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Old 01-19-2007, 01:55 PM   #146
Mike Sigman
Location: Durango, CO
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 4,123
United_States
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Re: Rear Leg

Quote:
Michael McCaslin wrote:
Anyway, the point of keeping the weight over the rear leg is to make sure you don't end up using it as a "strut" to brace your structure. If you take a bunch of guys/girls who don't know how to do this stuff, put them in a deep front stance, and test them, they will almost all use the back leg as a brace and as a result they will almost all develop bad habits that prevent them from "getting it." So Mike came up with a stance for beginners to use in an introductory exercise that removes the potential for one of the more common errors people make when starting out.
Y'know, really those videos of Master Sum and O-Sensei are good to analyse in terms of the back-leg thing. Well maybe Sum's is the best one. Watch his Uke walk around and push him from all sides. The idea is that you can release power in any direction at any time. If you become dependent on only pushing, bouncing, whatever to the *front* by using the back leg as a simple brace, you can't use power in any direction. That's why it's a good idea to have a partner walk around you slowly and give slow, steady pushes from various directions (although at first it's helpful if they push only toward the leg furthest away from them until you develop elementary skills).

Watch Shioda and others and how upright they stand so that they're always balanced. Then look at a few tapes of lower level westerners and watch how dominant the "back-leg brace" has become.

FWIW

Mike
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