Lots of great ways to develope leg strength and stamina…all of them are better than horse stance.
Again, horse stance for longer than about 6 mins is only training you to hold horse stance for more than 6 mins, which is a great hobby, but not for me.
Might I also mention the basic physiology principle called SAID?
Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands
In other words, you get better at what you make your body do, and worse at what you don’t do.
Holding a horse stance for long periods of time will make you better at holding a horse stance for long periods of time.
(Due to various physiological principles, once you get past a certain point, probably about 30 seconds to a minute), you won’t get much other benefit from it. Your kicks won’t get harder, your legs won’t get stronger (talking raw strength, not endurance, which you will obviously gain), etc.
Here is where all the “but my sifu says…” starts. Go ahead if you want, but please do a search first so I don’t have to repeat myself because I’ve had this argument many times before and “my sifu says” doesn’t win out over science, especially when they talk about things that don’t exist, like “uh horse stance builds and stores ‘springy power’ which gets released when you kick.” :rolleyes:
So at any rate, I’m not saying “don’t do horse stance,” because it can improve your kung fu (ie. your legs won’t be as shaky when you do forms, for example). I just don’t want people being misinformed about what they’re actually getting from their training. The more you know, the more you can tailor your training toward the goals you want to achieve, and the faster you can get there, too.
But what if my sifu says that SAID is the way to go? 
Stance training is actually quite important and should not be neglected nor replaced with other training methods. However holding a stance only builds endurance in a static position, therefore a limited muscle range. It is better to perform stance training by transitioning from one stance to another, holding each for 30sec or so, remaining low and planted on all stances and all transitions.
This stance exercise, repeated for several minutes, improves legs and hip-area muscular endurance, balance, hip rotation and power generation (an essential part of most CMA), body positioning, etc, all things beneficial to performing both forms and combat.
Then squats must be trained for leg strength, jumps and plyos for explosive power … and must also not be neglected as they complement stance training and cannot be replaced by it!
So stance training if done right and in the right context of other complementary exercises it is an invaluable and integral part of CMA training.
If somebody does not believe so just try it for 1 month every second day by adding it to a squat and plyos program … it will be a VERY interesting experiment 
W
To oversimplify a bit, do you know what an osoto gari is? Just in case, here’s a video:
http://judoinfo.com/video/gokyo/OSotoGari.wmv
In case the direct link doesn’t work it’s on this page:
http://judoinfo.com/gokyo1.htm
Now in the video the person being thrown is in a fairly high stance but the basic mechanics are close enough for what I am talking about. Look carefully and you’ll see the uke actually pick up his left foot so that his entire weight is on the leg that get’s swept. Basically if you use your leg to hook his leg behind the knee while you pull his upper body in the other direction like that, it doesn’t matter how low his stance is. It doesn’t help at all because you are picking up his leg not his COG. Furthermore, you are not lifting his leg straight up so it really doesn’t matter how sunk he is. All that matters is that he leaves his weight on his lead leg. In the video the stance is not a horse stance. For a deep horse the guy doing the sweep just needs a slightly different grip and needs to sweep the lead leg.
I’ve done it a number of times. For the time being, I am leaving out the spiraling aspect because I think it’s too hard to describe in text. But the basic throw is a modified osoto gari.
There’s actually at least another half dozen throws on there that should be effective aginst someone sunk into a deep horse but I have only really gotten good at osoto-gari and the occasional koichi gari or modified ouichi gari.
I don’t train Judo but that website has videos of at least rough approximations of every throw I’ve ever learned or been taught so I like to use it as a reference even if I learned the throw somewhere else.
I don’t know about horse stance in particular, but I usually recommend long holding of various stances as an error correction method - see if something aches or is strained that shouldn’t be. Duration means more things start aching, which means you can better map exactly what it is that you’re using to hold that piece of structure.
There may be more to stance training than is apparent on the surface. Check out these articles:
Horse stance is not used to resist against throwing but used to throw the others. The “waist lifting (hip throw)”, "bowing (shoulder throw)', and “fireman’s carry” are all depending on your strong legs. Without strong legs you cannot pick up a 300 lbs guy over your shoulder.
Horse stance and kicking do go together. I know after a couple of minutes it’s all muscular endurance, however it also develops and losens the hips which gives stronger kicks as well.
The looser you are, the easier it is to maintian the correct mechanics.
I have also found the twisted horse stance to be superior for developing a good side kick.
Once you can hold for 3 minutes, add ever increasing weighted vests, that helps too.
When you are done, and too tired to really muscle anything, kick the bag. This forces you to use good mechanics as you are too tired to perform well without them.
If you SAID to a MMA person training for a fight that he is wasting his time skipping rope because all it will ever do is make him better at skipping I think he would say that just because you SAID so does not make it true.
You dig?
