Transcription
Andrew here with andrewplitt.com. In this video, we are covering how to keep your knees safe while you practice Tai Chi. More and more in recent years, people are learning about how Tai Chi is good for joint health. And so there's a misconception that as long as you're doing something that's called Tai Chi, it's obviously good for your joints. And the problem with that is that there are incorrect ways of moving when you're practicing Tai Chi. And if you don't move correctly, then you actually put your joints at increased risk of injury rather than helping them with your Tai Chi practice.
And in this video, I'm going to be going over a lot of the common mistakes that people make when they're practicing Tai Chi that actually put their joints at risk of injury. Then I'm going to tell you the correct way of moving and the correct thing to do with your joints, especially your knees, which is our focus today, to help keep them safe when you're practicing Tai Chi.
The first thing we're going to look at is twisting movements with the legs. And that's basically any time you're changing your stance and you need to move your foot so that it rotates, or you're changing, you're leaving your feet flat on the floor and you're changing what your body is doing so it's putting a twist down through the legs. So we want to talk about how to do that safely so that it doesn't put your knees at risk. And we'll start with how you don't want to do it.
So one common mistake that I see is when people turn instead of turning at the hips and through the waist, they like to turn at the knees. And so there's this twist going through the knees as they turn the body. So for simplicity, we're going to look at the Repulsing the Monkey movement from the Taiji 10 form. The way you don't want to do this when you're turning back to look at the back corner here, as you're bringing the right hand back, you don't want to turn in a way that twists through the leg and pushes the knees out to the side. The twist should not be happening here. So if you find that when you turn, your knees are turning and twisting, you're adding a lot of torque and instability to your knees, and that's not good for your knees.
So the right way of doing that is to close. If I'm turning to the right side, I'm going to close the right hip in. So all turns of the legs happen at the hips. They don't happen at the knees or below. It's always here, and the rest of the leg stays in alignment. So we could think of me as turning the right leg in and turning the left leg out. So the right hip closes, the left hip opens, and then the rest of the twist comes through the waist and the lower back. So what I don't want to do is turn like this, and that's an over-exaggeration. A lot of times you see people do it more like this. But if I was to over-exaggerate, it's a twist all the way through the legs. That's what you don't want. So you're not going here as you turn. Keep the knees in alignment. Twist at the hips, twist at the waist here. And so this movement keeps my knees in alignment with my toes. Doesn't add extra stress to my knees or torque to my knees. It keeps them safe as I do this movement. So I turn and come back to center, and all the twisting happens at the hips and the waist. Turn, come back to center, and the knees are safe that entire time.
The next movement we're going to look at is the circle step that I teach in the 24 form. And I want to reiterate here that this is a training step. This is not the step that you're going to eventually do all the time as you do your 24 form. This is to get your balance and your rooting established, and then you would go on just to a direct step after doing this one. And I covered that in the 24 form series, but I just want to reiterate it here. So we're going to start as if we're starting the 24 form. And with that form, as you remember, you step out to the side, breathe in, and bend the knees. You circle in, and then your first step is a circle step going out to the east. So what I want to do here as I do this circle step is keep this knee in alignment with the toe. I don't want to step and bring the knee in, twisting through the leg. The knee stays here, and the hip is what opens to allow me to turn my body and step off to the east. So from here, the leg stays here, and then the body turns at the hip. So this stays in alignment. This is strong, stable structure, keeps the knee safe. I can still do my circle step and then shift into Parting the Horse's Mane.
The last movement I'm going to use to demonstrate this point is going into Single Whip from the 103 Yang form. Now, this is not a form that I have instruction videos up for yet, but I am planning to do that in the future, so stay tuned for that. But the reason I want to show this movement now is because it's the movement people are already practicing from other instructors. And also, when I have these instruction videos come out, I want to make sure that the terms that are done in them are done correctly and safely. So this will help you do that. So we're going to start from on, and then we're going to come across, pull in, reach out, step, and open. So the main movement that I want to look at here is when you turn the right foot in. So from our push, as your hands sweep across, what you're doing is you're lifting the toes of the right foot and you're pivoting the toes in into kind of a pigeon-toed, what's called a figure eight stance. So what you want to be careful of is as you come in, pushing the knee like twisting through the knee and leaving the foot behind, or bringing the foot in and leaving the knee behind. So either of those, either pushing in or pushing out with that without keeping the alignment, is going to add tension and stress to your knee that shouldn't be there. It's going to increase your risk of injury.
So what you want to do from here, as you come across, pivot and keep the knee aligned with the toe, and you're folding the hip in. So the leg and the hip are getting closer to each other. This way, all the way through the leg, that rotation happens, and that sort of pivot will keep your knee safe in that turn. So as a quick recap, anytime there's a twist going through the leg, it's not a twist that's rotating the knee. It's a twist that's opening or closing the hip, and the leg stays in alignment during that whole rotation.
