Yang form of YCF ... what was YLC form

[everything]

if the "smoothed" and "large frame" Yang form of Yang Chengfu is what most people know about, then what was the "form" that Yang Luchan likely did? How about Jianhou? Sure, sure "old secrets" blah blah but what do you think people think?

[windwalker]

That the idea of what a form is has changed in modern times.


In the old days it would be better to think of them as methods of linking movement, after a movement was learned.
The training tailored to an individual, reflecting, the skill sets and abilities of the teacher..

In modern times family styles are about preserving their historical training methods, insuring the method is correct
according to depth of ability, knowledge, and skill set needed.

Also to be considered not everyone can physically do the practice, according to the standards..


"Prof. Zheng taught students in China differently from the way he taught students in the United States.

When he taught me, he was very strict, espe-cially when he was younger. My legs would be so sore that, when I went to bed at night, I had to use my hands to lift my legs onto the bed. He was kinder with American students. He got softer as he grew older."

[robert]

if the "smoothed" and "large frame" Yang form of Yang Chengfu is what most people know about, then what was the "form" that Yang Luchan likely did? How about Jianhou? Sure, sure "old secrets" blah blah but what do you think people think?

In Chen style the form is a training device, and it changes as the student progresses. Slow and smooth at first and later fajin is added as the student improves. After YLC left the village and returned home, it probably looked something like this.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ljADZyRKAs

This is a lineage from Chen Yanxi, Chen Fake's father. Wang Changjiang is Wang Yan's grandson.

[everything]

so as we go back, something more rigorous, "martial", etc. if you are "Yang the Invincible" or martial arts instructor at court, it would have to be so, right (unless everything is a giant sham)? if someone in later generation than "smooths" it for more popular appeal/adoption, that would make sense. but did the form become "longer"? why would it?

[windwalker]

so as we go back, something more rigorous, "martial", etc. if you are "Yang the Invincible" or martial arts instructor at court, it would have to be so, right (unless everything is a giant sham)? if someone in later generation than "smooths" it for more popular appeal/adoption, that would make sense. but did the form become "longer"? why would it?

The number of movements is really not that important....as with the 37 step,,,
Some thoughts that might provide some insight...

The Professor simplified the form during the Sino-Japanese war.!°

He was in charge of martial arts training in Hunan Province. Martial arts instructors from throughout the province came to be trained by him. After discovering that there wasn't enough time to teach the long form to those who wanted to learn taiji, the Professor shortened the form. He didn't simplify the form with the intention of increasing its popularity, as some people believe.

One of the persistent myths in Taiji is that when Yang Luchan went to Beijing, he made the training easier by taking out all the hard stumping and jumps from the form to make it easier for the nobles.

There has been two reasons supplied for his doing so:

1) the form would otherwise be too difficult for the nobles,
2) he didn’t want to teach the real art to the Manchurians who invaded and took control of China in 1644.
If we just take a step back and take a look at everything else we know to be true about the martial art scene in Beijing at the time, we can easily conclude this not to be true.

To start, both of these reasons implies the true essence of Taiji lies within powerful stumps and high jumps.
But those are not what make basic Taijiquan skills work, or makes it different from other martial art right?

A lot of the underlying questions concerning Taiji get back to the conception of the art, the
understanding of the art as related to philosophical concepts it's purported to embody .

interesting post BTW

[everything]

there is a lot written about Wang Xiangzhai spending a large amount of time learning zhan zhuang from Guo Yunsheng. Of course he must've learned many other things. Same with athletes like Messi or Jordan.

For similar reasons, it seems hard to believe YLC wouldn't 1. know many things 2. wouldn't keep it all pretty "simple" in reality. But since there doesn't seem to be a record, just wonder about what others speculate.

[nicklinjm]

Despite what many people think, there are still several legitimate branches of pre-YCF Yang style to be found in China, especially as you get closer to Yang Luchan's hometown (Guangfu town, Yongnian county).

Having just been there a few weeks ago, I saw at least 3 schools coming down from different lines of Yang Banhou's disciples - Li Wancheng (-> Jia Zhixiang), Jiao Liantang and Bai Zhongxin (YBH's grandson).

One person who could throw a lot of light on this is Su Xuewen, because not only was he born in Yongnian (not far from Guangfu), but he also studied under 2 of the YBH branches mentioned above. A video of his form (with fajin) can be viewed here: .

Same goes for Yang Shaohou - Zhang Huchen's branch (to Jiang Lin) at least gives an idea of what YSH's small frame should look like，see here: https://v-wb.youku.com/v_show/id_XOTI4MTIzMjI0.html

[robert]

Having just been there a few weeks ago, I saw at least 3 schools coming down from different lines of Yang Banhou's disciples

It's interesting looking at some of the YBH lineages. In Chen style one variation we do with yilu is high stepping. This is found in some YBH lines.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQf1_UuEHRs

Also, the silk reeling, the body mechanics, can be more obvious in YBH lines, as opposed to YCF lines.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gXTjlaLPJA

This last video also has a more upright posture.

