BUILDING THE SUIT AKA SILKREELING STRENGTH. BASICS. In a sense, strengthening the suit can be imagined as using a full-body dance-leotard, but you have to imagine that there are small muscles built into the fabric of the suit. Generally speaking, the imaginary muscles layers/sheets go in directions along the front and undersides of the body for contraction and along the back and upper/outer sides for expanding and lifting the body. To engage the muscle sheet of the suit, the suit needs to be slightly stretched (for a no-slack connection) and it helps to then inhale with a reverse breath and sort of inflate the body/suit so that there is indeed no slack. With no slack, the fabric of the whole body's "suit" can be used to twist an object in the hands. Even the suit around the legs is an important area to twist as an additive force to the whole suit. The general rule, using a twist like in the video below (where he breaks the limb) is to take out the slack in the sui
Posts
The Model of the Imaginary "Suit" I tend to use a cartoonish model in my head about the body being covered with an unwrinkled lycra "suit" that is somewhat elastic (like a leotard), but which can also actively contract-inward toward the torso/center along the limbs as we inhale and which can also tighten and contract-against the skin as we exhale. This "suit" supplements our normal strength both by supporting the muscles as they act and by adding to the overall strength when the suit moves and twists as a whole unit. The imaginary "suit" generally supports the muscle-tendon ("Sinew") channels, in terms of its contractions, but the "suit" also acts as a whole-body elastic covering that you can store elasticity in by twisting/bending-joints and inhaling: you can release elasticity by unwinding/unbending and exhaling. The "suit" follows the directions of forces that the muscle-tendon channels delineate: Opening