Lower! LOWER!

[Hudson]

Heh, alright. Stances... I realize that most of these "practical" MA's knock out stances almost fully standing. My example: Horse stances. I see a lot of people with ungodly wide horse stances, but with legs locked out straight. A good horse stance should be squared away, no?

 

Another stance that is often shrugged off is cat stance. People just shift onto one leg and point the toes... which isn't right. Sure, sliding into cat during a fight you don't need to sink, but if you're practicing traditional forms, why wouldn't your cat stance sink?

 

And some people say you don't need low stances. They're impractical. They make you immobile. Maybe if you're sitting on your ankle! Momentarily sinking into a proper stance is more like a coil of a snake, giving you that full power generation so you can hit somebody from a foot away and make them feel like they just got hit with a haymaker.

 

So, what are your thoughts on stances? Low stances, good or bad?

[dingyuan]

Low stance genrates great power, I have seen many hard styles like Baji Quan and Shotokan uses low stance during training.

[Shorinryu Sensei]

IMO, low stances are good for training (we don't however) as they will strengthen the leg muscles, but they are impractical for fighting.

[Pacificshore]

As impractical as low stances may be in a "real" fighting situations, they are part of whatever art you are studying. The benefits can range from strength in the legs to proper balance. As you train, you must remember that the stance work is simply a transitional state that is always in motion

[SevenStar]

Low stance genrates great power, I have seen many hard styles like Baji Quan and Shotokan uses low stance during training.

 

right - during training. you do that during training to build leg endurance (not strength, as someone said) Also, some stances, such as the horse stance play a role in qigong development.

 

But for fighting? low is impractical.

[P.A.L]

if you think kokutsu dachi or kiba dachi is "like a coil of a snake" , next time try one block using kokutsu dachi during a full contact.

 

imagine yourself in a soccer stadium ,standing between rows and being attacked from two sides, are you gonna stand behind your post and fight in Kiba dachi and use all the power of “coil of a snake”, I don’t think so. But I can promise, you can fight in sanchin dachi or Naihanchi dachi with no problem. Tekki comes from Naihanchi , Sensei Motobu one of the greatest full contact fighters ever, stated that his fighting stance is Naihanchi dachi . sensei funakoshi learned the Naihanchi from itosu ,he took it to Japan and in 20 years a fighting system like Naihanchi became a useless Tekki ,good enough for damaging knee and wining plastic trophies.

 

each kata should teach fighting combinations and help a karate-ka practicing his/her techniques, it doesn’t need to be fancy but it has to be deadly.

 

and natural shiko dachi is the deepest stand I can accept.

[Shorin Ryuu]

There are some deeper stances, but you never throw a kick or anything like that from those stances. Those are almost always, at least in my mind, used specifically for grappling and throwing (i.e., not a front stance). Even in our deepest stance (hachimonji dachi), quick movement and transition is possible because the biomechanics of it allows for movement without relying on pure muscle power. I can not stress enough the difference between a plain low stance and a biomechanically sound low stance.

 

Note: This next rant deals specifically with STRIKING.

 

Some lower stances may produce this "power" that people talk about when they talk about "powerful low stances". However, I think most people do not realize what makes it powerful. While it does build muscles, this is not what makes it powerful. People mistake the feeling of the activation of muscles they develop by deep stances as "power" emanating from a stance. This, I think, is a mistake. With muscles, you can still feel that same "power" from a higher stance. The only way that a deeper stance causes power is from "falling" energy. Simply put, lower your center of gravity from higher to lower behind your strike (falling into the target, almost). But the key to this is starting from a higher to a lower stance, not a low stance to a low stance, which is what many do. This is big in a lot of the kobudo I do (not necessarily going into a real deep stance, as our kobudo stances are higher than our empty hand, but the notion of higher to lower stances is there). On the flip side of the coin, you can use "rising" power to strike from a lower to a higher stance.

 

So, whatever controversy this may cause, I think that low stances don't build "power", they just build muscles. The stance itself does not give you any extra power. If anything else, you are only building those muscles because you "handicap" yourself by using an impractical stance, forcing the muscles to compensate (if the stance was biomechanically optimum, it would put very little strain on the muscles). Sometimes lower stances are good for training, but only during training, in my opinion.

 

Now, that was only in regards to striking. In terms of grappling, Shorinkan has some deeper stances, like shiko dachi and hachimonjidachi. Once again, these stances are not deadlocked, but should be free-flowing due to biomechanical setup. The main usage of these deeper stances is to sink the weight and enable grappling and throwing. Also, the usage of the legs in the grappling and throwing is also enabled by a deep stance for leverage purposes. Lastly, (not really, just the last point I'm going to write here) a lot of the takedowns end up with an armbar against the leg or knee in a lower stance. The "rising" and "falling" energy discussed in striking also apply here to the grappling situation, but in this case, going from a low stance and remaining low does not present the same problems as striking does.

