Tai Chi's Thirteen Postures: The Framework, and the Routine That Borrowed Its Name

The two things called eight methods five steps

In any Tai Chi community, the phrase “eight methods five steps” turns up every day, and it refers to at least two things that are not the same.

The first is a technical framework — the Thirteen Postures (十三势), also called the Eight Gates and Five Steps (八门五步). It is eight methods of force — ward-off, roll-back, press, push, pluck, split, elbow, shoulder — plus five principles of step and body orientation: advance, retreat, look left, look right, central equilibrium. It has no fixed sequence. It appears inside every posture of every form, and inside every exchange of push hands.

The second is a solo routine published in 2018 by China’s State General Administration of Sport, formally titled 《太极（八法五步）》. It runs to sixteen forms comprising thirty-two single-posture actions, practised symmetrically left and right. It is now a set-event item at national competitions and an event at the National Games mass exhibition.

The two share a name and live at different levels. One is a grammar; the other is the first lesson written in that grammar. Confusion follows from that. Some readers assume the thirteen postures are the sixteen-form routine. Others assume the 2018 routine was invented from nothing. Both readings are wrong, and both are easy to reach — because in English, “thirteen postures” sounds like a list of poses.

This article puts each back where it belongs. It covers the framework’s original definition and textual history, why the framework belongs to push hands, what the 2018 routine actually is, and how to practise both without mistaking one for the other.

What the thirteen postures actually name

The classical definition

The definition most often quoted runs like this, traditionally attributed to Wang Zongyue in a text known as 《太极拳释名》:

十三势者，掤、捋、挤、按、採、挒、肘、靠，进、退、顾、盼、定也。 掤、捋、挤、按，即坎、离、震、兑，四正方也；採、挒、肘、靠，即乾、坤、艮、巽，四斜角也。此八卦也。 进、退、顾、盼、定，即金、木、水、火、土也。此五行也。合而言之，曰十三势。

The first eight characters are methods of force. The last five are principles of movement. The text then lines each group against a classical scheme: the eight methods against eight trigrams, the five steps against the five elements. Eight plus five is thirteen. Eight trigrams plus five phases is thirteen. The arithmetic is the same on both sides, and that correspondence is the point — not a count of movements.

The interactive reference here maps all thirteen with their trigram and element correspondences, and shows where transmissions disagree.

Eight methods, five directions

The eight gates divide into four cardinal and four corner methods. Ward-off, roll-back, press and push are the four cardinal methods (四正); pluck, split, elbow and shoulder are the four corner methods (四隅). The five steps — advance, retreat, look left, look right, central equilibrium — are directions of movement, not five discrete stepping techniques.

That last distinction matters and is worth stating plainly: they are orientations of the whole body and the weight, not a catalogue of footwork patterns. Advance is not “step forward”. It is the quality of moving into space with the structure intact. Look left is not a left foot placement; it is a turning of attention and weight.

Where the trigram and element pairings come from

The classical text supplies the trigrams but is more cautious than most modern summaries about what they mean.

The trigrams are named, not located. The text says ward-off, roll-back, press and push are 坎, 离, 震, 兑 — the four cardinal trigrams — and pluck, split, elbow and shoulder are 乾, 坤, 艮, 巽, the four corner trigrams. It does not assign compass directions to them. Fill in the directions from the Later Heaven arrangement and you get one set of bearings; use the Early Heaven arrangement and you get another, which is why some modern charts place ward-off north and others place it west. Any chart that presents its directions as the only reading has quietly chosen one arrangement without saying so. This site’s reference draws the Later Heaven wheel and shows the alternative side by side.

The element pairing is not bound in the earliest text either. The 十三势 text sets 金木水火土 against 进退顾盼定 as two lists side by side. It does not say advance is metal. Read down the columns and you get advance-metal, retreat-wood, look-left-water, look-right-fire, central-earth. That is an inference, and a defensible one — but it is not a statement the text makes.

One manuscript does make the statement. The Yang family text 《八门五步》 says it outright: 「五行：进步火，退步水，左顾木，右盼金，定之方中土也」 — advance is fire, retreat is water, look left is wood, look right is metal, central equilibrium is earth. This pairing also agrees with the element directions (fire south, water north, wood east, metal west, earth centre), so the whole scheme closes coherently. A stated pairing beats an inferred one; this site follows the Yang manuscript and says so where it is used.

