Does anyone else picture Peter chasing fa_jing Southpark-style while still in his ultimate horse stance?
I’ve been training horse for a few weeks now. Started at 2 mins and have been adding 10 secs per non class day. - days when I dont do a KF class.
I’m now up to 4mins.
This may still be rubbish but its half as rubbish as when I started.
I use the countdown function on the mobile phone - it beeps for the last 5 secs. Best sound in the world…
I’d like to hear how other people and systems use the horse stance. Maybe we can get some good ideas.
The “Scoop”: He wraps his arms around you from behind, you take one leg across and behind his leg stepping into sort of a bow stance, then twist to shift to horse stance which takes his legs out. You have to get your hips fairly low in order for it to work.
Well, the baji horsestance has been discussed elsewhere.
Personally, I hold the stance with feet somewhat wider than my shoulder width, feet rather strictly forward. I’ve found that the “correct” horsestances of folks usually tend to vary a bit depending on bodytype. I have rather long legs ..
The time I can stay depends on the day, really. It’s surprisingly inconsistent and I usually don’t push myself to the very limits, because I want my feet to be able to do the same training the next day. I hold the stance from 3 to 5 times, for 2 minutes and slightly less on the following ones. Currently, I could stretch it to three somewhat easily and have held it for five at times (but that is torture).
I find – like most things – that discussing the horsestance is a bit difficult. It has to be experimented width. So what follows is very personal in that sense. I find the best “spot” for the horse can be found by sinking properly into it – there is that one point where the stance turns from hard to extreme. Go to the extreme and relax and find power in the structure. If done properly, it becomes less difficult and you feel rooted. That’s my method. When you get really tired, relaxing into that proper “spot” gets a bit too difficult (too easy to slack off just on the “edge” of it) and the stance suffers. That’s one reason I like holding the stance for less time, but every day (and a couple of times), rather than for more time and more rarely.
IMHO, practising the stance shouldn’t become mechanical so you don’t fall into your own traps. You should be aware with an experimenting mindset. Be mindful and learn, don’t just sit there.
Those are my thoughts.
mine is shoulder width or slightly more with feet parallel (im much more comfortable with them pointed out slightly so that’s usually what happens), thighs are a little lower than 45 degrees but not quite paralell. i point my tailbone straigt to the ground, sink and root, straighten my back, sink and root, pull my shoulderblades back, allow them to sink, and then sink and root.
“Stand with you feet about shoulder witdth apart. Drop down onto your right knee. That’s where your left foot should be. Now, keep your back straight and squat down until you thighs are parallel to the floor. Now, groan and wail while your legs shake.”
that’s differant from your regular horse right? we have that stance too, and though i can’t remember what the hell sifu calls it, it’s actually one of my favorate.
that was a nice list of applications too. i particularly liked the oh ****, yanking them off their root, and the shoulder strike (we call it tiger leaning on wolf). i have also noticed that the majority of the jujitsu applications i have learned end in a solid, shoulder width, horse stance. or at least they should. i have much better control of the guy in the armlock when i’m rooted and stable.
what’s a san ti? from what your describing it sounds like the strikes we use that sink and lean (much more sinking than leaning) into the opponent. the shoulders should be lined up about 90 degrees to the target.
Oh, one more thing. I used to do stance training at an old school for 45 minutes as well. We did switch stances though (so it wasn’t just one stance for 45 minutes) from bow to horse and so on. I thought it was all good.
I started Baji later and now I know I wasn’t holding real stances – wasn’t relaxed, wasn’t rooted. I was just struggling.
There’s lots of small differences.
ps. before anyone gets all excited, I’m not saying Baji is any better, merely that the Baji I’m doing now is better taught than what I did before, meaning that there are different ways of practising things. You need to have a good teacher and be mindful of the details that are shown to you.
Daredevil. I love the Baji horse stance, especially the “triangles” you guys go for. I’ve played with it and it seems to create a much more “springy” energy. We force ours down and the feeling is like you have “Iron Bars” in your legs when you get done. I hear ya on the depends on the day stuff too. But I’m a numbers guy so I like to quantify things.
GDA, the knee thing is just to measure the stance. After you measure it out, you stand back up and sink into a regular stance. The San Ti is just a 60/40 back stance. What I’m trying to describe is: Drive off that back foot. This will have you pivot on the ball of the foot into a horse so that you arew side-on to the opponent. What it does is drive your bodyweight forward in a very small space. Tough to get, but really useful once you do.
What?? rubs eyes I must be dreaming…is this what I think? A GONG FU THREAD?? 
