Front Stance vs Side Stance

Here is what I have learned about side vs front stances over the last year (before this year I used an unorthodox side stance in kumite point fighting in the late 80's, and in the 90's moved to a front orthodox stance as I learned K-1 Rules Kickboxing under Vern Miller.) First and most importantly, there are a lot of misunderstandings due to perspective, literally, which lead to a lot of vocabulary problems when it comes to talking about this. To illustrate, here's a screen shot on the basic kickboxing (with leg kicks) fighting stance from a Kwonkicker video:

It looks like two different stances, a longer almost side stance from left and right POV, and a shorter front stance from a front and back POV. BUT IT'S THE SAME STANCE! When watching a fighter and trying to figure out if they are using a long or short stance, you can't just look at it from one POV.

This is a problem when discussing martial arts in general. Most Traditional Martial Arts (TMA) have this stance or something nearly identical. Yet many TMA instead of sparring from this stance in their kata, choose to do other stances to help them win points in foot-fencing competitions (Kumite Point Fighting.) This is a problem when trying to figure out what techniques are found in kata/forms. 

Let's take Tai Chi as an example. Yang Style is the most common style of Tai Chi in the world and varies so much in differences in technique that some Yang Style schools are not recognizable as doing the same kata or forms. Most of the Yang style movements are supposed to be done from a stance similar to what Kwonkicker is showing above. However a lot of Yang Style practitioners have a much narrower stance more similar to a side stance. This is a problem because:

1. It changes the application of the moves in the kata, long stance suggesting more 1890 style bare knuckle boxing technique, short stance suggesting more of a Mongolian Wrestling type of technique.
2. It changes the footwork immensely. When they step in the kata are they keeping their feet apart with a front stance like in Muay Thai, or are they bringing their feet together to cover more distance like in a stepping side kick?

The two most influential Yang Style masters in the West as far as I can tell are Chen Man Ching and Hu Yuen Chou, who would have both had Yang Style lineage directly from the Yang Family before Wu Shu had it's way with Yang Style. Chen Man Ching was bluntly obvious about using a front stance:

But many of Hu Yuen Chou's students intentionally bring their feet together when stepping, and use a long narrow stance more similar to a side stance:

In that 1987 footage from Hong Kong, my original Tai Chi instructor Vern Miller was there. He took very careful notes on this, and Vern was adamant that Hu Yuen Chou insisted on front stance. Why the differences in Hu Yeun Chou's students? Perspective, see the Kwonkicker picture above.

There are many fighters who make the side stance work for them - Bill Wallace and Floyd Mayweather come to mind as undefeated champions. Yet I would argue that short stance fighting is better for self defense partially because it is more focused on the Knock Out, like what you would see with Mike Tyson or Manny Paqcuio. But recently I started watching a long stance fighter who is a KO artist, and he absolutely defies my theory here, Deontay Wilder: 

As I have mentioned before, there is actually a front stance AND a side stance in MANY different martial arts, including the Choy Li Fut I did (my K-1 Rules Kickboxing and Tai Chi training was part of my Choy Li Fut training.) What Deontay Wilder's KO punches look like are side stance Choy Li Fut techniques:

There's lots of people now in MMA using Kumite Point Fighting errors, such as dropping their hands, using a very long sideways stance, using an unorthodox stance, and so on. However, sooner or later, this is going to catch up with you:

 

From a martial arts consumer advocate perspective, the front stance is preferable:

1. Your over all striking habits will be better, in general it is the preferred stance in MMA even if some fighters defy orthodoxy.
2. You will learn to fight faster (Muay Thai because of it's efficient focus on teaching stand up fighting through light-yet-continuous sparring, is the fastest way to pick up actionable self defense skill. Same is generally true of Sanda and Knock Down Karate as well. The tricky high kicks of side stance styles will take longer to learn and be less effective.)
3. You will be better prepared for combining grappling with your striking, because the front stance is far better for sprawling and avoiding leg sweeps than the side stance is.

