42-Form Competition Tai Chi
四十二式太极拳
The official competition form of modern wushu, deliberately mixing elements from all four family styles — Chen, Yang, Wu and Sun.
Quick Facts
About this Form
The form was created so that tai chi could be judged competitively. As long as every competitor performed a different family form there was no way to compare them; a standardised set gave the judges a common script. It has 42 movements and takes about seven minutes. The skeleton is Yang, but the form deliberately takes in elements of the other three families as well — the fajin release from Chen, the characteristic following step from Sun, and the tight, economical arm work from Wu. For the practitioner this means meeting four different logics of movement inside one form, which is demanding on precision and useful as an overview. That is why it is now used outside competition too, as advanced material. It is only fair to say what it is not: it is not the traditional form of any family, and nobody practised it before the late twentieth century. Anyone looking for lineage must go to the family forms; this one is an instrument of sport.