Anyway, here’s our horse: 2x shoulder width approx, butt tucked in gently, back straight, thighs parallel to the ground (although during combat or other situation the angle can be varying from 0 to 45°), and very important, feet have to be either perfectly parallel or slightly pointing in. Pointing them out is a definite no-no, because the hip angle makes it much harder to pull out a powerful stop kick to the legs of your opponent.
Also, the shins are as vertical as you can. In fact, the power should go straight down in the ground and to verify that we sometimes practice our horse stance standing on bricks (on the side, or much harder, on the top). At the sightest dispersion of force on the side, we fall off the bricks…
I seen Yang Jwing Ming hold a horse stance (and a jin ji du li, and also a “white crane soaring posture”) on 2 bricks piled on their lenghts :eek:
WD, what you are describing with the santi-to-horse is the – as I see it – the beginning core of Baji force generation, at least roughly so. I don’t think the Baji stance that is used to train this is quite Santi though, at least the hands are “reversed” (not same hand and foot forward, creating a bit of a twisting feeling).
“the knee thing is just to measure the stance.”
oh ok . . . i understood you were doing that to measure the stance, but i thought you came up with one foot in front of the other like you had taken a step while in the horse stance.
"What I’m trying to describe is … "
sounds like almost the exact same thing except our weight is generally 50/50 and you usually keep the feet positioned in the “L” shape, though i have seen some students rotate into a full horse. same power gereration though.
cp . .. that’s a really cool trainin meathod. i’ll be getting two bricks for my basement tonight. i think ill also mention it to sifu when i go back to class or next time i talk to him.
The weight distribution in san ti is not necessarily 60-40 (back-front), it can be (and is quite comonly) 70-30 or even others.
Here is some extra info:
http://www.emptyflower.com/xingyiquan/splitting/santi.html
http://www.emptyflower.com/xingyiquan/crushing/archives/meikle.html
I’m going back to basics too, with my kung fu anyway. I’ve been doing stances and drills lately. alot of calesthenics too.
Here’s a question I have for you guys… Why do want a 45 min horse? it’s not making the legs any stronger, only giving them extra endurance, and there are other ways to get that. Learning to root and also chi development, sure, but surely you don’t have to have such a long horse to develop that.
actually i don’t get it either. the only time i have ever heard of our sifu making students do horse for that long is for punishment.
My horse stance is shoulder-width. However, it’s outside the shoulders - ie. the feet are slightly outside the shoulders. So, a little wider than shoulder-width, strictly speaking.
I agree it’ll make them stronger to a point, but it’s a bodyweight only exercise, meaning that resistance can’t increase… If someone does squats and another does horse stance, the guy who squats will have stronger legs. the guy that has horse will have legs with more muscle endurance.
Yeah, but it’s all academic unless you can have your picture taken with two dudes standing on your thighs while you’re in your horse stance!
The way I was taught to measure out the horse was this:
Stand with your feet together
Open your toes to a 45 degree angle
Open your heels to 45 degrees the other way
Open your toes to 45 degrees again
Move your heels out to straighten your feet paralell
That’s your horse stance width. Now sit straight down, keep the feet paralell, knees over toes, pushing the stance wide, back straight, upper body relaxed, tailbone tucked in. Keep your hands on your hips with your elbows slightly forward and grip the ground with your feet. The nine points of the feet should remain in contact with the ground to maintain good rooting.
And holding it anything after 3 or 4 minutes will not increase strength any more, but it will increase endurance and can be used as a type of Zhang Zhuan exercise. I would suggest, however, that anything over about 20 mins or half an hour would be bad. Stagnant chi and all that.
Always do some plyos after stance training too, to move the blood around and push out stangnant chi.
Well, that’s my 0.02! 
Stand with your feet together
Open your toes to a 45 degree angle
Open your heels to 45 degrees the other way
Open your toes to 45 degrees again
Move your heels out to straighten your feet paralell
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Yup, this was the way i was taugh too.
I was also taught Water Dragon’s method, only with the distance of a fist between the feet during the “Measuring” posture used before the horse stance.
Now that I’m working with those guys, I do it their way quite often for a total of 3 horse stances. Personally, I prefer the wider one myself. I feel I’m more stable, and I can move smoother.
I agree – if you just want stronger legs you’re better off doing squats. Stance training isn’t just about strength training, though. How I see it, the strength training part of it is just preliminary. You have to have the strength to train the good stuff : your structure. Then there’s the chi development side of things, which I try not to speculate on too much.
As for sitting there 45 minutes, I’m nowehere close to that yet so I don’t worry about it. I’ll continue the practise as long as I seem to be getting something out of it.
I do recall my teacher saying something that stance training (time-wise) beyond a certain point isn’t all that useful. Can’t for the life of me remember how long it was, though.