2026-03-02

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

Pivoting on one foot requires balance and ankle strength. It’s difficult because you’re not just pivoting “on one foot”, you’re pivoting around a particular point on the bottom of the foot. Balance is easy with a wide base, like a front stance. Balance is harder in a narrow stance, harder still while standing on one foot, and very hard when your “base” is reduced to a single point. When pivoting on the ball of the foot, ankle strength (and, thereby, stability) also comes into play.

The biggest problem I see with pivoting on one foot is the failure to maintain a single axis of rotation. When pivoting on the heel, the person will lose balance, transfer weight to the ball of the foot, and then pivot from there. When pivoting on the ball of the foot, lack of ankle strength causes the person to let the heel fall, and then pivot from there. In both cases, they start the pivot on one point but then transfer the pivot to another point. In other words, instead of one long pivot, they do two (or more) shorter pivots, using different axes of rotation.

So how do you “fix” this? Balance is important for both heel and ball pivots, and while I could probably come up with a variety of pivot-oriented balance drills, we’re already blessed with dozens of kata that do that for us automatically. Just practice kata while concentrating on how, and how far, your feet pivot, instead of concentrating on all the cool punches kicks and blocks. The other factor in a ball pivot is ankle strength and, again, there’s no better training than kata. Practice your kata again, this time pivoting on the ball of your foot whenever possible (even if that’s not normally how you perform the kata). It’ll teach you a lot about balance and stability and greatly improve the pivots you normally execute on the ball of your foot.