Pivot

Spent all day today in Noon class working three different pivots and their place in the form Mo Yee Do.

The first one is a heel pivot. You go from a lead – both feet flat and weight neutral – then open the front foot on the heel. From there, you step the rear foot forward. Make sure the new front foot is pointing straight ahead and you stepped out wide enough so that when you close your open rear foot you’ll wind up in a good balanced lead. The most common mistake is to step to narrow and end up in a tightrope walking stance – never very good for throwing a strike from. Finally, close the stance by pivoting on the rear heel. With the closing of the heel, a strike can be tossed in, to show the student that pivoting on the heel will generate forward power where as if they pivoted on the ball of the back foot they would be sending some of their power backwards.

The second one is a very slight heel pivot. It’s done from a lead as well but instead of opening 90 degrees, you only open about 10 degrees. The point is to open the foot just enough to allow for a rear leg kick to come through comfortably and not strain the supporting knee. Once the kick is completed and the kicking leg comes down (step wide) then the foot can be closed back up, again by pivoting on the heel.

The third step is the most difficult one for folks. It goes from a cat stance to a lead. The tricky part is stepping out at a diagonal from the cat stance so that once again, you don’t end up walking the tightrope. I like to make students practice this step up and down the floor several times before adding in the punch from the lead. Make sure the feet are always facing forward. It’s a small detail but it will have massive effects on how much you’ll be able to put your hips into each strike.

For conditioning we did 2 rounds of 500 meter rows and 50 sit ups.