PRELIMINARY STUDY OF TRAINING COMPONENTS ON SENSORIMOTOR SYSTEM IN TAI CHI

Dongqing XU¹, Jinxian Li¹, Youlian Hong¹, Dewei Mao¹ and Kaiming Chan².

¹Department of Sports Science & Physical Education. ²Department of Orthopaedics & Traumatology. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT. Hong Kong.

The purpose of this study was to identify if Tai Chi (TC) movements are full with the training components on sensorimotor system by movement kinematics and electromyography (EMG) analysis. Two TC masters performed a typical TC movement- "brush knees and twist steps" twice. Motion analysis showed that joint angles (ankles, knees and hips) of eight different postures, height and velocity of center of gravity (C.G.) of the whole movement had no significant difference in two trials. The results indicated that the TC masters had good awareness of joint position and movement and spatial position sense. Moreover, EMG analysis showed that muscles activated from full relaxation to vigorous contraction and the similar EMG patterns of each muscle in two trials suggested the good training effect of TC on muscle coordinative contraction.