# Stances? ...is there too much? ..some just for training only?



## still learning (Oct 13, 2007)

Hello, How many of you are taught the "tons" of ways for stances in the martial arts?

In a real fight?  How many of you prefer just one stance for all around?

Many people are taught the long deep stance to fighting....some believe it is for training only? ..others are taught to fight like that?

For myself....one must study this very well and look at professioal fighters,muay thai fighters, Boxers, MMA, and everything else out there....one must also ask why they have similair stances....and why other seems so wide and deep?  

This one believes....copy those that are sucessful and throw away those that seems not to work......GO WITH THE MAJORITY Winners...there has to been a reason why?

What are you choices of stances?  Is all the others practical? ...like the cat stances?  which ALL OF US ARE TAUGHT in Karate,kempo and so on?

Boxers stance, long leg deep stances,cat stance, back leg stance,horse stances, and many others....

What is truly practical?   and what is nonsence stances? in a real fight?


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## still learning (Oct 13, 2007)

Hello,  What do you feel is the best "real street fighting" stance?

Is the cat stance practical for the STREETS?

Thanks for your thoughts.....Aloha


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## newGuy12 (Oct 13, 2007)

still learning said:


> Is the cat stance practical for the STREETS?



I think so.  I once saw an instructor do a crane stance as a board was flying across the room toward him (it was testing day, and once kick sent a piece of wood flying about, in a strange direction).  This crane stance allowed him to avoid the flying wood very easily.  He simply raised up his leg a little bit, and... he did not get hit by the board.

Also, someone can avoid an attack, say from a knife, from time to time, by moving BACKWARD --> all the way back, to the cat stance.  And from there, can move back again, quickly.

Of course, someone could also "skip" back and then forward, if they are are skilled with that, right?

Hello, 'still_learning'!  The cat is my favorite animal!


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## Blindside (Oct 13, 2007)

Stances are merely flashpoints in time, what they are trying to teach you is correct movement, and correct movement is what this is all about, right?

Lamont


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## foot2face (Oct 13, 2007)

Blindside said:


> Stances are merely flashpoints in time, what they are trying to teach you is correct movement, and correct movement is what this is all about, right?
> 
> Lamont


 
This is exactly the understanding I was taught.  An important factor in practicing the various stances is that they teach you how to control your center and maintain your balance while in motion, allowing for smooth transitions of foot work. For example, if I'm in any stance 99% of the time it's going to be a neutral "fighting stance", feet shoulder width apart,  equal weight on the balls of my feet and my body bladed towards my adversary, but I like to position myself just behind their lead shoulder and attack from there.  To do this I step forward into a front stance, anchoring my lead foot just behind them, then I pull back into a back stance and recover my "fighting stance".  At full speed this looks like a quick hop but when slowed down on video you can see a point where I land in a traditional looking front stance and then a traditional looking back stance.


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## SKB (Oct 13, 2007)

I have to agree with the comment about a stance being only a flash in time! Also think of it this way. If i drop down into a good fighting stance on the street what have i just told everyone? "_This guy knows karate!" _Instantly the level of the fight goes up. The same way you look at the video that was meantioned is the way you should look at your 'stances'.... if you stopped the video of the fight you would see the stance for a moment.


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## cuts and bruises (Oct 13, 2007)

At our school, we train and fight from a very natural, relaxed upright stance. Every technique flows right off a normal, standing in line at the bank posture. We have found that fighting from this posture becomes reflexive much more quickly.

This is not to say that if things do not de-escalate quickly thatwe continue in this stance. We quickly fall into a crossbreed Western boxing/Muay Thai stance and begin to circle our opponent. Seems to work great.


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## stone_dragone (Oct 13, 2007)

I too teach that specific stances are only frozen transitions.  Just because I teach that a particular technique lends itself to a particular stance doesn't mean that students are stuck with doing their technique in that stance.  

Isn't that how most stances evolved anyway..."this is how you will stand when you are doing a straight punch to the solar plexus..." became "...this is the forward straight punch stance..." and eventually "...this is he front stance, we punch out of it but I don't know why."

Just my .02


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## still learning (Oct 13, 2007)

Hello, Ever saw two Black belt train for years in varies stances....only to see when they get into a real fight? ....you will never see "cat stances", wide deep stances?

