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Writer's picturedavid cheng

Watch your back

Updated: May 14, 2022

We pay a lot more attention to the front if we divide our surroundings into front and back. It is because our four most important sensory organs (eyes, nose, mouse, and ears) are facing toward the front. We are a lot more efficient in using our muscles marching forward, such as the quadriceps, biceps, and deltoids, than the muscles marching backward, such as the trapezius, rhomboids, erector spinae, gluteus, and hamstrings. Based on the Yin-Yang definition, we can say the first group of muscles I mentioned are Yang muscles, and the second group Yin muscles. We focus too much on the Yang and not enough on the Yin. The result is the over activated (strong but tight) Yang muscles and less activated (weak and loose) Yin muscles.

When a new student joined our group, the first thing I did was to test the student's stability by asking the student to stand still in his/her best aligned position. I then will poke the spots that I can sense was weak, while asking the student to resist the poking force and maintain the stability. I gradually adding the poking force so that the student had the time to react. The whole process is called "Testing Strength". The purpose of this test was to help the student to realize and identify the muscles that were no longer to be fully functioned. Based on the testing results, the weak muscles were identified. I then asked the student to do some exercises specifically to train those weak muscles.


The weak spots or Qi stagnation points for the beginners were normally found at:

  1. The joint of the cervical and thoracic spine (C7/T1)

  2. The lower back

  3. The pelvic floor muscles

  4. The gluteus

  5. The Achilles tendon

  6. The Xiphoid process

  7. The sternocleidomastoid muscle


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