Originally Posted by
taai gihk yahn
a few things about stance training:
1) isometirc training trains a muscle to be strong statically at the point of holding, and about 20˚ in either direction; it doesn't do anything for dynamic synergistic function, explosive power, tendon elastic recoil capacity, eccentric strength, or anything that is involved in fighting; it will make u very good at standing statically in a given stance, and that's it; so it's basically useless for fighting, and if not useless, at the bottom of the list in terms of what u could train;
2) stance training can be very good for "health": for example, statically / isometirc holding of anti-gravity extensor musculature (glutes, quads) has an inhibitory effect on muscles that often contribute to things like low back pain and sciatic, including posas and piriformis (this is why yoga can be good for your chronic low back pain due to faciitated flexors); but again, this has little direct bearing on fighting skill per se;
3) kung fu came from indian martial arts; there is a lot of crossover between yoga and Indian martial arts; stance training is basically a carry-over from this; the problem is that, the emphasis is all wrong, because it doesn't teach the details / specifics of asana work (seriously, even basic yoga postures are quite complex in terms of the various anchor points, tensions, etc.); it's basically 'yoga-lite';
4) from a motor learning theory perspective, stance training makes no sense in terms of fighting skill, because the task parametrics are about as diametrically opposed to those of fighting as u can get;
5) there is a rich history in TCMA of basically teaching BS to "outsiders"; so frankly when the first thing that everyone learns is stance training, and if we apply some COMMON SENSE to it as I have above, it doesn't take a ot to put two and two together and consider that perhaps stance training was a means more of a smoke screen to weed out newbies, especially those from other schools who may have been there to steal ur stuff...