That is way different. You don’t jump rope for leg strength, just as you don’t hold horse stance for cardio.
i practice mabu training alot. i like it. it helps strengthen joints that are weak and give you soem ncie muslce and conditions the muscle. also more importantly it will make you have a strong stance when done right. now is mabu training alone important? yes, but more important is the mabu to gonbu training and other pivoting exercises with stances, so you learn how to use your twisting power and how to connect everything for striking. total all in all. i spend about 4/5 hours a week doing the stance training. dont just single this training out for learning to use your pivoting, these are mostly strengthen enxercises. you actually have to hit bags too in your fighting stance too, so you learn it that was too.
horse stance-
develops leg strength at the tendons which surround the joints.
develop strength in the quadriceps
develop basic strength in legs which augments ability to be solid in the rooting and hard in the kicking.
Deep horse stance is for augmentation training. Think of it in terms of strength development as opposed to a functional fighting method. Like a boxer who lifts weights to increase arm strength which in turn increase power and even moreso when structure and alignment is correct.
Good horse stance should develop correct structure and alignment and improve and build leg strength in large muscle mass as well as in the tendons.
that’s what it’s for. It has been said, “you are only as strong as your horse stance”
fighters should be mobile, but should also be able to root. staying rooted is not recommended when fighting, but getting strong root when making your attack will only make your offense stronger.
If you can sit in big square horse for 45 minutes, then move on and start to work on using that strength.
Anyone can sit in yee gee kim yeung ma for 45 minutes with a little determination.
Big square horse (sei ping dai ma) is not the same as other horse stances. It is very strong by comparison to other forms of the horse stance. All horse stance will develop some strength and root and balance, but big square horse is the ultimate of this practice. Many styles do not use it at all. it is mostly found in shaolin based martial arts.
I agree that you don’t do horse stance for leg strength. What’s your point?
My point was that if there isn’t more to this SAID (and there very well could be) it sounds like a bunch of crap. Just as you said 
you jump rope for better cardio not for better jump rope. Just like football players do push-ups but when they play a game of football no one actually does a push-up do they?
Lineman use that same motion every play against a 300-lb opponent. I’d say it translates well.
Back to the original question:
I do horse stance for ~1-3 minutes a day, 5 days a week. We are a school (God forbid :rolleyes: ) that does a fair amount of horse stance training. Thighs are supposed to be parallel to the floor.
I’ve never been told that holding horse stance is the best way to make your legs strong or that it will turn you into some champion martial artist. Our school uses horse stance to:
help develop leg strength + stability in new students
help develop the body to get used to low stances for forms work (we use very low stances in all of our forms)
help develop mental toughness and patience
warm up the legs at the beginning of a class
I think prolonged horse stance is one of those ‘mental toughness’ type tests that our sifu uses to see if you’ve ‘got what it takes’. I know this type of stuff is more CMA-oriented and you MMA guys typically bash stuff like this, but I don’t really mind. I like the fact that you have to test yourself this way in our school. That you have to hold horse for a while. Our BB and beyond tests all incorporate holding a parallel horse stance for at least 10 minutes, for up to an hour.
Good horse stance should develop correct structure and alignment…
That is a lot of it right there. Horse stance can be a meditation. An exercise for the mind as much as the body building the will, determination and character. Horse stance is one way to get your mind used to pain. Remember these are martial arts not sport fighting. There is a difference and there is a lot of things that go together to make up a martial art other then kicks, punches, locks, throws, etc.
If any one is moving around in horse stance constantly they are using it wrong. The connectivity it will bring will help you to hit with you whole body using a strong connection with the ground (root). So when fighting footwork is fast and light then as you connect you root for an instant and then are light and moving again.
With a well trained horse stance (in southern styles at least) you bridge not only with your arms but also with your legs and and utilise a strong root to disrupt their balance by stepping through their centre line (off balance point). This reduces their striking ability and sets them up for your throw or locks or what have you. Horse stance is also a great thing to throw someone over again by steping behind and past the person and throwing them over your lead leg with your lead arm.
Hose stance has its place.
You are partially correct. Jumping rope is done to gain endurance. An MMA guy training for a fight would get better endurnace for fighting by practicing fighting instead of jumping rope. This is why a lot of MMA guys will train for endurance before a fight by getting lots and lots of mat time, fighting a new fresh opponent every minute or two while they themselves don’t get any breaks. This is a perfect example of SAID, and will prepare the fighting much better than jumping rope would. However, jumping rope has some cardio benefits that carry over into fighting.
What I said before was that holding a horse stance past a certain point will not have any transferrable benefit into fighting. Then I gave examples. I said it won’t increase your strength for kicking, for example, because it’s not increasing the force with which the muscles can contract.
I agree that you don’t do horse stance for leg strength. What’s your point?
My point was that past a certain point it doesn’t have any carryover to fighting.
ewallace answered your other questions.
I can tell from your post that you are thinking, though.
I’m Australian. Not everyone lives in America. What about the rest of the team? And well again you just made my point. Push ups help a Lineman against their 300-lb opponents they don’t just make them better at push ups. Do I need to type out more examples?