If you’ve been at class this week (and if not, we miss you, where’ve you been?!), you will know that Kru Kelly has been focusing on fighting stance even more so than usual. This week and next week, drills and demos have been centered around this all-important aspect of MuayThai. It is next to impossible to have balance, generate power or utilize speed without a proper fighting stance. So, following are some of the basic points to remember regarding our MuayThai stance:
– Your dominant foot should be in the rear position. The lead foot should point straight ahead, while the rear foot should be turned at a 45 degree angle.
– Feet should be approximately your hip distance apart width wise, and length wise should be a natural “stride” distance. This means the length of your natural walking step, or just a touch shorter. A lot of people tend to stand with the rear foot behind the lead foot, essentially causing them to “walk a tightrope” and leaving them off balance. Especially when you are doing repetitive drills like 10s, stance can tend to easily wander off from where it should be, highly compromising speed, power and balance. It is worth the extra time to fix your stance before going into each punch or kick until it becomes second nature to maintain that stance. Without this proper foundation, everything above it will suffer! If you are still working on your stance, take advantage of the parallel white lines on the gym floor by standing with one foot on each white line and having your partner keep on eye on your feet for you.
– Your shoulders and hips should follow the same 45 degree angle as your rear foot.
– Hands should be up with the knuckles roughly in line with the eyebrows to protect against high kicks (or also to give your arms and shoulders a great resistance workout!). Your dominant hand should be tucked in tight to your cheek while your lead hand is out in front to protect the front of the face and your chin should be tucked.
If you work on your stance, it will soon become something you do with out thinking too much about it. For those that have been participating in kickboxing for a longer time, it is worth it to stop and review your stance every now and then – in front of a mirror or have your partner watch it for you. As you step into your kick, are you moving through your kick at a 45 degree angle or are you moving away from your kick and losing power? When you do repetitive kicks or double kicks, are you balanced? Are you up on the ball of your foot or flat footed? Are your hands staying up or drifting down when you are tired or trying to generate power? These things could be the difference between a knock out…or being knocked out.
For some inspiration, check out the always amazing Buakaw doing repetitive kicks and watch how he maintains his stance in order to continue with speed and power the whole way through. With this type of cardio kick technique usually suffers a little (sure his left hand comes down every once in awhile but I think we can overlook that on this one!), but the constancy of his stance is what allows him to nail off this many quick kicks with so much balance and power…. that, and some pretty intense conditioning.