 

All this is my opinion, feel free to debate it if you wish (as always).

[Drunken Monkey]

....i always find it kinda funny when people talk about stances as if they were separate, individual entities that you do isolated from the rest of your movements.

 

y'know, as if going into a cat stance would suddenly make your strike better.

 

(incidentally, moving into my cat stance makes my centre rise, not sink.... have you ever wondered why a cat stance is called a cat stance?)

 

when-ever i hear things like this it really does make me question how people are taught

 

(if they are at all.....)

 

someone mentioned feeling muscles working in a stance.

 

well, as i was taught, if you feel muscles working (over working?) then your stance is wrong.

 

stances are snapshots of positions during moving.

 

if you can't move freely and easily from one stance to another then your stance is wrong.

 

y'know what i think?

 

too many people watching kung fu movies and copying the low stance training from them.....

[Hudson]

Alright, let me clear some things up:

 

I agree low stances will build power. I'm living proof of it. But then again, power is the end result of many things: Technique, speed, etc;

 

P.A.L: I can't even respond to that post because I don't know all those Japanese terms. However if google is correct then yes, most of my strikes come from a Sanchin Dachi, which actually is called Dragon in my style.

 

Drunken Monkey: Thank you for the "holier than thou" post. It really was informative . Of course stances are snapshots from movement. But yes, we train them seperately and thusly can talk about them as seperates. If I were to show an untrained person a cat stance and say "Alright, now do that while moving in a circle and throwing a palm parry", then chances are the stance would be incorrect. But if I showed them a cat stance, made them do it properly, then tell them to do it in movement, they'd get it better.

 

Also, about your cat stance making your center rise... I actually find mine sinks depending on the use. Let me make an example again:

 

Lets say an opponent, facing straight on, throws any sort of front line kick. I would step to the outside of the leg, slice/hook/block and sink sideways into a cat to get a vantage point. Sure, it might hurt if I'm holding such a low stance for a prolonged state, but for that point in time it's perfect for dropping and striking.

[Drunken Monkey]

"Thank you for the "holier than thou" post. It really was informative "

 

actually, i did put quite a bit of info in there.

 

i mentioned mobility, centre, use of muscles....

 

i've recently been trying to keep my posts short cos it sometimes annoys people when i write essays about the littlest things.

 

anyway.

 

"But yes, we train them seperately and thusly can talk about them as seperates"

 

what i meant was, i find it funny that people talk about stances without refence to what you are also doing with the rest of your body.

 

i.e you only talk about the legs and ignore any possible hand/body/hip movements.

 

i have seen many lessons where stance training involves standing in stances BUT they ignore the way you move from one stance to another.

 

they would stand in "see ping", then step out of it to go into "ching gung, ho jin" and ignore the most important bit that is the TRANSITION.

 

for me, cat stance isn't something that you should stand in as it is by it's nature, 100% action.

 

the cat stance is a process of drawing back AND going forwards.

 

i.e the usefullness of cat stance is going into it and getting out of it and not the stane itself.

 

if you stop and hold the position, you are only working half of it.

 

but then again, i have no idea what it is you train

 

nor do i know whether or not your cat stance and mine are the same.

 

i asked a question earlier regarding why a cat stance is so called, which is a pointer to why i said my centre goes up.

 

the reason is that as you draw back, you arch your back like a cat.

 

if you do this, you should feel your centre go up slightly (even though your hip is on the same line)and feel a kind of tension in your back

 

this is where the chinese 'spring' principle manifests itself in the phrase "ready to pounce like a cat".

 

the strenght in the cat stance as i was taught, is that, as Shorin pointed out, is that it allows you to sink weight into the following forward motion.

 

if your centre sinks as you are drawing back, you are working against your own body weight.

 

i.e you are not taking advantage of body structure.

 

(which is why we only tend to sink as we go forwards)

 

what i don't get is why you would side step AND THEN move into a cat stance.

 

or is it sidestep INTO a cat stance to block?

 

or is it block as you side step then go into a cat stance?

 

in any case,

 

if you've stepped to the outside, why yield position (by moving your centre backwards and downwards)

 

when you can be active and force his balance with a pressuring type postion like a dragon stance or even just an extra shuffle/step?

 

and if you've block a straight forward kick by taking a sidestep, aren't you now on his blind-side with him off balance and facing the wrong direction?

 

what benefit does shifting back into a cat stance offer?

 

chances are we're just debating stylistic differences.

 

what style do you train again?