| Being a martial arts / sports teacher with about 20 odd years of experience dealing with both soft and hard styles. I can’t really speak from a formal medical background but only really from an experience and results based perspective. I see more and more people attending these types of activities because of “doctors orders”. And in many cases I see sports of any from just compliment whatever regiment the doctor has set out for the patient to begin with. I guess this is where physio has its place in the medical world as well, where patients need specific exercises to help with specific injuries. Anyway, I want to point out the differences between the soft and hard approaches in the martial arts because I think it’s relevant. Not only are both approaches pretty much contradictory to each other but I find that what people find case-by-case within each practice can differ completely, which makes the whole thing quite subjective and difficult to measure. The hard approaches are more fueled around explosive movements and repetitive training. From the students’ perspective the left to right body movement from this type of training is something that I’ve seen people with strokes or brain related illnesses use as a tool to help rebalance their motor coordination. In some cases I’ve heard people recommend dance because of the left right approach that comes with dancing, so not much to do with the style itself but rather the constant reshifting from the left to the right during training helps in this area, which has more to do with training methodology. Where as for the softer arts, although you usually have to explain the advantages to the student, soft arts are more geared around slow movement and are aimed around longevity. Personally I’m a bigger fan of the softer arts, simply because I prefer low resistance training myself, plus anyone with an injury who is looking for a sport, low resistance will be the better approach. The issue I have with soft styles is that I have read a bit about Tai Chi and the medical studies surrounding Tai Chi. Sufficed to say the medical studies in this particular area have not gone well, in many cases citing little to no evidence that soft styles help with age reduction. Although the evidence us martial arts teachers rely on are the case studies of our masters, for instance master x from martial art y lived until he was 100 and that’s because he practiced martial art y since he was 10, and so fourth. What I’d find interesting is if there are more substantial studies made in this area, I mean after all finding the fountain of youth is pretty much everyone’s dream. |