Fighting stance or kicking stance?
Several weeks ago, I was participating in a TKD class led by one of the master instructors. One of the things he said stuck in my head and has been bouncing around since then. The gist of it was a clear differentation between kicking stance and fighting stance. In our world, fighting stance has a left or right lead leg, with both feet facing forwards, knees slightly bent, weight on the balls of the feet and hands up. Kicking stance is more of a narrow back stance, weight more even distributed between the ball and heel, and the back foot is almost perpendicular.
Now, this was nothing new, it just struck me funny this class. Why are we kicking if we aren’t fighting, or training to fight? We’re by no means running a reality-based system, but we are more grounded in fighting practicalities than many TKD dojangs. I talked this over with a couple of other black belts, and we didn’t necessarily have a clear consensus.
The best argument for a “kicking stance” even existing is that it allows focus on the kick without really concerning ourselves with details external to the kick itself. Though we have used a different kicking stance for white belts, which is a front stance.
I guess one of the problems I have with it is that it seems to promote lazy kicking. Rocking back from the heel to the ball of the foot slows the delivery of the kick. And it also allows for a bit of resting, physically and mentally, between kicks.
Anyone else using different stances for fighting and kicking?