2023-03-13

Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.

We talked a lot about stances and structure in last night’s advanced class, and how I view them. Much of this comes from, experience, a lot of reading, and a heavy dose of Iain Abernethy’s views as expressed in his podcast episode called “My Stance on Stances”, and the related article on his website. To sum it up:

1. Like the foundation of a house, stances are literally the foundation upon which your techniques are built. If your stance isn’t sturdy enough to support itself under a “normal load” (i.e. your own body weight) it’ll never be strong enough to withstand the stresses applied when striking, blocking, kicking, etc., an attacker.
2. Stances aren’t techniques unto themselves, and techniques don’t really happen in stances; rather, stances are the postures we find ourselves making between techniques. (They’re the “spaces” between the “words” of technique.) If you start in a front stance and perform oi-zuiki, ending in front stance, you’re only really in front stance before and after the punch. During the punch, you’re in transition between those stances. (And the transition between stances is often more important than the stance itself.)
3. The almost-but-not-quite exception to the second point is when your stance is used as part of a technique … as a base, fulcrum, or obstacle that the rest of the technique requires in order to work. We see this when a hand technique causes the opponent to trip over our leg, or when our stance is used to lift or throw an opponent.
4. All of this, like all of karate, changes with experience. As beginners, we start with large, powerful moves. As we gain experience, we learn to generate power with smaller, less “formal” moves. Stances are no different, hence Gichin Funakoshi’s precept, “Hitotsu, kamae wa shoshinsha ni ato wa shizentai”, often translated as “Formal stances are for beginners; later, one stands naturally.”