Posture With A Little Twist

要知拳精髓，首由站桩起

To get to know the quintessence of boxing, it first starts with standing pillars.

练功不站桩，等于瞎晃荡

Training skills without standing poles, is like blindly swaying.

練拳無樁步，房屋無立柱

Training boxing without stakes, a house without stud.

In old training, first came posture, then stepping. Posture was a very important basis of any training, a way to learn to put one’s body parts in the most beneficial angles. Feet, since their position basically has a great influence on the whole body, head included, were actually probably the most important part to train.
To keep it simple, totally static postures were meant to teach the foot to remain evenly placed on the ground while semi-static ones to keep the posture even when shaken by the rest of the body. The present post will deal with the static ones. 

As far as they are concerned, a distinction between the feet totally flat on the ground or only a part, one tip, can be made.

I. Flat Feet

The main feet postures one can witness nowadays basically go from:

To

Between the two are a lot of variety, each with its own reasons and underneath principles following the different requirements of a particular practice.

Still, apart from practising one own style basic feet posture, there used to be a special training, the three steps:

normal

open

close

The goal was to specifically train the feet and their corresponding fascia lines, which meant, for the upper part of the roots, training the kidneys, the “Life Gate”.

Hence an old way to get to the horse stance, instead of the usual five steps, 

was:

Or

Probably the lack of flexibility and the lesser importance payed to flexibility training as time went by led to go from four steps to five. Or, maybe, it was already a way to differentiate practices focusing on fascias from those relying more on muscles.

To understand the three steps training and one’s practice basic posture, whatever it is, one has to remember that internal practices training and fighting often follow opposite principles, that posture training is meant to deeply transform one’s body, not to be used as such while fighting. In the three-step method, normal is closer to fighting while opened and closed to training.

a. Normal

There is a saying stating that fighting is a walk*. It is a very simple sentence but has implications at least towards one’s mind, spirit, pace and posture. The present post is about posture. To understand the reasons behind it, one has to understand what lies behind internal training in terms of structure and power, including the fascia and vitality issues.

Hence, training the normal posture was a way to prepare oneself to the feet posture mainly used when fighting, a just natural and not really fancy one. Indeed, if the particular feet postures of one’s style are useful to train and eventually transform the body, they are often not really the best angles as far as long-term motion is concerned. Walking with one’s style posture for an hour can easily make someone realise how not appropriate they are in fact when motion comes around.

Because the final aim is to reach the locks and the internal alignment, when training the normal posture, one shall put all the benefits of the other feet postures in the normal one. Hence, “Fists have fixed postures, but when boxing there is no fixed posture.”

Therefore, one of the main aims of the normal feet posture is to learn to tense the fascias while not changing any body angle to do so.

b. Open

Open and close have in common that they put stress on the rest of the roots, up to the waist, and if not maintained in check, they break** the fascia lines at the pelvic area. Hence, the first benefit of training open, or close, postures is to reinforce the fascia lines and understand how to prevent them from breaking**. Simply said, open and close postures often pushes the butt out, tucking it back in and keeping it tucked will be one of the first training linked with open and close postures.

As far as particular fascia lines are concerned, by twisting the legs outwards, the opened posture stresses on the Feminine fascia lines of the feet. Indeed, what was inside the legs in a normal posture becomes in front the body in an open one, this is just a basic Feminine and Masculine principles application.

Furthermore, if such posture opens the legs, it closes the kidneys, another application Feminine and Masculine principles.

As far as the feet are concerned, the open posture stresses the training on the forefoot and the inside. It allows to learn how to keep one’s balance and correct angles using those two parts.

c. Close

It shares the common goal to put stress on the rest of the roots as described earlier.

As far as particular fascia lines are concerned, by twisting the legs inwards, the close posture stresses on the Masculine lines of the feet. Indeed, what was mainly on the side of the legs in a normal posture becomes in front the body in an closed one. Just, again, a basic Feminine and Masculine principles application.

Furthermore, if such posture closes the legs, it opens the kidneys, the opposite of the open posture.

As far as the feet are concerned, the close posture stresses the training on the hindfoot and the outside. It allows to learn how to keep one’s balance and correct angles using those two parts.

In order to train even more the feet, close to tightrope training was made with the feet.

II. Tip of the Feet

The idea was to stress training on each of the five parts of the foot. In order to do so, devices could be used.

a. Tips

The first type of training was to stand exclusively on each and every part: 

- Forefoot 

The skill is close to pointe technique in ballet dancing. Still, the idea is not to stand on the tip of the toes but to stand up the toe joints flat on the ground in order to stress training on this particular part. 

- Hindfoot 

This is the opposite of the forefoot, toes are as high as possible and one tries to stand on the very tip of the calcaneus. 

- Inside 

The hallux metatarsal phalangeal joint and the inside of the calcaneus is what one aims to stand on, twisting the ankle by lifting up the outside of the foot. 

- Outside 

The opposite of inside, twisting the ankle by lifting up the hallux metatarsal phalangeal joint and the inside of the calcaneus. The feet will then rest on their lateral part. 

- Mid-foot 

Mid-foot is the only part can only be trained through a tool.

b. Devices

Apart from twisting and lifting up the feet in order to stress training on one of their parts, tools were also used. The best-known ones are pillars and bricks. 

The idea was, of course, to stand on them, a kind of tightrope training. The first part to be trained was usually the mid-foot, the centre. Then, one would try to stand and stay balanced on each and every of the five parts.

Whatever the tool used, the two main aims were to learn to keep one’s balance on whatever tip of the feet one was standing and to strengthen their corresponding fascia lines.

The present post has left out the "on one foot training”, which is basically doing everything previously described on one foot instead of two, and other tools meant to challenge feet balance as a whole***. 

One can, for example, train Wei Tuo Presenting the Pestle II in all the feet postures described in this post. 

Wei Tuo Presenting the Pestle II

Finally, three postures, three treasures, five tips, five elements, altogether eight changes...

*There used to be, for this, a simple training, just hitting with one’s weapon while walking at a fast pace and never stopping, especially when hitting.

**Breaking in the sense that what is supposed to be a linked line becomes two or more separated ones.

***Describing all the posture training linked to the feet would be very long and, after all, martial arts are(were?) about self-discovery and research, not blindly repeating whatever.