Courses for People Association (PA) - Taichi for Musculoskeletal Dysfunction

Courses for Community Centres/Clubs (CCs) and Residents' Committee (RC) Centres:

1. Multi-Racial Harmony Taiji
2. Taichi for Musculoskeletal Dysfunction
3. Taijiquan

Taichi for Musculoskeletal Dysfunction has been introduced by SE Tan to the Community Learning quite recently to improve general public and existing Taichi practioners' musculoskeletal acute and chronic problems. This also helps to address most of the issues that the practioners faced during their practices like weak muscles, poor movement patterns and poor biomechanics causing lower back pain, knee pain, ankle sprain, foot pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, golf/tennis elbow, dumbness on upper/lower extremities etc.

Introduction
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Training Tai Chi with good biomenchanics and motor control principles to improve neuromuscular control and prevent musculoskeletal dysfunction. This type of training not only improves health and fitness of the practioners but also enable continuous lefelong mind and body learning and positive skills transfer to Activity of Daily Living and other sports such as pilates, yoga etc.

There are three common musculoskeletal imbalances namely:

1. Foot over-pronation (foot collapses inward the midline of the body)

As the foot pronates, the leg also rotates inward the midline of the body, affecting the knee and hip alignment. When the leg internal rotates inward, the pelvic usually moves an anteriorly rotated position.

2. Anterior pelvic tilt

The pelvic rotted naturally forward about 10 degree. An excess of more than this angle usually accompanied with excessive lumbar lordosis which is over-arching the low back

3. Excessive Thoracic Kyphosis

The thoracic spine is naturally forward, forming a slight kyphotic curve. When this curvature is excessive and the shoulders round forward, it can cause various clinical issues. The overly rounded position causes the shoulders blades to move away from the spine and slide forward on the rib cage. This can affects the functioning of the shoulder joints and arms. Excessive thoracic kyphosis usually accompanies excessive anterior tilt.

Training Format
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There is 10 minutes warm-up followed by about 10 minutes of anatomy train stretchig and mild body weight resistance training at the beginning of the session. 30 minutes on Tai Chi practices using current 18 or 24 steps (Go Back to Basic) applying the principles and finally 10 minutes for relaxation.

The trainees attires are sports pant and white T-shirt with collar. Trainees are require to bring along exercise mat and wrist weight (0.5kg per hand) for training.

Number of sessions: 10

Training Duration: 1 hour per session