Intrigued? Well, let’s just cover the reasons that you think you should do tai chi:
- helps you to relax and de-stress
- improves your health
- improves your balance
- keeps you moving, particularly if you’re in your senior years
- improves your sense of wellbeing
There are loads of other reasons why people do tai chi but these are the more popular reasons that people join a tai chi class.
And now on to the main reason why I think you should do tai chi
As you’ve probably guessed, I’m big into sport, fitness, overall health and maintaining a good weight (well, bodyfat percentage) so for me, the two reasons why everyone should do tai chi irrespective of their age are as follows:
- you burn calories
- it builds leg muscles
Tai Chi burns calories
It might be slow and gentle but it can be a proper workout when you do it under the guidance of a teacher. The average overweight person can burn 300+ kcals an hour. The best bit about it is that you won’t have stressed your joints nor will you have hated every second of it as some burly personal trainer is shouting at you to give him another 3 reps while you feel you’re dying!
It’s great for your legs
When performed properly, you are essentially practising slow partial lunges for an hour which will stimulate the thighs and slowly grow the muscles in that area. Larger muscles require more calories to maintain so you are going to burn even more calories when resting.
The trick is to:
- achieve correct stances (make sure the knees are bent where relevant)
- control the transition between postures so you don’t just dump your foot on the floor when stepping forward as that just makes it too easy to perform
- make sure the supporting leg is bent over the toes when transitioning between stances.
This is a great video for explaining how to move between the stances.
If you find the moves easy after 5 minutes, then bend your knees a little bit more and take even longer to step between the stances!
So, you can see that if you perform tai chi correctly, you can develop your leg muscles, burn fat, lose weight and develop toned legs.
Your 30 day challenge
Now to put this into practice. I invite you to practice just 10 minutes of tai chi walking everyday for the next 30 days. Let me know how you get on by posting on my Facebook page!