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| Tai Chi stone lifting exercise |
Do Internal Martial Arts Need Strength Training?
There is a persistent idea in Chinese martial arts that practitioners of the so-called internal styles should not rely on physical strength.
In its more moderate form, this idea contains something valuable.
Good martial technique should not depend upon unnecessary muscular tension. Efficient movement, coordination, timing, structure and sensitivity can allow a skilled practitioner to accomplish something with considerably less effort than a beginner.
But the idea is sometimes taken much further.
According to one common interpretation, conventional strength training is not merely unnecessary for internal martial artists—it is actually harmful. Developing muscular strength supposedly interferes with relaxation, blocks internal power or prevents the practitioner from developing higher-level skill.
Historically, however, things are considerably more complicated.
Traditional practitioners of arts today classified as internal trained their bodies.
They lifted and manipulated heavy objects.
They trained with weapons.
They used resistance.
They conditioned their legs, waist, torso, grip and shoulders.
They struck things.
They wrestled.
And they practiced demanding physical exercises.
The interesting question therefore isn't:
Did internal martial artists use strength?
They obviously did.
A much better question is:
What kind of strength were they trying to develop, and how was that strength integrated into martial technique?
What Does “Internal” Actually Mean?
Before discussing training, we need to clear up a historical problem.
Today, three martial arts are particularly associated with the category 內家拳 — internal martial arts:
Taijiquan 太極拳
Xingyiquan 形意拳
Baguazhang 八卦掌
This modern grouping is strongly associated with developments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and particularly with writers and teachers such as Sun Lutang 孫祿堂.
But the term 內家 — internal school itself is much older.
In 1669, scholar Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 wrote the Epitaph for Wang Zhengnan (王征南墓誌銘).
He wrote:
少林以拳勇名天下……有所謂內家者，以靜制動……
In other words, Huang contrasted famous Shaolin boxing with something he called an “internal school”, characterized by overcoming movement through stillness. He consequently described Shaolin as 外家 — external.
His son Huang Baijia 黃百家, who reportedly studied with Wang Zhengnan, later wrote an account titled 內家拳法 — Boxing Methods of the Internal School.
So internal and external are not inventions of the 1920s.
But there is an equally important qualification.
Huang's 內家 was not necessarily the same category that modern martial artists mean when they collectively classify Taijiquan, Xingyiquan and Baguazhang as the three great internal arts.
We are dealing with an old terminology whose meaning and application changed over time.
That alone should make us cautious whenever somebody claims that all “internal martial arts” have always followed one universal training philosophy.
Internal Does Not Mean Physically Weak
Whatever philosophical or technical meanings were attached to the internal/external distinction, there is a basic biological fact that martial arts cannot escape:
human movement requires muscular force.
A punch requires force.
A throw requires force.
Maintaining posture against resistance requires force.
Accelerating your own body requires force.
Controlling another person's body requires force.
Even deliberately relaxing one muscle while maintaining the structure of the rest of the body requires muscular coordination.
The useful martial distinction therefore isn't:
strength versus no strength.
It is more often:
efficient force versus inefficient force.
A beginner may contract far more musculature than necessary.
He may stiffen opposing muscle groups simultaneously.
He may lose coordination between the legs, torso and arms.
He may attempt to overcome every problem by increasing local muscular effort.
An experienced practitioner can reduce much of this waste.
But reducing unnecessary muscular effort does not mean eliminating muscular force.
Strength and Skill Are Not Opposites
This distinction is particularly obvious in grappling.
A beginner trying to throw another person may use enormous effort.
With experience, positioning improves.
Timing improves.
Balance improves.
Sensitivity improves.
The practitioner learns where the opponent is weak and where applying force is useful.
Consequently, less force may be required to achieve the same result.
That is genuine skill.
But notice what happened.
Strength did not magically disappear.
Technique made the available strength more effective.
The same principle applies to striking.
A beginner may attempt to punch primarily with the arm.
A more experienced practitioner coordinates the legs, pelvis, torso and arm so that forces generated throughout the body contribute to the strike.
The second punch may feel less locally strenuous while producing considerably greater force.
That is not evidence for the absence of muscular power.
It is evidence for better coordination.
Taijiquan Was Not Designed for Frail People to Wave Their Arms
The modern public image of Taijiquan can make this difficult to appreciate.
Most people encounter Taijiquan as slow solo exercise.