Usually they will be in a boxers style of stances!

Kung-fu and others like them...train is flowing, deep stances....in a real fight (not tournaments) real street fight?   they look like everyone else..up right boxers stances.  (some do fight like they were train)....but most times the Natural  stance (like a boxer) prevail

Why? Does the Boxers stances, Muay thai , MMA, Stances (almost the same)....usually is the most seem and proven way?

Our bodies KNOWS what is the correct and right feeling for stances in fighting!  ..Aloha


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## clfsean (Oct 13, 2007)

still learning said:


> Kung-fu and others like them...train is flowing, deep stances....in a real fight (not tournaments) real street fight? they look like everyone else..up right boxers stances. (some do fight like they were train)....but most times the Natural stance (like a boxer) prevail


 
Most end up in a "boxer" or "kickboxer" posture when they weren't taught to fight with their MA the way their MA is designed to. 

I may stand in a natural boxing position when training & sparring, but my footwork is CLF due to my sifu's training methods & when I move/attack/counter/etc... my footwork is CLF & that is "stances" as you call it. Angles, stepping, controlling, attacking, offbalancing, etc... with your feet are an integral part of CMA. If a person fights without them, they oughta just say they kickbox or box.


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## tellner (Oct 13, 2007)

Good comments so far. I'd like to add a couple thoughts...

If martial arts aren't about teaching movement they aren't about much. Stances are static things, un-moving. So what use are they?

Part of it is the way we learn. It's easier to learn something static. First you learn a position. Then you learn another position. Then you learn to move between them. Over time you clean up the transitions, smooth them out and add the other ingredients. At each step in the process you have something you can hang onto and remember. 

By learning positions at the extremes of your range of motion you learn where your center is at all times. You also have boundaries and parameters to work within. Anything inside those extremes can work. Things outside them probably won't.

Many times the stances and motions are extremely exaggerated compared to what you actually use. It's another one of those learning things. People learn gross motor skills more easily than subtle small ones. As you get better the stances get less extreme. The motions get smaller. 

Fighting is positional. Being good at it depends on knowing what you can do in the positions that you and the other guy are in. Which tools can reach. Where's your center. Where's his. What lines of attack and defense are open. Where is his balance. BJJ emphasizes positional training and fighting more than most. Training out of a variety of stances can offer you insights into positions and how best to exploit them.


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## searcher (Oct 13, 2007)

Great advice and points made up to this point, so I will not taint anything by making a re-statement.

I will say that the one stance that always seems to be used by myself and my students more than anything is a neutral bow.   That heaven I had the chance to study EPAK.


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## exile (Oct 13, 2007)

There have been a lot of good points made about stances in general in the preceding. They speak to the implicit assumption in the OP that a stance is some kind of physical configuration you assume and then horse yourself around in for the duration of the fight, setting up the obvious straw man response that `and of course, no one actually fights like that!' But stances, in the sense that the OP seems to be assuming, just sketched, do not exist in the kata-based sources of TMAs. They came into being  as Bill Burgar notes in his book on bunkai for Gojushiho _Five Years, One Kata_, only when kata training was replaced in preward Japan by kihon line drills as the method of choice for large-class instruction. Chaps like Itsou, Arikaki, Azato and other founders of modern karate taught one- or two-on-one, and emphasized kata as the method of technique development. And in the kata, what we call a stance was nothing more than a momentary conformation of the body in order to _project body weight into a technique_. As Abernethy notes in his chapter on `The purpose of stances',

_In combat, the stances are used in one of two ways. The first way that stances are used in combat is to ensure the correct distribution of body weight. The use of body weiht is critical if your techniques are to be successful, as all techniques should be applied using the entire body. The second way that stance can be used in combat is in the use of the physical position of the legs themselves. In this instance, the legs can be used to physically controll the opponent._​
And he goes on to add a caveat that could have been aimed directly at the OP itself: 

_The word `stance has connotations of something fixed and immobile. In combat, however, situations are constantly changing and hence the stance should also be constantly changing. The distribution of the body weight should not be fixed, but should b constantly changing depending on the technique being employed at that time. Stances will be assumed as and when required, before instantly shifting the body weight to the next appropriate position._​

