Long form vs short forms

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..

Notably, the Yang 24 movement "short form" links movements together in ways that the long form doesn't.. it shows us that we can deviate from the confines of a "form", that we can link movements differently depending on situations while preserving principles.. Yang short form also more evenly trains left and right sides, it puts emphasis in places that the long form doesn't..

Too much focus on "Form" (choreography).. too little focus on principle.. Forms teach principles, principles make the forms work.. Long form, short form, middle form.. learn all that your style has to offer. i have never heard a student say they didn't want to learn something new (neither have i)..

I appreciate scholar's perspective, i learned the Yang Long Form first, too.. but, i also see the benefit of the short form.. and, if someone wanted only to learn the short form, i would gladly oblige.. who am i to deny someone a taste of Tai Chi, and it may bring them into the whole Tai Chi "way".. There seems to be a bit of "attachment" to personal preference here, assuming that personal preference is "the" way.. "the" way is determined by the one walking their chosen path, not by our proclamations of preferences..

Be well..

[denali]

Personally I think this over emphasis on ''form'' is what is watering gongfu down. If you only train the form, it doesn't matter, long or short, you are not training gong.

While the form does have some benefit, in order to fully understand the movements you also have to think, use your brain, analyze. This does not happen by simply repeating a pattern over and over. Someone said that short forms are for dumb people. I say only training forms, regardless of length, is for dumb people.

Like math, you learned 1+2+3. What about 2+1+3, etc? You learned a movement in the form, can you do it in a different direction, with the other side of the body..etc? You need to break it down and do more training than just the form, otherwise you are still not yet training gongfu.

Why does Xingyi train short forms of just a few movements..?
Why do people bother training hours and hours of stances or footwork? Why did Yang Chengfu spend so much time repeating single whip and repulse monkey?

I don't claim to be an expert or anywhere close, but this is what I have been taught, and stand by it.

[scholar]

You do need both form and no-form, yin and yang. Beginners need the form first. The form has to be just right for efficient training, but you have to be able to transcend it in an instant for fighting, too. I have been taught that the form is for conditioning and focus training, which is why it is taught first. On top of that, it is an internal form, so there is more going on than an untrained person will get consciously from external appearances.

So the form and basic push hands make sure that you don't skip bits of your conditioning. Freestyle pushing hands and sparring helps you break out of the patterns, indeed they demand that you be able to demonstrate ability or you'll get hammered...

As the musicians say: "Technique isn't everything, but you can't do anything without it!"

[Vapour]

It is my view that to improve particular technique, nothing can beat *drilling*. That is to practice one particular technique repeatedly.

Doing different variations of technique in sequence just miss the benefit of specialisation and waste become more pronoucned as the form get longer. It is my view that the form is specialised tool to train body (jing?). And drilling is specialised tool to train particular technique. I'm not saying long form is bad. As long as one concentrate on building internal strength, it is perfectly fine. I'm just saying that it is not the best way to train individual techniques.

One interesting comparison. Even in judo, there are only about 13-15 basic throws. But each throw has 100s of variation. And to become good judo player, doing uchikomi (technique drilling) is a must.

As of benefit of performing form both left and right equally, according to Cheng Man ching, who was a master of Chinese Medicine, that it is bad rather than good because humand internal organ are not placed symetrically.

[scholar]

I agree, training technique is best left to sparring drills and push hands. The form is conditioning, and a catalogue of techniques. To apply those techniques, however, you have to have training beyond the forms.

You bring up a good point that left and right aren't the same. One side is blood, the other side is ch'i from a TCC standpoint. Externally, we train to do anything on the left side that we can do on the right, internally, the circulations are naturally different. The masters who formulated and transmitted T'ai Chi to us were also masters of Traditional Chinese Medicine and took these circulations into account when setting the training routines handed down by the 5 families.

The internal energies are subtle and the traditional family long forms - beyond the purely physical regimen - circulate and balance those energies very deliberately through a specific set of complete ranges of motion, leaving nothing out, circulating, balancing and recirculating until the desired end is achieved. If it is a good form, there is no wastage, indeed, there is tremendous benefit. It is one of the downfalls of most short forms that they are not properly balanced that way. I'm not saying that it is impossible to do it, just that very few of the shorter forms that I have ever seen were formulated by people capable of understanding the difference, so they don't have the same effect.

[Brad]

deleted my post because I'm going on vacation and won't be able to read or respond to any replies for a week I'll repost if no one else has said it after I get back

[Vapour]

As someone who practice judo and taichichuan, I just can't fail to notice the similarity when it come up. True, judo is a sports and totally ignore *internal* aspect (whatever that is) so there isn't yoga/form-practice aspect in judo.

Judo place great emphasis on uchikomi (technique drilling) and randori (sparing). When I started judo, I used to really have go at it in randori. I was then told that if I do randori like that I will never improve. Basically, to prevent being thrown, I was stiffning my arm to keep randori partner away. If both side do that, each side are prevented from practicing technique which you trained in uchikomi. In randori, your arm have to be deliberately soft so that both you and your partner can practice as much techniques as possible. You must make concious decision not to counter power with power and instead focus on countering technique with technique. You have real go at it in shiai (competition).

Plus, my judo coach give me occasional suprise because he give me the same advice as in taichi. I was recently told that I have to think in term of *space*. The same advice I was told by my taichi instructor. And everyone must have heard by now how much BJJ emphasis relaxation.