A third transmission, the Guan Baoqian text, gives 水火木金土 — advance water, retreat fire, look left wood, look right metal. It is a narrower line, but it exists, and it is one more reason not to present any of these as the single truth.

Why “postures” is a poor translation

The Chinese is 势 (shì), not 式 (shì). 势 is a tendency of force, a momentum, a configuration — something in motion. 式 is a finished form, a set shape, a pattern. Traditional texts use 势 because the concept is a law of force and direction. Modern teaching materials that cut movements into teaching sections sometimes write 式 instead.

English inherited “postures” for 势, and that single word has caused most of the confusion that follows. A posture is a shape you hold. The thirteen are not shapes you hold. They are variables that different postures fill differently.

Not thirteen movements. One movement contains several. A single Grasp Sparrow’s Tail carries ward-off, roll-back, press and push in sequence. A Cloud Hands set exercises advance, retreat, look left, look right and central equilibrium across its turns. The thirteen are variable names, not an action list.

The textual history, and why the authorship is disputed

The text above is traditionally attributed to Wang Zongyue, and that attribution is genuinely uncertain. It is worth stating what is and is not known, because much writing on this subject overstates it.

• Wang Zongyue’s dates are disputed: some place him in the Ming dynasty under Jiajing or Wanli, others in the Qing under Qianlong.
• His birthplace is given as either Xinjiang or Yangcheng in Shanxi.
• Some scholars argue the texts were not his at all, and that they were written by a later hand — one candidate being Wu Yuxiang.
• Wu Chengqing, who is said to have obtained the manuscript, wrote in his own colophon: 「右论不知创自何人」 — this treatise, I do not know who composed it.

The chain of transmission is better documented than the authorship. In 1852 Wu Chengqing found a manuscript of the Tai Chi classics at a salt shop in Wuyang, Henan. It passed to his brother Wu Yuxiang, and from him to Wu’s nephew Li Yiyu, who copied and annotated it around 1881 in what are known as the “old three books” (老三本). One of those, given to his student Hao He, is the Hao He edition. The earliest text we can actually consult comes from this line.

The careful formulation, and the one used throughout this site, is “traditionally attributed to Wang Zongyue” — not “by Wang Zongyue”. The text’s standing as a classic does not depend on settling who wrote it.

Why the framework belongs to push hands

If the thirteen are a law of force and direction, their relationship to push hands follows immediately. A solo form is one person folding the thirteen into every movement. Push hands is two people taking the thirteen apart under contact.

The mnemonic is a push hands document

The 《打手歌》 — the Song of Striking Hands — is the most compact statement of the framework in action:

掤捋挤按须认真，上下相随人难进。 任他巨力来打我，牵动四两拨千斤。 引进落空合即出，沾连黏随不丢顶。

Six lines. The first four describe the coordination of the four cardinal methods, the way upper and lower body move as one, and the principle of borrowing force rather than opposing it. The last two state the tactical core: lead the incoming force into emptiness, then issue.

Every one of these operates on contact. 「舍己从人」 — give up yourself and follow the other — is not a description of solo practice. It is not even meaningful without a partner.

The training structure mirrors the framework

Traditional push hands drills are organised on the same eight-plus-five division:

• The four cardinal methods pair with the four orthodox hands drill (四正推手), the basic fixed-step exercise in which two people cycle ward-off, roll-back, press and push.
• The four corner methods pair with the large roll-back drill (大捋), which works the diagonal, close-range methods.
• Advance, retreat, look left, look right and central equilibrium operate in moving-step push hands, where stepping happens without losing contact.

A full curriculum typically climbs: fixed-step single hand, fixed-step double hand — which is the four orthodox hands drill, the same stage under two names — then moving-step, large roll-back, and freestyle. At the top of that ladder the framework is no longer being rehearsed; it is being used.

This is the point that gets lost. The thirteen postures are not a solo sequence that happens to have martial applications. They are a vocabulary of force, and push hands is where the vocabulary is spoken.

