24 Form (Yang Simplified/Beijing Form). Only place to start?

[meeks]

you're starting taiji with a form? .....

[Jonny]

The taiji form, or style, doesn't matter. Find a teacher who knows and will teach the system's shenfa (or body method), the basic jins, and how to apply these jins in self-defense usage of the postures within the form he is teaching.

I agree

[Ron Panunto]

eh. just do the cloud hands and brush knee. maybe wild horse's mane. a long choreography is more of a mental training. it's really not particularly interesting.

IMHO the form that you practice should at least have one posture representative of each of the taiji 13 (8+5) jins and movements. If your not learning and practicing the "13" then your not doing taiji.

[everything]

eh. just do the cloud hands and brush knee. maybe wild horse's mane. a long choreography is more of a mental training. it's really not particularly interesting.

IMHO the form that you practice should at least have one posture representative of each of the taiji 13 (8+5) jins and movements. If your not learning and practicing the "13" then your not doing taiji.

to me cloud hands has everything except push and press. push and press are easy to practice separately. just do cloud hands + push + press.

[Waterway]

I am curious though, is there any other starting form people in Taiji learnt other than 24 form?

Not sure why you keep asking about "starting form". The starting form is whichever form you happen to learn first. For some people that is a long form such as Yang 108 or Chen's Lao Jia Yi Lu. The short forms are a little more accessible to beginners though I guess. I think CZL's 18 movement form is pretty good, but then again I'm sorta biased.

Sorry I didn't articulate it very well maybe. "Starting Form" in the context of what I was discussing originally related to the 24 form being the form that you learn as an "introduction" to Taiji, something that you "had" to learn before learning more about Taiji. It seems to be the opinion of at least 2 teachers in my area.

I was just wondering if there was any reason for this e.g. is 24 form so much easier to learn than any other form? I wanted to find out why some many local teachers seemed intent on starting everyone on this form. When I asked before, I was told it was a good introduction to Taiji, but I never found why that was.

Hope that makes a bit more sense. I have found this thread to be pretty helpful, so thanks to everyone for contributing so far.

[everything]

putting aside questions about whether it even makes sense to start anything with a form, maybe they just mean because it is short?

[Waterway]

Maybe. I've never been able to get a straight answer.

Everything, I am interested about your reference to start learning something by doing a form.

A Xingyi teacher I spoke to told me there were 17 short excercises he made his students learn before getting into forms.

Sorry but this is a real noob question, but are there specific Taiji excercises that are taught to people before getting them going into forms? My teacher did show us a few Wu leaning excercises in Sword class now that I think about it, but it never occured to me that these could be taught first and then the form at a later stage.

[johnwang]

Taiji excercises that are taught to people before getting them going into forms?

IMO, these are the basic that everybody will need before getting into any forms.

- warm up (waist rotation, arm rotation, leg bend, ...)
- basic stretching (swing leg up, inside crescent, outside crescent, ...)
- 8 basic stances (horse stance, bow-arrow stance, golden rooster, ...)
- basic punches (vertical punch, horizontal punch, hook punch, ...)
- basic kicks (front kick, round house kick, side kick, ...)

[chud]

the 24 form being the form that you learn as an "introduction" to Taiji, something that you "had" to learn before learning more about Taiji. It seems to be the opinion of at least 2 teachers in my area.

I was just wondering if there was any reason for this e.g. is 24 form so much easier to learn than any other form? I wanted to find out why some many local teachers seemed intent on starting everyone on this form.

I would stay far away from those teachers then. Any teacher who uses the Beijing 24 as a starter form doesn't know good Taiji when they see it. Would this happen to be a Shaolin-Do school?

[johnwang]

I would stay far away from those teachers ...

I met an old lady in the park this morning. She learned Yang 48 form from a teacher in Oceano, Ca. From the way that I talked to her, she can't care less whether the form she is learning is 24, 36, or 48. Today, Taiji has attracted different kind of students and that's for sure. Whether this is good or bad, all US Taiji teachers should accept this responsibility.

[Waterway]

I don't *think* so. Like I said, the Wu Dao form is good, and the guy has been to Beijing to train, and he has competed and had success in Traditional Wushu comps in China.

The thing is, a lot of the classes are filled with people who are purely interested in health. Nothing wrong with that, but that seems to be what the class is geared towards. I have taken some private lessons with the guy for Qi Gong, and I felt I got more benefit out of one Qi Gong Lesson than I did the whole time I studied 24 form.

I think the teacher is good, but the class isn't great, if that makes sense. I think the class is too big for a start.

He also talked about starting people off on 24 form, then letting them move on to another form but he has been teaching classes for nearly 3 years, and all of his classes still seem to teach 24 form.

Thanks again guys, this is helping me out a lot.

[everything]

The thing is, a lot of the classes are filled with people who are purely interested in health. Nothing wrong with that, but that seems to be what the class is geared towards. I have taken some private lessons with the guy for Qi Gong, and I felt I got more benefit out of one Qi Gong Lesson than I did the whole time I studied 24 form.

then, for your health interest, forget the 24 form and do the qi gong you learned for starters, and maybe forever. add the 24 form if you feel the same or more benefit.

if it's for MA interest, you don't need to learn choreography X, then choreography Y, then choreography Z, and so on. Forget that. See if you can find a class that does something like this: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5252 (yeah ok it's probably very rare).

[johnwang]

It's very difficult to switch back and forth between "combat" and "health" for any discussion. For health only, you can just run 5 miles daily and you don't need to train any CMA.

In another forum someone asked whether he should "tucking his tailbone in Taiji"? I responsed, "Can you apply hip throw and not hang your ass out? Later on I found out that people were talking about "better flow of Qi" and nobody gave dam about combat. I felt like a fool myself as a chicken talked to some ducks in that discussion.

I think we should label every thread as "This thread is for health discussion only", "this thread is for performance discussion only", "this thread is for Qi flow discussion only", and "this thread is for combat discussion only".

[chud]

Later on I found out that people were talking about "better flow of Qi" and nobody gave dam about combat. I felt like a fool myself as a chicken talked to some ducks in that discussion.

[Ron Panunto]

the 24 form being the form that you learn as an "introduction" to Taiji, something that you "had" to learn before learning more about Taiji. It seems to be the opinion of at least 2 teachers in my area.

I was just wondering if there was any reason for this e.g. is 24 form so much easier to learn than any other form? I wanted to find out why some many local teachers seemed intent on starting everyone on this form.

I would stay far away from those teachers then. Any teacher who uses the Beijing 24 as a starter form doesn't know good Taiji when they see it. Would this happen to be a Shaolin-Do school?

Why would you say that Chud? I use the 24 as my starter form for students. It's a well balanced form with most postures being done on both sides, and it is the most practiced form throughout the word. I've learned dozens upon dozens of taiji forms, and find the 24 to be one of the better modern short forms. One of my associates, Dr. Cheng, who is a fierce Yang taiji fighter from China, also uses the 24 as his "starter" form.