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Postural Responses to Sudden Horizontal Perturbations in Tai Chi Practitioners

Tai Chi has been shown to elicit numerous positive effects on health and well-being. In this study, we examined reactive postural control after sudden unloading horizontal perturbations, which resembled situations encountered during Tai Chi. The study involved 20 participants, 10 in the Tai Chi grou...

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Autores principales: Sever, Jernej, Babič, Jan, Kozinc, Žiga, Šarabon, Nejc
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7967416/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33800052
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18052692
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author Sever, Jernej
Babič, Jan
Kozinc, Žiga
Šarabon, Nejc
author_facet Sever, Jernej
Babič, Jan
Kozinc, Žiga
Šarabon, Nejc
author_sort Sever, Jernej
collection PubMed
description Tai Chi has been shown to elicit numerous positive effects on health and well-being. In this study, we examined reactive postural control after sudden unloading horizontal perturbations, which resembled situations encountered during Tai Chi. The study involved 20 participants, 10 in the Tai Chi group (age: 37.4 ± 7.8 years), who had been regularly training the push-hand technique for at least 7 years, and 10 in the control group, consisting of healthy adults (age: 28.8 ± 5.0). Perturbations were applied at three different positions (hips, shoulders, and arms) via the load-release paradigm. Twenty measurements were carried out for each perturbation position. We measured peak vertical and horizontal forces on the ground (expressed percentage of body mass (%BM)), peak center of pressure displacement and peak horizontal and vertical velocities at the knee, hip and shoulder joints. The Tai Chi group exhibited smaller increases in vertical ground reaction forces when perturbations were applied at the hips (11.5 ± 2.1 vs. 19.6 ± 5.5 %BW; p = 0.002) and the arms (14.1 ± 4.2 vs. 23.2 ± 8.4 %BW; p = 0.005). They also responded with higher horizontal force increase after hip perturbation (16.2 ± 3.2 vs. 13.1 ± 2.5 %BW; p < 0.001). Similar findings were found when observing various outcomes related to velocities of vertical movement. The Tai Chi group also showed lower speeds of backward movement of the knee (p = 0.005–0.009) after hip (0.49 ± 0.13 vs. 0.85 ± 0.14 m/s; p = 0.005) and arm perturbations (0.97 ± 0.18 vs. 1.71 ± 0.29 m/s; p = 0.005). Center of pressure displacements were similar between groups. Our study demonstrated that engaging in Tai Chi could be beneficial to reactive postural responses after sudden perturbations in a horizontal direction; however, future interventional studies are needed to directly confirm this. Moreover, because of the age difference between the groups, some confounding effects of age cannot be ruled out.
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spelling pubmed-79674162021-03-18 Postural Responses to Sudden Horizontal Perturbations in Tai Chi Practitioners Sever, Jernej Babič, Jan Kozinc, Žiga Šarabon, Nejc Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Tai Chi has been shown to elicit numerous positive effects on health and well-being. In this study, we examined reactive postural control after sudden unloading horizontal perturbations, which resembled situations encountered during Tai Chi. The study involved 20 participants, 10 in the Tai Chi group (age: 37.4 ± 7.8 years), who had been regularly training the push-hand technique for at least 7 years, and 10 in the control group, consisting of healthy adults (age: 28.8 ± 5.0). Perturbations were applied at three different positions (hips, shoulders, and arms) via the load-release paradigm. Twenty measurements were carried out for each perturbation position. We measured peak vertical and horizontal forces on the ground (expressed percentage of body mass (%BM)), peak center of pressure displacement and peak horizontal and vertical velocities at the knee, hip and shoulder joints. The Tai Chi group exhibited smaller increases in vertical ground reaction forces when perturbations were applied at the hips (11.5 ± 2.1 vs. 19.6 ± 5.5 %BW; p = 0.002) and the arms (14.1 ± 4.2 vs. 23.2 ± 8.4 %BW; p = 0.005). They also responded with higher horizontal force increase after hip perturbation (16.2 ± 3.2 vs. 13.1 ± 2.5 %BW; p < 0.001). Similar findings were found when observing various outcomes related to velocities of vertical movement. The Tai Chi group also showed lower speeds of backward movement of the knee (p = 0.005–0.009) after hip (0.49 ± 0.13 vs. 0.85 ± 0.14 m/s; p = 0.005) and arm perturbations (0.97 ± 0.18 vs. 1.71 ± 0.29 m/s; p = 0.005). Center of pressure displacements were similar between groups. Our study demonstrated that engaging in Tai Chi could be beneficial to reactive postural responses after sudden perturbations in a horizontal direction; however, future interventional studies are needed to directly confirm this. Moreover, because of the age difference between the groups, some confounding effects of age cannot be ruled out. MDPI 2021-03-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7967416/ /pubmed/33800052 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18052692 Text en © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Sever, Jernej
Babič, Jan
Kozinc, Žiga
Šarabon, Nejc
Postural Responses to Sudden Horizontal Perturbations in Tai Chi Practitioners
title Postural Responses to Sudden Horizontal Perturbations in Tai Chi Practitioners
title_full Postural Responses to Sudden Horizontal Perturbations in Tai Chi Practitioners
title_fullStr Postural Responses to Sudden Horizontal Perturbations in Tai Chi Practitioners
title_full_unstemmed Postural Responses to Sudden Horizontal Perturbations in Tai Chi Practitioners
title_short Postural Responses to Sudden Horizontal Perturbations in Tai Chi Practitioners
title_sort postural responses to sudden horizontal perturbations in tai chi practitioners
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7967416/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33800052
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18052692
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