When one team pulls the other across the line, the rope travels: the movement is the work. When both pull equally hard, the rope stands still — and yet every muscle is working. That is exactly Zhan Zhuang: outwardly still, inwardly under marked load. And Yu Yong Nian goes one step further: only when the mind pulls in addition does what he calls the second movement begin.
“Two kinetics” is the term of the English edition. In the Chinese original they are 第一随意运动 and 第二随意运动 — the first and second voluntary movement. Yu thus divides voluntary motor activity: every sport knows the first, the second is Dachengquan’s real contribution. The division is his own model, not a category of muscle physiology.
Yu’s pair of terms “animal” and “vegetal” (位移运动 / 位静运动) is a different division: exercise with or without moving from the spot. An animal runs, a tree stands. Zhan Zhuang is always “vegetal” — but whoever merely holds the posture is still practising the first voluntary movement in it. The second begins only with the work of the mind.
That work is genuinely being done in quiet standing is something Yu backs with measurements. After ten to twenty minutes the body reports unmistakably that pulling is going on — only the rope does not move.
In the small-step stance: 74 before, 86 after four minutes of merely holding. One minute of mental work each time raised it to 113 and 119, two minutes in a row to 144 — with the posture unchanged.
The thigh muscles contract and relax at high frequency; the warmth rises measurably in that area.
Warming, sweating and a feeling of well-being — the signature of genuine inner work.
Merely standing already forces the working muscles into constant contraction to carry the position. That is the base load — still the first movement. In the trial: 74 → 86 beats.
In addition the practitioner, by means of the mind, makes the resting muscles tense and release. The pulse jumps at once and drops just as fast when it stops. This is exactly where Dachengquan’s own contribution to training physiology begins.
The division into working and resting muscles is Yu Yong Nian’s own model. Muscle physiology knows fibre types, motor units and the roles of agonist and antagonist — but no class of muscle that rests in everyday life and can be addressed separately by a command of the mind. The model is therefore not refuted, but not established in this form; it serves as a picture for practice, not as physiology. Whether the “resting muscles” mean the tonic postural musculature remains open. The measurements above are Yu’s figures as well — single measurements on one person, not a study. What is established is the core: standing is isometric contraction — a high energy turnover, but no mechanical work. That is exactly what “standing still is work” means. The tug of war is this page’s picture, not Yu’s. Physiologically it fits the second movement best: there both teams sit in the same body — flexors and extensors pull against each other at the mind’s command (voluntary co-contraction, → Zheng Li).
The second movement is deepened in stages. Yu names four kinds of mental work, each with its own target: 紧松 trains the resting muscles, 连接 the nerves, 扽筋 the tendons, 牵挂 the mind. Tap a stage.
The second movement does not run by itself. Four of Yiquan’s tools build it and keep it going.
The primary training system of the second movement — standing motionless while, inside, the pull is at full strength.
Song (releasing) and Jin (tensing): the language for the contraction and relaxation cycles of the resting muscles.
The imagination is the command on which the pull is made: seven types of mental activity in two modes (monitoring, excitation) address the resting muscles (→ Yi).
Without releasing the working muscles the resting muscles stay out of reach — whoever cramps up has no hand free for the fine pull.
Conventional training moves the rope. Zhan Zhuang holds it still — and pulls with full strength all the same: force without travel. What is meant to grow from it Yu calls 物, “the thing”: the unified strength of the trained practitioner, and his technical name for it is the second voluntary movement.