(p. 203). There's a nice simple example which makes the point fairly clearly, I think. Take Shotokan's Taikyoku Shodan, which was adopted whole into KKW TKD's Kicho Il Jang (for some reason the KKW overlooked purging it, in spite of its Okinawan/Japanese sources. _Someone_ was sleeping on the job... ). I interpret the initial kata sequence

(i) ready position, preparatory to a 90º turn into a left front stance/down block;
(ii) 90º turn into a left front stance/down block with chambering retraction of the right fist;
(iii) movement into right front stance/middle lunge punch with chambering retraction of the left fist...

as a `minimal combat sequence', with attacker and defender starting off face-to-face and the attack initated by a righthand wrist grab by the attacker, to the defender's right wrist, arm or shirtfront, and the corresponding response (where in general combat move (n)' is the oyo for kata movement (n)):

(i)' the defender covers the attacker's wrist with his own right fist, or reverses the wrist grab&#8212;this is one of the very earliest SD techs we teach them&#8212;and in either case, simultaneously (a) twists the captured wrist counterclockwise, and (b) turns quickly clockwise pulling on the wrist&#8212;this is the concealed meaning of the apparent presentation of the defender's left side to the the attacker at the outside of the form (something that would be suicidal to do in a street confrontation, obviously)...

(ii)' followed by simultaneously (c) driving the left forearm against the attacker's now forcibly extended right arm just above the elbow (the lower part of the `chambering' phase of the `down block'), (d) hikite of the trapped fist by the defender's `chamberinging retraction' of the right fist (pulling the attackers right fist into a maximally extended positon to give the defender's arm pin on the attacker maximum leverage and trapping the attacker in position) *and projection of the defender's full body weight forward into the pin via the `front-stance movement', forcibly driving the attacker's upper body down and exposing their lowered head to the defender's upcoming counterattack.*

Having driven the attacker into a lowered position via the arm pin described, the defender (e) quickly moves the left arm from its pinning position to near the defender's right ear and lowers it in hammerfist strike or knifehand to major targets on the attacker's head: the carotid sinus or larynx. The downcoming strike can be subdivided at the defender's discretion into (e1) a spearhand elbow strike to the attacker's face (eyes are a good target) and (e2) the payoff hand strike to the selected target.

(iii)' A smooth muchimi shift of the striking left hand to a grab on the attacker's ear/hair/collar is immediately followed by a simultaneous (f)hikite retraction of the left fist to pull the injured attacker in and around  and (g) a right-hand strike (maybe a fist, but I think a palm-heel strike is sounder) to the attacker's face with the full weight of the defender's body moving into a right front stance. 

This is a pretty harsh, effective response, no?&#8212;especially considering that this is the first, most elementary kata you learn in Shotokan and the first hyung you learn in Song Moo Kwan TKD. But notice that it hinges crucially on driving the full force of the defender's bodyweight into the attacker's hyperextended arm. I've been both uke and tori for this oyo and believe me, no matter how noncompliant a mood you're in, you will _punished_ if you try to fight the arm lock when it's executed by a halfway competent technician. But the weight projection is crucial. Picture it: you've extended the attacker's arm while pinning and twisting his wrist, you've established a fulcrum just above his elbow, and now you drive all your bodyweight into the pin by moving the leg on the other side from your trapping hand forward, driving your forearm forward and _down_. Film that move and 100 MAists out of 100 will identify it as a left-leg front stance. You only stay in it long enough to set up the elbow and throat strikes I've mentioned, then you immediately come forward on your other leg to bring yourself into range to deliver the followup hard strike to the jaw (or maybe temple). And that movement looks exactly like a standard right-leg front stance kihon movement.

The OPer brings up the cat stance, and asks somewhat incredulously if anyone ever uses a cat stance in a fight. Without going into the literally gory detail, consider what Abernethy says about what cat stances really are (to see exactly what he's talking about, you need to see the photo sequences which accompany the description):

_
*Short cat stance*

The opponent has been thrown to the floor in such a way that you still have control over one of their arms. Push your foot up against the opponent's back, lift your heel and assume short cat stance. Pull the opponent's arm back over your thigh in order to hyper-extend their elbow joint (*Figure 7*). You'll notice how the physical position of short cat stance is used to control the opponent and to provide a fulcrum for the arm lock.

