The Effects of Eight-week Dance and Tai Chi on Balance, Well-being and Mood Among Healthy Adults

A double-blind, randomised controlled trial will be adopted to evaluate the effects and efficacy of an eight-week dance intervention compare with Tai Chi and control group on physical and mental benefits.

Participants will be asked to attend baseline testing one week prior to the first session, which will include lower extremity muscle strength, balance, and mental wellbeing. Participants will also be asked to fill in the mood evaluating questionnaire before and after each session to measure the acute effect of each intervention. The first four weeks of the interventions are the learning phase, participants will mainly focus on learning the movements of dance or Tai Chi. After the last session of the fourth week and before the first session of the fifth, participants will be asked to complete the previous test procedure as the mid-term test. The last four weeks are the practising phase, participants will mainly focus on practising the learned movements with reduced direction from the instructor. The post-intervention test will be completed within one week after the last session, alongside an interview on their perceptions of the intervention.

Randomisation and blinding Participants will be randomly assigned to three groups: dance, Tai Chi, and Control group, using stratified random sampling based on sex. Participant mental wellbeing scores will be ranked from highest to lowest in each sex group before being systematically assigned to one of the three intervention groups, this will reduce potential differences in baseline data between groups. All measurements will be conducted by research assistants blinded to participants' group allocation and analysis will be carried out by statistician blinded to the group and test parameters.

Interventions Participants will complete informed consent and Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (PAR-Q) prior to data collection. At the first testing session basic anthropometric (stature, body mass, age) and personal information (ethnicity, activity level) will be recorded and each participant issued with an Unique Identifying Code (UIC).

The Dance Group, participants will be provided with three dance genre options to choose from, ballroom dance, street dance/Hip-pop and ballet, and the most-voted genre will be delivered. Dance sessions are instructed twice a week for eight weeks. Every session lasts 45-60 minutes, containing 5-10 minutes of warm-up and 35-55 minutes of learning or practicing. In the first four weeks, a short dance sequence will be taught and in the following four weeks, participants will mainly practicing the learnt sequence along with music.