Grandmaster Tse’s Tàijí Fist 143

Wáng Zōng Yuè’s Tàijíquán Poem王宗岳太極拳論 Part 6

Wáng Zōng Yuè’s Tàijíquán Poem 王宗岳太極拳論 says, “ 進之則愈長，退之則愈促 When we move forward – we can go further away. When we move backward, we should be able to move quickly.”

In Tàijíquán 太極拳 if we go forwards, we can go further away. What does this mean? Normally when we go forwards it is to attack. When we attack, we expect that our opponent will move back, away from us, so we need to move further. This means that to catch them we need to move forwards faster than they can move backwards. Whenever we attack, we must expect the enemy to run away and so we should expect to take more than one step. No matter what, we should not lean forwards, but instead we should move forwards with good footwork and not the upper body. Even if we do not need to move forwards, we should maintain a straight back and only shift the weight instead.

When we need to move backwards, we need to move faster than they can move forwards. They will try to move faster than us and so we need to move even faster. After the first step back, we should move back in a curve and never step more than three steps back in a straight line, otherwise our opponent will be able to catch us. When we move is a curve they will no longer be faster than us because we are moving in a circle.