[everything]

It makes me wonder if people near YLC's hometown think YLC did
a. slow motion form
b. a "long form".

For wild speculation, we can easily see that in all difficult body activities (music, sports), beginners up to top experts go through passages slowly. As the SEAL teams say, "slow is smooth, smooth is fast". So I'd expect any top expert to do certain things slowly as well as quickly. Golf swings, music performance, punches, kicks, wrestling, math problems, whatever. Anything. But this doesn't really answer my questions A and B above. And I don't really know why I wonder.

(Obviously it can be wrong often) chatGPT told me people think that YLC actually did 13-16 moves, the 2nd gen did 40-60, and 108 came later. Which says to me some humans somewhere speculated (the AI can be wrong but doesn't "speculate"; it "reads" documents that were human-generated ... side note: when "documents" are mostly AI-generated, oh boy...) that later generations added more, or added repetition, etc. for some reason. I can't find any such human writing in English, though. I don't have enough language skill to do a good search for this in Chinese or other languages.

[robert]

so as we go back, something more rigorous, "martial", etc. if you are "Yang the Invincible" or martial arts instructor at court, it would have to be so, right (unless everything is a giant sham)? if someone in later generation than "smooths" it for more popular appeal/adoption, that would make sense. but did the form become "longer"? why would it?

According to Chen Village lore CCX reworked the forms that CWT had created. He reduced the training from 5-7 forms to two - yilu and erlu and removed some of the more difficult moves. It is said there were moves where you jump in the air and land in a handstand and jump in the air and land in splits. CWT was a county level military commander, CCX a bodyguard/security guard. Times change, training evolves. YLC would have learned the new forms, but he certainly may have seen the original training forms as well.

[edit]
YLC would have been taught erlu, pao chui (cannon fist) as well, which is more rigorous and vigorous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgQUOo95hM8&t=22s

[everything]

that looks awesome. I guess there is the question of do these modern examples really replicate what YLC's teachers did / looked like / taught him.

but in any case, so it seems he learned Chen long forms, probably a giant repertoire of moves and lessons and applications. but I wonder what he personally did. I guess to answer my own questions

a. mixture of slow/fast for reasons already mentioned.
b. probably after he learned long forms, didn't personally do them as much later. I guess Steph Curry learned all of basketball but disproportionately has practiced shooting by a huge amount. perhaps the same with mma guys like Adesanya (I guess certain kickboxing moves he does by a giant % more than other things he's learned). "daily decrease" as Bruce Lee put it.

[robert]

but in any case, so it seems he learned Chen long forms, probably a giant repertoire of moves and lessons and applications. but I wonder what he personally did. I guess to answer my own questions

In terms of forms, we have multiple Chen lineages that are parallel developments. YLC also taught other people that gave rise to other family styles. Hao style, which is from YLC and Chen style -


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9bZXn_m5LY

and Wu style


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDaV9C0ERP8

And there are the various Yang styles. There are differences in choreography, but the same principles underlie these forms.

but I wonder what he personally did.

Yeah, teaching methods and supplemental training methods, jibengongs/neigongs, aren't documented.

[everything]

from a distance, the forms all look similar to me (in the sense that the all look like "taijiquan" and not baguazhang, xingyi, praying mantis, wing chun, whatnot), and are all "long forms", a lot of them done slowly, some of them done quickly.

supposedly this manuscript is by Yang Banhou:
https://brennantranslation.wordpress.co ... i-fa-shuo/
with one copy given to the Wu family and one copy retained by the Yang family.

in a short section on "long form" it says more or less that once you learn all the postures, join them together in a long form/routine. I guess it all seems to say (to state the obvious), YLC must've learned and taught a long form (among those other things we don't have much record of). not sure that answers my questions, but it's interesting. perhaps the "Banhou book" is the closest in proximity to a theoretical "YLC book", Idk.

[robert]

in a short section on "long form" it says more or less that once you learn all the postures, join them together in a long form/routine.

I think it's interesting that it says each posture is learned by itself, and then they are joined together. HJS says this was his approach to learning from Chen Fake, and also that although CF had a number of students, he taught each individually.

[everything]

hmm, yes, right. not to over-analyze this book, but he doesn't seem to spend much time talking about doing the long form ("routine" is a nice word). learn them first, then later do a long routine. do the long routine correctly and like a river flowing. he spends most of the book talking about other aspects.

but in the popular imagination, we think the long routine part is the beginning as well as the main point. to make a bad analogy on the spot, in 150 years, if we had no clips of Tyson boxing, only stories, but we had film of students of his grandkids doing a long shadow boxing routine, and this was pervasive in movies and other popular culture, we would think "Tyson boxing" is this long shadow boxing. This would of course seem absurd to us. I mean, yeah, watching someone like Tyson shadow box or even jump rope is really really impressive. But nothing compared to watching prime Tyson do his KOs. So it must be the same with YLC. The stories of many Beijing martial experts coming away amazed are brief. Basically one move defeated and impressed them. Never anything about watching his long shadow boxing routine or his jumping rope, and "wow". This is way off on a tangent, but that would also seem absurd.