Short cat stance projects the body weight backwards and downwards at a fairly sharp angle. One technique that requires such a distribution of body weight is the following wrist lock. The opponent has seized your wrist (*Figure 8*). Pin the opponent's hand with your free hand whilst quickly rotating the arms. Then cut against the opponent's wrist as your hands move towards their body (*Figure 9*). Grab the opponent's forearm and pull your hands down and towards you. Assume short cat stance at the same time in order to project your body weight in the same direction as the hand movement (*Figure 10*). This will lock the opponent's wrist and for the opponent to their knees. If you try to apply the lock with the arms alone, the opponent should be able to resist the pull. However, by dropping the body weight into short cat stance, the effect of the pull is greatly multiplied.
_​

(pp.205-207). _That's_ the sort of thing that the cat stance is used for&#8212;imposing unacceptable pressure on a joint you've used the kata `instructions' to pin. Likewise, Abernethy shows how long cat stance is applicable to disrupt an attack from behind, how the back stance sets up a pivot point to use in throwing the opponent... nothing remotely like the assumptions that the OPer's initial and subsequent posts seem to incorporate. 

It was only when techniques were detached from the flowing subsequences of the kata and turned into separate, stand-alone moves in a strategic and tactical vacuum that stances were reified, no longer the mere transient by-products of combat moves but instead... _things_ on their own, things to practice and hold. They _never_ had that status in the formative days of karate, when kata, each incorporating several whole combat-effective subsequences, were the core curriculum&#8212;yet another case where history turns out to shed an invaluable light on seemingly confusing technical matters.


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## jks9199 (Oct 13, 2007)

Stances serve various purposes.  A "fighting stance" is a moving ready position; it serves to provide a base to move out of.  In wrestling, it's a crouch.  In sprinting, it's getting on the blocks, ready to start the race.  Depending on the fighting style, the fighting stance may put an emphasis on certain directions of movement or certain options; many TKD fighters use a stance that maximizes their ability to quickly pivot kicks from either leg, while a boxer uses a stance that protects the body and head while setting up quick hand motions.

Beyond the "ready" fighting stance, there are stances that serve as endpoints; they guide where your weight goes, provide a stable platform for techniques (My teacher, repeating the words of Dr. Gyi, would say that "you can't fire a cannon off of a bamboo platform!") or support body alignment and focus for techniques while still providing escape routes.  

Still other stances simply provide a good place to start from; I liken them to the paper I used as a school kid that had an extra, dashed line in each row to help guide where to write.  In many styles, this is one of the purposes of the horse stance.  It's a place that allows you to see hip movement, shoulder rotation, and other important principles because your weight is evenly divided and square.  

Stepping is important; it's how you move between two stances -- but stances are also important. 

And I've used low stances in real world confrontations; it's often vitally important to me to be in a stable position which allows me to focus and control another person, while protecting myself.


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## stone_dragone (Oct 14, 2007)

tellner said:


> By learning positions at the extremes of your range of motion you learn where your center is at all times. You also have boundaries and parameters to work within. Anything inside those extremes can work. Things outside them probably won't.
> 
> Many times the stances and motions are extremely exaggerated compared to what you actually use. It's another one of those learning things. People learn gross motor skills more easily than subtle small ones. As you get better the stances get less extreme. The motions get smaller.



Good point!  

Funakoshi discussed this quite succinctly when he said "Beginners must master low stances and posture, natural body positions are for the advanced."


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## tshadowchaser (Oct 14, 2007)

> What do you feel is the best "real street fighting" stance?


 
Place one foot in front of the other and run like hell


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## searcher (Oct 14, 2007)

tshadowchaser said:


> Place one foot in front of the other and run like hell


 







  Bingo!


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## Kacey (Oct 14, 2007)

Do I know, and practice, stances I would never fight out of?  Of course I do - because there is more to martial arts, for me at least, than _just_ self-defense.  Of course self-defense is a piece, but it's not the main motivation in why I train - I train because I enjoy learning, and because TKD is the only form of exercise I've ever been able to stick with in the long term.

To get back to stances:  stances teach balance (weight distribution and how that affects movement), train muscle strength (longer, lower stances - which few, if any people, fight out of, but many train with - build leg strength), teach an understanding of movement (how to shift between stances and which stances to use for what purpose), and so on.  