Now I'm going to focus a little bit more on keeping your knee completely aligned with the toe. Now, this is something that you see observed more carefully with instructors who are teaching very traditional Tai Chi. When you see competition and performance Tai Chi taught, this gets lost a lot of times. And so if you are doing a competition or performance Tai Chi, that's great. It's great exercise, but do be careful of your joints because some things that are considered more beautiful in movement are not necessarily things that are particularly safe in movement. And to me, it's more important to protect my body when I'm training than to look a specific way while moving. And that's something that you need to weigh for yourself. Is the way that you're moving, you know, winning the trophy, whatever it is that you're doing with your Tai Chi training, is that worth potential injury to your body?
And the places that I see this the most is when people are doing a false step or when they're doing a low bow step. And what tends to happen is instead of keeping the knee aligned over the toe, they'll turn the toe out and then leave the knee in and use the stress on the knee as the stabilizing part of their leg to hold their weight in this position. That's really rough on the knee. So I would highly recommend not doing that. Line up the knee and the toe. If you need more flexibility, work into that so that you can do that. Keep the weight right in front of the heel, directly below the shin bones, and you can stand in this stance very stably and strong with a safe knee, well-supported knee. And there's no reason to bend that knee in or turn the foot out and push the knee in and put that knee at risk.
The other place I see that a lot is in the fall step. They'll do the same thing, turn the foot out, push the knee in, and use that to stabilize the stance. All that stress on the inside of the knee. And when you're really young and invincible, it seems like you can do that without any trouble. What I would caution is that that is setting you up for future problems. So really work on getting your lower stances if that's something that you need for your training, for your performance, your competitions, but doing it in a way where you can keep your knees safe and keep it aligned over the toe.
That brings us to the next mistake that I see happen really commonly in Tai Chi training. And this really comes a lot from not really understanding the meaning of double weighting, the appropriate use of silk reeling, and then it also comes from misunderstanding of how Pung should be applied through a stance. So if you're brand new to Tai Chi, a lot of those terms may not make any sense to you, and that's fine. That's something that comes with practice and training. And the more you learn, the more you'll find out about the kind of these deeper concepts and fundamental ideas of Tai Chi. These are things that you're familiar with, and you may already have some ideas of what you've been taught of as the applications of these concepts. I do have videos planned that will deal with each of those concepts more specifically. But what I want to focus on here is how to avoid errors that are related to those concepts.
So the first thing that we're going to look at is Pungjing or Pung energy in your Taiji training. And that's often described as an expanding force in your body when you're practicing Tai Chi. It's something that's supposed to be present at all times, and it's also something that's supposed to be present in your stance and in your legs as you're practicing Tai Chi. Now, the misunderstanding with that is that it should be an outward force in the legs. And what that turns into sometimes is this idea that you need to be pushing the knees out. And that's not what it means. It's not a pushing out of the knees and opening of both hips. That's not Pung energy. The expansion that happens with Pung energy through the legs is an expansion that fills the leg down into the floor. It's an energy that goes from the lower Dan Tian, both down the legs, filling the legs down, and then in the legs, it fills outward as well. So it's like a support from the inside of the legs.
Now, where this becomes a problem if this is not practiced correctly in your stance is that it causes you again to put your knees in situations that are less than ideal. And I'll give you an example of how this can play out in a less than ideal way. I was attending a class a while ago, and the instructor, when I was doing a 4-6 stance, so I shifted back, saw that my knee was pushing inward, or what he thought was pushing inward, and he said I should be pushing it outward to maintain Pung. And so that's where a misunderstanding comes in from Pung. So if I'm in a 4-6 stance and my weight's back, this is a leg that has Pung in it. This is a leg where the outside of my knee is at risk of injury. This is a collapse knee where the inside of the knee is at risk of injury.
So what I want to do to maintain the safety of my knee, maintaining Pung in that leg when I'm in my 4-6 stance, is make sure the alignment's there. But then the direction of the energy is the most important thing. It's not where I'm pushing my knee that gives me Pung or does not give me Pung. The knee should be aligned with the toe. The direction of the force, though, is down this way through the leg. If I'm putting that force down back through the leg this way, that supports the knee. If I relax that and push down through here, that's where Pung disappears and that puts more stress on the front of the knee, even if it's aligned with the toe, and that increases the risk of injuring the knee. If I push it out to the side trying to maintain Pung, that's not Pung energy. That's just poor alignment that's going to increase risk of injury, as I said before. And as I said before, if I let go of that support completely and let the knee rock in, then of course that increases risk of injury.
So when you're in your 4-6 stance or back stance, the Pung energy supports the leg down through the leg here, going that way through the leg. So whether my toes are pointed more forward, whether they're out to the side, or whether they're even back off to the corner here, all of that's fine. All of those can maintain Pung. I can maintain Pung here, I can maintain Pung here, I can maintain Pung here. The importance is making sure you maintain the alignment of the leg, knee, and toe, and that your energy expands down and through, down and through, down and through. And that expansion of the energy down and through is what supports the leg in its structure.
In my series on footwork and rooting fundamentals, I spend a lot of time really talking about where that force is supposed to be directed to on the bottom of the foot. And I would encourage you to go watch those videos because that's a really key part of making sure the force is going in the right direction and you're keeping your knee safe.