Pursuing Martial Arts

Sometimes I think I could spend the rest of my martial arts career just correcting my front stance (mountain climbing stance, bow stance, whatever). I think now that I probably didn’t take it as seriously as I should have back when I was a white belt, and really didn’t begin to until I was an advanced color belt. By then, I’d formed some really bad habits.

You can get by in class with bad stances, depending on how bad they are, but in reality, if you were in a real fight, if you were doing a bad stance, you wouldn’t be rooted well enough and would be leaving yourself open to easily lose your footing, or be swept. Knowing this, though, it’s still hard to fix.

I guess I’m thinking about it now more often, now that I’m also learning tai chi, after working so many years on tae kwon do. My instructor with that is attempting to correct those bad stances, and sometimes I just wonder if this old body is ever going to do it the right way. It’s hard to tell whether those things that are wrong are there from bad habit or because it’s less painful.

At any rate, in tae kwon do your feet need to be both pointed towards the front, but in tai chi, your back foot has to be at more of a 45 degree angle. The hardest part of the proper stance for me seems to be rolling my tail bone in, and not sticking my butt out. I never even realized I did that until it was pointed out to me. But now when I see others doing the same thing, I can’t help but correct it, as it now looks so wrong, even if I still do it, probably far too many times to admit.

My best advice, then, for anyone just starting out in martial arts is to take the time to ge the stances right from the beginning, as it gets harder and harder to fix it the longer you go through it, especially if you’re not exactly a spring chicken anymore.

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