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Observation- 24 form vs. CMC form vs. Yang form

February 18, 2010 on 3:26 pm | In Tai Chi Chaun/Taijiquan | 1 Comment

In my small 20 years of Taijiquan practice and recent observations with frustrated new students of Taijiquan (TJQ), I am seeing a breakdown of good fundamentals not taught by many veteran and expert teachers of Yang Taijiquan and its other variants. This has mostly been students of more Traditional TJQ like Cheng Man Ching’s (CMC) and Yang’s Long form TJQ. It takes a very long time for beginners to grasp the form as taught by many instructors of these forms. However I see that people who learn the 24 form have much improved and better grasp of the movements of Taijiquan in shorter amount of time than the Traditionalists. Why is this?

Based on my own experience when starting with CMC form in late 80′s early 90′s, the teachers did not teach stretching, stances, or basic stepping and movements. They begin the student with “The form” with justification “its all in the form”. Rarely a teacher might import a brief warm-up like ‘Ba Dua Jing’ to the curriculum. In my experience with teachers who taught Yang Family Taijiquan form it was pretty much taught the same way with going right into ‘Raise hands’ , Grasp Bird tail, Single Whip, ect.” and thus leaving the beginner trying to copy a series of movements and stepping completely foreign to their balance, mind-body connection, and muscle memory. A high degree of frustration ensues, quality of movement sacrificed, inability to retain information, and willingness to continue with long term study is then defeated. A lack of interest and drop out rate soon sets in.

Enter the 24 form-

When I met a teacher from Yongnian Taijiquan Association, who was also a member of the Shanghai Wushu Sports University in early 90′s, a new understanding of Taijiquan was presented. As a teacher well versed in the International and National competitions in China and USA, the modern approach to teaching was modern and systematic. The negative scrutiny of the traditionalist that “It’s not Taiji” changed to small adjustments and corrections, to a ‘flowing movement vs exact posture’ approach. Here is how Taijiquan was broken down by the modern instructor:

Basics:
-Warm up consisted of joint opening and loosening exercises from head to toe. This included neck, shoulders, elbow, wrist, waist, spine, hips, knees, ankles.
-Various athletic sports style stretches for legs, back, hip, waist, ect.
-traditional stances.
-Stepping drills- walking forward, backward and sideways without hand movements.
-walking forward, backward and sideways with hand movements: Part horse mane, Brush Knee, Wave hands, Repulse monkey.

With learning those simple amount of basics and progressing with them, my own Taijiquan quickly improved. Later when I decided to teach, my students were able to quickly surpass the traditionalist’s students and even compete in local tournaments and win. Along the way I was even able to help struggling Taijiquan schools with established curriculum’s and have positive results with students I taught. It was because these teachers were not taught this way that the student has to miss this as well. Taijiquan teachers who opened up to this approach helped business and frustrated beginners gave thanks and ability improved.

The reason I am writing this is because two clients of mine from the Information Technology side business have taken up Taijiquan. One is learning the CMC form and the other Yang Long form from some teachers I know. Both are very confused and not certain how long it will take for them to “get it” after over a year now and just getting to 1st Brush knee- play pipa. After a year! I know if they were to learn the basics, they would grasp it much quicker as the information would be beneficial. I see this when I go to many groups that have free classes in the parks as well. Going right into the form without good basics simply does not help the novice student. Though I don’t teach anymore nor haven’t taught in many years, it motivates me to start teaching Taijiquan again even though I am happy with my current training with Boxing and Thai Boxing.

Addition:
Basics:
-Warm up consisted of joint opening and loosening exercises from head to toe. This included neck, shoulders, elbow, wrist, waist, spine, hips, knees, ankles.
-Various athletic sports style stretches for legs, back, hip, waist, ect.
-traditional stances.
-Stepping drills- walking forward, backward and sideways without hand movements.
-walking forward, backward and sideways with hand movements: Part horse mane, Brush Knee, Wave hands, Repulse monkey.

A little bit more about this:
The stepping drills is doing walking across a room so you get rows of repetition and a lot of it. The stepping without hand movement and then with hand movement takes a good 40 minutes and the legs are toughened and sore. The heavy elements sink making legs feel heavy and lighter elements move upward with arms feeling lighter.

Also ‘Peng-Lu-Ji-An’ sequence can be repeated moving forward getting both left and right side done.- excellent basic.