That practice can have considerable value.
But it represents only one part of the historical martial system.
Traditional Taijiquan training also contains partner work, pushing hands, applications, weapons and other methods requiring physical effort.
Chen-style Taijiquan provides particularly visible examples.
Traditional and contemporary Chen training has included methods using heavy poles, weighted balls and heavier versions of weapons. Modern Chen practitioners describe Taiji-ball work specifically as a method of strengthening the torso and developing physical power, while heavy-weapon training provides another form of resistance.
The point isn't that every historical Taijiquan practitioner followed an identical strength program.
They didn't.
Nor does the existence of a heavy training implement prove every story told about famous masters lifting enormous stones.
Historical anecdotes about particular weights need independent evidence.
What the surviving training practices demonstrate much more safely is this:
Physical resistance and strength development are not inherently incompatible with Taijiquan.
Why Train With a Heavy Pole?
Heavy weapons are particularly interesting because they blur the modern distinction between strength training and technical training.
Imagine practicing with a long, relatively heavy pole.
The exercise places demands on:
- grip strength,
- forearm strength,
- shoulders,
- trunk stabilization,
- legs,
- balance,
- coordination,
- and control of rotational forces.
But you are not simply lifting a weight.
You are attempting to preserve the movement principles of the martial art while dealing with increased resistance.
That makes the exercise simultaneously:
strength training and skill training.
This is an important difference between traditional martial conditioning and simply going to a gym and increasing one's bench press.
Traditional exercises often attempted to develop physical capacity inside movement patterns relevant to the system.
Xingyiquan
The contradiction becomes even clearer with Xingyiquan.
Xingyi is commonly classified today as one of the major internal martial arts, yet its practice has never required practitioners to behave as though physical strength were undesirable.
Traditional Xingyi places enormous emphasis on repeated fundamental movements, stance work, whole-body coordination and weapons.
The spear is especially important in many Xingyi traditions. Some lineages use exceptionally long spears specifically to increase the physical challenge of training.
Again, the objective isn't bodybuilding for its own sake.
The practitioner is learning to produce and control force according to the mechanics of Xingyi.
Resistance provides the body with a problem it must learn to solve.
Baguazhang
Baguazhang presents the same general picture.
Walking the circle itself can become physically demanding when performed with low postures and sustained structural requirements.
Different Bagua traditions have also developed numerous conditioning methods involving resistance, partner exercises, heavy implements and weapons.
The exact methods vary enormously between lineages.
That variation is important.
There is no single historical “internal strength-training program.”
There are instead numerous martial traditions using different exercises to produce qualities needed for their particular methods.
What About Neigong?
This is where terminology becomes difficult.
內功 — neigong, literally something like “internal work” or “internal skill,” can refer to many different practices depending upon period, teacher and martial tradition.
Some methods emphasize breathing.
Some emphasize posture.
Some involve repeated tension and relaxation.
Some involve coordinated movement.
Some involve meditation or attention.
Some are explicitly connected with qi.
Some are physically exhausting.
Calling an exercise neigong therefore tells us very little about its physiological demands.
A practitioner can perform an exercise interpreted traditionally through qi while simultaneously placing substantial mechanical load on muscles, tendons and joints.
Traditional explanation and physical effect are different questions.
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| Kung Fu strength training |
Qigong Did Not Suddenly Enter Kung Fu in 1900
This is another claim from the original version of this article that I would now correct.
Chinese martial arts, daoyin 導引, breathing practices, medical exercises, religious cultivation and ideas concerning qi 氣 have interacted in complicated ways over a long period.
We cannot responsibly claim that qigong was simply added to kung fu at the end of the Qing dynasty.
There is another terminological complication.
The modern umbrella term 氣功 — qigong became standardized and enormously popular during the twentieth century.
That doesn't mean all of the practices later grouped under that name were twentieth-century inventions.
This is exactly the same historical trap we encounter with the word neijia:
The date when a category becomes standardized is not necessarily the date when every practice subsequently placed inside that category originated.
So instead of asking when “qigong entered martial arts,” we need to investigate individual breathing, daoyin, neigong and cultivation practices separately.
What Traditional Strength Training Was Actually Doing
Once we stop thinking in terms of “internal versus muscular,” many traditional exercises become easier to understand.
A heavy pole increases the torque that must be controlled by the body.
A weighted ball challenges the trunk and arms through changing positions.
