Chair Yoga/Tai Chi

Image from Muscle Booster Program

One of my goals after retiring was to drop a few pounds and gain some flexibility. We have a home gym with some basic equipment - slant board, free weights, Marcy multifunction machine, a treadmill and a boxing machine. My buddy, Jude and I joined the LVHN gym, and he had told me that they offered low impact, chair and relaxing yoga classes. We attended one of the yoga classes and while it seemed to be somewhat straightforward at the time, I found that I was VERY sore the next day. Evidently, yoga isn't for sissies.

In a recent post, we talked about treadmill walking or walking a couple of miles around the neighborhood. I'm still averaging between 7,500 and 11,500 steps just about every day. If it's on the treadmill, I'm walking at about 3.2 to 3.5 MPH, which is a comfortable pace for me. I have an iPad set up with Netflix and whatever movie interests me at the time, so it's mindless entertainment. Between that and about 500-1000 "hits" on the boxing machine, I was maintaining a consistent weight but still carrying a "dad bod" physique.

I found an app called Muscle Booster by Welltech that combines a relaxing, seated Tai Chi workout of about 10-14 minutes with a "chair" workout that uses no extra equipment other than a chair to do a 12–15-minute program that isolates certain muscle groups. One day might be abs, hamstrings and lower back and the next day might be quads, gluts, chest and back. When you first download the program, you answer a few questions about your goals (weight loss, endurance, flexibility, etc.) and some demographics about your sex, age, current workout routine if any. The program then tailors a program geared toward you and your particular goals. My wife started seeing my results and decided to try it for herself. Her goals and the answers to her questions produced a completely different program than mine.

My "routine" is to do the treadmill first, then the muscle workout and finishing with the Tai Chi relaxing chair workout. Obviously, you can walk on the treadmill for as little or as long as you like, but the Muscle Booster program only takes about 10-15 minutes of your day.

Here's a few screenshots from Muscle Booster program chair workout - as you can see, some of the movements don't require the chair at all:

Some of the exercises above are timed (30 seconds to about a minute and a half) while others are number of repetitions. As you go through the particular exercise, a "coach" talks you through it with affirmations like "You're doing a great job..." "Just hang on for a few seconds more" and "You're almost done!". There are typically 10-12 different exercises each day on my program - some are easy and some are more challenging, but all are low impact. If you come across a particular exercise that you simply can't do, you have the option to change it out and are given two or three alternate exercises that work the same muscle group. And for more of the strenuous exercises, you're given a rest period of anywhere from 30 seconds to about 120 seconds before the next one kicks in.

After the muscle workout, I cool down with the Chair Tai Chi workout. This workout is part of the same program but looks and feels completely different than the muscle workout. Here's a couple of screenshots from that:

The narrator for the Chair Tai Chi relaxing exercise speaks in a very gentle, almost airy voice and it's a good follow-up after the isolated muscle exercises. I'm not as crazy about this side of the program as the chair muscle booster side because I have a tendency to get a little ADD and think about other things, but it's a good cool down and forces you into some deep breathing.

You're probably wondering how much Welltech is paying me to hawk their app. The truth is that I'm just so impressed with a few of the results I've seen over the past couple of months, I decided to do a post on it. I've dropped about five pounds and starting to see some definition in my body. My beer gut is smaller, my legs and balance stronger and the best part is that others have noticed it too. For whatever reason, this simple isolation and activation of core muscles have seemed to have an effect on everything else. A nice feature of the app is that it can tie into Apple's Health and Activity Rings and if you use an Apple watch, you can start and stop the program through the watch.

Forbes Health published a list of the best chair yoga apps of 2026. The one we're using (Muscle Booster) came in 3rd, with two other programs rated higher but were a little bit more expensive than I wanted to pay:

1. Simple (rated 9.9 out of 10 Outstanding) - Simple: Weight Loss & Health Coaching — Create Your Account

2. Reverse Health (rated 9.8 out of 10 Excellent) - Reverse Health | Chair yoga for women 40+ | Gentle relief

3. Muscle Booster (rated 9.7 out of 10 Excellent) -MuscleBooster

4. Better Me (rated 9.6 out of 10 Very Good) - Quiz: Which Diet and Workout Plan is Best for You? | BetterMe

5. Yoga Go (rated 9.5 out of 10 Very Good) - YogaGo

Here's a side-by-side comparison between the programs including features and pricing:

From Google AI

Simple: If your primary goal is weight loss through structural schedules rather than heavy exercise, Simple operates as a fasting-first tracking system. It stands out due to its advanced integrated AI companion, Coach Avo, which provides real-time nutritional score feedback based on photos of your meals.

Reverse Health: Unlike general apps, Reverse Health caters strictly to the physiological needs of women over 40. It cuts out high-impact, joint-straining cardio in favor of hormone-friendly meal prepping and video courses dedicated to somatic movement and gentle strength

Muscle Booster: This platform acts as a digital personal trainer geared toward hypertrophy and physical conditioning. Muscle Booster removes the confusion of designing complex weightlifting schedules by asking your equipment availability (bodyweight, dumbbells, or full gym) and building a structured schedule automatically.

BetterMe: Serving as an all-in-one health suite, BetterMe features a massive variety of lifestyle paths ranging from military boot camps to face yoga and mindfulness meditation. It is frequently cited as highly beginner-friendly, though deep features like direct medical meal plans or 1:1 human chat coaching requires tiered, separate premium in-app purchases.

Yoga Go: Despite its name, Yoga Go acts as a complete low-intensity home studio app. It features deep libraries of classic yoga, Tai Chi flow transitions, and Wall Pilates designed to minimize barriers to movement for older adults or individuals working from limited living room space.

I'm not going to claim that these programs are going to transform you into the beach body you want overnight but just relaying my personal experience that since I started the program a couple of months ago, I'm feeling and possibly looking better. You might find the monthly or annual price daunting for an app, but considering you'd probably spend this or more for dinner and drinks out in one night, it seems like a fair trade-off to improve your body and longevity.

Good luck!