Creality Ender 3

I am a 3D printing newbie. A Creality Ender 3 might not have been the best choice for a first 3D printer in my case, but I have managed to get it up and running. After a lot of trial and error, here are the videos that were helpful, which if I had when I first got started would have saved me a LOT of time:

First is just putting the Ender 3 together in the first place. The price to pay for getting a $2,000 quality PLA printer for $200 is that assembly is required, AND THE INSTRUCTIONS THAT COME WITH YOUR PRINTER ARE SHOCKINGLY INADEQUATE, YOU MUST GO TO YOUTUBE TO GET ADEQUATE INSTRUCTIONS TO PUT TOGETHER THE ENDER 3:

Yay! Your printer is put together, can't wait to print, right? WRONG. Just leveling the printer bed is more challenging than putting together your printer in the first place. You won't even be able to print mistakes if you don't get this correctly adjusted within a fraction of a millimeter, it's a level of precision so high you can't see it with your naked eye. Ironically there is a somewhat easy way to do this:

(Note: You don't need to use a sticker, a piece of paper will work fine.)

Now, finally you can start printing, with the printer assembled and the bed leveled, right? Yeah, you will be able to print the test models that came with the printer, but everything else is going to be worse than garbage until you get the software side figured out. Some vocabulary for you:

• .blend: Blender is the best value 3D software on the market (like Maya, but instead of costing thousands of dollars per year to rent, it Blender is FREE.) A model being worked on in Blender is saved as a ".blend" file.
• .stl: this is file format the 3D model has to be saved in before it can be printed.
• .gcode: is the file with the exact instructions for the 3D printer to produce the model.
• slicing: is turning an .stl file into a .gcode file.
• Cura: is the most popular slicer software, and it is free.

When you find a file you want to print online, you will usually get the .stl file, and maybe the .blend file. Once you get the .stl file, you need to put it into Cura to slice it into a .gcode file for your printer. That last sentence is where you are going to spend most of your time trying to get models to print out. Coming up with the right .gcode file for the 3D model is the biggest challenge of 3D printing. If you want to get to printing quickly once your printer is assembled and its bed is leveled, this video the best place to start:

Standing Meditation

I have done Tai Chi standing meditation for 30 minutes a day every day for over 15 years. People ask me about how to do it. In general what you are going to do is:

1. Set a timer (or put clock where you can see it,) for how much time you intend to practice standing meditation.
2. Stand with your feet shoulder's width apart. 
3. Get your feet facing forward and parallel to each other, with the toes not pointing towards or away from the toes on the other foot. 
4. Your weight is going to remain evenly distributed on your feet.
5. You are going to stand as tall as you can, pretending a string is pulling up from the top of your head, a little towards the back of your skull so that your jaw is slightly down.
6. Bend your knees.
7. Slightly tuck your hips so that the curve in the small of your back is flat.
8. Bring your arms forward until your hands are a little above your belly button, and make your arms round, with your palms facing your stomach.  
9. Your fingers should be almost straight, but not tense.
10. While continuing to hold the 2-9 posture above, close your eyes and feel your body, paying attention to each inhale and exhale individually. Relax the muscles in your back and shoulders while keeping your spine straight and perpendicular to the ground.

When you are done, stretch. (In my case I usually do the splits and butterfly stretches. You might want to do butterfly and hurdle stretches instead.) In general, the minimum amount of standing time is 15 minutes. The maximum is 45 minutes. My back usually pops a few times when I do standing mediation.

Here's a short video that explains the simplest way to start doing it:

Here's my favorite video of standing meditation that I think shows the most correct posture. Ironically I think it's Chen Ziqiang coaching in this video, who is also one of the foremost experts on Tai Chi push hands. Notice how he is often adjusting the student's hand position to be lower (instead of higher like you may see many people doing on the internet, my hands are actually lower than this,) and most students he has to have them adjust their hips slightly forward:

This is the best over all Standing Meditation tutorial I know of on YouTube:

Caveats:

• The students toes need to be more forward, less outward.
• The students hands are at about the right height.
• The instructor's posture is a LOT better than the student's (though his hands are higher than I would recommend,) his brief examples are more informative than his commenting on his student's posture.
• Do NOT watch TV while doing standing meditation.
• Standing meditation is MUCH MORE significant that anything else in Chi Kung.

