Chen Style Long Forms
The Chen family Old Frame, First Form (Lao Jia, Yi Lu) is arguably rooted in the oldest Tai Chi form and the foundation of traditional Chen style Tai Chi training, as well as being the root of most other styles of Tai Chi.
It’s around 74 postures long – depending on how they’re counted – and contains a wide variety of different types of movements – some more physically demanding than others, with occaisional fast moves too.
There are two Lao Jia (Old frame) forms:
• The Yi Lu, or first form, which helps develop good posture, footwork, flexibility & technique.
• The Er Lu, or second form, sometimes called Cannon Fist, which is shorter, performed in a more lively way, and develops power, speed and quick changes of direction.
Then there’s the New Frame – different versions of both the first and second forms developed in the early 20th century by Chen Fake – one of the Chen family who moved to Beijing. This version incorporates more coiling and twisting movements for use in martial applications, although opinion varies on which version is ‘best’.
The Chen Short Forms
During the 20th century, various shorter forms were created for people who didn’t have the time or commitment to learn the full long form, but still wanted to gain some of the benefits that Tai Chi could offer.
Because they’re so much shorter, they’re much quicker to learn – the classes I teach take around 20 sessions to get to the end. There’s still a lot to work on after the basic movements have been learned – developing the principles and ideas behind each posture can keep you learning new things and improving your skills for a long time.
The short forms generally leave out a lot of the repeats of postures that occur in the longer forms. They also exclude the more physically difficult moves, making them more suitable for people with physical limitations of various kinds. Having said that, if someone is struggling with a particular movement in any form, I work with them to adapt it into a way that they can manage rather than demanding that movements are done in a fashion that isn’t achievable for them.
Dragon River Tai Chi Chuan 