Grandmaster Defies Age, Expectations

Here is video of Grandmaster Lu Zijian demonstrating the  Enei form of Tai Chi (from the Szechuan Province).

In this video, he is 93 years old.

Lu Zijian was born in 1893. Read more about his long, amazing life here.

No, Really: What's Your Excuse?

Not that you need it now, but visit my Pinterest Motivation board for other excuse-busters.

Why It's Better to Eat Small Meals

The human body takes anywhere from 12 hours to 72 hours to process food. The bigger the meal, the longer it takes to break down.

What does that mean for you?

After a few large meals in a week, the body is burdened with the burning of all the extra calories that it does not immediately break down.  Because all available blood is used to transport broken-down food, the body's metabolism actually can slow down.

Even those who consume the proper calorie amount each day may gain weight. 

Therefore, eating many smaller meals during the day helps boost the body's metabolism and keeps the body running more smoothly.

Tai Chi Tuesday: Sharing Information

Finding a valuable resource is important. Sharing it is important, too.

I met Shifu Loretta Wollering at the Tai Chi Gala in Albany this summer. She is the organizer as well as a presenter.

Her knowledge of Qi Gong and Tai Chi is extensive and thorough, and her instruction methods are easy to follow and interesting. She runs Internal Gardens Tai Chi, which offers excellent instruction both in person and through its resources.

Check out this video of her studio classes:

I hope to continue to learn from Shifu Loretta, and I hope to see her again at next summer's Tai Chi Gala.

Have you found an excellent teacher? What do you like most about her or him?

Tai Chi Tuesday: Relaxation is the Key

Welcome back to Tai Chi Tuesday.

Here is a tip I have been sharing with my advanced students: it's the meditative relaxation of Tai Chi that makes it a formidable martial art.

Even if you have not reached  the stage of being able to produce Jin, you still gain more power by being relaxed than by being tense.

Also, with Chi, awareness comes the ability of feeling your opponent's intentions before they happen. This makes it much easier to guide an opponent off his /her center in order to counter-attack.

Tai Chi classics say, "Move a thousand pound with four ounces." If we tense our bodies, we already have exceeded the four ounces.

Fitness Friday: How to Deadlift Correctly

The folks at Fitsugar have excellent instructions on how to deadlift:

• Hold the barbell (or two dumbbells at your sides) close to your legs, almost touching them.
• Keep your arms straight and knees slightly bent.
• Slowly bend at your hip joint -- not your waist -- and lower the weights as far as possible without rounding your back. 
• Keep your back straight; a good way to do that is to look forward, rather than at the ground. Keep your spine neutral with a natural low-back arch, shoulders down. 
• Squeeze your glutes to pull yourself up at a quicker pace than it took to bend down (Fitsugar recommends four seconds to bend down and two seconds to pull up). Don't use your back. Do not round your spine.
• Using a weight that allows you to do three sets of 12-15 reps, keeping your form strong and correct through to the end.

Be sure to read the article, and not just because it concurs with what I have told clients for years: deadlifts are great for your core, glutes, posture... pretty much every muscle group.

Tai Chi in Sculpture

This past spring, Peking University hosted repeat Olympic tai chi sculpture exhibition.

According to the Global Times:

In this exhibit, 200 sculptures depicting different tai chi maneuvers and forms were displayed on the grass west of the Qiubade Gymnasium, the location of the table tennis events during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The university hoped that drawing attention to tai chi and other outdoor activities would engage visitors to become more interested in sport.

(Photo credit pending.)