The Soft Overcomes the Strong: Muscles Should Be Soft
Big, hard muscles are not a sign of health; they are a warning. When your muscles are soft, your skeleton stands straight and your body comes alive.
Part 2 · How the Body Works I — The Framework of the Human Body · Essay 13
Ask teenagers today what kind of body they want, and most will describe one covered in big, bulging muscles. They take protein supplements, lift heavy weights at the gym, and compare photos of their bodies on their phones. Adults are not so different. These days everyone seems to agree that we lose muscle as we age, so we need strength training. The belief that bigger, harder muscles are better has become the conventional wisdom of our time.
The Momsalim Movement turns this conventional wisdom on its head. Good muscles are not big and hard; they are soft. In my last essay, I called muscles the clothes the skeleton wears. Today, let us talk about those clothes.
Nothing Is Softer Than Water, Yet Nothing Is Stronger
In Laozi’s Dào Dé Jīng (道德經), there is a phrase: shàng shàn ruò shuǐ (上善若水) — “the highest good is like water.” Water does not fight. It flows to the lowest places and gently embraces everything it touches. Yet drop by drop, over the years, it wears a hole through solid rock. The soft overcomes the strong, and the supple overcomes the hard. Put shàng shàn ruò shuǐ into the language of the Momsalim Movement, and it says this: good muscles are not hard and strong, but supple and soft.
What Do Muscles Do?
Muscles wrap around the bones and work with them to create movement. They protect the skeleton, and when a bone slips out of place, they pull it back. But muscles do much more than we can see. The beating heart, the stomach kneading food, the intestines pushing it along — all of this is the work of muscles. The muscles that move your hands and feet and the muscles that make up your internal organs share the same roots. So does your skin. Many people think the skin has nothing to do with muscle, but the skin, too, is part of the muscles. From the skin that wraps the body to the organs deep inside, muscle runs through every part of us. That is why muscles must be soft for the arms and legs, the internal organs, and the skin to do their jobs.
Hard Muscle and Soft Muscle
Muscle built up by force — by lifting weights and straining — is what the Momsalim Movement calls gāngxìng (剛性) muscle, or hard muscle. It is the kind of muscle bodybuilders have. Muscle that forms naturally, in harmony with the structure of the body, as we live with good posture, is called ruǎnxìng (軟性) muscle, or soft muscle. Think of a young child’s muscles. When the body is straight, the bones, not the muscles, carry its weight. So the muscles have no need to tense up. They stay soft and relaxed most of the time and become firm only when strength is needed. That is soft muscle.
Hard muscle does have its uses. It can produce a great deal of force in an instant, and it looks impressive. But apart from those two things, it is less useful than you might think. It is also inefficient: it wastes a great deal of energy just to move, so it wears out quickly. This is exactly what Korean elders meant when they said someone “has no geun-gi (根氣)” — no stamina to keep going. It is also why long-distance runners, and people in any sport that demands endurance, tend to have soft muscles.
Hard muscle melts away soon after you stop training, leaving sagging flesh behind, like a flat tire. Look at photos of bodybuilders who once held audiences spellbound on stage, now in old age: often the impressive muscles are gone, and only loose, wrinkled skin remains. Above all, hard muscle is stiff. Stiff muscle presses on the nerves that run through it and blocks the flow of blood and lymph. Muscle pain follows, and circulation and communication inside the body are disrupted.
Soft muscle is different. Because it uses little energy, it does not tire easily. In Korean, the word for the power to keep going without giving up is kkeun-gi, and it comes from geun-gi (根氣). When children play all day and still come home begging their tired parents to play some more, it is because their muscles are soft and springy, like rubber bands. Soft muscle, formed naturally to fit the structure of the body, does not waste away easily, even with age. It is elastic and resilient, and it keeps the body soft and flexible.
The more our muscles lose their softness, the closer we come to frailty and disease. It is not age that stiffens our muscles; it is bad posture. And stiff, hardened muscles speed up aging.
Not All Hard Muscle Comes from the Gym
Muscle that has stiffened because the skeleton has twisted is also a kind of hard muscle. People with neck pain have stiff neck muscles. People with shoulder pain have tight shoulder muscles. People with back pain have back muscles as hard as a concrete floor. People with lower back pain and tingling legs have stiff muscles around the sacrum, and people who often get calf cramps have tight calves. No one has ever had a painful shoulder with shoulder muscles as soft as a baby’s skin.
Thighs that are unusually thick compared with the upper body are not a sign of strong legs. They are thick because the pelvis has lost its balance, so too much force lands on the thighs with every step. When the buttocks grow unusually large with age, that too is a sign that the pelvis has lost its balance. Once the pelvis settles back into place and the lower back regains its natural curve, the buttocks get smaller and the thighs get slimmer.
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Why do muscles stiffen? As I wrote in my last essay, the muscles, tendons, and ligaments work without rest to pull twisted bones back into place. When a bone stays out of place for a long time, the muscles keep pulling for a long time, and in the end they stiffen. A stiff muscle, then, is not a lazy muscle; it is a muscle that has worked itself to exhaustion. Look at it the other way around: when stiff muscles soften, it means the skeleton has been set right.
