Theme of the Week: Stances

This week, we’ll look at how we stand and examine if it’s helping us accomplish our martial goals.  We’ve done footwork as a theme before, and this will definitely be a closely related idea but we should be able to look at a few different pieces of our stances besides our feet.

For example, tonight we examined how keeping a tight abdomen can help us in fighting drills.  Thinking about it from the opposite point of view might be instructive.  Imagine a fighter who is leaning far forward over their center of gravity with their torso.  This will give the fighter more range but it will also put them in an easy position to get thrown, swept or knocked off their base.  Take that same fighter and lean their torso far back behind their center.  Now they’ll find it easier to kick with the front leg but they might also run into trouble with being bulldozed by a fighter with good forward pressure.

Now that you’ve got an idea of some of the possible bad consequences of leaning to far forward or backward in your stance, picture the fighter who is well balanced over their center of mass.  This fighter is more difficult to throw or knock down than the one who is off balance.  One way to help achieve this “centered” feel is to tighten the lower belly, which helps connect the lower and upper body into one integrated piece.

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