I DO NOT LARP!

As I have stated before this blog has become a broken record when it comes to martial arts and I will be soon blogging more about other things. Some of those things are gaming related topics as I am a founding member of the Game Arts Guild, so I want to clarify something here loud and clear: there is no overlap between my gaming and my martial arts, I DO NOT LARP!

LARP refers to a type of game, specifically a type of Role-Playing Game, where people dress up as characters and play the game in a live action sort of way. Sometimes there is overlap between LARP and martial arts, most famously and explicitly in the SCA, where they sometimes simulate large dark ages battles that even include arrows:

But as you may have noticed, that kind of fighting on a massive scale the way the SCA does it involves stop-and-go fighting. It may be a necessary evil to pull off the battles they have safely which sometimes involves thousands of fighters at once, but the over all effect is throughout the organization they simply have no continuous sparring what so ever. There are competent martial artists involved, but the LARP aspect limits the transmission of the martial art skills within the organization.

In general I am unconformable with people dressing up in costumes. Halloween is fine, but when I see adults dressed in costume off stage for any other reason I find it unnerving. The few times I attended SCA events, I was not enthusiastic about the costume element, and it showed. I find PAX uncomfortable and Sakura-Kan unbearable. But it goes much farther than that for me, I don't like to work out in martial arts uniforms - I don't like Gis in Judo, Karate or BJJ, I hate monkey suits in Kung Fu. I don't even like to wear workout clothes with the name of my martial arts school on them - or even  Muay Thai shorts with Thai or Chinese writing on them.

In the mid 90's I had an internet moniker that wasn't my real name, and I was trying to get some business done with people you have heard of before, big names in the 90's gaming industry. I was late on getting a reply, (and this was the difference between getting a product out for Christmas shopping season vs getting it out in January,) and I have always wondered how much me using a moniker complicated that communication, when I could have used my real name instead. Monikers were common back then and internet culture was in its infancy, but in general, I don't like pen names, masks, monikers, costumes, martial arts uniforms, etc.

I am uncomfortable with pretense. I try to slightly understate my martial arts skills, experience, etc. every time I comment about it. This is me in the red in 2019 sparring with a 3rd degree blackbelt in Ninjitsu at the Bremerton Martial Arts Center:
What you don't see in this video is sometimes that guy gets the better of me in sparring, even if he didn't on that day, but do not doubt the modest claims I have made about my martial arts training. I have no plans to make money off of martial arts, but perhaps unlike most martial arts consumers I have needs to actually use martial arts I learn. I am skill oriented, not status oriented. I don't want or need or like belts, rank, recognition, uniforms, etc.

I DO NOT LARP!

Shining Armor

Back in 2013 I wrote about my contempt for swordsmanship in a blog post called "The Pleasantry of the Peasantry," and what an improvement long weapons are over swords, especially when complemented with a good knife. While I generally still hold this opinion, I have learned more about one historical nuance: it's the armor that makes a knight (and I mean knight in the most culturally general sense, to include Samurai) tactically different from fighting a peasant, not the knight's sword, but the knight's armor.

First of all, this idea that "a sword is a symbol of nobility, so only a knight would carry a sword" is not actually historically accurate. Though new, high quality swords in ancient times were always valuable, the vast majority of swords were NOT both new AND high quality:

But considering how many sword-like weapons are out there - such as the cultural ubiquity of the machete for example - this isn't really surprising. The sword is essentially a self-defense weapon, which is why it is still so common in many martial arts. Like many other self-defense weapons, swords have their place on the battlefield, but when advanced armor is involved, swords are often only a back up weapon on the battlefield.

What was universally expensive was armor. It took resources to get armor and fit armor to your body. Armor had to protect you against swords and arrows, reducing deadly sword duels to friendly contests of strength and skill. Heavier weapons with armor piercing potential such as an arbalest, halberd or war hammer were too heavy to be carried around for self defense by people who would only fight unarmored attackers, these heavier weapons were primarily battlefield weapons.

