Long Forms vs Short Forms – What Should You Start to Learn?

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Form, Form practice, Jibengong, Tai Chi form

Should you learn a shorter or a longer Tai Chi form? What is best to start with? Longer forms can be 88, 108 or 120 movements or even longer, depending on how you count the individual movements. Cheng Man Ching’s form is 37 movements long and the modern short Yang or “Beijing form” is merely 24 movements long.  

So what is best to start with? A long Tai Chi form or a shorter one? Some schools have a strict curriculum on how things should be taught and in what order. Some schools only teach one form. To make a statement on this topic might be viewed as dismissing some schools. But I think it’s more about what you want to learn, what kind of focus you have in your practice. But on the other hand, if you ask this question or is interested in my answer, you might not yet know what you should, or even can, focus on.

Whatever you can find is better might be a proper answer. Or maybe it’s just better to find a good teacher regardless what you are taught. However, in my own classes and as a teacher, I have struggled to find a good way to teach Tai Chi. All of my teachers taught in very different ways, and I know yet others who teaches Tai Chi differently. There’s no simple answer to this question.

I’ve tested different ways. The first times I taught a class, I started with the long Yang (Yang Cheng Fu) Tai Chi Form. Years later when I started a new class I tested teaching a short yang form first, and then moved on to teaching the long Sun style Tai Chi form.  I know that many teachers prefer to teach a short form first. For Yang style, it’s either the 24 or 10 movements forms. Then later they go on teaching a long form, so I thought that I should try this myself.

The idea is that the student could find it somewhat rewarding to actually finish something within the first six few months instead of spending two or three years learning one single form. But I wasn’t satisfied with this method. Not at all. I found it repetitive and a waste of time. If you want to teach a form, start with the long form first. This is my own recommendation.

But the issue is not if a form should be short or long. Length has nothing to do with the qualities learned in Tai Chi Chuan. Over the years, I haven’t been very satisfied over the way I taught and not how I structured a curriculum. But it hasn’t much to do with what form to teach or when. The main idea to focus on as a teacher should not be about teaching your students to remember movements. It should be about body method. How to teach body method and body movement, is the really tricky part.

In later years, even though I hardly teach nowadays, I have stopped teaching forms, longer and shorter. Maybe when a student has gained some level of understanding of body movement I might teach one. My own method focuses on Jibengong, or foundation exercises, as well as single movements and short drills. And then there are plenty of partner work as applications and push hands.

So to answer about what is best to start with, a longer or shorter form? I guess that my point is that it doesn’t matter very much. It’s your own understanding of how to move and how to understand basic principles that matter. You see, a Tai Chi shenfa, or  Tai Chi body method, isn’t something that comes naturally by learning movements. You need a teacher that can teach you body movement, and teach you how you practice a certain quality of body movement. Building up a body method, or shenfa, takes a whole lot of time. Focusing on the right things and not wasting time on superficial things is important. Form is not superficial, that is not what I mean. Form practice is important and helps you to deepen your understanding. But in my own opinion you need that basic understanding first and you need to practice in a way so that you build up your body method in a certain way.

Another thing about form practice, and Tai Chi in general, is that I don’t always agree with how principles are usually taught and understood. I do believe that rules are mostly taught too dogmatic in Tai Chi, too strict, and often the teacher misses the point about what is important or not. Forms often becomes very strict and the students learns rules, and to prohibit the body from “wrong” type of movement, instead of nurturing a type of body that has freedom, and with freedom of movement.

With my own methods, focusing on what I do and teaching my Tai Chi body method, I can focus my exercises on body awareness and teach a student how to feel and understand what the body wants. I want the practitioner understand a certain precision of movement, but at the some time nurture freedom of movement, spontaneity and creativity. This is what I consider the “correct” way to teach and learn Tai Chi, regardless if a practitioner trains through stances, drills or forms. Mindless repetition of movements is the very last thing I would want my students to spend their time on.

Why There’s No Continuous Movement Without Engagement From The Core

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Body awareness, Form, Form practice, Tai Chi form, Whole body movement

Would it seem contradictory if I told you that Chen stylists are often better than Yang stylists on keeping an unbroken continous movement while performing their form? It probably would if you think about the suddenly outbursts of fast movements and stop-and-go actions in Chen forms. Shouldn’t Yang or Wu stylists be better when as many of them claim that the essence of Tai Chi is continuous unbroken movement, just as the classics state? Why then do I see so many practitioners and even long-time teachers stop or sometimes even stop and then speed-up in a transition from one posture to another? In my own view, as long as you don’t deal with dingshi, the form should be seemless, with no end or beginning of a posture shown visibly. Yet, I will stand firm in my statement that Chen stylists are often better on this.

