Ma Bu (Horse Stance) Training

[Fu-Pow]

also we would work on sliding from side to side in the horse stance...come to think of it, we did this in football too, the sliding/shuffle part....without crossing the legs...

Gosh I think I said something similar about a million post ago. Notice how it was conveniently ignored by Ironfist.

[Fu-Pow]

Your center of gravity is lowered when you're in a horse stance because you're physically lower to the ground. It doesn't carry over tho when you stand up again.

Well I think you need to distinguish between center of gravity and center of mass. There not exactly the same thing. Depending on how you train you can change your center of mass and therefore change how your body is effected by gravity. Most guys that build a massive upperbody without compensating in the lower half (ie chicken legs syndrrome) shift there center of mass upward. In the acceleration of gravity that makes them top heavy.

True, if you drop the entire mass then the center of gravity is lower.

But there are other factors like stability of the structure, etc.

[IronFist]

Originally Posted by IronFist
"Spiral Energy" does not exist. A muscle either contracts or it relaxes. You have tension or you have no tension. A muscle doesn't have special things that it can do.

ROFL@the ignorance.

Hilarious. What's ignoranant about that? Everything I said is 100% accurate and demonstratable in laboratory settings.

Proof

Proof

IronFist is just putting his head in the sand now. Presented with endless examples, photos of boxers, typical sports drill and even a champion kickboxer he still plays the ostrich and sticks to his own little world.

Yeah, citing psyiological prinples is putting my head in the sand. Geez some of you guys are dense. Here let me bold it for you:

Being in a horse stance (or any other stance) for 2 seconds in a fight is NOT affected by holding a horse stance for 20 minutes in training.

There is more than ONE muscle in the body and those muscles work in unison with all the other muscles, bones and tendons, synergistically creating said "spiral energy". Trying to apply muscular physiology to it is about as relevent as applying quantum mechanics.

Wow. First you talk about muscles working in unison and then you say it's irrelevant to "apply muscular physiology?" Absolutely incredible.

You still haven't shown me that anything I've said has been incorrect.

edit: remembering why I usually just lurk here.

edit: cuz you can't subtantiate anything you say with proof?

It seems that quite a few people in this thread are missing the basic principles of SAID which may be why we keep arguing. I've tried as best I can to explain it because I know that not everyone has an elementary foundation in physiology and anatomy. SAID is one of the most basic principles in physiology and nothing is exempt from it. Everything you do is causing some sort of adaptation, and the fact remains that endurance training does not increase maximal strength output which was my whole point in this thread. So if those of you who don't understand that want to keep arguing, that's fine with me.

[IronFist]

Well I think you need to distinguish between center of gravity and center of mass. There not exactly the same thing. Depending on how you train you can change your center of mass and therefore change how your body is effected by gravity. Most guys that build a massive upperbody without compensating in the lower half (ie chicken legs syndrrome) shift there center of mass upward. In the acceleration of gravity that makes them top heavy.

True, if you drop the entire mass then the center of gravity is lower.

But there are other factors like stability of the structure, etc.

Yes, but "center of gravity" is what was said before.

I've heard stories of qigong masters who could "change their center of gravity at will" to avoid being pushed over. Your center of gravity may slowly change over time as your upper/lower body proportions change, but it's not something you can randomly move around at will and it certainly has nothing to do with holding stances.

I certainly don't hope you think holding horse stance for any period of time is going to increase lower body mass.

[word of honor]

Well I certaintly don't hope you think holding horse stance for any period of time is going to develop lower body mass.

?? holding sei ping ma to the point of collapse will definitely develop more mass in the muscles of the legs !!

[IronFist]

?? holding sei ping ma to the point of collapse will definitely develop more mass in the muscles of the legs !!

No, not once the "point of collapse" is past around 30-45 seconds.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. People are arguing without knowing what they're talking about. You're new to the board so I'll let it go, but trust me, endurance activities will absolutely NOT build size. There's a reason sprinters have huge quads and marathoners don't.

