Robert Amacker

Robert Amacker (1944-2021) spent over half a century in pursuit of the deepest secrets of Taijiquan.

Robert was born in Texas in 1944. He began practicing martial arts with self-study of Judo at the age of eleven. For ten years, he studied Karate and Aikido with some of its foremost exponents (Bobby Lowe, Peter Urban, Yoshimitsu Yamada). Robert studied Zen meditation with Hakuun Yasutani Roshi and Katsuki Sekida.

At the age of twenty-one, he took up the study of Taijiquan in New York City with Zheng Manqing (Cheng, Man-ch’ing), a student of Yang Chengfu, and later with two of his students, William Chen and Ben Lo.

From 1969 to 1974 Robert Amacker studied with Chu Chufang, another student of Yang Chengfu, from whom he learned the advanced techniques of the Yang family (Three-step, Da Lu, Sanshou).

For a year as an addition to learning Taijiquan Robert studied Monkey Style Boxing with Quan Sai-hung.

On the left: Professor Zheng Manqing. Photo © Ken Van Sickle.
On the right: Chu Chufang and Robert Amacker, 1972

Chu Chufang, doing Yang Style Solo Form

Robert Amacker taught Taijiquan since the spring of 1968, he created taiji schools in the Bay Area, and in Moscow, Russia. What he taught was the most historically classical style of the Yang Family, the result of lifelong research on his part and this authenticity had been verified numerous times by teachers on the Chinese mainland.

Robert Amacker is co-author of today’s most widely acclaimed and utilized translation of the Classics of T’ai Chi Ch’uan.

He is the author of a widely acclaimed book, The Theoretical Basis of T’ai Chi Ch’uan.