Smith Academy

When doing Karate stances, there is never a time that you will lock the knees. The knees will always be bent at least slightly and your weight will never rest on a leg with a completely straight knee. In the foot diagrams below, the lines are meant to assist in visualizing where the body is at and approximately where the center of balance is.

Stances can vary from one style of martial arts to another... this is the way that they are taught at Smith Academy. Beginning students are introduced to the following basic stances when they first begin training:

Point Stance

Musubi-dachi (Point Stance, Attention Stance, Knot Stance)
Heels together, toes slightly open at 20 to 30 degrees. This is a  karate informal attention stance. This stance is used to perform the formal respectful bow, rei. Student bring their left foot into the right to go into this stance. As we are practicing, if the sensei announces "Point Stance" everyone is expected to stop what they are doing and go into this stance, giving the sensei our full attention.

Horse Stance

Kiba-dachi (horse stance or rider stance)
A low stance where feet are parallel and wide, weight is central and low, with the back straight and the knees and feet pointing slightly inwards. This stance is not used in all styles of karate because of strong tension that it requires, instead it is often replaced by Shiko-dachi.

Iron Horse Stance

Shiko-dachi (square stance, strattle stance, we refer to it as the iron horse stance in this dojo) Much the same as Kiba-dachi but the toes face out at about 45 degrees. When we use it, the feet are usually further apart than in Kiba dachi and the body's central mass is brought even lower into the stance.

Ready Stance

Moto-dachi (Ready Stance, Fighting Stance, Foundational stance)
This is a medium height stance with both legs slightly bent, the front foot facing straight forward and the back foot pointed outward at about 20-30 degrees. The body should be squarely forward unless a half-turn han-mi is applied. The basic ready stance for kumite (sparring).

Front Stance

Zenkutsu-dachi (forward stance)
This stance can vary by the style being taught at a particular school, but overall it is rather similer to a lunge. This is a long frontal stance where the weight is mostly on the front leg. It is a low stance with the rear leg straightened and extended back. The front foot is placed with toes facing forward, the rear foot is turned out 30 degrees, just like Moto-dachi, but not 90 degrees as many beginners want to do as that will hinder forward movement. The heel of the rear foot rests on the ground.

Back Stance

Kōkutsu-dachi (back stance, back long stance)
This is a reverse of zenkutsu-dachi, where the rear leg is bent strongly at the knee and the front leg is slightly bent. The rear foot is turned 45 to 90 degrees to the side and supporting most of the body weight. The body is turned 45 degrees or more away, except for the head which looks to the front. Kokutsu-dachi is a good defensive stance because of the amount of energy stored in the rear leg, ready for a counter-attack.

There are of course numerous other stances and we will cover some of them in a later article. However, the basic stances that you see here are the ones that you will find yourself using over and over again, most of the time. Beginning students should become familiar with these stances first and be comfortable doing them and switching between them.