount of basketball playing will make you grow to seven feet.

Start instead to imagine you as the fittest you can be.  See yourself in the mirror, then imagine you had the best diet and exercise regime for you.  If I told you that you can have this with relatively small changes to your diet and perhaps 10 minutes per week of exercise, would you buy into that?  Good, because you won’t have to buy anything and you won’t need hours of dedication.  In the next blog we will look at evidence from clinical studies.

When people start Kung Fu the issue of fitness often arises and it usually comes down to one of two concerns: do I need to be fit to train at Kung Fu, of will I get fit training at Kung Fu?

There will be a minimum level of fitness needed to train, but this is surprisingly low.  If you need to take it easy to start with, working slowly and even stopping to sit out for a moment, no one will judge you for it.  Of course, if you are training on your own at home, this is obviously true.  Remember this is a style that relies on skill, not on strength, size or fitness, so in one sense there is no great advantage in being super strong and fit.  On the other hand, you will get fitter and stronger during the training; it is inevitable.  

While it is generally going to be a benefit being fitter and stronger, there is at least one question you need to be clear about.  If you want to get fitter, ask yourself, “fit for what”?  At the extreme it is possible to sacrifice health for greater fitness.  Health and fitness are not the same thing.  You can aim for such a high level of fitness that you have to sacrifice your health on the way.  This is why simply aiming for ‘fitter’ without a target can actually be dangerous.  When you can do a hundred press ups, why not go for two hundred, or three?  Well, here’s why.  It won’t make your muscles any bigger or stronger.  It won’t have any effect on any part of your daily life; nothing will be better.  However, you will have a higher chance of joint problems when you are older, you will just wear out the joints.  The only benefit, (and I use the word loosely) is that you can boasting about how many press-ups you can do (and no one will be very impressed), and I don’t think that compares well with an increased chance of long-term injury.  You see ‘fitter’ is not a good target; it has no definable standard of achievement.  It’s a bit like ‘thinner’; you can diet until you die, and you can train until you are crippled.  I’ve done the over training thing in the past and now (in my late 50s) every health problem I have, is down to that over training; that aiming to be that bit fitter, without a defined target.  With the Kung Fu Living exercise regime we have defined our fitness aim as ‘an optimum level of fitness training, enough to enable a full and active life, able to do any activity that any normal person might want to take part in, and a level of fitness that can be maintained, without risk to long term health, well into old age.’  Of course, there is still a huge variety of fitness levels amongst students, some do additional training and we can give useful advice to help them define and achieve their goals.  Others find that the amount of exercise built into the exercise regime is entirely sufficient for them to gradually increase their fitness and strength, which is, of course, what it is designed to do.

One of the questions that people often neglect to ask is, why get fit?  It’s often assumed that any amount of being fitter is automatically to be desired.  But without being clear about your goal it is difficult to know how to set about the process to achieve it.  If you go shopping with a goal of buying new clothes it will help to be clear about what you are dressing for.  New pyjamas will not serve you the same way as a wedding dress or a wet suit.

When you want to answer the question, how do I get fitter?  There exists a vast range of suppliers, from magazines to websites and even governments get in on the act.  There are sources that will tell you how to be thinner, bigger, stronger, faster, leaner, sexier etc. Whether you want to have the perfect godlike proportions of a modern-day Adonis, or the stamina of a modern day Pheidippides, someone will tell you how. 

If you start looking for instruction before you have a clear goal you may get caught up in whatever is the current trend or fashion within the fitness industry; yes it is an industry.

I’ve been intrigued to see a recent rise in events and training regimes, aimed primarily at men, for the ‘Hard Man’ the Spartan, the Iron Man, the Tough Mudder.  No longer is running a marathon impressive, instead, the question is, can you swim the Chanel, cycle the length of Britain and then run up a mountain?  How about 30 marathons in 30 days?  The fitness zeitgeist is geared towards the superhuman.  It challenges us.  It asks “are you man enough?”  Is this a reflection of a generation of men lacking clarity for their gender identification?  Is this modern man searching to find an archetype for manliness without the hunter/warrior figure to draw upon?  That architype is not really so ancient.  Its only a generation or two ago, in Britain at least, that men, typically, went to war and were the sole income provider for their wife and half a dozen children.  It’s an image of what being a man meant.  I’m not considering the virtue of that view, or indeed whether it was even an emotionally or mentally healthy idea to hold, it simply was in fact the archetype or definition of what it meant to be a man.  It is perhaps a reflection of this search for a new gender identity that has prompted this drive to the super fit, endurance athlete.  This trend appears to be aimed at men, though women will get caught up in the flow, I haven’t noticed it being a significant factor within the industry.  The general point of knowing your gaol still applies however.

