How long should I be able to hold a horse stance?

[JowGaWolf]

It would also matter how deep it is of course but assuming it is a "good" horse stance. How long should I be able to keep it without stopping?

Here's a serious answer to your question from my Sifu. 4:11 is where he starts to get into about how low and how long

I can tell you this much from my own training, I don't hold it for more than 1 minute in my training. I think a minute and 30 seconds is the most I've every done and didn't care about doing more than that. I do more training of moving while in horse which is tougher and your muscles will catch fire quickly. In the past staying in horse stance too long actually made me feel heavy like a tank and it was like I was always rooted. I didn't like that feeling so now 1 minute is about all you'll see me do and then I'll do about 10 or 15 minute worth of drills moving while in horse and transitioning in and out of horse.

Everyone one is going to have their own take about the horse stance. You won't find much agreement about how long one should hold the horse stance.

How long not important. How well you can kick out of that stance is.

This one is important in my training. A stance doesn't help if you can't fire the guns while in the stance.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

. A stance doesn't help if you can't fire the guns while in the stance.

Sometime the horse stance is your gun. Without a strong horse stance, you can't apply:

- hip throw,
- bowing throw,
- embracing throw,
- fireman's carry throw,
- ...

 

[drop bear]

the real question is is this bum in or out. Bum out you can do for ages.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Here's a serious answer to your question from my Sifu. 4:11 is where he starts to get into about how low and how long

I can tell you this much from my own training, I don't hold it for more than 1 minute in my training. I think a minute and 30 seconds is the most I've every done and didn't care about doing more than that. I do more training of moving while in horse which is tougher and your muscles will catch fire quickly. In the past staying in horse stance too long actually made me feel heavy like a tank and it was like I was always rooted. I didn't like that feeling so now 1 minute is about all you'll see me do and then I'll do about 10 or 15 minute worth of drills moving while in horse and transitioning in and out of horse.

Everyone one is going to have their own take about the horse stance. You won't find much agreement about how long one should hold the horse stance.

This one is important in my training. A stance doesn't help if you can't fire the guns while in the stance.

Just a quick technical note JGW, which you may want to pass along. That room has bad acoustics for a remote mic like he's using. If he applies a low-cut (high-pass) filter to the audio before he publishes, it will be much easier to understand him. Otherwise, using a lavalier mic will help, too, but is the more expensive solution.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Sometime the horse stance is your gun. Without a strong horse stance, you can't apply:

- hip throw,
- bowing throw,
- embracing throw,
- fireman's carry throw,
- ...

I don't use a horse stance for my hip throws. Most of them use a very narrow stance.

 

[Balrog]

I would be very, very careful about the horse stance. I thought mine was pretty good and as a result, I tried something I shouldn't have.

I'm at the emergency room

. This morning was not good. Since I have a good horse stance, I decided to go horse back riding, something I haven't done in a while. It turned out to be a big mistake! I got on the horse and started out slowly, but those of you who know me know that I'm a dare devil, so then we went a little faster. Before I knew it, we were going as fast as the horse could go. And when I tried to stop the horse, I couldn't stop him, he must have gotten spooked or something, he was out of control, so I decided to try to jump off the horse, and instead, I fell off, but as I was falling, my foot got caught in the stirrup , so the horse was dragging me. And he wouldn't stop! Every time I screamed at him to stop, the horse went faster ,Thank goodness the manager at Toys-R-Us came out and unplugged the machine. But he had the nerve to take the rest of my quarters so I wouldn't attempt to ride it again.

 

[wingerjim]

Do it as long as you possibly can + 15 more seconds. You will find each day you can go longer and longer.

 

[Touch Of Death]

Three Days...

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

I don't use a horse stance for my hip throws. Most of them use a very narrow stance.

The horse stance used in Shuai Chiao is much narrower than the one used in the striking art.

IMO, the following horse stance is too wide.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

The horse stance used in Shuai Chiao is much narrower than the one used in the striking art.

That's about as wide as I'd go normally (there are times I'd go wider, but not normally). Slipping under for one of our hip throws, I'd normally end up feet closer even than that. Now I wish I had a training partner handy to experiment and see why I sometimes choose a wider stance. It has become automatic for me, and I can't think off the top of my head why I use a different stance sometimes. I know I use different stances than I used to, because of my knees, but this doesn't seem to be driven by that.

@Tony Dismukes - your Judo throws are going to be pretty close to the throws I'm used to. Do you have some input on stance variation in hip throws?

 

[Tony Dismukes]

your Judo throws are going to be pretty close to the throws I'm used to. Do you have some input on stance variation in hip throws?

I learned a pretty narrow stance for most hip throws. Like you, I'd say that clip from KFW shows about the widest I would normally go for a hip throw. There are other throws (like tai otoshi) which use a wide base, but they aren't hip throws.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

IMO, the "low stance walking" training is better than just to stay in a static horse stance.

 

[Flying Crane]

The horse stance used in Shuai Chiao is much narrower than the one used in the striking art.

IMO, the following horse stance is too wide.

Yeah, that last one is too wide, too low. The camera angle is high so it is a little hard to tell, I think if the camera were lower, at his hip level, you would see his butt already dropping below his knees.

 

[JowGaWolf]

Just a quick technical note JGW, which you may want to pass along. That room has bad acoustics for a remote mic like he's using. If he applies a low-cut (high-pass) filter to the audio before he publishes, it will be much easier to understand him. Otherwise, using a lavalier mic will help, too, but is the more expensive solution.

Yeah it's bad. He won't be using that room anymore as he's back in the states. But I'll pass the info on because I know he'll probably make some more videos. He should do an audio test before he does the videos.

 

[JowGaWolf]

ha ha ha.. not Jake Mace. He knows every fighting system and yes, that horse stance is way too wide. Training horse stance should consist of training a functional horse stance. There's no need of training something that can't actually be used. There is nothing in fighting that would ever put him in a position like that.

It always amazes me that he's Yout Tube Famous lol.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Yeah it's bad. He won't be using that room anymore as he's back in the states. But I'll pass the info on because I know he'll probably make some more videos. He should do an audio test before he does the videos.

It's a common problem. A filter set to pass everything above 80Hz will knock out a lot of the sounds that make speech less intelligible. If he does any post-production with something like Audacity, it probably has a built-in high-pass filter he can use.

 

[Ironbear24]

ha ha ha.. not Jake Mace. He knows every fighting system and yes, that horse stance is way too wide. Training horse stance should consist of training a functional horse stance. There's no need of training something that can't actually be used. There is nothing in fighting that would ever put him in a position like that.

It always amazes me that he's Yout Tube Famous lol.

He is very atheletic and fit, but when it comes to martial arts there is a lot he simply just doesn't do well. The guests he has on his show don't seem to be too great either. He literally had one video about striking with your wrist...

Great way to shatter it.