In this way you can choose small sections to repeat. For instance the last closing section of ‘Snake creeps down- 7 stars- ride tiger- Sweep lotus-shoot tiger’ can be repeated many times.

So instead of doing a form where you do a few movements once, with basic repetitions you get a lot done with quality.

Comments:

Some Feed back from some other people:

As some call it, Yang 24 (Beijing 24 or just plain old 24 form) does not come directly from the Yang family it comes from Li Tianji

And please correct me if I am wrong but Li Tianji trained with Li Yulin, Sun Lutang and Li Jinglin and he learned Taiji from Li Jinglin, who was a student of Yang Jianhou which of course gets it to the Yang family…kinda.

Li Tianji studied with Li Jinglin so the Yang connection is obviously there and the postures are as those of Yang Chengfu. Beijing 24 shi taijiquan’s movements are exaggerated but they are Yang style nonetheless.

more feed back:

Excellent opening post! Now i think the point of the topic has deviated to “what is 24 Taiji” which I am sure is not the point. Let me firstly say from my experience in CMA that , as traditionalists one should try to stick the original as much as possible in all forms, but at the same time we should not be limited by this thought either. When we see something that is useful or beneficial that does not neccessarily come from within our own system, we should make use of it, and by the same token when something whithin our system does not make sense or is not useful, we should first try understand it more, and then improve it so it does make sense or benefit us. Without this type of mindset we will doom our own traditional systems to disappear in the future, or become irrelevant. We need to strive for improvement while still sticking in the confines of or styles as far as possible.
An example of this is the creation of CMC style of Yang Taiji. CMC Taiji is the result of his understanding of Taiji, and the environment in which he practiced. Personally, its not for me, but each to his own.
I want to quote from the topic:

“The 24 form was created in 1956 by the Government Sport and Health committee so people could learn for sport and improve physical health. It is often called the “Beijing form” and even the “Communist form” from many people. From what I have heard, the Yang Family had no say into the creation of this form and had much disapproval. It was a different approach to Taijiquan instruction that made learning Taijiquan much easier in my case. I had started with CMC taijiquan and each teacher taught more about how I was not doing Taijiquan than that I was doing it correctly. I guess its a positive vs negative reinforcement that I experienced.”

The government created a simplified form of taiji for one main reason, and that is to get more people practicing taiji, when I say more people I mean everyday masses and the reason was that they realized the vast benefits of Taiji practice. In comes the Li family who had the task of creating a form, that wasnt too long to be overlooked by the common people, and not too complicated in terms of depth, something they could practice everyday without taking up too much time. In effect it is an INTRODUCTION to taijiquan. It was not meant to replace any taiji by any means but just make it more practical and accessible to everyday people. This introduction is basically a “doorway” to taiji. With that it has to focus on elements that a beginner can grasp, and that will appeal to non martial artists. So it focuses on external elements as opposed to the whole kettle of taiji fish. This has benefits in many ways, including benefits for the promotion of traditional Yang whether you can see it or not. The fact is, the more people that practice this, the more interest that is sparked in people, from this there will be some who will go further in that just the doorway and seek deeper into the road of Taiji. The external is a road to the internal, remember that. Trying to teach people internal principles off the bat is very difficult and from my experience, teaching from an external point of view first helps firstly identify those that have the aptitude to do internal work and secondly get them geared for it.
Back to the topic at hand though. Above is stated that the Yang family had no say in the 24 form and they weren’t happy with it. Well lets not ask them what they had to do with CMC Taiji or what they think of it either…… The task Li Tianji had was a tough one, formulate a clear strategy on the development of 24 taiji for common people. So things had to be clear is black and white, or people wont understand. But with this I believe that a basic taiji training regimen (focus on the word basic here please) was created. Of course warm up and stretching are essential and this is a fact for ANY CMA….it can only do good. After that a curriculum of stepping basics, hand basics, and movement basics were created that helped the beginner develop the skills required for 24 taiji. These are all good, and can only create solid base for Taiji in all forms. Personally I think the approach is a good primer for further Taiji training, albeit superficial at first. But the point is, from the superficial we got in deeper, we cant jump into the deep end straight away from my experience. A systematic approach is needed for beginners, one that focuses on topics they can grasp easily, and this is exactly that.