Low stance training increases demands on the legs.
Partner resistance introduces unpredictable forces.
Weapons extend mass away from the body and alter leverage.
Repeated striking trains both force production and the ability to tolerate impact.
None of this requires a mysterious explanation.
But neither should we reduce traditional martial conditioning simply to primitive weightlifting.
The exercises were often chosen because they trained particular relationships between strength and movement.
The practitioner wasn't merely becoming stronger.
He was learning to express strength according to the technical requirements of his martial system.
What Modern Strength Training Can Add
Modern exercise science gives us tools traditional practitioners did not possess.
Today we can distinguish more precisely between:
maximum strength
explosive power
muscular endurance
rate of force development
isometric strength
eccentric and concentric loading
mobility
balance
and other physical qualities.
A modern martial artist therefore doesn't need to reproduce every historical training method merely because it is traditional.
If an old exercise works, we can investigate what it trains.
Sometimes the traditional method may remain excellent.
Sometimes modern equipment can train the same attribute more safely or efficiently.
Sometimes the traditional exercise simultaneously develops a technical coordination that conventional gym exercises don't reproduce.
These methods don't need to compete.
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| Tai Chi Stone Ball |
Can Strength Training Make You Stiff?
Yes.
But that requires another qualification.
Poorly designed training can interfere with martial performance.
Excessive fatigue can reduce technical training quality.
A poorly balanced program can create mobility problems.
Practicing every movement with maximum tension can establish undesirable motor habits.
Adding large amounts of body mass may be disadvantageous for particular competitive requirements.
But none of these observations demonstrates that strength itself is harmful.
A martial artist needs to learn both:
how to produce tension when force is required
and
how to release unnecessary tension when it is not.
Those are complementary abilities.
A strong person can learn to relax.
A relaxed person who cannot produce sufficient force when necessary has a different problem.
The Real Meaning of “Don't Use Strength”
Traditional Chinese teachers often tell students:
不要用力 — don't use force/strength.
Taken literally, this instruction is physiologically impossible.
But teaching instructions aren't always scientific descriptions.
A teacher telling a beginner “don't use strength” may actually mean:
Stop forcing the movement.
Stop tightening your shoulders.
Don't fight the opponent's force directly.
Use the whole body rather than the arm.
Wait for the correct moment.
Maintain structure instead of struggling.
In that context, “don't use strength” can be excellent instruction.
The mistake comes when a useful coaching cue is transformed into a universal physiological theory:
Muscular strength is bad for internal martial arts.
Those are not the same statement.
Strength Is Not Internal Power's Enemy
The old argument between “internal” and “external” training creates a false choice.
A martial artist is a biological organism.
He needs physical capacity.
He also needs technical skill.
Strength without skill is limited.
Skill without sufficient physical capacity is also limited.
Higher-level martial ability means that the practitioner becomes increasingly efficient at applying whatever physical capacity he possesses.
That may make his movements look effortless.
But effortless appearance is not evidence of an untrained body.
Often it is exactly the opposite.
Years of training have made difficult movement appear easy.
Traditional practitioners understood this even if they explained the process using a very different vocabulary from modern sports science.
They trained stances.
They trained weapons.
They trained resistance.
They trained with partners.
They repeated movements thousands of times.
And sometimes they lifted heavy things.
Perhaps the most useful lesson isn't that the so-called internal masters secretly practiced “external” training.
It is that the division itself can mislead us.
The body does not know whether an exercise is internal or external. It responds to load, movement, coordination, repetition and adaptation.
What makes training relevant to a martial art is not whether we call it internal or external.
It is what qualities it develops and whether we can use those qualities when they are needed.
References
For the historical internal/external distinction, the primary source is Huang Zongxi's 王征南墓誌銘 — Epitaph for Wang Zhengnan (1669). An accessible transcription and translation is available here:
Huang Zongxi and Huang Baijia — Internal School texts
Stanley Henning's research is useful for the historical development of the internal/external terminology and the significance of Huang's epitaph.
For the later association of Taijiquan, Xingyiquan and Baguazhang within an internal-martial-arts framework, Sun Lutang's Republican-period publications and the intellectual environment surrounding them are important.
For examples of strength and resistance work preserved in contemporary Chen Taijiquan practice, David Gaffney's discussion includes Taiji-ball training, pole exercises and heavier weapons.
Strength Training in Chen Taijiquan