To bring the thread back to original topic, yep, IMHO, form is for internal strength, and drilling and push-hands and controlled sparing for techniques. In long forms, entire theme of body training are included in various stage of form performance. In short form or styles which are short form based (like CMC) it is responsiblity of the practioner to be aware of different theme so the form performance can be altered to train various aspect of the theme.. In reverse, if you are not aware of the these themes, it makes no difference whether you practice long form or short form.

[scholar]

V.,

Would you say those themes include the famous '8 gates' p'eng, lu, chi, an, ts'ai, lieh, tsou and k'ao?

In terms of what you are saying I'm guessing that they should be the themes expressed in forms, as well as combinations of the 8 gates, such as as fa (discharge for distance no impact), na (locking and breaking the joints), ta (hitting for impact no distance) and hua (neutralizing). Those are the first 4 "methods of application" or combinations of the 8 gates trained in my school. We eventually go for expressing as many of those themes in the forms at once as we can depending on the perspective of the observer. For example, in the first postures of the form: the motion described by the top of the arm can be p'eng at the same time that the motion downward through the elbows (from the perspective of an opponent below the arms) can be both ts'ai and tsou simultaneously, the elbow (tsou) 'plucking' in a downward strike, as well as the same motion expressing a na style trap with the elbows from above (if a hypothetical opponent has grabbed one or both of the elbows).

Expressing and applying in this sense aren't the same things, of course. The accurate expression means that the stand alone motions themselves would work if there was an opponent in the right place providing the appropriate opportunity. The test for the students of whether the form's expression is accurate in application is indeed two person drills of p'eng, lu, chi, etc. and fa, na, ta, and hua; fencing and weapons/empty hand drills, freestyle sparring bridging into wrestling (closing the gap, so to speak), footsweeps, throws and groundfighting and whether or not those applications will work with the same or similar motions that the students are working with in the forms. If the senior teacher can get them to work and the student can't, then the student still has some work to do. If the senior teacher can't get them to work, maybe the motions shouldn't be in their forms. The senior teacher in the school presumably should have the experience to be able to simply watch another's form and make an accurate assessment of its martial efficiency. And we all know that martial efficiency is necessary for the fastest route to the miraculous health aspect of TCC.

Cheers,
S.

[Vash]

Have more omves than Short Forms.

[Vapour]

Nah, scholar. If you are talking about technique such as locking, hitting and so on, no way. I'm talkinga about principles such as following, rooting, or general conceptual strategy such as invading opponent's space or leading opponent to void or listening opponent through hand contacts.

And he doesn't really say these thing as if it is a quote from (taichichuan) scripture. When I'm doing something wrong or I ask question, then he correct me or give me some advices and his advice often turn out to be sometime very similar to or exactly the same as the taichi classics. And he hasn't got a faintest clue about what taichi classic is. But he is a Kodokan 8th dan teaching judo for like 40 years so go figure.

As of long form, I really don't mind learning Yang long form once I feel I got to o.k. level in CMC. But then, I might just skip and do something like Chen. But that will be in the future.

[scholar]

Originally posted by Vapour Nah, scholar. If you are talking about technique such as locking, hitting and so on, no way. I'm talkinga about principles such as following, rooting, or general conceptual strategy such as invading opponent's space or leading opponent to void or listening opponent through hand contacts.

...

Following I can see as in following the time of the other people in the form, rooting of course is related to how relaxed you are in the form, and these things are necessary to expressing p'eng, lu, etc. correctly, in forms and pushing hands, but they come from pushing hands first, and only later are translated into the forms. Which is why we say, "the form cannot be correct without pushing hands." Locking, hitting, etc. in TCC are only accomplished if you have looseness, sensitivity, rooting stickiness already, to allow for 'soft style' timing, coordination and positioning. Those things cannot go out the door in sparring if you want to be a TCC practitioner! Although with most people, unfortunately, they do...

[wiz cool c]

Short form is good for paying attention to detail. The long forms somtime have you thinking how much more do I have left. And the short form is also more practical for some people like myself who live in NYC where there is not a lot of space to practice. Also it is the teacher that matters. The long form has martial application and the short form doesn't. This is bull. It is the teacher how he learned and how he teaches it.

[Ma_Xu_Zha]

I went last night to train with this guy who does alot of Dr. Yang Jwing ming's yang taiji pushing and forms. Alot of interesting points were talked about long form without even asking him. He says the yang long form is the only form taught at the school. It should be done up to four times a day in 20 minute rounds. Each long form having some area of focus.

He couldnt remember what they were all about some thing like, first round is to open the body up, second round is structural alignment , third round chi flow, fourth round is for gong fu/ fighting applications.

matt

[Syd]

I like Yang Jwing Ming, and I'm going to do a backflip here and say; Hey, if people get benefit from their short forms and prefer it to the long forms, why not? It's got to be a personal thing at the end of the day. I guess the only thing I ever found a bit brow furrowing was this idea that people didn't have the discipline to learn the long forms so the short forms were born of that necessity. If thats the case then I think it's a bit of a cop out and a shame, but, if the short forms do give and equal benefit to those studying them and all the same benefits as those privy to the long forms, then fine, lets live and let live.

Best, Syd

[qiphlow]

hmm--any form can be made long or short. do the yang 24 form 24 times in a row and it's a LONG form . i believe that with any form, you get out what you put in. you can do a form well and have a good result from it, or you can just do it half assed and get no benefit whatever. your level of skill in any art is directly proportional to the work you put in to that art. the length of an individual form doesn't have much to do with anything.