If you don't like training stances you see as irrelevant - that's your choice.  Like patterns/kata/forms/whatever you call them, there is more to martial arts than _just_ self-defense - there is fitness, control (of one's mind and one's body), and a variety of other things not really relevant to this thread, and covered in depth in many threads on the general theme of "why do you train".  

For myself, I train multiple stances because I understand that there is much, much more to what I am doing than just self-defense - but if self-defense is all your after, drop the parts that you find to be irrelevant.


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## CuongNhuka (Oct 14, 2007)

-rolls eyes at the close-mindedness and moves on-


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## Blindside (Oct 14, 2007)

CuongNhuka said:


> -rolls eyes at the close-mindedness and moves on-


 
Who is being close minded?

Lamont


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## CuongNhuka (Oct 14, 2007)

Blindside said:


> Who is being close minded?


 


still learning said:


> Hello, Ever saw two Black belt train for years in varies stances....only to see when they get into a real fight? ....you will never see "cat stances", wide deep stances?


 
Answer your question?


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## exile (Oct 14, 2007)

See, CN, again the problem is the basic assumption in the OP that you `get into [such and such a stance] and then you fight from it.' As in the discussion I cited earlier from Abernethy, you don't `assume a cat stance'. Instead, you maintain your hold on the downed attacker's arm, slip your foot against their back, raise your knee and drop your weight back and down&#8212;instant short cat stance, in other words&#8212;and keeeerackkkk!!, that's it for their elbow, should you decide to push things that far. Take a photo of the fight at the moment when your heel comes up and your body weight comes down hard on the attacker's hyperextended arm, and it's the classic cat stance. Take a photo of the moment you move forward to drive your forearm into the attacker's pinned arm above the elbow to hyperextend it with your full weight behind it, and it's the classic left front stance. 

I think you have to take into account the way people have been taught stances, as well as other techs, since the karate-based arts went mass-scale the better part of a century ago. Most of us drill stances, blocks, punches etc. isolation, relentlessly. It's so much the norm that most folk cannot conceive of the fact that doing it that way was actually a novelty, going along with large class sizes, deliberately diluted technical content, and all the rest of what we've learned about the history of karate in very recent decades, eh? For a lot of people, stances are things unto themselves because that's how they've learned them, and the way you first learn something fixes your way of thinking about it pretty solidly, unless you can distance yourself from your own assumptions and rethink a familiar phenomenon in a way that makes it very unfamiliar and novel. How many people can do that sort of thing easily?

The best thing to do is simply put the alternative perspective and the counterevidence and so on out there and hope that it helps someone `improve their ideas', as the Brits say. If it doesn't... well, you tried, eh? :wink1:


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## foot2face (Oct 14, 2007)

I've often herd a similar criticism of the crane stance.  I recall having a conversation with a "freestyle" fighter who was negatively commenting on more traditional fighting systems.  He said that "TMAs are impractical" and that "you'll never see anything as useless and stupid as a crane stance in MMA".  I remember pausing for  a moment, in total disbelief of his...naivete and then responding "What are you talking about? You see it all the time. When ever one of you guys check a leg kick what do you think that is? It's a crane stance."


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## exile (Oct 14, 2007)

foot2face said:


> I've often herd a similar criticism of the crane stance.  I recall having a conversation with a "freestyle" fighter who was negatively commenting on more traditional fighting systems.  He said that "TMAs are impractical" and that "you'll never see anything as useless and stupid as a crane stance in MMA".  I remember pausing for  a moment, in total disbelief of his...naivete and then responding "What are you talking about? You see it all the time. *When ever one of you guys check a leg kick what do you think that is? It's a crane stance."*



Good comeback! 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





That's still another case of someone thinking that the frozen `stance' position at the end of the motion is what's important, rather than the motion itself that gets you to that position, and the work that that motion did. It's too bad that all too many MA instructors teach from that perspective... probably because that's the way they themselves learned their approach to stances. It's very hard for people to go back to the beginning and rethink the point of view they were trained to when they were first learning...


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## tellner (Oct 15, 2007)

The real problem is that almost nobody knows how to actually use these training methods. There's some form. There's some history. But for the most part it's done by rote by teachers - even ones with lots of black belts - who didn't get that bit transmitted to students who will never learn better unless they go searching elsewhere. If the student asks why the Emperor doesn't have any clothes he's told that it's his fault for not doing enough reps, being disrespectful or not figuring it out for himself. 

