Golf chi-kung

Golf chi-kung? Are you kidding? No, I'm not.

Recently an old friend of mine told me that he was contemplating on a second career to become a professional coach of Golf. As I always want to note down some of my thoughts on using chi-kung as part of a work-out routine for athletes, I shall use Golf as an example here. Many martial artists for centuries have been using chi-kung and related disciplines (like yoga) as foundation work-out for their practice. In a recent post, I mentioned renowned Brazilian Jujitsu master Rickson Gracie using yoga and meditation to condition himself during his regular trainings as well as using them to condition himself immediately before major fights.

In this post, I shall use zhan zhuang as an example. As per one of my previous posts on zhan zhuang, the basic stance (stand-like-a-tree, or embracing-tree) is excellent as foundation chi-kung practice as well as specifically for curing back pain. After one has proficiently practiced this stance (which would mean experiencing moderate chi in the body moving between feet [toes] and hands [fingers]), one can go on to practice some variations aiming at achieving additional objectives. One series of stance is called fighting stance. The objective is to facilitate throwing a punch (or executing a throw) from different angles. The theory behind is that executing a martial act consists of different intermediate positions. And if one can be trained to have the required flexibility, strength and control in each position, the practitioner will be more likely to do good execution when joining these positions in one quick sweep.

This is exactly what golf is all about! The picture above shows the four basic Golf stance (intermediate positions), and it is interesting to compare it with one of the fighting stance placed below: taming dragon.