Didn’t you hate it when your mom used to say, “Susan (or whoever), you NEED to clean your room” or “you NEED to empty the dishwasher” or even “you NEED to be nicer to your little brother.” One time I heard a young girl retort to her mother, “I don’t NEED to do anything but be born and die so back off.” I was never quite that forward with my own mother and would usually do whatever was asked even if I grumbled about it. But I hated the word “need.”

Well, here I go being your mother. Just imagine that I’m yelling this at you in my most shrill voice—“You NEED to take a Tai Chi class!”

Now I’m going to tell you why…
I took my first Tai Chi class this morning here at the gym. We’ve been offering them on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 8–9 a.m. since the first of the year. The young man who teaches the class is a professional mixed martial arts fighter and incredibly knowledgeable. There were three participants. The style that we’re learning is called Wu dang, and there are 120 movements in the entire sequence. I think we learned ten of them this morning. Was I sweating? Not after I stripped down to my tank top. But I was warm in my muscles like I had been working out for an hour. And I had this great sense of well-being. It was calming and exhilarating all at the same time.

So why exactly do you NEED to take Tai Chi?

Look at all these benefits:
1. Joint mobility: No matter whether you’re active in a sport or just hanging out doing nothing, your joints are being stressed. Tight muscles stress your joints and limit range of motion. De-facilitated muscles do the same thing. If you increase your joint mobility, you can increase your range of motion in your squat, golf swing, tennis serve, or remote control reach when you’re just sitting on the couch. Preserve joint health. Take Tai Chi.
2. Balance and stability: Right now, stand on one leg. DO IT! How long did you last? Five seconds? Ten seconds? Longer? Probably not because we just don’t do much balance and stability work. I see clients all day who can’t stabilize well enough to do a high step over something. And how many older people do you know who have fallen because they lost their balance? For that matter, Marc probably wouldn’t have fallen and torn his triceps is he had been taking Tai Chi (ok, so that could be a stretch but maybe not). Don’t fall and hurt yourself. Take Tai Chi!
3. Grace: Again, I don’t care what sport you play, but grace is a huge part of it. Powerlifting takes brute strength and lots of training, but it also takes grace. To be successful, you don’t just have to be strong. You have to be spatially aware of your body and how it flows with the surroundings. You wouldn’t ever get onto the squat platform in a suit and knee wraps without some sort of grace and awareness. And think about golf—driving, putting, and chipping all take different body positions and awareness. You need to understand the length of your body and the club and be able to judge how to put it all together to hit that little white ball and make it do what you want. Ever seen an elephant play golf? It probably wouldn’t work unless he took Tai Chi. Be graceful. Take Tai Chi!
4. Brain power: One of the members in class this morning has chronic back pain. In studying her condition, she has read that chronic pain can bring about up to a 10 percent diminished brain capacity. My assumption is that your brain starts to shut down due to the pain. How scary is that? Tai Chi is a discipline that can help increase brain power. You have to learn the moves and combinations, and you’re constantly forcing your brain to move in new and different ways. We learned everything in a slow and controlled manner this morning, but Steve also showed us the martial arts version, which is really fast. I can’t imagine what my brain would have to do to be able to accomplish a 120 move series quickly. Be smarter. Take Tai Chi!
5. Peace and quiet: The one thing I have learned recently in my personal yoga practice is that I wasn’t allowing myself to have genuine peace and quiet at any time during my day. What about you? You get up and turn on the TV, eat, get the kids up, go to work, go to the gym, come home and eat dinner, watch more TV, and go to sleep. Our daily lives don’t lend themselves to peace and quiet. Many of us don’t even know what that would even feel like. I can tell you that when you learn to add even five minutes of quiet into your day, you’re rejuvenated for everything. You train better and just act like a better human being. Be more peaceful. Take Tai Chi!
Convinced yet? You can take all five of these benefits and make them work for any sport. We have tri-athletes who work out at our gym. Imagine if they could increase joint mobility and lengthen their running stride or if they had better balance to help them through potential crash situations on the bike. What if you don’t have a sport but just enjoy life. Wouldn’t increased mobility help you to garden? Would an increase in brain power help you with the crosswords in the morning? Could it help stave off Alzheimer’s? Don’t you deserve to give yourself this gift? We all deserve it. So whether you take Tai Chi here at South Carolina Barbell or you find a class in your neighborhood, you really do NEED to take a Tai Chi class.