Originally Posted by
Judge Pen
Perhaps hyperbole took effect there, so let me clarify.
In the first video, when he is instructing on the basics of making a fist and throwing a punch, he is in his horse stance. You can see that his stance is 5 hands wide, thighs horizontal and back straight. I've seen him address the class like that for at least 5 minutes straight with no sign of fatigue. I've seen him then lead his class through their forms with him not showing any effect of holding a horse stance for 5 mintues (if it were me my stances would be very sloppy because of leg fatigue).
Another example from my personal observation. Every year he would lead his black belt students through a vigourous conditioning class. One of the requirements is holding a thigh-parallel horse stance for three sets 2 minute incriments. The way it normally worked as 2 minute horse stance, one minute bo stance on each leg. 100 push ups, 100 sit-ups, a set of kick excercises and then repeat this sequence 3 more times. His rationale for that is too often he would see "black belts" get lazy and fat and not be able to do the basics so if you wanted to call yourself a black belt under his supervision, then you had to be able to do these basic things.
Final example, I took a seminar from him where he taught SD-s 5 animal form. It was a 5 day seminar. For those who don't know, our 5 animal form is essentially the same form of Doc Fai Wong's and it takes a little over 2 and a half minutes to do the entire form full speed. The last day of the seminar he took the last 30 minutes to walk through the form. He told us by the end of the walk-through, no one would have any more questions about the form. He then led us through a walk through where he made us all hold each transitional stance for several seconds while he talked about the fundamentals and applications for each technique and answered any questions about that technique, but you had to hold the stance with him the entire time. By the end of the form "walk-though" me legs were a quivering mess, and I had to stand up several time before going back to the stance, but I never saw a sign of fatigue from Master Garry.
He really stresses conditioning and fundamentals. He trains all of his bent leg stances to be done with the butt at the knee for stength and conditioning. He often leads his class through 3 sets of one-legged squats (10 on each leg for each set) during the warm-up excercises.So when I said 'indefintely', I apologize for exagerating. I've never seen him hold the stance indefinatly. I have seen him do the things like I mentioned above, on several ocassions, with no apparent weakness or after effects. I can only speculate how long he could hold a horse stance, but I would put him up against almost any martial artist I met on conditioning especially at his age.
Is that better?