Unleashing Your Power Part 2 of 2: How to do Jaw-Dropping Kicks in Northern Shaolin Kung Fu
When I first started practicing this way, my stances were suddenly much higher because when I was maintaining the proper alignments to stretch my hips and protect my knees it highlighted the stiffest least flexible areas that were limiting my movement and preventing my progress. Soon though I made considerable improvement in stretching my hips out completely and breaking through the scar tissue in my pelvic region resulting from the car accident breaking my pelvis in five places. Where I had reached a plateau and could not progress with normal stretching methods, I refocused on the movement into an out of my stances. Constantly maintaining correct hip, thigh, knee and lower back posture I had a huge breakthrough in my flexibility as I gradually lowered my stances deeper and deeper. Because I was able to achieve a high level of flexibility through my stance training my kicks also improved dramatically. (Practicing lots of kicks was important too!) This is one reason I think our deep stance training is a secret to our excellent kicking skills.
The other reason our stance training is fantastic for our kicking is the awesome leg strength we develop doing extremely low stances. When you perform all your stances, but especially your horse stance and bow stance that will comprise 80 percent of all the stances in each form, you want to grip the ground with your feet a little, then sit down and back like you are going to sit on a low bench. If you do this your thighs will carry the weight of your upper body directly and not shift the weight into your knees. If you push your knees too far forward to go lower, or collapse them inward because your hips are stiff, the knees, and especially the tendons and ligaments of the knee will carry the weight of your upper body.
The knees have an incredible range of motion, but they are not designed to carry weight. Carrying the weight of your upper body is the job of your muscles especially your thigh and hip muscles. Your joints provide the points of articulation for your skeletal system, your muscles provide support to erect and support your skeletal system. When we practice our Bow and Horse stances we want to protect our knees and lower back by stretching our hips, gripping the ground with our feet and sinking backward, as well as down, when we lower ourselves into our stances. Keeping an upright posture without tilting the pelvis or entire upper body forward is incredibly important for many reasons. Keeping the pelvis level also ensures that you use the correct muscles in the hips, lower back, and thighs. Deeps stances will likely be both strenuous in term of both stretching and strengthening your legs and hips at first.
After practicing your stances with good alignment, until they are extremely low, your legs will become supremely strong and awesomely flexible. Then your kicking becomes incredibly awesome. This is why I think that our stances are the secret behind our kicks.
