In this talk, I will give a brief introduction of the variational methods in N-body problems from 2001--2015 with emphasizing the work of our collaborate research group. A new variational method on boundary value structure of the N-body problems is introduced. It combines the numerical optimization with geometric and topological structure and analytic proof. By using this method, many new non-symmetric and 3-D orbits are discovered. The original ideas combines with vivid numerical simulation will be presented in my talk.