Why? Because Yang stylists are sometimes not very good at initiating movement from the feet and from the core. Where I personally believe that Chen style has an advantage, is about initiating movement from the core, through Dantian practice and silk reeling exercises in the very beginning of their Tai Chi study. Often when you see that Yang and Wu stylists stop and go, this is a clue that tells us that there is no internal movement. The hand stops because the body doesn’t move. While Chen stylists keep their body moving through continuous coiling and rotating core action, many people from other styles move to a posture, stops and move again because they don’t keep the core active the same way. I would suggest that you, regardless style pay more attention on continuous internal movement than just do a transition from here to there. When performing your form, movement should not stop in the feet or legs, and the spine should keep on moving, coiling, rotating through waist and continuous open/close movement, coordinated directly with the feet and hands.

If you do like this, your form will gain spirit and an organic feeling of whole body movement. The whole body needs to come alive. Yet I see people who seem to be trapped in their bodies. Sometimes they move as big solid chunks where movement seems to be stuck, sometimes parts of their bodies never moves. And all of this keep being habits through the years without changing. Tai Chi Chuan should release your body, not trap it. Freedom of movement begins from awareness and movement on the inside.

Suggested related post on internal awareness

When Should You Start To Learn Push Hands?

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Applications in Tai Chi, Form, Progress, Push hands, Tai Chi

A common question from beginners and non-practitioners especially who are interested to start studying T’ai Chi Ch’uan, is about when they can start to learn push hands.

There is a common view that form should be practiced first and push hands later. Many teachers, even some established and well known, will teach form and basic exercises for the first one or two years, and then go on to start teaching push hands. Applications and combat practice will be initiated even later.

Some people say that you need to practice form first to be able to understand push hands. I don’t agree with this conception. Form practice is not a prerequisite for push hands. In my opinion, the truth is quite the opposite around. Push hands is a tool for learning how to practice the form correctly, especially in terms of balance, alignment and intent. Form should be taught together with, and alongside, push hands and applications. Otherwise your form practice will be just as good as walking around with an empty bag. Later you’ll probably need to re-learn how to do your form… if you haven’t already cemented a false appreciation of the form and still are able to change it…

But practicing push hands, and applications especially, early when you have started to train, doesn’t mean that you should do it in a purely ”technical” or ”external” manner, as you commonly see in Karate or Jujutsu. No, on the contrary, you should do this using tai chi principles and practice this to learn and understand Tai Chi principles. My own teachers paid a great attention to details right from the beginning. When we did simple applications and “leading & following” exercises, my first teacher would show me how to stand correctly, how to relax properly, how to sink into the stance and how to use my waist. He would to tell me how to breath correctly or not to hold my breath. And he would constantly repeat “relax, relax, relax”. Tai Chi principles were taught and drilled right from the start, practically. The first thing my first Tai Chi teacher did on my very first class was not about showing a form or any kind of solo exercises. No, instead he taught some simple evasion and guiding exercises, as well as balancing and unbalancing. These few exercises set the course for the whole progress in my Tai Chi practice. For the years to come, form, push hands and applications were always fully integrated. I learned balance, rooting & structure more from the latter two parts of the practice and I would continue to study what I’ve been taught in class when I practiced form home alone.

In my own opinion, this is the correct way to teach form, push hands and applications. For push hands, I believe that the basic simple drill also could be taught from the start. But the progress from drills to free push hands exercises should be achieved by a gradual process. In my own opinion, free push hands is always better as a semi-cooperative game where you help each other solve problems and come up with solutions. Free combat practice and sparring should is in my opinion better learned from other formats of practice.

 

How often should I practice my Tai Chi and for how long? (And some other stuff like a few points about “warming up the system”)

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Form, Form practice, Tai Chi

So how much should a Tai Chi practitioner practice Tai Chi and for how long? Sometimes I read books from people as Yang Jwing-Ming who has very special demands on very slow speed of form practice as well as tons of jibengong exercises, (basic practice) advice on sitting meditation (about two hours a day recommended by the mentioned teacher) and has a whole lot of different Qigong sets with different demands. So I wonder if he and similar teachers practice about 36 hours every day. At least, they can’t get any food, because they never eat one or two hours after training. But then I think about that they still have time to write a whole lot of books and make videos. So their demands can’t be so serious after all.

