What improvements in your quality of life can you expect from consistent Tai Chi practice? Will it build bigger biceps, give you a rippling abdominal six-pack or prepare you for your next marathon?

By now we all know that training is specific. The best way to prepare for a marathon is to run long distances and the best way to build a body that looks like a “condom stuffed with walnuts” (as someone described Arnold Schwarzenegger in his bodybuilding days) is to engage in bodybuilding-type resistance training.

So where does this leave us with regards to Tai Chi? Will it give you the strength of a lumberjack and the serenity of a sage, as so often advertised? Quite possibly, yes, if you work at it hard enough.

Irrespective of stylistic differences, Tai Chi should equip you with the ability to counteract the effects of stress by improving your posture, deepening and refining your breathing and positively affecting your energy flow. This will take you quite some way towards the serenity of the sage.

Tai Chi will also teach you how to use “whole body power”, i.e. how to integrate various parts of your body more efficiently so as to be more powerful in your everyday life. You may not have bulging biceps, but you will be able to recruit the whole body much more efficiently for a variety of tasks, from lifting heavy loads without injuring yourself to running after a bus. Your co-ordination, balance and flexibility will improve tremendously. So, yes, even lumberjacks could benefit from Tai Chi training.

Will it make you raise a sweat, burn more calories and look svelte in a swimsuit? Now, that would depend on which style of Tai Chi you happen to be practicing. If you practice a “large frame” style that uses low stances, extended movements and explosive issuing of force, then you may well be dripping by the end of the workout session and your legs are likely to feel as if they are on fire. Chen style, a limited number of the variants of the Yang style and the “Power Tai Chi” as developed by myself for use in a health club environment are useful in this regard.

Which is not to say that such styles are superior to those demanding less physical exertion (i.e. higher stances and/or smaller frames). Culturally, looking at Tai Chi’s roots in China, many practitioners were members of farming communities whose daily work gave them all the sweating they might desire and then some. Others were scholars or merchants for whom the kind of body we see today on the covers of fitness magazines would not have been very appealing. Some of the other Tai Chi styles specifically prefer not to emphasize external physical exertion, whether for cultural or conceptual reasons.

So, as always, you first need to determine exactly what your goals are before you can choose the training method that will give you the specific results you are seeking.