In my previous post introducing the Iron Shirt Neigong training, I was at level 2 of the training. I reached level 3 on the day I went to the Qigong Retreat with the kung fu school. I find level 3 is less physically demanding but has more complex stances and movements requiring more focus.
Iron Shirt level 3
One of the new thing in level 3 is the one-foot stances, there are two of them and each stance is repeated twice, 3 minutes on each foot. The first one is called Crane watches the carp, you need to hold what we call the cat stance, your weight is fully on the back foot while the tips of the toes from the front foot only slightly touch the ground. Arms are held up with hands floating at head level.
Out of the two one-foot stances, this one is the easiest in my opinion and on a good day I could probably hold it for 6 minutes on each side. The second stance, called Daoist looks out from the hole (... 🤣), is on the other hand a killer. Two minutes into the stance and your foot will be burning hot and holding your balance is very hard.
As you can see in the photo above, only one foot is touching the ground. This is also 3 minutes on each foot. Who want to take the challenge and try this stance 3 minutes each side?
Iron Shirt and Qi
Iron Shirt not only strengthen your myofascial tissue that protects your muscles, organs and bones it also increase your ability to cultivate your Qi energy. If you are familiar with Qi exercises (Qigong, Neigong, Taijiquan etc...) you should know about that tingling sensation you feel in your hands that we often refer as energy. Since practicing Iron Shirt, I'm starting to feel that magnet sensation taking over up to my elbows now. On rare occasions I can feel it all the way up to the shoulders. But today, I've reached another level. While doing one of the static stances, I usually do slow reverse abdominal breathing, I noticed that I could control that energy feeling in my hands by just focusing on the hand and breathing. Well, this evening, near the end of the level 3 set, as I breathe in, I could feel something forming in my abdomen and as I breathe out, I felt like a ring of electricity surrounding my belly and shooting upward toward my shoulders and then flowing through my arms reaching my hands. That was really cool.
Recap from level 1 and 2
My Iron Shirt training will reach its 100 days on October 23rd 2019, now that I'm at level 3, I need to spend about 1h30 every day doing the sets of exercises from both three levels. My weekdays are now quite busy:
- waking up at 5:30am
- take a light breakfast and coffee
- warm up
- 30 mins of Iron Shirt level 1
- 30 mins of Iron Shirt level 2
- shower
- 7.15am take the train to work
- 8.45am arrive at work
- 6.35pm get back home and do 30 mins of Iron Shirt level 3
- have diner
- a bit of family time
- 1 hour of free time that I spend on various projects (gardening, worm farming, black soldier flies etc...)
- go to bed
During my commute time, I do some coding work for BuildTeam in the morning and Steemit Condenser/Wallet in the evening. That's full on!
After over 70 days of Iron Shirt training, I do notice great improvement in my health and body strength. I have not been sick since I have started the training and this is quite impressive since I usually get sick during season changes and my wife and son did get a cold/flu but I managed to escape it or feeling under the weather for just one day and then feeling better the next. This could be just coincidence but I like to think that the training did help.
Thanks to the many stretching stance such as Rhino looks at the moon, pictured below, I feel like I have acquire some more mobility.
I also have less instances of shoulder pain like I usually have since two years ago when I had a shoulder incident when doing kayak fishing. Holding those arms up for a long period of time must have strengthen my shoulders.
With exercises such as the Leopard paws where you have to tense all muscles in your body, I now have healthier limbs and my six-pack are starting to show again when I contract my abdomen, well it's more like a four-pack but that's better than a one-pack 🤣.
And low stances such as Buffalo goes to the sea my legs are getting stronger and I've improved my ability to root myself and get more stable when doing Taijiquan. Try holding the following stance for three minutes! Your back should be parallel to the ground.
One little hiccup, for me, of doing this training is that since doing the level 3 sets, my lower back pain is flaring a little bit. It's not a pain but more like a soreness or burning sensation. I believe one of the stances is putting strain on my back, probably due to me not being straight. I need to find out which one it is and try to re-adjust my posture.
I'm really glad to have started this training, although it's really hard to commit to doing it every day for a hundred days. I'm excited to see it is nearing the end of it and to start another hundred days of steel brush training.
If you live on the Central Coast, NSW, Australia and are interested in Martial Arts, especially internal styles, I invite you to come and visit our Wu Xing Dao Kung Fu school and talk to our head instructor Grant Mundy.
See you in about 30 days when I complete this Iron Shirt Neigong training.
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Owwwww... was in pain watching this! But no mud, no lotus right? I was so fit when I did 30 days of hot yoga and yoga 6 x a week... a bit more relaxed now but not as fit!
How long ago was it? Maybe it's time to do it again 😅
This looks super intense. My quads were hurting just watching this. Haha. Pretty cool though! I can almost feel the flow of energy just watching you. Thanks for sharing.
Very intense indeed. Even over 70 days in now, some stances are still hard to hold.
I can imagine!!
Wow! Now I will have to look back and find the rest of this series. I practice an energy art too, but we call it Ki and my practice is mainly in dynamic work with partners in a dojo.
We would really benefit from this kind of sustained posture work - strengthening the myofascial tissue could prevent injuries, and help to repair old ones!
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That's Aikido isn't it? Ki is another name Qi I believe. I guess the concept is the same but it might differ in the way to cultivate one's energy.
There are several form of Iron Shirt Neigong/Qigong training, some of which you can find on Youtube too. They definitely help with any form of martial arts. I find this article quite interesting to read:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275968128_The_secret_of_fascia_in_the_martial_arts
Thank you for the link! Yes, I practice Aikido and while I think Ki and Qi are basically the same concept, each of those is foreign to my native culture so I can't claim to have deep knowledge of how they might be different.
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That's a lot of dedication to make that commitment! I am glad you are getting some of the desired results and are feeling in much better shape for it! Love the photos of your stances - looking good!
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