Right, what’s the point? With so many training methods available out there, why try to popularize yet another one? Previously, when someone, one of my massage clients, for instance, would ask me as to what I thought was the best all-round way of getting fit and staying healthy I would tell them “Yoga”. One day I started thinking why this should be so, when I have so enjoyed doing my Tai Chi movement practice for the last twenty-six years and have only intermittently done a year or two of yoga now and again?

Yoga movements both strengthen and stretch the muscles, leaving you with both a good range of motion and the ability to contract and produce force, when needed. Once again, some of the ultra-soft or hyper-internal Tai Chi styles may seem to have little to offer in this regard. Again, why?

The spine is supremely important to our health (just ask any back-ache sufferer). Yoga’s twists and stretches keep the spine young and healthy. As seems to be taught by some of the instructors of the classical Tai Chi styles, the spine is held vertical or slightly forward leaning but may serve only as a relatively unmoving axis or central pole.

Finally, Yoga stays interesting from one class to the next because there is a great deal of variety in the class. The order in which the movements are practiced is often changed ( I know, maybe not in Bikram or classical Ashtanga, but in most of the other Hatha Yoga styles). Also, if there is no set sequence, a student who has been on a business trip can come back after two weeks and slot right in again. His postures may not be as refined as his fellow students, but he is not constantly looking around trying to play catch-up with the form movements he missed out on.

Right, so that’s that then? Yoga is great whilst tai chi is second rate? I thought of how I do my own training, based on the methods taught to me by my first teacher, Mr. Fok. When I “turn up the volume” in my own training by using deeper stances and producing power via the four power production methods, I drip sweat like a faucet. My legs ache and my back is tired and yet I feel alive, fluid and flexible (for example, as for flexibility of my posterior leg muscles, I can easily touch the floor with the palms of my hands and even then I can go down further and bend my arms, so can many people, but with me this is due to my Tai Chi practice, as I was never “naturally” flexible).

The strong spinal-wave movements and twisting done in the “gen gung” work my spine thoroughly and finally, since in this regard I follow the way I was taught, I work on single movements or ever-varying combinations and thus am not bored. I rarely work on a long form since I find it less satisfying than working on single movements or short “movement phrases”. If I feel like working on a form, I prefer to go through the 24 movement form(which was the first form Mr Fok taught me) a few times, working on the sensation of “flow”. Or I simply improvise and make up my own “form of the day”. My personal practice of Tai Chi certainly keeps me fairly fit and healthy in the context in which one would think of fitness in a health-club environment.

The problem I was having in recommending Tai Chi classes lies in the fact that ninety nine percent of teachers in South Africa (that I am aware of at least) seem to prefer teaching from a highly traditional standpoint ( empty handed forms, co-operative push hands, weapons forms plus internal work), which is wonderful in and of itself, but often does not produce the same “fitness” results as Yoga. In some ways this traditional training may even have superior results to Yoga training, in stress reduction or internal health for instance, but not on a “physical fitness” level.

What I was doing in my own training and passing down to a handful of dedicated students as a martial art is not inferior to Yoga in this sense. The only problem being that it was never available to the general public and especially not in the context of fitness training. The obvious solution was to make it available and this is what I am doing.

The structure for Power Tai Chi as taught by myself in a gym context, is about eighty or ninety percent equivalent to the first couple of levels of Tai Chi as I was taught the traditional curriculum by Mr. Fok Si Yue. The biggest difference of course being that I leave out all the competitive drilling and sparring practices that are so necessary for gaining martial proficiency. I also leave out some of the more “internal” training methods as taught by Mr. Fok, such as standing in a jaam jong “embracing a tree” position for one hour at a time whilst doing certain visualizations.

So, does it make sense to introduce yet another fitness training method? It does if this is not a mere duplicate or rehash of some other method. Power Tai Chi is certainly neither a duplicate nor a rehash. It’s strong emphasis on breathing, posture and awareness may appear to be similar to Yoga, but the utterly different movement practices, the way in which the body is coordinated and what you feel like afterwards make it a fantastic method in its own right. Cheaper too, since you don’t need a rubber mat!