The 70% rule for gradual improvement
Aug. 14th, 2022 08:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nancylebovI posted recently that my ability to go down stairs without pain has been improving, and it's a result of qi gong. Nobody asked, but I'm going into some detail anyway.
I've been studying qi gong at energyarts.com. They have video programs (live and recorded) as well as a school in Colorado.
I am not a teacher, though I'll be doing my best to be accurate.
I hope people can get something useful out of what I'm writing, but you can't learn this by reading it and thinking it's a good idea, and you can't learn much by noodling with it a little.
The 70% rule has been very valuable for me. It about making a 70% effort (30% or so if you're sick or injured). This is enough to make progress, while making it hard to injure yourself or get burned out.
It's very un-American, since a great deal of American culture is about valuing 110% effort. That sort of effort can be appropriate for urgent situations, but not for training.
To be fair, it's not just an American issue-- there are styles of qi gong, yoga, etc. which take a gung ho attitude towards enlightenment, which is also risky. And painful methods of learning martial arts, too.
Anyway, I've found the 70% rule to be very challenging. It was a jump just to have to pay enough attention to do it instead of assuming that whatever level of effort I felt like putting in was correct.
And it's thorough. No trying to do better than the previous day-- it's paying attention to what is feasible today. There's some tolerance of pain in the system, but not a lot. It's mostly about improving attention rather than pushing through.
It's about improvement rather than drama.
One of the principles is to not add tension. After all, you're going for relaxed and easy movement, and pushing yourself hard enough to make you tense up is the opposite of what you're aiming at.
It's not just about not comparing yourself to your past self or your ideas about what you "ought" to be able to do, it's about being really picky. You can raise your arms, but how high can you raise them smoothly and easily? If you turn your palms up, it might be more difficult, in which case you wouldn't raise your arms as high. What happens if you point your elbows towards the floor? Make changes gently.
Here's an aspect I haven't managed yet. One side will have more range of movement than the other. Both sides should match the more restricted side, and eventually the more restricted side will get more range.
I've been thinking about this essay for a while. At least the impulse to yell at people about how they should be careful with themselves has faded out.
I've been studying qi gong at energyarts.com. They have video programs (live and recorded) as well as a school in Colorado.
I am not a teacher, though I'll be doing my best to be accurate.
I hope people can get something useful out of what I'm writing, but you can't learn this by reading it and thinking it's a good idea, and you can't learn much by noodling with it a little.
The 70% rule has been very valuable for me. It about making a 70% effort (30% or so if you're sick or injured). This is enough to make progress, while making it hard to injure yourself or get burned out.
It's very un-American, since a great deal of American culture is about valuing 110% effort. That sort of effort can be appropriate for urgent situations, but not for training.
To be fair, it's not just an American issue-- there are styles of qi gong, yoga, etc. which take a gung ho attitude towards enlightenment, which is also risky. And painful methods of learning martial arts, too.
Anyway, I've found the 70% rule to be very challenging. It was a jump just to have to pay enough attention to do it instead of assuming that whatever level of effort I felt like putting in was correct.
And it's thorough. No trying to do better than the previous day-- it's paying attention to what is feasible today. There's some tolerance of pain in the system, but not a lot. It's mostly about improving attention rather than pushing through.
It's about improvement rather than drama.
One of the principles is to not add tension. After all, you're going for relaxed and easy movement, and pushing yourself hard enough to make you tense up is the opposite of what you're aiming at.
It's not just about not comparing yourself to your past self or your ideas about what you "ought" to be able to do, it's about being really picky. You can raise your arms, but how high can you raise them smoothly and easily? If you turn your palms up, it might be more difficult, in which case you wouldn't raise your arms as high. What happens if you point your elbows towards the floor? Make changes gently.
Here's an aspect I haven't managed yet. One side will have more range of movement than the other. Both sides should match the more restricted side, and eventually the more restricted side will get more range.
I've been thinking about this essay for a while. At least the impulse to yell at people about how they should be careful with themselves has faded out.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-14 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-14 06:30 pm (UTC)I'm glad to hear that this is working out well for you, and I really think that I could put that 70% approach to good use - not necessarily in terms of exercise or physical activity in general, but in other things that I'm trying to do better at.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-14 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-15 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-15 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-29 10:36 am (UTC)