As someone who has done some weapon sparring, I can tell you there is a world of difference between fighting with a safety stick with your hand protection, and sparring with a safety stick when you have forgotten that hand protection. Armor makes an extraordinary difference when being attacked with a weapon. I would go so far as to say that at close range, armor makes more of a difference than a sword does.

Let's say just for example, that a fully armored knight without a sword were to face a brawler with a sword in a pub. That knight is going to close the distance and get close to the swordsman. The swordsman is going to probably only get one stab at the knight, and it's not going to be a precisely aimed stab because of the knight's charge. The knight will then cave in the swordsman's face with his gauntlet. And it would be the same if it were a Samurai in armor against a brawler with a katana.

The cliche hero is not "knight with a razor sharp sword," it is a "knight in shining armor." Armor demonstrates even in today's world that you are a person with responsibility and that it is your job to take charge in that situation, on behalf of the powers that be, as in the case of law enforcement with a bullet proof vest or riot gear, or a soldier geared up for battle. The civilian known to dress up in as much armor was Pheonix Jones, real life superhero (estimated cost for version 2.0 = $250,000 with donations, $10,000 out of pocket to have it assembled.) But he isn't the only one responding to crime by wearing armor:

With emerging technologies such as carbon nanotubes making body armor stronger and lighter, it makes me wonder what roll armor will play in the future.

Update: A few days after this post I heard fight choreography experts Adorea put together a fictional short film to illustrate this point. It is considered to be a fairly realistic fight scene, consider how much armor improves this fictional knight's ability to fight multiple opponents:

Psychic Martial Arts

One practice I am particularly critical of is kata (technique) focusing heavily on pain compliance such as pressure points or wrist locks. In the martial arts there is an extraordinary type of foolery where Chi is faked by demonstrating supposed no-touch knock-outs and other very silly no-touch martial arts techniques. In the martial arts there is also a less extreme type of foolery where people are doing martial arts randori (sparring) where one person is easily and effortlessly flinging multiple attackers around. I argue that these two types of foolery are strongly connected, the fake randori leading to the fake Chi, and it all starts with pain compliance kata.

If you spar with wrist locks or pressure points, you learn very quickly that pain compliance techniques have a low chance of success compared to more common techniques such as straight punches, leg kicks or double leg take downs. So some people practice pain compliance through kata instead of sparring:

1. If you are not sparring, and you are training kata, and someone hits you with a wrist lock or pressure point intended to throw you, the pain will eventually hurt you enough so that you will have to comply with the take down.
2. Wrist locks and pressure points, like any other martial art technique, take a toll on your body when executed on you.
3. When practicing pain compliance kata, the best thing for the person to do to protect themselves from damage is to flow with the take down, offering as little resistance as they can get away with.
4. Over time, the person who the pain compliance is happening to will have a finely developed reflex to immediately comply with the take down.
5. Over time, the person executing the pain compliance will have to do less and less to get the desired result. 
6. Eventually, the person executing the pain compliance may not even have to make contact in order to get the desired result, since his target will react even when the technique is not executed correctly.
7. It is easy to see from here how people think they have the ability to knock someone else over with an invisible force. If you are someone that has been conditioned to react this way over time, it's easy to see how you might believe another person has such an invisible force - you don't necessarily realize how you have been conditioned over time.

This following video by a highly regarded martial arts master actually follows this 1-7 progression above (notice that at the beginning of the technique at around 2:40 the techniques are at least trying to appear practical, but by 3:42 they have become distinctly less practical, at 6:35 we have a technique that is completely implausible in any way, and at 7:43-7:44 we have our no-touch throw):

I am not trashing Aikido specifically here, Aikido can still be saved. I am not trashing Chi here, I think there is more to Chi theory than most want to admit. What I am trashing here is the practice of drilling pain compliance techniques for long periods of time instead of sparring with them.

