Basic #2 - SOKU （足 ） Legs/Stance

In the episode we continue going deeper into ichi gan, ni soku, san tan, shi riki as we take a deeper look into the second element the legs (stance).

The stance is the foundation upon which we build, it grounds us and is the basis for all movements and actions that carry us forwards.

---- Transcript ----

Martin: Hey everyone, this is Martin & Sandra Phillips and welcome back to the Karate 4 Life Podcast.

Sandra: Today we want to dig a bit deeper into the basics of karate and life, taker a closer look at the second element of ichi gan, ni soku, san tan, shi riki - the stance.

Martin: We've noticed that everyone faces challenges in life, some big some small. But not everyone has a way to navigate these problems.

Sandra: It’s not always easy, but we’ve found that we always keep coming back to what we’ve learned from our years in the dojo.

Martin: And that’s what this podcast is all about...

Sandra: Helping us all find the solutions to life’s problems. Or even better yet, to remove the problems before they arise.

Martin: This is Martin & Sandra Phillips and welcome to the Karate 4 Life Podcast.

Sandra: We've managed to wrap up Ichi Gan, the eyes, Martin, and we do need to move on to Ni Soku. Before we do that, I wanted to share with you I had quite a few people come and talked to me about the Ichi Gan, the eyes segment, and are really interested to learn a lot more about Ni Soku now. They're kind of hanging out.

Martin: The pressure.

Sandra: You've delayed this one coming out. You've had quite a busy time at the moment, but you should look at this a bit quicker I think.

Martin: We need to get it moving.

Sandra: Yes. Okay, so where should we start?

Martin: I think we'll start the same way we did last time and look at Soke's text, his teaching manual the Kyohon. I might show our video again to read it out.

Sandra: "The basis of all movement and posture. Always take care to unconsciously have correct and smooth stepping motion, stance, and way of evasion."

Martin: That's simple stuff, really. Isn't it?

Sandra: You try and do that well. Maybe if you work it out you can let me know.

Martin: Yes. A simple idea, simple but not easy.

Sandra: Okay. Well, let's see if we can break it down just a little bit more than that. When we were having a chat earlier, we were discussing three points as far as looking at the stance, looking at stability, mobility, and also power generation. Maybe let's go to the stability first, and let's see if we can unpack that just a little bit.

Martin: Stability, I guess, that gets back to what we do with our brand new beginner students. The first thing we do when we're looking at stance is literally just getting the feet in the correct position. How wide is your stance? How long is your stance? How much do you bend your knees? Creating that position of stability, but, I guess, this is where we probably need to tie back to the eyes as well.

As we talked about last time with the eyes, that creates that posture and that structure, and then the stance builds on that creating a full body structure.

Sandra: Yes, so we have those little tests in class where there's a big strike shield coming whacking at you or whether it's a one-finger test on your belt, if you don't have your eyes in the correct position, it makes it very hard to maintain a strong stance.

Martin: Yes, this is a bit of a paradox with teaching brand new students to get your feet in the right spot. Automatically most people look down at their feet. They look down at their feet, and they go, "Oh, okay. Are my feet in the right spot?" Then they might have their feet in the right spot, but because they've looked down, they've broken that structure. They've broken the posture. It kind of defeats the purpose of having their feet in the right spot in the first place because they don't have that stability.

Sandra: Yes, so true. Then, as we tend to take people through their journey with their stance, we do find that they do, in time, get their eyes back up and get their posture.

Martin: After lots of reminding normally.

Sandra: Yes. I'm still working on that. I go through cycles, maybe. What happens though is often that we get so caught up on enjoying and embracing the structure and feeling strong and the foundations feel so strong that, I guess, in the stance, for a person coming through once they have the feet in the right position, they feel this sense of structure, they then get so grounded and they have the wrong muscles working, generally they create a tightness.

Then when we have that, we lose all ability to actually move which would be mobility.

Martin: You hit the nail on the head there. Most people when they think strength in the base, they think tightness. Like you said, they just get really tight and they can't move, so what we're going to try to do is to create a feeling of tension in the base. The difference between tension and tightness is if you think of your body, the way your body works, you've got opposing muscle groups.

Tightness, I think of as you've got the opposite sides both working, they're both tight, they're both contracting. That's kind of like driving a car with the handbrake on. It doesn't go so well. When you create tension, that creates a feeling of like a stretch, like a rubber band being stretched out. Then, you have the release. Tension in the body is like when you get the muscles holding to a point, and then one side releases, and you create movement.

Sandra: That preparation is so key, isn't it? Because once you get beyond that point of just being strong and grounded and you want to get more mobile, you then start to play with the different muscles in the body, and as far as that muscle pairing, but then what we then find with people there's a progression which then gets them to a point of starting to move more explosive with their step.

When they go to kick, for example, we can get them to get that foot off the floor faster, or if we go from a punching perspective, we can get that hand from the pullback position to be released much more powerfully and faster as well. But I guess what's underlying, what I find for most people is that when you get that elasticity in the body, I find that for most people, there is no force required to get that technique executed if we truly have the eyes working well in our favour, aligning the posture.

Would you say that would be what you see as well?

Martin: Absolutely, it's key. Again, there's two parts coming back together, the eyes and the stance working together. If you have one working without the other, it doesn't work. It literally does not work. You see people who've got that amazing speed, but if their body's not aligned correctly, it becomes useless.

Sandra: So, preparing, so whether we're in the phase of just getting started on a karate journey as a beginner, just getting those feet in place and then moving on to getting your intermediate and then trying to be really tight and strong and no one can move me kind of feeling, and then eventually going to the point of going, "You know what, it's not practical to stay like this, I can't move."

Martin: If we get back to what we was talking about last time with the eyes, the first rule of self-defense, don't be where the punches are, if you're strong and stable, and can't move, you're going to be where the punches are eventually.

Sandra: It's going to be very, very challenging. Then to obviously then develop your footwork in a way where you can truly apply some great self-defense strategies and some taisabaki (body evasion) you need to be able to get your footwork to be more mobile.

Martin: Absolutely.

Sandra: Just say we were doing some exercising the dojo for a self-defense situation and we're getting people moving beyond being strong and tight, but they're moving into the place where they can be more relaxed and get more mobile and they're doing it with a great posture and eyes. What if they then were to let the eyes go? What would you normally see in a student that was getting more mobile, but then their eyes were to fail?

Martin: What we'd normally say is you have a loss in structure so the posture would drop, the accuracy of their techniques would disappear, so be the ability to actually hit a target with any accuracy goes out the window. Then you completely miss the third step, which is the power generation. If the body's not aligned properly in the first place, then you can't generate natural power. You might be able to generate power from physical strength, but the natural power that you can generate from a good structure just isn't there.

Sandra: Let's just say you had a person that was training and they'd obviously moved to the point of getting that mobility in their base and doing it for the most part at a reasonable level, and they also had the eyes also developing, so they create this always ready experience. Whether they're studying their basics or kata or bunkai, kobudo, anything, they've always got this always ready feeli