09/30/19 — Beginning week 7
It seems that once again Tai Chi has managed to deceive me concerning what it is or isn’t doing to my body.
I noted shortly after beginning that I while my thighs did seem to be burning and shaking the whole time, I have never felt sore afterwards, which I found confusing. I also noted that I did seem to be getting sore in my back and shoulders, those places where I store tension. I have since come to the conclusion that this soreness was not, in fact, due to Tai Chi, but due to the nearly daily use of an exceptionally heavy backpack, which, while well designed to protect my body and carry the weight evenly, can only do so much if I’m dragging myself around campus with the posture of a certain notorious bell ringer of Notre Dame. Since paying more attention to my posture and exercising more care when lifting my bag, the shoulder pain has receded greatly.
But a new discomfort has been discovered. The day after Tai Chi, my arms were sore; sore from the wrist through to both my triceps and biceps, and this time there was no convenient alternative activity to explain it.
This day we spent nearly an hour going over the kata, then finished with about 15 minutes of push-hand practice. At no point did it feel strenuous. Now, it has to be acknowledged that the kata has now become quite lengthy, I’ve deepened certain moves and grown confident enough with others, such that I do manage to break a sweat by the end of a single run through. And contrary to my expectation, the time it takes for my legs to begin shaking and burning has not lengthened at all, but has actually decreased, which suggests to me that I am somehow making the kata harder for myself as I grow more confident. How precisely I’m doing this, I’m not sure. But the arms, for all the effortful control that I try to insert into the kata, never feel like they’re doing any form of exercise. Yet now after practice they are a bit sore while my thighs feel just fine once the shaking stops.
At the same time, it seems that I am truly growing stronger by this exercise that never seems to feel like exercise, because I can definitely tell that I am able to control my movements and flow through the kata much more smoothly, with more stability in the stances and more strength in the strikes.
It’s great, but it’s very confusing.