Systema has an interesting take on Chi, which is that Chi is psychic power or mind control of others. That's exactly what I think is going on with these fake Chi martial arts demos, by drilling pain compliance people have been conditioned into cult like, mind-control behavior, "psychic martial arts" if you will. The following video shows a similar progression as the above video, from seemingly well intentioned dodging type of techniques, into pain compliance, and eventually just sitting in a chair and making 4 people fall over with a hand gesture:

George Dillman, who ran the North East Karate Championship for 30 years, became obsessed with pain compliance kata in the form of pressure points, and is now famous for his bizarre no-touch knock out mind-control techniques:

Almost every martial art out there has pain compliance techniques. But the more they emphasize these techniques outside of sparring, the more prone they are to develop delusional ideas about how likely pain compliance techniques are to work. Using pain compliance drills to condition your students to react to your non-sparring movements is what I call "psychic martial arts."

Martial Arts Fantasy Origin

There is a new vocabulary developing on the internet for talking about how effective various martial arts are. The latest development, which I for one agree with, is how much "fantasy" has creeped into any given specific martial art. From my perspective as a consumer advocate, I have a very clear vision of exactly how martial arts get infected with high levels of fantasy.  Probably the most classic example of a fantasy-rife technique found in many martial arts styles is countering a punch using a wrist lock:

There is no problem to most of the individual steps this Sensei describes: keeping good posture at close range, grabbing someone's arm, dropping your weight, flanking your opponent as they attack you, etc. Almost every little component of this technique works, yet if you have ever tried to use this whole technique in free sparring, you know that it almost never works. Even though the technique happens in a brief period of time, it is made of numerous little steps that have to be done in exactly the right order. Free Sparring teaches us that the opponent has an agenda as well, so that techniques must be simple in order to actually work.

People have been talking about how "martial arts that do training with resistance or sparring are the best." As this vocabulary has been developing, "training with resistance" used to actually mean free sparring specifically. Now "training with resistance" seems to mean "everything that makes a martial art good, but which is not actually free sparring." Here's the different kinds of martial arts training people are talking about here:

• Practicing a technique in a drill while someone resists you. You could be throwing a boxing jab at someone who is practicing head movement. You could be doing a kata while someone times you for speed, pressing you to go faster and faster, kicking a heavy bag in Muay Thai for example. You could be doing stop and go "fighting" like in fencing or stationary push hands. None of this is any kind of "sparring," it's all drills. It's all Kata to teach martial art theory.
• Focused sparring is where no one is taking turns, but where only a few techniques are allowed while sparring. Positionals in BJJ is an example. Playing "king of the mountain" in wrestling (trying to get each other out of a circle) is another example. Sparring with only a jab in boxing is another example of this. This is one of the very best way to teach individual techniques and develop a practical understanding of the theory behind the techniques, BUT IT IS NOT FREE SPARRING.
• Free sparring is continuous, and has the least possible outside interference. No one is dictating which moves you can do within your over all ruleset you are sparring with. Though it can have varying levels of contact and intensity, free sparring is where you learn to react against unscripted attacks, and where you find out exactly what works for you want what doesn't. The elite quality of both BJJ and Muay Thai has everything to do with their culture around Free Sparring.

In other words there is a Yin/Yang balance to martial arts training: theory vs. practice. Everything that is not Free Sparring is Theory, and the ONLY way to build solid practical skill is by complementing that Theory with Practice aka Free Sparring. The Yin is the Theory/Kata/drills/focused sparring, while the Yang is the Free Sparring.

But here's where the FANTASY comes from: while Theory/Kata informs Free Sparring, the Free Sparring in turn informs the Kata/Theory! What happened in Aikido that made it mostly fantasy based, is that the founder of Aikido was a pacifist, and this pacifism  discourages Free Sparring. Aikido's practical side is largely neglected because the people practicing Aikido do not realize which techniques are the most important, because they do not do Free Sparring.  All Martial Arts Change over time: All techniques are always becoming better or worse in their effectiveness, so that if a martial art is not sufficiently investing time in free sparring, that arts Kata/Theory will become less valuable over time.