It was the three-stance exercise that formed the question in her mind. The innocent question was asked by a young adult white belt. And I had to think a bit to answer it for her level. This class’ ages range mostly from about 12 to 16 years old. A few other adults, lower ranks, were also looking at me to hear what I had to say. After all, their legs were burning – I hoped – and they wanted a good answer.
Well, the quick reason was that training stances with proper tension in the legs and body makes all techniques – kicks, blocks and punches – stronger. (My answer was something along that line.) I can’t believe this meant much to her since she is just getting started with her training.
But there are many more reasons for training stances! What are they? And how does this ‘proper tension’ thing make a block stronger? Or any other technique stronger for that matter? Sure, done correctly, the legs get stronger. Doh!
So my task is to explain reasons for training stances. And explaining them to a white belt might be the biggest challenge. Sounds like a Sweat Blood! e-zine article to me.
Hi, My name is Leon. I come from a mixed matial arts background, and have been studying for most of my life, 37 years to be precise.
In the early 70’s when I started in the martial arts, everyone taught from their backyards. These men, and other curious matial artists with whom I traded my techniques, are where I learned most of my arts.
I realize this site is about Karate, But My experience in cross training has led me to believe that most Japanese arts share certain fundamentals in so far as footwork. And I do not know an artist worth his salt that would disparage stance training in ANY other art.
There is a lot of talk about “Hitting like water”, and other eloquent talk of power generation and kinesmatics, But even the great Ocean sits upon the earth. All of the power generated in a technique comes from the groung on which we stand, even aerial techniques. (You cannot add power to a technique when you have already left the ground, only control the energy of your original momentum. This is why proper form is so important to aerial techniques.)
In Chinese internal arts, one of the most profound practices is called post meditation. It’s just standing there feeling your energy flow. By this comes the inference that even internal power comes from the stance, or root.
I remember learning the stepping techniques for a particular form of Karate, where we curled our toes into the ground, and in Bagua the techniques are practiced in a style called mud stepping. Of course there’s the famous thousand pound rooted horse technique and all of it’s offspring.
My answer to this question would be : In the beginning, you are of course doing these stances for the physical benefits, including the ability to “stick yourself to the ground” better. You’re learning where your center of balance is, too. When you first start, it can be surprising how little you are aware of.
But later, when you have built your legs up and it’s less difficult, it becomes important for other reasons.You can begin to focus on proper breathing, the little details like the exact position of your hips and knees. And you will find that when your body has grounded itself, your emotional and mental state will follow. All of this will then carry over in your techniques.