Fetishising stances

Years ago (30 years ago, now I think about it), I started my martial arts journey in Shotokan karate.  And in that, we did a lot of stance work.  Static stances, moving into stances, kihon-waza while holding or moving into stances, and focus on the stances in kata.

I'm not alone - it has been a continual feature of my online interaction with the greater karate community that stances are an important thing to get right and are something that all too often our karate gets judged by.  And there's a lot to be said for a focus on our stances, at least in the initial stages of our development.  How someone stands can tell you a lot about how integrated their skeletal and muscular systems are, whether their core is switched on, how well they understand how to hold their body.  But, the more advanced and competent they become, the less important stances as objects become.

That is because a stance is not an isolated entity (or shouldn't be).  Stances exist as a component of a larger technique/movement and need to be considered in light of the function and intention of that technique.  Having a perfect zenkutsudachi, for instance, is pointless if, in attaining it, the ability to apply your force to the target is lost as you are too close or have broken your kinetic chain.

In my opinion, stances are teaching tools and once the lesson has been learnt, the tools is no longer as important as the application of the lesson.  Fetishising stances and the quixotic quest for perfection in stances actually impedes learning the lesson they are meant to impart - it is akin to a woodworker who pursues the ultimate sharpness of their chisels, but never actually uses them to pare wood.

But the main issue I have with an over-emphasis on stances, is that a stance is all too often judged by its end point - the final, static posture.  This ignores the most important part of a stance, which is the movement into it, and the transition from one stance into another.  The core lessons we gain from stances is not so much how to hold ourselves, but how to move ourselves: control over our centre of gravity, balance, coordination and how to enter into or move away from an opponent while maintaining control over them.  A zenkutsudachi (to continue to use it as an example) is all about having your weight forward, of moving it towards a certain direction, of dropping from high to low, or of keeping pressure towards your opponent while you pivot away from them (see Gekisai for an example of this).  To move into nekoashidachi is to unweight your front foot, to move your centre of gravity backwards and lower, to load up the leg ready to spring forward).  Most applications from kata rely on the movement through a stance or from one to another as a key to successful, effective control of the opponent. Worrying too much about what the end position looks like places the focus in the wrong place and arguably makes for poorer (but prettier) karate, and perpetuates a beginner's mindset in the practitioner (in that they are forever stuck in the beginner's worries of "is my foot in the right place?", "where do my hands go?" etc...).