"Dropped diaphragms" and "internal power"
There is a persistent myth that I've heard over the years that somehow training in the internal martial arts gives you a big belly. I've never regarded this myth as anything other than an obvious, self-referential joke: ie. "I don't have a beer gut - it's just that my belly is full of qi/ki." Recently however I have become aware that some people actually think there is such a syndrome. Just yesterday a correspondent on an internet forum said that practising internal arts had given him a "dropped diaphragm" that "stretched the fascia" giving him a "thick inflated core [which] is great for MA but definitely not a hit with the ladies". 1 Indeed, many famous internal martial arts masters were, shall we say, well endowed in the mid-section. Consider the picture at the top right of this article of Wang Shujin, a formidable street fighter and student of the famous internal arts teacher Chen Pan Ling (my teacher's father). The foru...