Happy Foot

打拳容易走步難

Boxing is easy, stepping is hard

步不活則拳亂，步不快則拳慢

Boxing becomes messy when one does not step lively, slow when one does not step fast

One who has studied long enough old practices may have heard about a story or two describing the importance ageing masters paid to step. A typical one is probably the student being finally granted to see his master’s training only to end up walking hours with him. Beyond this type of story lies, for the least, two principles, “to each his/her training” and “feet go first”.
Indeed, reaching old age is not the time to do crazy acrobatics or to train until exhaustion, it is a time for something else. This issue has been already described in previous posts and will not be dealt with in the following ones. Indeed, apart from the need to preserve one’s body, walking for hours as just a main training is actually an example of how important old practices regarded the feet.

As mentioned in a previous post, the foot is a very complex machine: twenty-six bones, thirty-three joints and more than a hundred muscles, tendons and ligaments. Furthermore, one of the two endpoints of half of the twelve major fascia lines are in the feet. The impact the feet posture on one’s body is, indeed, extensive, back pain and headaches often have somehow a rooting in one’s feet.

Hence, old practices had a few training focused on the feet, which basically concerned the angles they should take while standing in a posture and how they should land on the ground when walking. Before describing those, it may seem opportune to mention how old practices viewed the feet, tip of the roots, and what type of general exercise was meant to strengthen them.

I. Tip of the Roots

For old practices, roots are anything below the waist, the feet being their down ends. Maintaining balance and grounding were the main aims feet engaged in as part of the roots, speed being a by-product (as a reminder, balance is the capacity to avoid falling down by keeping correct body angles while grounding avoiding the same while, on the contrary, having totally incorrect body angles and by using the pelvic area as a ballast).

1.1 Balance

Balance is mainly a question of straightness, and feet are no exception. On an even ground, they should lay flat, hence straight. Any unbalance will have direct impact on the pelvis, unbalancing further the whole body, leading most of the time to back issues. A very easy and known thing is to check used shoe soles, they show exactly how right or wrong we stamp on the ground.

Balance is also a question of being centred. The feet have to be right in the middle of the shin. Hence, old practices would put the tibia vertical in a horse stance, never diagonal.

Horse Stance for Internal Arts

1.2 Grounding

Grounding is more extreme, an active coordination between the feet and the pelvic area. In this instance, feet are put in all kinds of wrong angles on purpose and one has to find a way to avoid falling down by using the pelvis as a ballast. Such training is an advanced one for the Swaying Fist, often known as the Drunken Fist (not the style but of a specific way to train). Grounding training sessions were in themselves a way to strengthen the feet.

Still, they were also other basic exercises which would strengthen one’s feet.

II. Strengthening

Old practices are about fascia elasticity, stretching naturally being the first way to strengthen the feet. Then standing on one leg and acrobatics would further the process.

1.1 Heavy Stretching

Heavy stretching, front split and above like, were meant to pull the body in all directions and so intensively that all and any fascia tissue would have to stretch, including the multiple ones contained in the feet, all the way to the tip of the toes. Therefore, stretching was one of the basic training sessions of internal practices.

1.2 One Legged

Doing postures on one leg was also a way to strengthen the feet. It was, then, customary for old practices to also do their routines only on one foot. 

Furthermore, apart from the waist down, there is, actually, another type of roots the feet are part of “手腳眼為根”, “Hands, feet and eyes for roots. To strengthen even more the feet, the idea was to avoid using the hands as a counterbalance (think of people walking on ropes) and to deprive one of his/her eyesight by having them training in the dark or eyes bound. This was also a way to improve the use of the inner ear in the feet search for balance.

1.3 Acrobatics

Jumping roundhouse kicks, walking on ropes, doing routines on pillars or bricks... were all the kinds of acrobatics aimed at strengthening the feet. A lot of them were also meant to improve the use of the inner ears.

Apart from the basic training, there were also ways even more focused on the feet, whether through posture or walking, the coming posts.