What is your fighting stance?

[Zen_Hydra]

When the chips are down...When your "spider sense" starts tingling...When you look into the eyes of the punk across from you, and know he is about to throw down...What stance do you go into? What is your natural, reactionary fighting stance? If this stance is one that you have programed yourself to react with, what was your reasoning? Where are your hands, your feet, your eyes?

[Judge Pen]

Feet about shoulder length apart, weight equally distributed. Right foot slightly in the lead.

Hands up and palms facing outward so it looks like I'm not wanting to fight.

The reasoning is that I can move and defend myself from this stance, but I still look pedestrian. I don't look like I'm ready to fight so, hopefully, the guy will underestimate me and, by the time he ralizes different, it's too late.

[Shaolin-Do]

Dont really pick up a "fighting" stance. Will kinda puff up... talk some sh!t... Usually it wont escalate past that. Normally feet are about shoulder width apart... god knows where my hands are. If Im at a party, ones on my beer and ones ready to hit someone.
:)

[Judge Pen]

Originally posted by Shaolin-Do
If Im at a party, ones on my beer and ones ready to hit someone.
:)

Very practical stance. You must practice "reality" fighting! :D

[norther practitioner]

Shaolin-Do always figures when we are talking about different thows we are speaking about how to either perserve the beer, or how to toss it on the opponent...:D

I guess I'm slightly wider than shoulder width, right foot lead..

[shaolinboxer]

I take no stance.

[Judge Pen]

Originally posted by shaolinboxer
I take no stance.

What, are you laying down? :)

[shaolinboxer]

Sorry, I should have said I take "no-stance"

[norther practitioner]

No, it is the buddhist stance on everything....lol:D

[old jong]

It should be a mental stance.
You don't want to take a B.L. pose with eyes bulging and yelling like a cat who's been stepped on his tail. Or, you don't want to take a R. G. pose lying down on your back with your legs spreaded with a bored look on your face.

[SifuAbel]

I don't take a stance, I shoot them from my chair.

[Jotaro Joestar]

I take a Jade Ring stance

[Water Dragon]

What's my stance? Pro-Choice

[Shaolin-Do]

"or how to toss it on the opponent."

no no no. Maybe the empty cup, but not the beer!
:D
As of late, I really havent had any sort of confrontations at all....
:)

[yenhoi]

Depends entirely on everything. How you stand and posture yourself not to mention how you talk, look, smell, etc has much to do with how the fight starts, if it starts, etc.

Ryu should preach on this topic.

:eek:

[Shaolin-Do]

"Shaolin-Do always figures when we are talking about different thows we are speaking about how to either perserve the beer, "

I once saw a beer thrown about 100 feet staying completely upright not, spilling a drop at a concert :)

Yenhoi is completely right :)
You cant really adopt a stance until you are actually fighting, the range will differ as to when the confrontation started (physically) and most times if the person was right in your face, theres no time to adopt a stance, only time to react.

[JusticeZero]

The usual place I end up in when startled is ginga esquerda (sp?) with my weight 65/35 on my left front foot, back leg straight back, feet about the length of my leg apart, on the ball of my back foot, feet parallel, hips forward, right hand about a hand's length from my left shoulder, right elbow down, left hand loose by my side. I don't stay there long.
When merely under stress, it's feet shoulder width apart and parallel, hands chest level - negaca alto.

[Mr Punch]

As SD, one hand on me beer, one hand out front as one of Geoff Thompson's barriers...
one finger extended, followed by a little beckoning motion, a quick shimmy-shuffle and a strangled-chicken kiai! :D

[MAC]

If this question is for real, my stance would vary (as I do have 3 favorites that kind of depend on the situation / position) but the fact of the matter is that I tend not to "square off" or "bow up". If I'm seriously getting into a situation I'm too old, slow, whatever to mince words - no talk - just jump in and end it. Hopefully my efforts will land on target and with proper approach and impact to end the conflict. If not -- I'll probably get hurt.

[No_Know]

Crossed arms at chest, hands near opposite shoulders, upper body turned to the side and in a cat stance.

Three times I got startled and assumed this pose with defense/attack on the mind even though I was not sure what or whether the attack was.

Startled was when people came near my position from behind a door or around a pillar.

It is a posture from at least one of the Kung-Fu froms I was shown.

[yu shan]

ditto MAC! us old guys learn to play smart, but isn`t it fun to shuck and jive...

[Christopher M]

I think in many self-defence scenarios, contra many sportive and training scenarios, there is never the opportunity for any kind of "squaring off" in the first place. The way range develops and changes in each of these cases is quite different, and this has implications for training. For instance, in the sportive/training sense, you might concieve of a stance as a consistent and self-sufficient defense base from which you can launch attacks with optimal static defense. On the other hand, in the self-defense sence, the stance could be concieved of as a pedagogy for instilling a primary reflex which establishes an interactive structure with the engagement of your assailant. These two things may be very different.

In the later case, it's difficult to talk about the stance in isolation, as it's meaning only arises when it interacts with the opponent's attack. Rather, we could ask, how is the stance being trained as a primary reflex? How does it establish your own posture? How does it respond to your opponents attack and establish his posture and your relative positions and ranges? In what way does it begin a series of trained reactions to your opponent's subsequent responses which will manifest themselves as the techniques you use in the engagement? In all of this, I think you will the important thing to not be the stance, that is - not the end-product of the movement; but rather, the movements your body made to get there. Again, this would be contrast with a sportive and training "squaring off" approaching to stance, where the end-product is very important.

[No_Know]

Christopher M, getting there seems literally pointless without a destination into which to be gotten.

There should be a comprehension of attacks as one understands them. There should be a single posture which can address all these. However one is before, the getting to that one initial posture can occure from nearly any other semblant posture--a standing/crouching posture from nearly any other standing posture.

[SifuAbel]

You know, even though he is a guy desperate and long overdue for a gallon of lithium, he may just have a good point.