The other direction, and why it is also wrong

If the framework belongs to push hands, it is tempting to conclude that the form is optional — that a serious student should skip the solo work and go straight to a partner.

That does not hold either, for a practical reason. Push hands tests the framework under contact, and contact is unforgiving: when force arrives, the body does whatever it has rehearsed. A practitioner who has never developed ward-off alone will not find it under pressure. The force that fails in push hands is usually the force that was never built in the form.

This is why traditional curricula run both in parallel rather than in sequence, and why the ladder above does not abandon the form once partner work begins. The form is where the shapes are made reproducible; push hands is where they are tested. Remove either and the other degrades — one into choreography, the other into wrestling.

What follows from this is narrower than it sounds. It does not mean the 2018 routine is the right form for that purpose. It means that whichever form you use, the framework has to be built somewhere before contact will find it.

What the 2018 routine actually is

Origins and stated purpose

In 2018 the Wushu Sports Management Center of the General Administration of Sport of China compiled 《太极（八法五步）》 as part of a programme to promote Tai Chi to the general public, working from the principle of being scientific, standardised and simplified. The Chinese Wushu Association convened specialists to produce the set. It extracts the methods and stepped directions held in common across the major family styles and arranges them into a single beginning-level routine.

Its position is explicit: it is the standardised entry-level routine that follows the 24-Form Simplified Tai Chi. Its aim is not to produce fighters. Its aim is to give an absolute beginner a starting point with a low threshold and consistent standards.

Timeline:

• 2018 — the routine is formally published.
• 8 August 2018 — national promotion begins; the year is designated the first year of nationwide promotion.

Structure

This is where second-hand descriptions most often go wrong, so it is worth being exact.

• The set comprises sixteen forms containing thirty-two single-posture actions, including the opening and closing and several compound forms.
• The methods and steps are combined within the choreography and practised symmetrically on both left and right, so that each action is learned on both sides.
• The whole set divides into a fixed-step section and a moving-step section, and may be practised as fixed-step alone or in smaller groups.

The sixteen forms run: opening; left ward-off with right roll-back, left press, double push; right pluck with left split, left elbow, right shoulder; the same pair mirrored; advancing ward-off left and right; retreating roll-back; left step press and double push; the same to the right; retreating pluck; advancing split; right step elbow and shoulder; the same to the left; central equilibrium with left and right standing on one leg; cross hands; closing.

The distinction between sixteen forms and thirty-two actions is not pedantry. It is what tells a reader that the set contains compound forms — that a single numbered form may hold four separate methods. Remove the second number and the design disappears from view.

What the choreography is doing

The structure is not arbitrary, and reading it explains why the set works as an entry point.

The opening few forms state the four cardinal methods in order — ward-off, roll-back, press, push — then immediately repeat them mirrored. Doing so on both sides is not padding. A beginner learns a method on the strong side and then has to build it again on the weak side, which is where the learning actually happens.

Forms three and five do the same for the four corner methods. So the first five forms present all eight methods, each twice, in a fixed stance. Nothing moves yet.

Only after that does the set introduce stepping: advancing ward-off, retreating roll-back, left and right step press and push. By this point the hands already know their shapes, so the new variable is the footwork and the weight transfer attached to it. That ordering — hands first, feet second — is the reverse of how many traditional forms are taught, and it is deliberate: it separates the two things a beginner is being asked to coordinate.

The set closes with central equilibrium as a standing-on-one-leg form, then cross hands, then the closing. Central equilibrium is the fifth step and the hardest to teach, so it arrives last, once everything else is in place.

Nothing here is surprising once stated. What is surprising is how often the set is described as a simplified distillation of the forms without anyone explaining what was kept and in what order — which is the part a learner actually needs.

Standing

The set has moved well past “promotional material”. It is a set-event item at national Tai Chi competitions, appears at the National Games mass exhibition, and is used at provincial, municipal and collegiate events, often with standardised accompanying music. It is at once an entry routine and a competition routine.

It belongs to no traditional family style. It was assembled from the technical ground shared by the Chen, Yang, Wu, Wu (Hao) and Sun traditions, and it must never be attributed to any one of them.

