Tai Chi

I have just attended my first Tai Chi class.  I assume that the Tai Chi exercises will help with general health, and particularly balance, which has never been a strong point for me.  But I also assume that I'm not going to particularly enjoy the classes, as such.

I've seen the boys do karate classes for years.  I know the style.  As an educator, it's easy to recognize this particular style.  I tend to call it the Asian style, which is probably not fair, since it is a standard apprentice model of education.  But, in the west, even the apprentice models of education for the trades are now following more advanced methods.

The traditional Asian method is used by people who have never heard of task analysis.  There is no attempt to break down the task that is to be trained, or to figure out what the important parts of the task are, or which parts or skills or functions of the task may be common to a number of different skills or trades.  There is just the fact that you are given grunt work to do, while you are given an opportunity to observe the master.

That is, of course, not quite the style used in karate or Tai Chi classes in the western world.  For one thing, you are paying for classes or courses in these fields, and so you aren't being given grunt work, because nobody would tolerate both having to do the grunt work, and having to pay for the instruction that doesn't happen.  However, even the Western instructors, who have been instructed in Tai Chi, or possibly Western modified Tai Chi, still don't seem to understand any aspects of task analysis.

I'm the newcomer.  I'm new in the class.  I am completely new to this field, although, of course, I've seen videos of people doing Tai Chi in news stories, and advertisements for recreation centers, and old folks homes.  So I wasn't completely surprised by what we were being asked to do.  According to the instructor, I did all right for a first-timer.  Which is nice, although that doesn't particularly make you feel an awful lot better.

I can already see that I'm going to have to take the explanatory sheets, which don't explain an awful lot, home, and do a fair amount of practice.  Of course, they do promote the idea that you should be practicing at home, and repeating the exercises, anyways, in order to get the greatest benefit from it.  Sure, as an exercise regime, that makes sense.  But I can already see, in my initial beginners class, that nobody has done any analysis on the individual forms and exercises.

The instructor said that the particular exercises that I had particular problems with are exercises that everybody has problems with.  Well, as an educator, I can tell you why.  Most of the exercises have both upper body (hands or arms) and lower body components.  But, there are exercises that have very simple components, and exercises where the individual components can be very complex indeed.  Some of the introductory exercises will have some lower body movements that are simple, one directional, movements forward and back.  These are sometimes combined with simple, one plane, movements of the upper body.  When two simple, one plane, movements are combined, it's not terribly difficult.  But then we move, seemingly with no understanding on the instructors part, to movements where the lower body leg movements are in two directions, and this is combined with upper body movements where the arms are moving in two planes, and that is combined with additional hand movements, all of which have to be coordinated.  Suddenly, instead of simply coordinating two axes of movement, we have five axes of movement.  And, while the instructor seems to realize that everybody has problems with these latter, complicated exercises, she doesn't seem to understand why they are complicated, and hasn't made any provision for making them any easier.  Nobody has done any task analysis.

Of course, I am not going to make any changes to a model which all the instructors in this particular field have been trained on.  This is what all the instructors are going to do, and they are going to run into the same problems, and none of them are going to understand why.  I will have to do the exercises, and practice, myself, and do my own task analysis, and break the exercises down, simply through observation of the instructor, if I'm going to practice Tai Chi.  That's the reality is situation, and that's the way it's going to be.  I don't have to like it.  I just have to do it, and I have no other option if I'm going to get the benefits of the exercise.  Eventually ...