Tan Tui (彈腿 / 潭腿) — The Foundational Kicking Drill

Tan Tui (彈腿 / 潭腿, "springing legs") is not a martial-arts style in the usual sense — it is a foundational drill-set underpinning nearly every northern Chinese system. Almost every northern boxer trains some Tan Tui, regardless of whether their main art is Cha, Hua, Northern Shaolin, the Jingwu standard curriculum, or one of the family styles. Tan Tui's role is structural: it builds stance, line, snap, breath, and the springing front kick that is the root of countless more elaborate northern techniques.

What it is

A series of short linear sequences — typically 10 or 12 of them — each built around one springing front kick (彈腿 tan tui) repeated as the routine walks down and back across the training floor. Each road (路 lù) is its own short sequence; they are numbered 1 through 10 (or 1 through 12) and trained in order.

Performance: the practitioner stands at one end of the room, executes the first road's sequence — which lands the kick repeatedly while advancing in stance — pivots at the far end, and returns executing the same sequence the other direction. Each road is short (often under 15 seconds per pass), and the full set takes only a few minutes.

What gets built: rooted low stances, a powerful spring-up from the rear leg, perfect alignment of hip-knee-foot at the kick, continuous breath, balance through the pivot at the line's end. These are the prerequisites for nearly everything else in northern boxing.

Two main lines

• 十路彈腿 (Ten-Road Tan Tui) — the Jingwu (精武) standard, the form most widely disseminated through the early-20th-century Chin Woo Athletic Association network (from Shanghai's Jingwu HQ to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc.). Slightly shorter and faster.

• 十二路潭腿 (Twelve-Road Tan Tui) — the 教門 (jiao men, "of the gate" — i.e., Muslim) tradition, particularly associated with the Hui Muslim lineages from Longtan Temple in Shandong. The character variant 潭 (with the "water" radical) is preferred in this tradition. Slightly longer and more developed.

Both lines do the same essential work. Many schools teach one or the other; some teach both as parallel curricula.

The twelve roads (十二路潭腿歌訣)

The set is carried in memory by a famous twelve-line verse (歌訣) — one line per road, naming its theme. The 教門 / Longtan twelve-road tradition runs:

In full: 頭路出馬一條鞭，二路十字鬼扯鑽，三路劈砸車輪勢，四路斜踢撐抹攔，五路獅子雙戲水，六路勾劈扭單鞭，七路鳳凰雙展翅，八路轉金凳朝天，九路擒龍奪玉帶，十路喜鵲登梅尖，十一路風擺荷葉腿，十二路鴛鴦巧連環。

The Jingwu ten-road (十路彈腿) standard works the same material in ten roads, dropping and re-ordering the last pair; it carries its own opening verse (頭路衝掃 …). Each road is a short there-and-back line built around the springing front kick, and the verse-line is the cue a student repeats to remember it.

Primary sources

We hold:

• 十路彈腿講義 (Ten-Road Tan Tui Lecture Notes) — Jingwu standard, Republican. Held in the codex's Sources/northern-kungfu-manuals/.

• 教門彈腿 (Jiao-men Tan Tui) — the 12-road Muslim tradition.

• 潭腿圖譜 (Tan Tui Manual) by Jin Tisheng — Republican illustrated edition.

• 六合潭腿圖說 (Six-Harmony Tan Tui Illustrated) — a larger variant set.

• 十二路潭腿新教授法 by Wang Huaiqi — early-Republican modernized teaching method.

• 潭腿 by Zhao Lianhe (1929) — additional Republican primer.

Together, these constitute one of the most thoroughly-documented Northern arts in our open public-domain corpus — a striking contrast with the in-copyright-only situation for Pigua and Chuojiao.

Video

• 12-road foundation + applications (CWS-CMA)

• 十路彈腿 一路二路 講解 — narrated breakdown

• 12 Set Tan Tui — Roads 1–6 · Roads 7–12 — Shifu Sal, full coverage

• 十路潭腿 — clean single-take

• 北少林派 潭腿上六路 — as taught in Northern Shaolin

See also

Northern Long-Fist & Shaolin on Film — video index (archival + lineage demos)

Northern Shaolin (北少林) — pairs Tan Tui with its core forms

Cha + Hua (查拳・華拳) — long-fist arts that build on Tan Tui's foundations

Northern Kung Fu Styles — Tan Tui's role across the canon

Sources

[1] Tantui, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) — the two traditions (Jingwu 10-road; Muslim 12-road), Longtan Temple association.

[2] 十路彈腿講義, 教門彈腿, 潭腿圖譜, 六合潭腿圖說, 十二路潭腿新教授法, 潭腿 (Zhao Lianhe 1929) — all held in the codex.