Hi everyone,
I'm new here, and am looking to start Karate at a local dojo. My experience is almost exclusively in grappling, and I've never done anything that requires kicking above the waist before, so I wanted to ask some advice about this. I have out-toeing--where my knees and feed turn a bit outwards, rather than pointing straight. Does anyone else here have this problem? If so, how has it impacted your martial arts, if at all? Thank you
Hey Uncle Duke! I'm also "duck-footed". Especially my right foot. When my knee points and flexes straight forward, my foot angles outward at about 20°. I have a congenital fusion of the bones in my ankles which severely limits lateral movement and apparently this splaying of the feet is one of the common characteristics of this uncommon condition.
At any rate, my splay-footedness affects my training in several areas. My core art is Wing Chun which has a pigeon-toed training stance built around adducting the knees. Okinawan karate does something vaguely similar in the Sanchin kata.
So, although I can achieve the "classic" position, when I do my
knees are over-rotated inward to the point of making the stance
look correct while actually being less functional and unnecessarily stressing both my knee and hip joints. Over the years I have learned ways to moderate the stance to suit my physical condition while still allowing for good functionality.
The second place my "duck-footedness" has given me trouble is in taking the traditional
ma-bo or horse-stance widely used in martial arts including Wing Chun's long pole training. Some systems allow for the feet to splay a bit, but in the traditional Chinese arts, the classic horse-stance demands that the feet be parallel and point straight forward:
Such a horse stance puts extreme stress on my knee joints so I compensate by splaying my feet which, although considered "bad form", again is more functional for me.
The real problem here is how
your instructor feels about your situation. In the several arts I have trained, I have worked with instructors who varied greatly in their attitudes. Some listened to me describe my condition and helped my find a work around, others were inflexible and reacted angrily to my "stubbornness" leading me to limit or even discontinue training with them.
Even today, after decades in the martial arts, I've encountered a few odd people who make unsolicited comments about my "incorrect stances" assuming that somehow I simply don't know "the right way" to do it and feel that it's up to them to correct me. Fortunately, martial arts is supposed to teach us
patience too.
