Investigation And Analysis Of Huai'an City Elder Taijiquan Practitioners Knee Pain

The traditional Chinese shadowboxing, rooted in Chinese, is an excellent sporting item belonging to the world cultural heritage, and it has a long cultural history with the enormous practicing crowd as large as in China.It combines functions, bodybuilding, attacking and defending with personality-edifying,so that it arouses the attention of peoples with different colors in the world.Modern research has proved that shadowboxing has effects of keeping fit for human body, especially suitable for the elder citizens.However,during the research in the recent years, some scholars point out that there exists a kind of phenomenon showing practicing shadowboxing can cause knee-joint pain in some cases.To make things clear and offer a better environment for the development of the sport, we did the survey among the elder citizens who practice shadowboxing in the four districts of HuaiAn,Jiangsu province.Objective The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between shadowboxing exercise and the occurrence of knee pain in Huaian and provides suitable references for the practicers. Methods Questionnaire was used to survey shadowboxing practitioners in Huaian urban area. There were400valid copies from the426questionnaires collected.Questionnaire included subjects’basic information, information related to occurrence of knee pain and its onset time, type, pain level, duration, pain location, etc.Results Combining with the results of230people comparing to knee bending diagram in Annex three,we find that120subjects(52%) knee pain after shadowboxing practice, and110subjects (48%) had knee pain before starting practicing shadowboxing, in which80subjects’ knee pain was relieved after practice.Inknee pain after shadowboxing practice group,39.1%occurred during the initial stage of practice, and30.9%from initial to intermediate stage. A small portion of knee pain occurred during intermediate stage (18.7%) and intermediate to later stage (7.8%). Only3.5%of high level practitioners had knee pain. Knee pain mainly appeared during squatting (45%).The knee pain has certain correlation with the age of fist and whether the practicers have knee pain before. Conclusion Improving shadowboxing exercise methods and movements, can help the primary practitioners reduce lesions in the knee joint, and the control of shadowboxing practice time can also help practitioners relieve knee discomfort caused by tai chi practice.