The Horse Stance in Kung Fu

Series Summary

Kung Fu is a traditional form of martial arts native to China. The forms of combat arts that make up Kung Fu can be traced as far back as the 12th century BC. The term “Kung Fu” actually refers to any individual accomplishment or cultivated skill obtained by long and hard work. The term was popularized in Western countries in the 20th century by Hong Kong films in the 1960s.

In this free video series, our expert Jack C. Huang will tell you how to do basic Kung Fu. He will teach you how to do the horse stance, front stance, back stance, cat stance, and fighters stance. He will also teach you how to do a jab, hook, upper cut, front kick, roundhouse kick, step kick, and side kick in Kung Fu. He'll even tell you how to do blocks in Kung Fu: the in and out block, the down block, and the high block.

Video Transcript

"Hello everyone, welcome back. I would like to lead you to another subject called kung fu. But before you jump into the world kung fu you got to know, kung fu require a lot of stances and let's begin with it. The first one is called horse stance. Why we call it horse stance? Take a look. Bend your knee, open it up. This a horse stance. Why? Imagine that you are riding a horseback. Meanwhile your back is completely straight you don't arch your back forward or leaning backward. It got to be straight up. And in the old days of Shaolin Temple those monks would stay in this position for hours because this really trained their thigh muscle. Not only that, the strength of the legs. If you try to put your feet out, no, this is not called horse stance. This a bad one. You got to put your feet completely inwards or make them parallel to each other. In this kind of stance you don't use it for self-defense. You don't use it in the ring, no, because it's hard to move. But when it come to weapon, yes! In the old day those soldier carry long weapons and this will help them to balance themselves. Now, about straight punch. You see this? Try not to use your shoulder. It's a snap. Then when I'm changing to the other fist you see this there's a tracking. There's a tracking. There's a tracking. There's a tracking. Now if I try to elevate the level of the fist, same thing. Snap, snap, and snap again. But still you got to squat down with your horse stance because this is the basic training and later on we are going to move the subject on to blocking too. With the same horse stance. So that covers up the subjects of horse stance. Thank you."