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?
Hi, just found your blog! I do karate (4th kyu)and our sparring stance sounds the same as your fighting stance. However, we don’t have a particular stance that we would refer to as a ‘kicking stance’. How we stand depends on which kick we are going to deliver. We would generally do a front kick with the back leg and would stand in a forward stance to deliver it. However to deliver a kick with the front leg we would stand in cat stance. Your narrow back stance description sounds interesting with not commiting your weight to one leg or the other – more versatile, which leg do you kick with?
@SueC
Hi, Sue! Considering my tiny readership, I’m sure you’re my first international visitor. What part of the U.K. are you from?
So your back leg kicks are done from a forward (front) stance. We don’t use cat stance often. The narrow back stance tends to leave the majority of the weight on the back foot, so back leg kicking involves shifting weight to the front leg during the kick. When kicking with the front leg, it should be just a lift-and-go, though most students do a little stutter step to gain balance.
Now, the fighting stance is much more 50-50, and makes it fairly easy to use either leg.
Hi again! I’m from Yorkshire in the north of England.
We’d only use the fighting stance in competiton sparring (light, minimal contact sparring). We are taught that this is not a good stance for self-defense karate as you cannot generate as much power in the kick from the balls of your feet. We keep our feet firmly planted on the ground when practising more traditional stuff.
@SueC
Farthest north I made it in England was Oxford, so I’ve never been to your neighborhood. Some day we’ll make it over again for more touring.
Well, I suppose we’re even more confusing on our stances than I let on. We additionally have a “sparring” stance, which is involves light bouncing. The fighting stance is sort of a more planted sparring stance. The fighting stance is my stance of choice for Hapkido, since we’re usually closing the gap with the opponent there. With the weight a little more forward, kicks are often going to be done while moving forward and into hand techniques.