Weight Distribution in the Zheng Manqing Taijiquan 37 Posture Form

7/6/17

The weight distribution, what percent of your weight is on each foot, is important in all martial arts, but especially in taijiquan. We often talk about 70-30 (that is 70% of your weight on one foot and 30% of your weight in the other foot), 100-0, and very rarely 50-50 or close to it. These weight distributions need to be felt, but one can actually measure these. Simply do your taijiquan postures with each foot standing on a scale.

Consider the following table. I list all postures and "sub postures" I could think of as well as the percent of weight that is in the left and right foot. In every posture, the weight distribution obviously transitions through a range of %. However, I listed the weight distribution which I believe "defines" the posture. That is, the posture you'd make if someone asked you to hold the posture.

Posture Number	Posture Name	% weight in Left Foot	% weight in Right Foot
1	preparation	0	100
2	beginning	49	51
3	ward off left	70	30
4	ward off right	30	70
5	rollback	100	0
6	press	30	70
7	push	30	70
8	single whip	70	30
9	lift hands	100	0
10	shoulder strike	30	70
11	white crane spreads wings	0	100
12	brush knee left	70	30
13	play the pipa	0	100
14	brush knee left	70	30
15	step forward	0	100
16	deflect	0	100
17	parry	70	30
18	punch	70	30
19	withdraw	0	100
20	push	70	30
21	apparent closure, cross hands	51	49
22	embrace tiger, return to mountain	30	70
23	rollback	100	0
24	press	30	70
25	push	30	70
26	diagonal single whip	70	30
27	rely on fist, fist under elbow	0	100
28	retreating monkey, right	100	0
29	retreating monkey, left	0	100
30	retreating monkey, right	100	0
31	retreating monkey, left	0	100
32	retreating monkey, right	100	0
33	diagonal flying	30	70
34	cloud hands, left	100	0
35	cloud hands, right	0	100
36	cloud hands, left	100	0
37	cloud hands, right	0	100
38	cloud hands, left	100	0
39	cloud hands, right	0	100
40	cloud hands, left	100	0
41	single whip	70	30
42	squatting single whip, snake creeps down	0	100
43	golden rooster stands on one leg, left	100	0
44	golden rooster stands on one leg, right	0	100
45	separate right foot	100	0
46	separate left foot	0	100
47	turn and strike with heel	0	100
48	brush knee left	70	30
49	brush knee right	30	70
50	low punch	70	30
51	ward off right	30	70
52	rollback	100	0
53	press	30	70
54	push	30	70
55	single whip	70	30
56	fair lady left	70	30
57	fair lady right	30	70
58	fair lady left	70	30
59	fair lady right	30	70
60	ward off left	70	30
61	ward off right	30	70
62	rollback	100	0
63	press	30	70
64	push	30	70
65	single whip	70	30
66	squatting single whip, snake creeps down	0	100
67	seven stars step forward	100	0
68	step back and ride tiger	0	100
69	turn body and sweep lotus with leg	100	0
70	bend bow, shoot tiger	30	70
71	step forward	0	100
72	deflect	0	100
73	parry	70	30
74	punch	70	30
75	withdraw	0	100
76	push	70	30
77	cross hands	30	70
78	conclusion	30	70
79	bow/saying thanks	49	51

Here is a graph of the % weight in Left Foot vales.

Note the "up down" part in the middle, the many 0-100 changes. These correspond to the Rely on fist to Turn and strike with heel section.

It is interesting to look at some statistics of the % weight in left foot and the % weight in right foot numbers. The left foot has 0% weight in it about 27% of the time (this is 21 times out of 79 postures), and has 100% weight in it 16% of the time. The right foot, of course, has these same percentages but flipped. So we can say approximately 50% of the time (27% plus 20%), the left or right foot has either 0% or 100% weight in it. The average weight in the left foot is about 47% (and 53% for the right foot), and the median weight in the left foot is 30% (and 70% for the right foot).

Thanks for reading. Happy practice!