It takes a specific combination of time under tension (TUT), intensity, and volume (and making sure you eat enough calories to facilitate growth) to create muscle growth. Holding horse stances will not do it. If it did, every kung fu guy who held his stances for a while would have elite level bodybuilder legs. Your legs are hard enough to build muscle on when everything I mentioned above is in check. It's not going to randomly happen cuz some guy holds stances for 5, 10, 20, or even 60 minutes a day.

Newbies may notice a little growth or something from it, but these gains will die off shortly.

[Lowlynobody]

I did a lot of weights when I was young. Basically got taken to the gym by older brothers (one of which competed in local bodybuilding) when I was as young as 12. By the time I was 15 - 16 I was 85 kg and doing body weight bench press for 3+ reps. Because I grew so quick (6 foot by the time I was 13) I had long relatively thin legs. Back then I did a lot of squating and other powerlifting movements to try to even things out. Now years later I haven't done weights in a very long time and have more muscular legs than I ever had when I was weight lifting. For me horse stance and other stance training HAS increased the size of my legs.

[Lowlynobody]

I must add though that I am an easy gainer and my body responds quickly to any regular type of training. Always has.

[omarthefish]

Hilarious. What's ignoranant about that? Everything I said is 100% accurate and demonstratable in laboratory settings.

Accurate and completely irrelevant. As is the rest of your post here. Kinesiology yes, physiology no. Nothing whatsoever to do with chansijin.

All you have done with that huge post is demonstrate a collosal ignorance of what chansijin is. Your trying to debunk a term for something where you don't even have the faintest clue what the term means.

[IronFist]

Are you sure there was nothing else you did that could have contributed to it? Is horse stance the ONLY thing you've done?

Are you sure it didn't have anything to do with your age and the amount of hormones in your system at the time? If you experience leg growth while training horse stance, how do you know it wouldn't have happened anyway during those years?

How do you know you experience leg growth? Did you measure? How do you know it wasn't just a reduction in bodyfat that made the muscles appear more visible and giving the illusion of growth?

How do you know it wasn't the "newbie gains?" The growth isn't continuing past an initial threshold.

Please don't make me explain "newbie gains." Let's just leave it at people who do something shockingly different for the first time experience very rapid adaptation for a while that is completely uncharacteristic of normal circumstances. Examples include people increasing their max bench press by 10-20% after their first few workouts, or people doubling the maximum running distance in their first week or two of training. These types of increases will never be seen again (diminishing returns) and when a lot of people experience them for the first time they assume that they'll go on forever and thus proclaim a given exercise as doing all this stuff that it really doesn't. You may gain some size on your legs from horse stance in the first month or two, but it definately won't continue over the years.

[IronFist]

Ok, when I said "spiraling energy" before, I wasn't referring to body mechanics. Someone a while ago tried to tell me that horse stance makes your muscles store "spiral energy" that was some how a special kind of muscle contraction or something that was different from a "normal" contraction.

I didn't know when I brought that up that "spiraling energy" was your term for "using body mechanics to generate more force." But I never argued against that, either.

But that's why I said before that a muscle can only contract or relax, and there's no such thing as "spiral energy."

Now, back to arguing about horse stance.

[omarthefish]

Please don't make me explain "newbie gains." Let's just leave it at people who do something shockingly different for the first time experience very rapid adaptation for a while that is completely uncharacteristic of normal circumstances. Examples include people increasing their max bench press by 10-20% after their first few workouts, or people doubling the maximum running distance in their first week or two of training. These types of increases will never be seen again (diminishing returns) and when a lot of people experience them for the first time they assume that they'll go on forever and thus proclaim a given exercise as doing all this stuff that it really doesn't. You may gain some size on your legs from horse stance in the first month or two, but it definately won't continue over the years.

Just taking advantage of the opportunity to agree on something.

[omarthefish]

Ok, when I said "spiraling energy" before, I wasn't referring to body mechanics. Someone a while ago tried to tell me that horse stance makes your muscles store "spiral energy" that was some how a special kind of muscle contraction or something that was different from a "normal" contraction.

