Please read this post. Because almost nothing else I can teach you (apart from good breathing) is more important.
The strength of your legs directly relates to almost every element of your physical and mental health and wellbeing.
Your legs are the foundation of your structure. They are your connection to the earth which is the only thing in your life that will always be there to support you. Without strong legs you hold tension in your upper body constantly 24 hours a day. This tension keeps the weight off your weak legs but it creates mental anguish, back pain, cardiovascular problems, breathing issues, digestive upsets, weight gain… the list of other ills that chronic tension causes goes on and on and on and on.
Your legs also carry you through life. We’ve all seen people struggling to walk as they age. Their legs lack both strength and mobility.
Do not let this happen to you.
The Chinese have recognised this for thousands of years. All the Chinese arts place a huge emphasis on leg training. However, although the kind of leg training we do in the West such as squats and leg raises etc is important, it isn’t enough.
Strengthening your legs is one thing. Learning to relax your upper body down onto them is something else entirely
Having strong legs is of limited use to you unless you can learn to fully relax down onto them. This takes the tension out of the upper body and drops it down through you legs into the earth. Only by doing this can you avoid all the many health issues I mentioned above.
Learning to create movements using your legs rather than instinctively using your upper body also gives you power beyond belief.
The secret lies primarily in learning to stand on your legs in different ways. Then in being able to move from one stance to another while keeping the tension out of your upper body.
This is much harder than you think. But almost nothing else you can do will have a greater impact on your health and personal power.
Below are links to our most common stances. Whoever, you are, however old you are, you should practice these daily. Spend most of your time in the horse stance then as your legs get stronger you can incorporate the others as well. You can then thank me later as your legs strengthen and your upper body lets go.
The most important thing to remember is to relax down onto your legs. Let them carry your weight. This is a process of discovery as gradually your upper body lets go and learns to sink down. Let it happen. Don’t fight the process.
- Try to avoid anything that will bounce your body up again.
- Don’t be tempted to move, to scratch to get back into a more ‘comfortable’ position
- When moving from one stance to another or when closing the practice or if you need to make any other movement make sure you move VERY SLOWLY.
- Keep your structure sound. In particular relax your elbows down to keep your arms connected to your structure and keep your tailbone down to connect the upper body onto your legs. If you don’t do that you will never succeed and all your efforts will be pointless.
Here are the stances.
Horse stance – spend most of your time in this one
Dragon stance – the easiest to stand in but easy to not be on your legs
Tiger stance – more challenging so get used to the horse stance first
Cat stance – all your weight is on one leg so challenging in a different way but used all the time in tai chi and kung fu
Crane stance – balance is the issue here. Get used to the cat stance first so you learn to rest all your weight on one leg
Scissor stance – more for those learning kung fu but a useful stance for anyone. It trains different muscle fibres than the others