The two, side by side

The short version: same root, different branch. The routine did not invent anything. It took the part of the framework that can be performed alone and arranged it into a set. What it cannot carry is the other half — the partner work, the listening, the force that only appears under contact.

The English problem

Most of the confusion this article addresses is created by translation rather than by the sources.

Search for “thirteen postures” and you will find charts, articles and videos that present thirteen circles, or thirteen drawings of hands, as though the framework were a set of shapes. The word “posture” does that. A posture is something you can photograph. 势 is not.

Three parallel translation failures feed each other:

势 rendered as “posture”. It should be closer to “configuration of force” or “momentum”. “Thirteen postures” was fixed in English long before anyone worried about the ambiguity, so it is not going to change — but every article using it owes the reader one sentence of clarification.

八法五步 rendered as one phrase. In Chinese the phrase covers both the framework and the 2018 routine, and context decides which. English has no equivalent shorthand, so the phrase gets carried over whole and the two meanings travel with it silently.

十三势 and 十三式 both rendered as “thirteen”. These are different characters. 势 is the framework. 式 is a set shape, and turns up in the names of modern short routines — including some that have nothing to do with the classical framework. Rendered into English both become “thirteen”, and the distinction vanishes.

None of this means English readers should abandon the Chinese terms. The opposite: keeping 十三势, 八门五步 and 八法五步 in the text, with a gloss on first use, is the only reliable way to hold the distinction. A reader who knows the four characters involved will not be misled by a chart. A reader who only has the English will be, repeatedly.

Three misreadings worth naming

The routine is not the thirteen postures. It is one solo extract from them. Mastering all sixteen forms leaves you at the start of the framework’s application, not the end.

The thirteen postures are not thirteen movements. This is the deepest-rooted confusion, and English makes it worse. Anyone who goes looking for thirteen movements to practise will eventually force the framework into a shape it does not have.

The routine and the tradition are not opposed. It is neither a state invention displacing family styles nor a watered-down version of them. Within a traditional school it is a ready-made beginner’s text; for the public it is the cheapest available route into the core concepts. The thing to guard against is not the routine. It is mistaking the routine for the whole of the art.

A route through both

The question worth asking is not which is more authentic. It is what you are trying to do.

If you want to move, breathe and stay well: learn the 2018 routine and stop there. It is well designed for that, consistent, and learnable in a couple of weeks. There is no deficiency in this path.

If you want to go deeper — to understand force, and to push hands: treat the routine as the first stair.

1. Learn the set. Sixteen forms for coordination and for the outward shapes of the eight methods and five steps.
2. Take the methods apart. Work each force on its own: where ward-off holds, where roll-back leads, what shape press makes, how far push sinks.
3. Enter partner work. Begin with fixed-step single hand, then the fixed-step double hand — the four orthodox hands drill — and let ward-off, roll-back, press and push operate against a person rather than air.
4. Open it up. Large roll-back and freestyle, where the corner methods and all five directions stop being sequences and become responses.

The principle behind the route: the routine is the entrance; push hands is the classroom. A practitioner who only walks the form rarely arrives at the framework’s real content. A practitioner who only spars without returning to the form builds on sand.

What to take away

Two things share a name, and the name is the problem. Hold these two lines and the confusion does not return:

The thirteen postures are a framework — eight methods of force, five directions of movement, common to every family, at home in push hands.

The 2018 Eight Methods Five Steps is a routine — sixteen forms, thirty-two actions, symmetrical, extracted from that framework for solo practice, at home in daily training and on the competition floor.

A framework is not a routine, and a routine cannot replace a framework. Once that is clear, the form, the partner work and the tournament all make sense on their own terms — and a chart of thirteen circles with trigram names stops looking like a list of moves and starts looking like what it is.

Where to go next

• The thirteen postures reference — all thirteen, with trigram and element correspondences, and where transmissions differ
• The thirteen postures, defined — the entry, with the textual history in full
• The eight gates and the five steps — each half on its own
• Eight Methods Five Steps, form by form — the complete 2018 sequence with movement notes
• The eight methods in depth — ward-off, roll-back, press and push, and the four corners
• A push hands guide — where the framework is actually tested
• Learning Tai Chi — the sequence of study, and where each of these sits in it