Your Muscles Are Not Weak — The Body’s Remarkable Power to Regulate Itself
When your lower back hurts, you are told to strengthen your back and core. When your knees bother you, you are told to build up your thighs, and when you slouch, to train your back. The idea is that because the bones are weak, the muscles should be built up to take over part of the bones’ work. Elderly people who walk unsteadily and fall often are told their leg muscles have weakened and they need strength training. People whose grip is too weak to hold things are told to squeeze hand grippers to build finger strength. When I was diagnosed with spondylolysis as a young man, I was given the same advice: strengthen my back muscles so they could take over at least some of the bones’ work. But this advice comes from not understanding how the body works.
Our body is not a machine assembled out of bones and muscles. It is a finely tuned system in which countless tissues and organs constantly exchange information to keep us alive. Without our even noticing, the heart beats, breathing goes on, and body temperature and blood pressure adjust to the situation. When we eat, the digestive organs go to work; when we exercise, the heart beats faster and we breathe harder. When we cut ourselves, the body immediately begins to stop the bleeding and repair the damaged tissue. In this way, the body adjusts itself as conditions change. Muscles are no exception. When part of the body is injured, the muscles adjust their own movement and strength to protect it.
Anyone who has badly sprained an ankle knows this. At first, the pain keeps you from putting your foot down properly. Even after a few days, when the pain has eased, you cannot walk normally right away. You are afraid to put weight on the ankle, and your muscles feel as if their strength is gone, so you limp. But your muscles have not lost their strength. This is a protective response: the body deliberately limits movement so that the injured joint is not overloaded. That is why, once the misaligned joint returns to its place, the muscles gradually regain their strength. If you could not use your strength, it was not because your muscles had none; it was because your body was holding it back.
The same principle explains why elderly people fall so often. To walk without falling, the pelvis, hip joints, knees, and ankles must work in harmony. The muscles that keep us balanced as we walk number about 100, counting both legs. For all of them to move as one, the nerves and muscles must work together with great precision — and what directly governs that precision is the balance of the skeleton. Frequent falls do not happen because the leg muscles are weak. They happen because the muscles we already have are not working together in harmony. When the cause lies in the skeleton, building muscle is barking up the wrong tree.
The same goes for the fingers. If your fingers are too weak to hold things properly or to wring out a wet towel, it is not because your finger muscles are weak, but because your finger joints are sprained. Once a sprained joint returns to its place, the strength comes back on the spot. Strength that months of squeezing a hand gripper could not bring back returns in an instant.
It is time to change the way we look at muscles. Muscles do not exist apart from the skeleton. They transmit force through the bones and joints, contract and relax under the control of the nerves, and do their job within the balance of the whole body. So when your muscles feel weak, do not start by thinking about how to make them stronger. First ask why they cannot use the strength they have, and what structural problem is holding them back. More often than not, the answer lies in a twisted skeleton.
Why Massages and Pain-Relief Patches Don’t Last
When our shoulder muscles knot up, we massage them, try to work out the knots, and slap on pain-relief patches. It feels good, but the relief does not last. Massage, acupressure, and patches soften stiff muscles only for a while, briefly easing the pressure on the nerves. The cause of the stiffness — the twisted bone — is still there, so before long the muscles tighten again and the pain comes back.
Direction also matters when loosening muscles. The lower back is the center of the body’s bones and muscles, and from there the muscles run both upward and downward. So above the lower back, muscles should be worked from top to bottom, and below the lower back, from bottom to top. Work them in the wrong direction, and instead of loosening, they may grow even stiffer.
Good Posture Over Strength Training
Here the Momsalim Movement gives a clear warning: strength training on a twisted skeleton is exactly the wrong prescription, because it only makes the deformation of the bones worse. If you force the muscles that are holding a twisted bone to grow even stronger, they end up locking the bone even more tightly in its twisted shape. That is why I advise people over forty to stop exercises that force their muscles to grow. Instead of building muscle, set your skeleton straight. Our ancestors’ way of staying healthy was simple: whether sitting, standing, or walking, they straightened their lower back and opened their chest. Live with good posture, and the muscles you need will develop on their own, while the muscles you do not need will fade away, leaving you with the most balanced body possible. Without sweating it out on gym machines, your chest opens, your shoulders broaden, and you stand tall and strong. Simply walking on flat ground for 10 to 20 minutes a day, with your lower back straight and your chest open, will soften the muscles that bad posture has stiffened.
Live with your head up instead of bowed, and your neck muscles soften. Live with your back straight, and your back muscles soften. Live with your lower back upright, and the muscles of your lower back, the area around your sacrum, and your legs soften. When the muscles soften, the pressure comes off the nerves running through them, the internal organs do their full work, and the twisted bones follow their homing instinct back into place. Your head clears, and your whole body feels refreshed. Being free of disease does not mean being healthy. You are healthy when your head is clear, your whole body feels refreshed, and you are full of energy.
The Soft Overcomes the Strong
My teacher, Kim Chul, is well along in years, yet his body is as straight and supple as any young person’s. Does he do strength training? No. He has simply lived his whole life with his lower back straight and his chest open.
Water is soft, yet dripping water wears away stone. Soft muscles are not bulky, but they do not tire easily, they do not age quickly, and they keep the body full of energy. Before you envy big, hard muscles, press your own muscles and feel how soft they are. The secret of health lies in soft, springy muscles.
In my next essay, I will talk about the last part of the framework of our body: the nerves. How do the nerves housed inside the spine direct the whole body? And when the skeleton twists, what happens to that chain of command?
Your body can heal itself — learn how.
