Keys to Success - Balance

Balance can be described as the distribution of weight to provide stability. In Tang Soo Do, we have many kicks. Whenever you are doing a kick, one of your legs is obviously in the air. Therefore, you need to be able to balance all of your body weight on the leg that is not kicking. Furthermore, we have kicks where you are spinning on the non-kicking leg and have to maintain your balance on that leg for the duration of the kick. Finally, we have phase kicks (jumping kicks) where you have to maintain balance while your body is up in the air. Maintaining you balance during all these kicks can be challenging enough, but real combat situations make the task even more difficult. You will be dealing with a moving opponent with the possibility of obstacles and/or uneven terrain. So, how do we improve our balance?

From the very beginning, we tell students to practice balance. The first way is very simple. All you have to do is lift one of your legs off the floor. You are now balancing on one leg. You can do this just about anywhere and you can do it while doing something else, like playing a video game or watching TV. Once you have good balance this way, you should cock your leg as if you were about to do a kick. From there, you can execute your kick very slowly with a focus on doing the kick correctly and having good balance throughout the kick. If you can kick slowly with good balance, kicking at normal speed is easy. Another good exercise is to stand on one leg while punching and blocking. This is good because you may need to punch and block while you are kicking.

Other exercises that will help improve your balance are standing on your toes, jumping rope, jumping on a trampoline, hopping on one leg, jumping up and tucking your legs under you, jumping and switching your feet, jumping and spinning 360 degrees, and single leg squats.

The best way to learn balance while kicking is to practice the kicks. You may not realize it after you have done a specific kick hundreds of times, but your mind and body are detecting minor imbalances and making adjustments. Some studies indicate it takes at least 5,000 repetitions before a technique is truly learned and is part of your ‘muscle memory’. Other studies indicate the number may be closer to 10,000.

Balance also applies to fighting when you are not kicking. It does not mean that your weight is evenly distributed over both feet. When you are in a front stance, 70 percent of your weight is on your front foot. In a cat stance, almost all of your weight is on the back foot. In both of these cases, you should still have good balance. Also, remember that you can have good balance, but not be in a good position to maintain that balance. A tightrope walker may be very well balanced, but it would be easy to disrupt that balance by pushing him. That is what our stances, particularly our normal fighting stance, are designed to provide. When you are in a good fighting stance with your knees bent and the proper separation and placement of your feet, a minor push or shove should not cause you to lose your balance.

A discussion of balance would not be complete without mentioning another aspect of balance. In the first Karate Kid movie, Mr. Miyagi said ‘Balance not just for Karate. Balance for whole life.’ It is true. If you spent every waking hour doing Karate, you would quickly burn out and quit. We do not want this to happen to any of you. Ecclesiastes 3:1 says ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.’ Working, studying, exercising, playing, eating and resting are all things we need. The problem is when any of these aspects monopolize an unhealthy amount of our time. See to it that you are balancing the important things appropriately in your life.

Donnie Chaffin,
3rd Dan