Traditional Chinese Weights

[The Xia]

An obvious compliment to Kung Fu. Has anyone tried them?

[franco1688]

In my style we use weight vest training. We also do an eagle claw exercise where we hold a brick in each hand and perform certain movements in the training for twenty minutes along with releasing and catching the bricks 100x each arm. In another weighted training we utilize concrete posts that we do various movements with and these range in weight from 50-100 lbs. or so. The final traditional training we do is a tiger training called he twenty-four tigers exercise. In this exercise we hold weighted vessels and perform twenty-four different movements for twenty-four repetitions non-stop. That's a total of 576 repetitions so as you can imagine it's pretty intense.

[SevenStar]

shuai chiao uses pulleys with weights to simulate throws. Also there is a device called the rock pole.

As franco stated, there is the brick training, and also carrying weighted vases.

When I was training kung fu, we used a weight vest as well. Western boxing does also.

[GeneChing]

I'm guessing Xia is refering to my latest article in the 2006 November/December issue: Increase Your Grip Power with Homemade Stone Locks: Grandmaster Tu's Chamber of 99 Power

Worthy of note, Gigi and I also did an article on Shuai Chiao training tools back in our 2006 January/February issue: Master Charng’s Shuai Chiao Training Methods.

[auntie]

We use wooden versions of those in varying weights. And an enterprising club member came up with a metal grip welded onto a screw thread so that you can attach different weights as you get stronger. We are encouraged to aim to be able to do pow chois with at least 15% (20% for men) body weight using those.

[franco1688]

what is a pow choi?

[The Xia]

Increase Your Grip Power with Homemade Stone Locks: Grandmaster Tu's Chamber of 99 Power

I just read this article. It is awesome. It explains the benefits of stonelock weight training. The weight of a stonelock is concentrated on the bottom instead of being distributed on both sides like dumbells have. There are exercises you can do with stonelocks that will greatly increase your grip strength to levels that you can't reach with dumbbells.

[BentMonk]

Stone locks bear a strong resemblance to kettlebell training. Both use the whole body in nearly every exercise. IMO this is better than traditional weight training, which tends to isolate muscle groups. For MA purposes it just makes more sense to train your entire body as a unit as often as possible, since the strongest strike is delivered by using your entire body. Now...a shameless plug for my teacher's site: www.iron-body.com Back to our show...

[dougadam]

Could you post a link to some images of these?

[jmd161]

We use stone locks in Hak Fu Mun, but they're used for many reasons. One of the more intense workouts we use them for is arm conditioning. When you hold one in your grip and throw a punch, the concrete bangs against your forearms, so you get some serious arm conditioning from this.



jeff