My first introduction to the importance of strength was through ads in the back of old comic books. Charles Atlas, the bully kicking sand in your face, and the need to lift big hunks of iron would save your life. Why, lift enough iron and roles would be reversed, you suddenly could do the bully to the bad guy, win the girl, and life would be grand.

Then, as life proceeded, I found out that people who lifted weights were considered stupid. They were the new bullies of the world. And, heck, they even started taking steroids and all that drug stuff.

The truth behind lifting weights is, of course, not entirely as I have portrayed it here through my youthful and naive observations of life. It is true that you have to lift weight; you have use muscles if you are going to gain the benefit of muscles. But, there are alternatives to lifting bars weighted with immense plates of iron that are much more efficient, much less dangerous, and, in this writers opinion, a heck of a lot more fun.

I began my practice of the martial arts in the sixties, and I was unaware that I was lifting weights. I was was, in truth, lifting the weight of my body, and throwing it around in a manner that simple weight lifting could never duplicate. The ranges of motion, the competence of motion, it was something that in my few brushes with weight lifting I had never experienced.

A few decades into my martial practice, already achieving an enduring health and physical conditioning that was far beyond my oxygen tank toting, walker using compatriots, I heard of body calisthenics. Body calisthenics are simple exercises that brought home the theories I had been practicing without realizing it when I was doing the martial arts. Furthermore, I wasn’t experiencing health problems, the muscle to flab syndrome, injuries to muscles and joints that unreal stress can inflict on an unaware person.

Interestingly enough, I had started doing the martial art known as Tai Chi some years previous, and had discovered what I called Suspended Strength. When you hold a limb up for a while, moving it slowly, this is suspended weight, and this practice increases strength without increasing bulk, which is good if you want to develop physical, and mental, attributes specific to the martial arts. So, to coin a nifty sounding phrase, I was doing Extreme Suspended Weight Body Calisthenics.

The truth of this whole matter, however, eluded me until I injured myself. A separated shoulder, and I was reduced to rehabilitation, and I started doing light Yoga exercise. Here was something slower than Tai Chi, in which I suspended strength even longer, and did something that moved me into ever higher realms of fitness and martial arts ability. I realized that true strength is increased more by awareness than anything else.

This is the key, you know, for the body is a device in which, in most people, energy is stopped, blocked, not flowing, even no matter how much weight they lift. By doing yoga, and realizing the truth of increased awareness unblocking energy flows, I began to experience the true strength and wellness that the body is capable of. Karate and Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi and Yoga, life is made whole by the increase of awareness, and I recommend this sequence of practice to all.

Al Case has practiced martial arts for 40 years. If you want to sample a little of his strength through a free ebook, go to Monster Martial Arts.

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