Until you can answer the question “Fit for What?”  it isn’t really possible to begin any sort of meaningful exercise regime and particularly difficult to find the motivation to keep going.  For example, do you also want to be healthier?  Make no mistake, fitness and health are not the same.  For a completely sedate individual, a small increase in almost any exercise and its increase in fitness will invariably instigate an increase in health. However, any serious improvement in fitness will have a potential cost.  The cost might be nothing more an increase in the risk of injury; almost inevitable with any physical activity.  Some levels of fitness for some particular activities will require a major sacrifice in health.  There is a ‘minimum effective dose’ for exercise; enough to cause an improvement to a particular functionality.  There is also a level of exercise, that, while causing a short-term functional improvement, will cause excessive wear and tear and therefore a long-term reduction in functionality.

So, I want to ask you the question, “for what purpose do you want to be fitter?”

Do you want to be able to continue everyday activities for as long as possible?  Being an active independent person into your 90s?

Do you want to appeal to the opposite sex?

Do you want to take part in a sporting activity at a competitive level?

Do you want to consider yourself the worthy inheritor of your genes?  Someone that your hunter/warrior ancestor would be proud to call his descendent?

Are you seeking a high level of self-esteem through comparison with your peers?

The answer, “I just want to be fitter”, is wholly inadequate.

So perhaps start to give some thought to why you want to be fitter, ‘for what purpose?’

I’m often asked, if there is one Chi Kung exercise that someone could do for the maximum effect, what is it?  That’s easy to answer.  It is, learn to breathe.

Every emotional state has a unique breathing pattern, with only slight variation from person to person.  When you know a person well, you will be so familiar with their breathing patterns that you know instinctively their mood.  Of course with many such things, it’s not really instinct or intuition it’s just that at an unconscious level we have noticed them breath in a certain pattern when they have been in a corresponding mood and so our unconscious brain lets us know their mood even if we don’t realise consciously how we know this, so it seems that we just know by intuition.  One of the most obvious breathing patterns that people have is their sleep breathing.  They might be motionless and look asleep, but we will know if they are not and we can tell instantly when they actually fall asleep.  Any parent can hold their baby, rocking it and will know the moment they drop off.  The ideal Chi Kung breathing is very similar to that sleep pattern.

If you want to get technical, and it invariably helps to understand what’s happening, two subsets of the autonomic nervous system are the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems.  The sympathetic nervous system is initiated by anything in our environment that we perceive as a threat; sometimes called the fight of flight response, though its actually more complicated with considerably more nuance than that.  When we are triggered by something into this state, our entire body gets ready for some sort of action.  We are on high alert, we get tunnel vision, we can become almost deaf, our digestive system stops, our immune system goes on hold, blood pressure goes up along with the pulse, blood coagulant is increased along with adrenalin and cortisol.  While this is going one, our cells are not being repaired, we aren’t digesting nutrients, we aren’t growing and the only information our conscious brain is receiving from the vast amount of data that our unconscious brain takes in from the environment is information about threat.  Our breathing pattern is faster, and higher, that is, all in the chest.  Hence, we associate a high chested breath with someone about to be violent.  Solders on parade, and by association children standing in ranks, are told to pull their shoulders back and out, push out their chests and hold their abdomens in.  When two men square up before a fight, they push out their chests to appear threatening and ready to fight.  If you live in this survival state for any length of time, you will be subject to the plethora of illnesses we call ‘stress related’ as we are simply not designed to be in this sort of state for more than a few minutes and rarely.  One of the long-term effects of being in a stressed, anxious, fight or flight response, is that your mind focusses primarily on survival.  You consider how you can stay alive and what are the threats in your environment.  It necessarily makes you self-centred and focussed on things, only considering material reality around you; will it keep you safe or can you eat it to stay alive?  So long term stressed people are likely to be selfish and materialistic.

