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Date Posted: 09:34:44 06/04/01 Mon
Author: Goktimus Prime
Subject: Horse Stance Training

About once a year, I go and waste my money by buying a martial arts magazine. I'm sure that most of you know that the majority of stuff printed in MA magazines are just rubbish, and it's just not worth paying money for a magazine that only has one or two decent articles. Most of the time, it's better to just read the good articles and put the magazines back on the shelves.

I'm sorry, but there is just not enough decent material in these magazines to justify me parting with my money to get one. But about once a year, I give in and buy one.

This year, I shelled $6.55 for Vol.8 #2 of "Australia New Zealand Fight Times". There's not much in the magazine which caught my interest -- it's mainly about prize fighting. So why did I bother getting it? It has one rather interesting article by Adam Hsu called "Some Thoughts On Traditional Training in the Millenium."

Anyway, I'm not going to repeat the entire article here, but I shall share with you all a portion of the article which I consider to make some rather valid points about stance training. Anyway, here goes:

"Horse stance training
Students assume the horse stance and stay there, motionless, for a long, long time. Sounds strange? It is. We don't have this kind of training in the modern world. It's all from old, old China. From the Western perspective, this looks like the antiquated, unappealling way to build endurance and strengthen the leg muscles. Why not pump iron and run every day, instead? Did the ancient Chinese resort to these crude methods because they didn't have electronic treadmills and sophisticated weight machines? Of course not! This is an Eastern exercise: Stance training works on the entire skeletal system -- bones and connective tissues -- and at the same time, the yi, mind and imagination continue to direct the qi downward, passing through the soles of the feet and spreading out wide and deep into the earth like the roots of a tree.

No matter how long a person can hold the posture, if he only stands on the surface of the globe, he's not training correctly. This kind of training is superficial. Someone who is "rooted" has a very strong foundation. There's a perceptible depth to his postures and movements. Here's where words totally fail. I can't explain how, but as an experienced person can see the difference between..." [snip] (he just goes on about how he can't explain why, but he just knows that he can tell the difference)
"Many people know about the legendary horse stance, so I am using it as an example to show what's really involved in traditional kung fu training. Unfortunately, the majority of people who practice the stances ride the horse only on the surface of the earth. This is neither good nor bad. It's simply wrong. From a traditional standpoint, I could not even call it kung fu practice!"

Comments:
So what is Hsu going on about here? In typical Chinese fashion, he's described everything in a very colourful fashion, using expressions such as "direct the qi downward" and describing a good posture as being "rooted" into the ground like a tree.
Naturally he's being metaphoric here, so don't start sprinkling fertiliser onto your legs in hopes of sprouting roots and planting yourself into the ground.
What Hsu refers to here is a common problem among practitioners of practically all martial arts -- being able to sit into your stance. Many martial artists don't sit into their stance, rather, they sit on it.
When you execute your stance properly, you should be directing your centre of gravity towards the ground. You need to mentally imagine your feet being anchored (or as Hsu put it, "rooted") into the ground. Doing this not only provides greater stability, but also provides you with more spring when you move.

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