Five Common Bad Zhan Zhuang Structural Habits

There are many different structural habits a practitioner can build into their Zhan Zhuang practice. A practitioner can often practice alone for years without noticing or worse yet never take the time to validate that they are practicing Zhan Zhuang skill sets correctly. Here are five common bad habits often overlooked by practitioners in their Zhan Zhuang training.


1. Collapsing / Hunching over - The structural problem of hunching is so very common and this habit can take a long time to correct so it’s at the top of the list. I have seen people really make amazing changes in their body over time to the point that they don’t even look like the same person. I’ve heard people say they can breathe better when they lose their hunch. I will say they look much younger and alive after they spent the time to correct this. So, what causes this problem? This problem is often caused by a daily life of working over a keyboard, planting rice, or by keeping your eyes down and not looking into the eyes of the king depending where you live and life style. Being aware and adjusting your posture really helps with bringing about long term change. Like any habit that took years to develop, it may also take a long time to change. Make it one of the things you check often.


2. Ankle alignment - Ankle alignment is so overlooked and is a root cause to many other problems. When people overlook ankle alignment in Zhan Zhuang and Wujifa practices, they end up making a number of other structural adjustments to their posture and that‘s why it’s second on the list of bad habits. There are many causes of poor ankle alignment such as wearing poor fitting shoes over many years to inactivity so that the resulting connective tissues in the foot and ankle become more and more distorted. Many times knee pain is caused by poor ankle alignment and trying to correct it with the hip creates a torque in the knee area as people try to re-align themselves. The best practice is to start with the feet and align them as best as possible (which again can take years, again, if ever). There are some tricks that some people have used. See Wujifa Zhan Zhuang Practice: Tight Calves and Ankles. Also seeing a qualified teacher who understands these things can really help as well.


3. Holding in the lower back and pelvis - Both the lower back and pelvis are included together here as they are rarely seen alone. When holding is found in only one of these two areas, a common response for example to relaxing the pelvis will be to tighten the lower back or vice versa, relaxing the lower back and tightening the pelvic area. Relaxing both are key for better Wujifa Zhan Zhuang practice. One of the big problems is people often store a lot of tension in the lower back and pelvis when they push themselves to hard. Simply taking a break and noticing and stretching throughout the day helps. Over at Internal Gong Fu Blogspot there is a long post about relaxing different areas of the pelvis (See: Relaxing the Pelvic Floor for Tai Chi and Zhan Zhuang). Taking a deep breath and exhale while relaxing those areas while practicing your Zhan Zhuang can help too. I’ll repeat, a simple stretch can aid in making progress and there are a lot of good YouTube videos you can look up (see comment area for suggestions). When practicing Zhan Zhuang, notice the habits of "tightening" and let yourself relax. It will take time to change a habit but it can be achieved pretty quickly (weeks or months) if you take the time and stay with it.

4. Knee Torque - Knee torque was talked about with the ankle alignment above, but there are more causes and knee torque deserves to be number four on this list because it is so common. While practicing Zhan Zhuang people often "lock" themselves into place (See: Is Your Stance Like a Dead Post) to take the weight out of their legs or to make it more tolerable by slightly torque-ing the knees in or out. The answer is to "slowly" build up to standing longer periods of time and change this habit of torque-ing the knee. Also over time the I.T. bands can be shortened and this can cause problems with the knees as well. Hip and lower back alignment as well as ankle alignment are common problems that contribute to knee torque in Zhan Zhuang practices. This is another case where a qualified instructor can really help you notice and make the changes you need to make with changing the habit of knee torque.


5. Chest/upper back and shoulder tension – Chest and shoulder tension are so common that for many it is the number one bad habit of people who practice Zhan Zhuang. You may be asking yourself why chest and shoulder tension/tightness is listed as number five on this list? This issue is listed as number five because many people who train Zhan Zhuang practices know they have this issue. If you visit or train with any high level masters or go to high-quality seminars you will see kind of adjustment being shared over and over again. It is the kind of habit that people change and keep picking back up and so it takes diligent practice to change this habit. If the muscles are chronically tense you may need to stretch often and get some bodywork like Rolfing to help speed you along the way. Most people simply need to pay attention and correct the situation and develop new habits.


I know of some instructors that will adjust the arms to a higher level for tense shoulders. This will cause the shoulder muscles to feel like they are on fire. Please don’t do this at home because you want to wait until the shoulder muscles give up, drop and relax and most people will give up way before that and develop more tightening in the shoulder muscles. A better way is to let the arms drop a little lower so the shoulders don’t have to work so hard to try to support the arms until you can understand what connection is, what relaxed is. Remember in Wujifa we say "Relaxed is not limp" and it may take some people awhile to understand what that means.


Another suggestion for the chest is to breathe deeply and exhale and simply "let the chest fall". Both this and the suggestion above don’t create a long term change directly. Only really paying attention and changing your habits over time will do that. What these two suggestions will do is give you some awareness of what a more relaxed chest and shoulders feel like.


Five Common Bad Zhan Zhuang Structural Habits - Conclusions - 


I hope this was helpful and a reminder to pay close attention to correcting any bad Zhan Zhuang habits you may have. One more quick suggestion that people sometimes find helpful, and please don’t make it a habit, is to tighten a tense area and then relax it quickly. This will also bring some awareness to the possibilities of structural change. Also, remember one of the best pieces of advice I can share, that is see a qualified instructor for assistance and verification. Many of these types of corrections can only really be made in person and hands on.


There are many more bad Zhan Zhuang habits we could add to a list like this such as: zoning out, practicing dead post, letting the mind wander, check the clock every couple minutes, and the worst of the bad habits that didn’t make the Zhan Zhuang bad habits list is not practicing at all! Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions or if I missed any other bad habits you’d like to see included in this or future list. Have a great day!