Concerning the crane stance and its resemblance to a leg shield...

How many Karate (Japaneses, Okinawan, Korean, Hawaiian or American) had any concept of that before they encountered styles that emphasized leg kicks? Precious few. Afterwards there was the usual round of "We have that too!" that always happens with everyone's martial arts. 

Now, in a sense they did. If your form has a reasonably complete range of motion you can reference anything you see to something in it. That doesn't mean anyone else from your lineage had any idea that it was an option. It certainly doesn't mean that your system contains everything and that it's just waiting to be discovered. It's that whole pulling things out of the form versus plugging things back in. 

A punch and a low kick in a kata does not mean that a simultaneous strike to GB 20 and Spleen 6 to interrupt both Yin and Yang channels was really there all the time but only waiting to be discovered. If you have that idea you can use your form to reference and remember it. Likewise, if your style teaches some bad techniques - and all of them do at some point or another - and there's someone somewhere else who does something similar but better it doesn't mean that the improved version was waiting there all along passed down to you by the Great Men of Old. It might be true. It might not. To assume it is to risk a separated shoulder when you pat yourself too hard on the back.


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## foot2face (Oct 15, 2007)

tellner said:


> Concerning the crane stance and its resemblance to a leg shield...
> 
> How many Karate (Japaneses, Okinawan, Korean, Hawaiian or American) had any concept of that before they encountered styles that emphasized leg kicks? Precious few. Afterwards there was the usual round of "We have that too!" that always happens with everyone's martial arts.
> quote]
> ...


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## punisher73 (Oct 15, 2007)

> How many Karate (Japaneses, Okinawan, Korean, Hawaiian or American) had any concept of that before they encountered styles that emphasized leg kicks? Precious few. Afterwards there was the usual round of "We have that too!" that always happens with everyone's martial arts.


 
Hmm, I think alot of styles had that in there before the advent of MMA.  If, for example, you look at Isshinryu's Wansu kata there is a movement of bringing the knee up to counter a leg kick.  

If you look at boxers squaring off you see alot of "traditional" stances that are just slightly different.  When they step in to do a right cross they are in a front stance, except that they lift the heel off the ground to get more rotation.  When they end up with their side facing an opponent there feet are in a horse stance.  

There are only so many ways to generate power through body mechanics.  So there are going to be alot more similarities than differences.


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## Grenadier (Oct 15, 2007)

_*ATTENTION ALL USERS:
*_*Please, keep the conversation polite and respectful.*
-Ronald Shin
-MT Senior Moderator-


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## jks9199 (Oct 15, 2007)

I don't believe that Tellner was saying that various martial artists copied and added knee or leg blocks when they saw them used in MMA or Muay Thai.  I think he was saying that they suddenly RECOGNIZED them when they saw what had been there all along.  Or, in some cases, decided to show and emphasize them more in response to what they saw or their students asked about.


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## tellner (Oct 15, 2007)

JKS9919 FTW!

Thanks for saying it clearly.


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## Touch Of Death (Oct 16, 2007)

CuongNhuka said:


> Answer your question?


Yep


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## Em MacIntosh (Oct 24, 2007)

Stances are transitional.  If you aren't a moving target, you get hit.  A stance needs to be instinctually able to adapt to a situation.  There is no perfect stance to stay in, not one particularly better than another.  Though I find the flixibility of JKD's Bi-Jong stance very effective for most (standing) situations and some are just plain useless to me (zenkutsu-dachi).  Some stances have no place outside the training hall and are only good for isometric exercise, IMO.  Shigo-dachi (similar to kiba-dachi with feet at 45 instead of straight ahead and toes under the knees) wouldn't seem effective for most I imagine.  They actually discouraged it's use in sparring.  I practiced it a lot and made it effective for me.  You have to read a lot into a stance before you can judge it, let alone dismiss it.  Stepping into somebody with a well practiced, "dominant" step can push the opponent off balance, be a strike in it's own right or even be a subtle limb destruction (wing chun, crippling step).  The real test is whether it works for you for what you're training it for.  If my stance is ineffective for self defense, it is detrimental and must be discarded lest a bad habit gets me killed.  Stance and footwork lead the way for your techniques and your stance and footwork should correspond to the opponent's actions.


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