Today the vast majority of tongbeiquan practitioners are in Qi style or its branches.

Most masters only taught high level skills to some disciples in their private classes.

Due to its long history, tongbeiquan has various names and subsets in different places.

There are other styles, with names that are also pronounced "tongbeiquan", but are written with different "bei" or "bi" characters (with meanings of "preparing", "arm", etc.).

[5] The masters always felt that the high-level skills should only be passed to morally upstanding people who must have a good personality, be smart enough to grasp the principles, as well as be diligent in practice.

Back-through Boxing takes the five elements of traditional Chinese philosophy as its basic theory.

This philosophy believes that heaven is an macrocosm while the human being is a microcosm but the principles of the systems remains constant regardless of the size.

The five elements of the heaven are metal, wood, water, fire and earth while those of the human being the heart, liver, spleen, lung and kidney.

When the exercises are done, power is generated from the back to pass through the shoulders and then reach the arms.

The modern wushu style of tongbeiquan, while having a non-martial emphasis, is still popular in the same regions of northern China such as Shandong and Liaoning provinces.

Today, the traditional style is kept alive through the efforts of practitioners throughout northern China, particularly by small groups throughout Beijing, Shandong, and Liaoning.