DOES EXTERNAL TRAINING ENHANCE INTERNAL TRAINING?
Grandmater Wong demonstrates the art of rolling bamboo
Question
Does adding some external training to go with our internal training add balance to our training and therefore improve our development?
For example, if we use some of the 18 Lohan Art exercises to develop internal force, will we get even more benefit if, on some of the days, we also practice external training such as punching with stone locks, gripping jars or rolling bamboo?
Sifu Mark Blohm
Answer
Yes, adding some external training to our internal training will add balance as well as improve our development.
I clearly remember my sifu, Sifu Ho Fatt Nam, saying that all great arts are both internal and external. They are also both hard and soft. At the highest level, it is internal and external, hard and soft at the same time, not first internal then external, or first hard then soft, and vice versa.
Practicing external training methods like punching with stone locks, gripping jars or rolling bamboo will enhance internal training methods like Eighteen-Lohan Art, Eighteen Lohan Hands, One Finger Shooting Zen and Iron Wire.
Besides adding external training methods like above, we may also consider the external and internal aspects of a particular internal training method.
Let us take as an example the first exercise of the Eighteen-Lohan Art, “Lohan Worships Buddha”. The physical form of the technique is external, whereas the energy flow which results in internal force is internal. We need the external form to work the internal energy flow.
Suppose we leave aside the external form. Because of our skills, we can still generate an energy flow without using external form. But the benefit will not be as good as if we use the external form. Not only we do not derive the benefit of the external form, like loosing leg muscles, the internal force derived may also not be as powerful.
On the other hand, because of our skills in internal force training when we perform an external training method like punching with stone locks, our benefit will be much more than practitioners who lack skills in internal force training.
The other practitioners use muscular strength in their punching, whereas we use chi flow. The others will be tired after the training because they expend energy, whereas we become more energetic after the training because cosmic energy flows into us. The others will be mentally stressful after the strenuous exercise, whereas we shall be mentally fresh because our chi flow does our work.
This is another good example of the great advantage of spread and depth.
The above question-answer is reproduced from the thread 10 Questions to Grandmaster Wong on Bone Marrow Cleansing and Eighteen-Lohan Art in the Shaolin Wahnam Discussion Forum
Grandmaster Wong leads a Choy-Li-Fatt class in developing internal force
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