Be like a balloon

I've been struggling with the "peng" jin and can't quite find the right balance between Peng and Muscle. Peng, it seems should have a balloon like quality to it - soft when in contact with something, but strong in terms of the quality of the expansion. It's the soft and strong that i'm trying to grasp. When I try to be soft, or more accurately be relaxed, the hand tends to be "limp". When I try to be strong, the hand just becomes stiff with little flexibility in the wrist, elbow, shoulder. Trying to find the balance is, erm, difficult (which i think is an understatement!).

The speed at which you train your form seems to help with honing this quality. The slower it is, the better you can feel the quality of "soft and strong". However, the leg will take its toll and thus shortening the training time.

Seems like training leg strength, relaxed kua, relaxed limbs etc must all come at the same time! I think that's probably one reason why form training is preferred over standing pole exercises (zhan zhuang). My current teacher made this point when i first started training with him. I'm pleasantly surprised when chessman made the same point in his post.

So back to form training...