Because this whole system is automatic, it works like a set of gears that are all interlocked.  What that means is that if you can control just one of that list of effects and turn it in reverse, you can instead initiate the parasympathetic nervous system; sometimes called the ‘rest and digest state.’  In this state we have an improved digestive system, stronger immune response, lower blood pressure, better cellular repair, improved nutrition absorption etc.  It also effects our psychological behaviour.  Because you feel relaxed and the alarms aren’t metaphorically ringing in your head and your entire existence isn’t focussed on personal survival, you can consider others and function more cooperatively, you can look inwards to understand yourself better.  Because you aren’t scared of some threat, you are less concerned about material things and gathering them to you.  You can become more philosophical.  No one ever worried about their spiritual growth while running from a bear.

The easiest of these functions or part of this system to get a hold of and put in reverse is breathing (there are others, but that would be another article).  By changing your breath pattern you can control the totality of this system.  Can you see why I describe it as the exercise that has maximum effect?

Let me talk you through how to get this just right.  If you can do this, standing in a summer meadow, with a riot of brightly coloured wild flowers, beside a gently flowing, crystal clear stream and possibly in the shade of a magnificent willow, where the only sound that disturbs the rustle of the leaves and the burbling of the stream is a blackbird and the occasional read warbler, that would be ideal.  If you can’t manage that, then just close your eyes and imagine it. 

Now stand with our feet shoulder width and parallel.  Unlock your knees; don’t actually bend them, they’re just soft and unlocked.  Rotate your hips so that you tuck your bum in.  Roll your shoulders up and backwards bringing your shoulder blades down your spine letting them settle low.  Imagine a thread attached to the very top of your head, right at the crown and now picture the tread is pulled up so your neck lengthens and your chin comes back a little.  Let your arms hang relaxed and bring your hands to the front of  your abdomen so the fingers and thumbs touch, your hands softly cup and they will naturally cross over a little so that the first inch or so of the fingers of one hand sit on top of the others up to the second knuckle.  Different schools of Zen would suggest which hand goes on top is important, but I’ve never noticed any difference so do whichever comes naturally to you.  Imposing a right or left dominance will feel like crossing your arms or legs in the way that is not natural for you, you will constantly be aware of it feeling wrong.

Now breathe in through your nose, filling your lungs, but only letting the abdomen expand.  When you breathe out through your nose, keep going until your lungs are empty.  Clearly your lungs don’t extend into your abdomen, but what is happening is that your diaphragm, a large muscle that sits across the bottom of your lungs, is pushing downwards to accommodate more air, and in doing so it pushes your lower internal organs down and forwards.  Now slow it down.  If you have a normal healthy cardiovascular system you should be able to do a steady count of ten in and ten out.  It is worth understanding that most people take around 12 to 15 breaths per minute, but only exchange about 10% of the air in their lungs, so when you are completely filling and emptying your lungs you can slow that down to 3 or 4 breaths a minute.  If you ever feel light headed, it is almost certain that you are breathing too fast not too slowly.  With a little practice, this breathing will become habitual and you won’t need to think about it, just like every other motor activity that you learn, it soon becomes unconscious.

When you first do this, it will seem to be very unnatural and awkward, taking a lot of concentration.  It does.  You haven’t done it before.  Go and watch a baby learning how to use a spoon for the first time, but if you can read this, you probably now use a spoon with great dexterity, hardly ever hitting your eye or throwing food across the room, even when thinking of something else.  Give it time and practice.

If I am only doing Chi Kung breathing with no movement, I find I naturally use a meditation similar to a Hindu practice called Holy Name.  Picture a moving point that gently swings down and a little forward to your abdomen as you breathe in, then swings back up through your body to the top of your chest, even up to the back of your throat as you breathe out.  Like a pendulum, it slows down at either end of its swing, coming to a momentary stop before going back.  This moving point meditation helps you to keep the breathing pattern without actually thinking about the breathing as you quickly marry the breath pattern and the moving point together.  When the focus and the breathing become one unconscious thought, you won’t need to count as the pendulum speed will be set.

When you first start practicing this you will need to almost constantly keep checking each detail: are my feet right, my knees unlocked, pelvis tilted, shoulders back and down, crown of head reaching up, is my abdomen moving, is the speed right?  Don’t worry that’s normal.  And don’t start with an hour.  Try it for 5 minutes, but try it every day.  When you love it, and you will, then start doing it for longer.  Don’t make it a chore, it should be a joy. As you advance through the Chi Kung brocades in the Kung Fu Living program, you will be introduced to various breathing patterns; each intended to generate differently energetic effects.  But this standing Chi Kung breathing techniques will become a staple part of your daily diet.