Are you struggling with your Karate stances? Do you have a hard time moving smoothly and quickly from stance to stance? Do you feel as if your lower body and upper body are disconnected from each other? Do you notice that your body goes up and down when moving forward or backward?
If you answered yes to any or all of the above questions, you are not alone, but there is hope and you can make your stances better.
The stance between the stance
The stance between the stance is a simple drill to help you improve all of your stances but today, we are going to focus on the front stance. This concept was shared with me a few years ago from my Sensei, Sensei Cieplik.
- Start in a cat stance with most of your weight on your back leg
- Tuck your hips under your pelvis
- Make sure that your hips are level and not tilted
- Tense your lower abdominal muscles
- Push your hips forward while moving your front foot forward.
- Bring your back leg up into a cat stance position and repeat.
Some key points are:
- Your starting cat stance position can have hips open or closed depending upon what you are working on.
- If you hips aren’t tucked, your upper body will lean forward as you move.
- Keeping your hips as level as possible will help remove any extra movements or wobbles when you are moving.
- Keeping your lower abdominal muscles engaged will help you keep your posture upright while moving.
- Initiate the movement from the hips.
- You can also perform this drill moving backward.
Even though this type of stance sounds very simple, you can get in an excellent workout just by doing these movements. You can also use this type of training if you have limited space to train in. My other article about Small space Karate training can give you a few more ways to train your stances using this concept.