Martial arts teachers often make the same comparison to explain why you need good karate stances. Your posture is like the foundation of your house. If you build it on a bad foundation and it falls down, no matter how good your house is, the foundation is going to destroy everything. Your stances are the same for karate. No matter how good you are, if you don’t have good karate stances, you will fall.
We will take our time to look at some karate stances and how we can improve ourselves. First of all, let’s take some time to understand why everyone should do it. What is the goal behind improving your karate stances? The truth is that the goal is to indirectly increase your attack power. Having good posture will give you better stability and your balance is crucial to your hitting power.
The reason can be explained by the laws of physics, more specifically by Newton’s third law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This means that when you hit, an equal force is also created on you. Think about that simple fact. If you push something heavier than you in a natural position (two feet away), you will easily lose your balance. However, if you take a half-moon position (with the leg in front of you bent and one leg behind you), you will probably step back without losing your balance. This is a great improvement, but you can do better. Placing your feet on the ground gives you a much better chance of successfully moving the object. Your feet push towards the ground and this redirects the opposing force into the ground. Later in this article, I’ll talk about an amazing method to ground your karate stances.
There is an interesting analogy between bamboo and your karate stances. Did you know that bamboo takes four years to build its roots and hardly grows? The most impressive thing is that after four years, it begins to grow two feet a day! That’s a good example of how to work the basics first.
If you want a solid bamboo posture, you need to develop your leg muscles. Have you done that before? You need to exercise the stabilizing muscles in your legs. You may already be strong with them, but you need to be strong with all four muscles within your quads.
This is one of the main reasons karate teachers often apply for long positions. Short karate stances are for experts only. You will gain more control and stability in the long term by practicing with long stances. However, you must be given this for educational purposes.
For the five exercises, we will have three exercises to develop your muscle, one exercise to improve your crescent position and another to develop your back posture. We will begin with three exercises starting in the crescent position.
1. Move your front leg into a half moon position.
Get into a half moon position. Without moving your front knee, bring your back leg next to your front foot and return to the original position. Make sure not to put weight on your back leg before returning to the original position. Do this exercise for 1 minute for both legs. If it is too easy or too difficult, adjust your speed but never stop.
2. Move your back leg into a half moon position.
In this exercise, you will need to start again in the half moon position and make sure you do not move your front knee. For the first 30 seconds, lower your back knee close to the ground without touching it and return to the original position. Do as many reps as you can and after 30 seconds, stop your knee close to the ground and don’t move for 30 seconds. Don’t forget to do both legs.
3. Practice your advance in a half moon position
The final exercise for the crescent position is simply practicing stepping forward (doing the “half moon” with your back leg “). This may be the simplest, but no matter what your range is, you still need to Practice the basics With enough progress, you can practice moving back, left, and right. Focus on how you move your weight as you move.
4. Move your back leg into a back position.
In the back stance, your back leg is the one with the most weight and it is crucial to have strength in it. To gain more power, get into the rear position. In slow motion, lower your back leg as low as you can without moving your heel, jump with it, and return to the original position. Do as many reps as you can for 1 minute for each leg.
5. Practice the movement of your back posture
The change of position backwards is the most important movement in Kenpo and no matter what level you are, you must practice it a lot. Go into a hallway or somewhere where you have enough space and practice a lot of little random movements. When you’re on the wall, practice your backward movement. Also make sure you never lean forward or backward when in motion.
If those exercises are too easy, you can do them with 20 pounds of weight on your hands. That way, it will be more challenging. Make sure you never forget to force the knee of your supporting leg out for good karate stances.
With those karate stances, you will practice your ability to ground yourself. To develop that specific skill, you also need to use your imagination. Imagine that the tibia of the bent leg is a metal bar. Look at that bar inside your leg and it’s longer than your leg. In fact, you can see inside your head the bar going through the ground. This bar cannot move and therefore your knee cannot move either. With practice, your ability to ground yourself will multiply tenfold.
The challenging part here is not the complexity of the exercises. You must realize that no matter what level you are, you should always work on your karate stances. If you stop improving, little by little you will lose what you already gained.
If you start doing it right now and once a day or two, I can promise you that you’ll have better karate stances after just two weeks. You can do it?
