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Mastering Tension and Relaxation

By Greg Mihovich

In order to master your body you need to master the skill of selective tension and
relaxation. So let’s start by looking at:

Tension

Tension = Strength. Do an experiment: squeeze something, like a thick pipe or a
hand gripper. First do it just with your forearm, while keeping the rest of the body
relaxed. Take a note of how strong your grip felt like.

Second, do it and also flex your abdominal and oblique muscles along with your
forearm. Take a note of how strong your grip felt like again. Stronger, huh?

Third, put your glutes into it, tensing them up. What the heck, you are already
getting it, you are not silly, squeeze your opposite fist as well. Get stronger!

What you just learned was a law of irradiation: the muscles of the whole
body linking up, or plugging in, if you wish with tension to amplify your
strength, make you stronger and saving you from injury.

Now once you learned the skill of tension start applying it when you under a load,
in a challenging position or just practicing to get stronger. It is that simple: just
generate maximum tension and have the tendons and ligaments to back up your
claim to a strongman title.

That is why you need to be patient, if you want to get truly strong. You need time,
because your tendons take much more time to develop than muscle tissue. But
they will start adapting and will continue to do so if you engage into lots of low
rep and high rep training.

Relaxation

Ok, now relax. Can you truly relax? Whenever you need to, like when resting, in
between connecting with punches and kicks, or while falling?

As you will practice generating tension in order to get stronger don’t
forget that you need to relax as well. It will allow you to waste less
energy, rest more efficiently, become more flexible and recover faster.

First, learn to relax while laying down or seating down (with back and head
support). Imagine a particular body part heavy and warm. Start with the face,
than follow with arms, legs, body and face one more time. If your face is tense
something else is tense for sure, that is why you go over your face twice. You can
tense up and than relax to better realize the difference between the two opposite
states.

Than learn to practice your new skill of relaxation under a variety of
circumstances (just not under a heavy load, leave that to tension), for example
when seating, talking, writing, running, fighting, etc.) After a while it will become
automatic reflex to be relaxed, supple and loose. That will pay off in faster and
more efficient actions, increased flexibility and mobility.

Performance = uniting Tension & Relaxation

Tension and relaxation are like two sides on the same coin, they are separate
skills, yet form a distinctive set of skills. In order to perform successfully you need
to master both, but than, also master fast and smooth transitions from one to
another.

For example, when throwing punches you should start in a loose stance (loose is
a combination of tension and relaxation but is neither one of the them, that
enables for quick transitions between the two states), generate tension from the
ground up in order to get the attack started, get relaxed during delivery, tense up
your fist upon impact and follow throw and relax again on recoil or before another
attack.

When performing in dynamic conditions you need to “switch gears”
constantly, alternating between sometimes lightning quick moments of
tension and relaxation multiple times. The faster the speed of such
transferring, the better athlete you are.

Especially, after you try doing any type of hi rep ballistic work, like time limited
kettlebell snatches for example, you will realize that you need to learn to employ
selective tension, or your work output and your results suffer.

Greg Mihovich
Performance Enhancement & Combat Arts Specialist
www.UndergroundGym.com

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