I didn't know when I brought that up that "spiraling energy" was your term for "using body mechanics to generate more force." But I never argued against that, either.

But that's why I said before that a muscle can only contract or relax, and there's no such thing as "spiral energy."

Now, back to arguing about horse stance.

I missed that post. Sounds like someone took a partial understanding of the concept and made false extrapolations or just didn't understand it well enough to explain. "Spiraling energy", to be clear, is a typical English shorthand for "chansijin" which more literally is "silk reeling energy".

The thing is, it IS developed through horse stance training. But yes, it's not literally stored in the muscles. But that is a close description. It's stored in the patterns of tension across various muscles throughout the body. One of the primary ways of developing this is through stance training. Static training, just holding a stance for a long period is just the first stage. You need to be able to be comfortable "down there". But then typically you would move on to slowly shifting between stances without coming up. You also will typically hold a "static" stance for a long time but are not truly static. You continually make small adjustments often not in posture but in patterns of tension as you develop better kinesthetic awareness and do "research" into the kineseology of your own body.

To borrow a term you like, body mechanics, are studied though carefull training in various stances, the "horse" being primary. Dynamic exercises are used as well but without the supplementary relatively static practices you will never achieve the same result in the dynamic drills as you won't have a chance to see/feel what's happening at key points.

This is a messy thread because I agree with you on many points and also feel that many of the "supporters" of horse stance training are positing all kinds of wrong reasons so I find I barely agree with anybody here. For me, the proof is in the pudding. I DO lift. I head out to the gym and squat, snatch and occasionally even bench. But they really don't give you the same benifit. Not making a better/worse comparison. They each have their own values and much of the "debate" is from people on one side having many wrong ideas about what they get out of stance training and on the other side someone like yourself who doesn't train a type of martial art that even uses the things.

So yes, SAID. If you fight the way you do and never actually use the things, aren't conerned with developing various jin, don't bother with the traditional stuff, then their relevance is limited. If you actually DO use a lot of that stuff then well, SAID. I need good stances because they are critical to my techniques.

[Lowlynobody]

Are you sure there was nothing else you did that could have contributed to it? Is horse stance the ONLY thing you've done?

Martial arts is the only thing I have done and for a few years stance training was a big part of it.

Are you sure it didn't have anything to do with your age and the amount of hormones in your system at the time? If you experience leg growth while training horse stance, how do you know it wouldn't have happened anyway during those years?

This is a good point. I couldn't answer this either way with 100% assurity. Though I doubt I would have experience an increase in muscle size in my legs as a result of the passing of time. When ever I've stoped training for any reason my body has either stayed as it was or gotten smaller. Depending on the period of time.

How do you know you experience leg growth? Did you measure? How do you know it wasn't just a reduction in bodyfat that made the muscles appear more visible and giving the illusion of growth?

The leg growth was quite apparent. Like I said I grew quick so I had long thin legs despite constantly working hard with weights.

I don't have very much body fat. I actually have a little more now then I did when I was yonger and lifting weights but the muscles on my legs are more defined now.

How do you know it wasn't the "newbie gains?" The growth isn't continuing past an initial threshold.

I know what newbie gains are. I have been around a lot of experienced weight lifters and personal trainers since I was young. I did also introduce a lot of people to lifting weights and helped them train. The growth wasn't massive and instant. It continued over a period of around 2 years of constant training. At which point I could hold a correct low horse stance (not thighs parallel which I don't personally agree with) for up to 45 minutes.

[word of honor]

sorry if i wasn't clear but i didn't say anything about continuous gains
i was just astonished by this overstatement on your part:

Well I certaintly don't hope you think holding horse stance for any period of time is going to develop lower body mass.

but then you acknowledged:

Newbies may notice a little growth or something from it, but these gains will die off shortly.

yes since i'm new to this forum i'm not familiar with the different voices and how they present their arguments so i'm sorry if i got hung up on symantics. thanks for cutting me some slack and i'll try to cut you more slack as well