How Low is Low?

While leading basics in class, Sensei Hatgis would bark out, “Get lower!”  Students whose stances were high would get lower; advanced students who were already low would . . . get lower.  I continued this practice at my dojo, calling for students to get lower in stance.  One night after class, a mother came up to me and asked how low her son should be.  I answered “Lower than he is now”.  “But how low?”, she insisted, “I want to monitor his practice at home.”  We all have an idea of how low stance should be; we know it when we see it, but may have difficulty expressing it to others.  This mother forced me to think and come up with a specific guideline.

A few quick thoughts first:  Low stance lowers your center of gravity, stabilizes your balance and increases power of your techniques.  It also allows you to unbalance your opponent.  Training with low stance in the dojo allows you to be quicker, smoother, and more supple with slightly higher stance in a street situation.  ‘Low stance’ is often misunderstood by kyu rank students.  They think that squatting down, hunching over, and spreading their legs too long or wide is how to get low.  This does physically reduce their height, but they must learn how to lower their hips.  Low stance actually means deep stance, but new students have difficulty understanding the idea of deepening their stance.  I’ll ask students what is the root word of ‘stance’ and they’ll correctly tell me ‘stand’.  I then tell them the proper way to stand is to sit down!  Even if they can’t physically do it yet, they understand the idea of dropping their hips with a straight back and ‘sitting’ lower in stance.

Back to the mother:  I told her to imagine a horizontal line across her son’s belt parallel to the ground.  The angle formed by the thigh and the horizontal line should be no greater than 45 degrees.  Ideally, I’d like an angle of 30 degrees.  Some younger or more agile students can make an angle of less than 30 degrees.  Fine, but too low might make it difficult to move effectively.  Photos below show stances of 60 degrees, 45 degrees, 30 degrees, and thigh almost parallel to the horizontal belt line.  I hope this gives you some ideas on how low is low enough.