Others says that 20 minutes a day is quite enough. They speak about form practice of course, as there was nothing else in Tai Chi worth practicing. Sun Lutang, the creator of the Sun Family Internal Arts, proposed 20 minutes of standing meditation in wuji stance before practicing form. So there goes the twenty minutes that the common “Yang short form” teachers speak about, just on preparation. Jibengong, other stance practice, stretching and  similar is not included.

So how much should you practice your Tai Chi and for how long? First, I must ask you: Why the heck do you ask me? I am not your teacher. And besides that, everyone has different goals with their practice. What do you want to accomplish and why do you practice Tai Chi? If you can’t answer those questions, how could you know how much you should practice? If you know the answers to these questions, just practice enough so you can see that you develop in the speed that you want to develop. Easy answer, huh?

But then, are there no general rules or any minimum amount of amount of time for practice? No, of course there are not. Again, it depends on what style you practice, what exercises you are working on for the moment, your own level and it depends on what you want to accomplish, i.e. your personal goals. You need to come to your own understanding about what is enough, what is too much or what is too little.

But I can tell you something about practice, like this: When I practice form, I need at least 20 minutes to “get into the flow”. After twenty minutes, and often it takes the double amount of that time for my system to warm up properly, I get my “motor” running. AND first after that time, the real practice and the real progress begin. I will move, breath and focus in a completely different way after that time of warming up. This is my own personal experience. But of course, sometimes I might focus on drills and jibengong, and stance training instead of form practice. Then it’s another way to deal with the whole thinng, another way to warm up the system, a shorter or a longer time. And also there’s another way of dealing with my own body after this time of warming up the system. “You need to pump up the qi”(ch’i) as a Qi non-believer so wisely said.

This might be the very reason for practicing long forms instead of short forms or drills. And I agree with this. Drills has it’s own place, but there is really something very special about longer forms that other kind of martial arts practice can not give you. So from my own experience, I have become a real fan of long forms practice. It can be both very demanding and very rewarding.

Then after “getting warm”, how much do I practice? Hopefully one or two hours, at least. But mostly, I won’t have the time to practice as much as I would like to. I am a busy man. But there’s another component to the deal than the time you do practical exercises. You are not actually limited to the time you do physical practice. If you practice regularly, practice is a way to tune and refine your system. It’s a way to develop your nervous system and muscle memory. Practicing Tai Chi, if you do it regularly, 20 minuets a day or 2 hours a day, a progress of development that goes on 24/7. If you are very passionate about the art, and do a lot of thinking and reading about the art, the overall development will go faster and reach deeper. This is my conviction anyway. I haven’t read things like this in other places, but  I know something about learning. And I speak from my own experience.

No, I have never heard anyone speaking about practicing time the way that I do in this article, or have read anything similar. You can throw everything I said into your mental bin if you like, but still, I hope that you will think more about thus subjekt in terms about how you develop yourself into your tai chi, or how you personalize your practice to suite your own goals and your own personality. This is actually a more “Chinese thinking” than giving general advice about time and amount of practice. A Chinese doctor creates an individualized cure for every patient. The way to handle a decease, how to cure it, is different for every situation. I look at Tai Chi as a “good decease”. You must be like a good doctor and treat yourself according to your own prerequisites. Don’t listen to other “doctors” as different teachers. The only way to develop in Tai Chi is to find the right road by yourself. Maybe easier said than done, but the art of Tai Chi really demands responsibility from the person practicing it. You can’t really hide away from your own responsibilities if you want to develop and progress for real.

On Movement, Drill, Form and Artistic Expression

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calligraphy, Form, Tai Chi

What is a drill and why form practice? It is said that earlier Tai Chi was postures and later individual movements and drills. Forms came even later.

Postures of a form can also be practiced as “ding shi”, or  “holding postures”, a kind of standing meditation. I was taught a method of practice that through the form, one should stop in every posture for six minutes before moving into the other. A long form of 88 or 120 movements consists of many six minutes of standing. 8 or 12 hours of practice a form? I would not have time nor courage to spend a whole day moving through one form.

A posture or a single movement is like a brush stroke, a drill is like a character. And a Tai Chi form is like painting fluid calligraphy. A tai chi form is like writing in “Grass style”, which is a highly personal expression where the artist condense and make abstractions according to his own personal, artistic choice.

People ask: Why so many forms? The I ask: Why not? Create your own form if you want, or change the one you know according to your own personal judgement. Change directions, duplicate or take away movements. Let the postures flow together or separate them. Do it beautiful or make it look bold. Just make sure you don’t copy any one else and be sure to find your own voice, your own artistic expression.