Is the Beijing 24 postures routine martial or just for health?

I know that a lot of people think that the Beijing forms are somehow 'sabotaged' to be less martial. Whilst it is true that the martial usage was de-emphasised after the cultural revolution, the actual postures were unchanged. I have studied with two disciples of Li Tianje (who choreographed the 24 form based on his family style.) Both were very much traditional martial artists concerned with usage. Below is a blog post where I compare Yang Chen Fu's postures to Li Yulin's. The 24 forms were based on Li Yulin's postures, which is why the 24 forms looks different to the orthodox Yang style. Neither is more or less martial, however. I have also included a video demonstration.

http://www.risingcrane.co.uk/?p=783

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Originally Posted by RisingCrane

I know that a lot of people think that the Beijing forms are somehow 'sabotaged' to be less martial. Whilst it is true that the martial usage was de-emphasised after the cultural revolution, the actual postures were unchanged. I have studied with two disciples of Li Tianje (who choreographed the 24 form based on his family style.) Both were very much traditional martial artists concerned with usage. Below is a blog post where I compare Yang Chen Fu's postures to Li Yulin's. The 24 forms were based on Li Yulin's postures, which is why the 24 forms looks different to the orthodox Yang style. Neither is more or less martial, however. I have also included a video demonstration.

http://www.risingcrane.co.uk/?p=783

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People who do not know about taijiquan tend to see the Beijing 24 just how it was taught! As wushutaijiquan and that is sad.
I try to simplify it by recommending people learn the Beijing 24 form from anyone who can walk and teach it then take a 1 year course in shuaijiao and they will have the best martial taijiquan around. I am looking at it from concept, principles and conditioning!

In my experience I learned Qigong sets like the 8- Brocade and others first, and learned the modern Yang 24 steps (Beijing 24 form). A lot of students, especially older students or someone with an illness, would learn qigong & yang 24 also, but it seemed that was the extent of their learning.

The Chen style class and Push Hands class that were back-to-back yielded fewer students. I learned applications from Yang 24 too, but from a martial perspective I got the most out of Chen style and it's theory in Push Hands. My teacher was a student of GM Feng Zhi Qiang and other Chen masters, so this is no surprise that we focused on Chen style theory and technique in our Push Hands, instead of say, Yang.

The Yang 24 has great martial applications, but seems like it has generally been promoted for health, and as a standardized form for learning "Tai Chi." (not necesarrily a bad thing, I myself am a fan of that particular form too having trained it so extensively!)