Avi - Chin to Toe

“Add a millimeter to your tendons and add ten years to your life.” –Chinese Proverb expounding on the importance of stretching

Stretching is fundamental to the practice of Wudang Gong Fu, so much so that the soreness of intense stretching often dominates the first weeks - sometimes months - of practice. Achieving typical stretches such as chin-to-toe, side splits, and front splits are landmarks in a students’ practice. Because stretching can be difficult and painful practice it’s helpful to understand the immense benefits that come from stretching. Why stretch?

The obvious result of regular stretching is increased flexibility. Muscles lengthen, tendons relax, and joints loosen which translates to increased range and ease of motion. Speaking strictly about athletic Gong Fu practice, all these changes allow a student to kick higher with better form, and make his or her stances lower and easier to transition between. All movement becomes faster and less tiring due to less internal resistance from tense muscles and tendons.

As a practitioner’s muscles and tendons begin to lengthen and relax with stretching, blood is able to move more freely about the body. Excellent circulation is a marker of excellent health. Good blood flow aids in the body’s uptake of nutrients and maintenance of healthy internal organs. Increased circulation achieved by stretching improves athletic performance and ups the practitioner’s energy level in general.

Some further benefits of stretching are not quite as obvious. Many complex stretches involving multiple muscle groups demand muscular coordination in order to be done correctly. The act of stretching well forces the student to be aware of his or her posture and body alignment, and often, to tense one part of the body while relaxing another area at the same time.

Stretching the chin-to-toe is a perfect example: in the process of practicing one must both pull on the foot, contracting with force, and simultaneously relax the hamstrings and hips completely. These demands are even more apparent while practicing high kicks. The leg must be raised quickly using tension, but in order to kick high the hips and various other muscles groups must be relaxed. To manage all these complicated maneuvers requires coordination learned through stretching.

As a bonus, a focused stretching session can feel similar to a de-stressing massage. As tension leaves the muscles stress often leaves the mind along with it. The blood circulates freely and you feel warm and loose, incredibly comfortable. In the course of stretching you may also find some discomfort or tightness that had escaped your notice before. So, stretching can also be a great way to take inventory of the body, and coupled with self-massage, can be a wonderful way to heal the body as well.

The path to a flexible body is long, and certainly not painless. There will be days when you seem to regress to a point stiffer than you were before you began practicing, so the path is definitely not even either. It helps, however, to have patience, keep the goal in mind – a healthy comfortable body– and remember that you have as long as it takes to release all the tension accumulated in your body. Due to cultural habits many Westerners have problems with the hips in particular and three to five years is a realistic timeframe to attain a relatively soft body.

Not everyone needs to be able to do the splits or touch the chin-to-toe. Stretching, though, is beneficial to everybody and those ideals give a practitioner something to work toward. Both are entirely doable and seriously satisfying when done to completion. As well as being immeasurably healthful, stretching is an integral part of Wudang Gong Fu and a necessary first step to internal awareness.