"Just Relax"

Author: Bret Gordon

​One of the most common instructions given in martial arts is, "just relax." While well-intentioned, it is also one of the least helpful pieces of advice an instructor can give. Strictly speaking, relaxation is the wrong word.

​If you were to truly relax every skeletal muscle in your body, you would simply collapse into a limp heap on the floor. Healthy movement always requires a certain level of muscle activation to maintain posture, support the joints, and interact with the environment. The real objective is not relaxation, but the elimination of unnecessary tension. Unfortunately, that distinction is often lost. Muscle tension is not something you can consciously switch on or off through willpower. Rather, it is the consequence of how the nervous system recruits muscle to solve a movement problem. The goal is therefore not to "relax," but to teach the nervous system that it can accomplish the task with less muscular effort while preserving structure, stability, and efficiency.

In the Chinese internal arts, the process of releasing unnecessary tension is called Song 松. In Aiki Jujutsu, the functional equivalent is Batsu Ryoku 抜力, literally "releasing power" or "power from release."

Neither term means becoming limp or weak. Rather, Batsu Ryoku is the result of continuously minimizing unnecessary muscle recruitment while preserving the body's structural integrity. It is not relaxation itself, but the product of increasingly efficient motor control.

---

The nervous system is constantly adjusting motor unit recruitment, activating only the muscle fibers it believes are necessary for the task at hand. As recruitment increases, muscle becomes mechanically stiffer, reducing its ability to transmit force efficiently. This is important because muscle does not transmit force solely along the direction of its fibers. A substantial portion of muscular force is transferred laterally through the surrounding connective tissue. When muscles become excessively stiff, their viscoelastic properties change, dampening the transmission of these mechanical pressure waves. Even during maximal effort, muscle fibers are continuously cycling on and off rather than remaining fully contracted, allowing force to be sustained while delaying fatigue.
​
Efficient force transmission also depends on the muscles and connective tissues remaining mechanically compatible, a concept known as impedance matching. When muscle becomes significantly stiffer than the surrounding fascia, mechanical pressure waves are reflected and dissipated rather than passing smoothly through the body. The result is that the body works harder while transmitting force less efficiently.
​
The question then becomes: if you cannot consciously relax a muscle, how does unnecessary tension actually disappear? The answer is not by trying to relax individual muscles, but by changing the conditions that cause the nervous system to recruit them in the first place. Batsu Ryoku develops by refining the way the brain organizes movement rather than by consciously suppressing muscular activity.
​
One of the primary mechanisms is the refinement of proprioception together with internal phenomenological awareness. As training progresses, the practitioner develops an increasingly precise awareness of posture, balance, pressure, and the internal organization of the body. This reflects the integration of proprioceptive, tactile, vestibular, and interoceptive information into a unified perception of oneself. When sensory information is incomplete or uncertain, the nervous system compensates by recruiting additional muscle fibers to increase stability and reduce uncertainty. As perception becomes more refined, the brain receives increasingly accurate feedback, allowing it to make smaller, more precise adjustments rather than relying on broad muscular contraction. The same movement can now be performed with fewer motor units while preserving both stability and efficiency.

Repeated practice also refines the nervous system's internal models of movement. Every repetition teaches the brain which muscles are genuinely necessary for a given task and which are simply habitual. Over time, motor learning eliminates unnecessary recruitment while reducing the simultaneous activation of opposing muscle groups. Beginners often stabilize their joints by co-contracting agonists and antagonists as a protective strategy. Experienced practitioners achieve equal or greater stability through far more selective recruitment, using only the muscles that truly contribute to the movement.

Attention itself also influences motor recruitment. Directing conscious attention toward individual muscles often increases localized muscular activity, whereas directing attention toward posture, balance, intent, or the desired movement encourages the nervous system to organize the body more globally and efficiently. Rather than consciously instructing individual muscles to contract or relax, establish the intention of the movement and allow the nervous system to organize the body to accomplish it.

Underlying all of these mechanisms is the continuous balance between neural excitation and inhibition. The nervous system is constantly activating muscles while simultaneously suppressing unnecessary activity through descending inhibitory pathways, reciprocal inhibition, recurrent inhibition, and continuous sensory feedback. Batsu Ryoku is therefore not simply the ability to produce force, but the ability to continually inhibit excess force. The nervous system constantly evaluates the demands of the task, increasing recruitment where necessary while preventing muscular activation from spreading beyond what the movement actually requires.

---

Finally, there is an important predictive component. Long before movement begins, the nervous system is already anticipating the mechanical demands of the task. When uncertainty, resistance, or instability is expected, it responds by increasing muscle recruitment and co-contracting opposing muscle groups, effectively bracing the body against potential perturbation. While this strategy enhances immediate stability, it also increases internal stiffness and interferes with efficient force transmission. Through repeated training, the nervous system gradually learns that stability can be maintained through skeletal alignment, connective tissue continuity, and refined motor control rather than generalized muscular bracing. Over time, these predictive motor commands become increasingly economical, recruiting only the muscle fibers necessary for the task.
​
A simple example is picking up a cardboard box that appears to be full of books but is actually empty.

​Before your hands even make contact with the box, your nervous system predicts that a heavy load is about to be lifted. In anticipation, it recruits additional motor units, increases stiffness throughout the arms and trunk, and co-contracts opposing muscles to stabilize the joints. When the box turns out to be nearly weightless, however, it accelerates far faster than expected. Your arms may overshoot, the box jerks upward, and your movement briefly loses precision because the nervous system prepared for a problem that did not exist. Almost immediately, sensory feedback informs the brain that its prediction was incorrect, and muscle recruitment is rapidly reduced to match the actual weight. Nothing about this adjustment required you to consciously relax your muscles. Your nervous system simply updated its prediction.

​Batsu Ryoku develops in much the same way. Through repeated experience, the nervous system learns that many of the protective muscular contractions it once considered necessary are not required, allowing movement to become progressively more efficient, more connected, and paradoxically, more powerful.

So, the next time an instructor tells you to "just relax," understand what they are really trying to communicate. They are not asking you to become limp, weak, or passive. They are asking you to stop using more muscular exertion than the movement requires. 

Whether you call it Song, Batsu Ryoku, or simply efficient movement, the goal is the same: use no more effort than is necessary while preserving structure and the ability to generate force. As your nervous system becomes more skilled at predicting the demands of movement, interpreting sensory information, and selectively recruiting muscle, unnecessary tension gradually disappears on its own. In other words, relaxation is not the practice. It is the byproduct. The real practice is teaching your nervous system that it no longer needs to brace against a problem that doesn't exist.

---