Yes, this does sound like something that was brought up somewhere else around here. I seem to recall seeing it before. Didn't someone else say that the forms are like a catalog of moves? They provide a simple way to teach and practice a variety of things. It's a way to preserve the moves of the art. No one ever said you have to do all of them in a fight or in the form's exact order. But they provide a vehicle for passing the art on to new students. As I understand it, and Kaith mentioned, they're also generally arranged to imitate a fight sequence. Every move in the form has its applications if you can see them, some are fairly obvious, some are more hidden and require some thought to figure out. Kaith's point about coordination and basic traits are good, too. I believe the tan tui routines we do serve a similar purpose although I don't have many details about them. They can be useful just for practicing the moves over and over. For example, the Yang tai chi form we're learning has the Peng, Lu, Ji, An (Ward off, Rollback, Press, Push) combination performed like 8 times in this long form. Why? Because they are a few of the most basic moves in the style and by repeating them so many times in the form, you get more practice at peforming them. It's certainly true as Kaith said that forms aren't everything in your training. However, they can be an important part of it. Cthulhu's probably right, too, that if you don't see the benefit of forms you haven't trained them (properly). As a beginner, I'm sure I don't see all the points in our forms, but I do see some of them and our teacher points out some of them. I would imagine that at this stage he's more interested in us learning the moves than worry too much about the point behind every single one. I suspect more about the point of the moves in the form will come later for us.