- 16 minutes ago
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Is your rear heel down when you assume a front stance? If it isn’t, your teacher will be there to correct you. Karateka are drilled incessantly in the matter of keeping that heel down when they begin training.
The heel must be planted firmly to correctly transmit power in the course of a technique. It works something like this: Adopt a front stance next to an immovable object—a wall or a telephone pole, for example. Extend your arms and push against the object with your palms.
If you push hard, your rear heel will go flat against the ground. Similarly, if you’re pushing a car out of a snowbank, you’ll naturally begin in something like a front stance, with your heel again firmly on the ground. You can feel the smooth transition of power, coming off the back heel and going through your body and eventually out your arms.
LET’S CHANGE THINGS
The car’s cleared the snowbank. You have to trail after it, following along until it has enough momentum to get back on the road. You’re still pushing, but the car’s moving away from you. Guess what? Your heels are going to come off the ground. You cannot move without lifting them.
Keeping your heels on the ground is a necessary step in learning to use your body efficiently to strike. It’s a step, though; it’s not a final, fixed goal. Many times, both karateka and critics of the art fail to make this distinction.
The basics are just that. It’s like drilling in formation at boot camp. The exercise teaches team cohesion and the ability to follow orders. You don’t, however, see Army Rangers doing a lot of formation drilling.
There’s a lesson there.
It’s essential to learn the basics. Likewise, it’s essential to have that heel firmly planted in a front stance. You must do it so often it becomes instinctive. That will allow you to perfect your method of stepping—not pushing off your back foot but “pulling” your rear leg forward by contracting the muscles in your front leg.
Stepping in karate is accomplished like a sprinter coming off the blocks: squeezing the toes of the front foot to draw the rear one up. If you raise your heel, you’ll step incorrectly, according to the principles of karate, and wind up pushing off your back foot instead of pulling forward with your front one.
Once you’ve learned that principle, however, you need to begin to add sophistication to your technique.
In no fighting art should you keep your rear heel on the ground, except possibly during the moment of contact. Fencers move on the balls of their feet, as do boxers. Karate is no different.
When sparring or fighting, the heels of both feet need to be off the ground—just enough to slide a sheet of paper between your heel and the floor. Doesn’t seem like much, but it changes everything in your movement and in the correct, effective delivery of technique.
When you drive forward, making a full step to deliver a punch, you use primarily the pulling action of your front leg. But to get depth in your step, achieve penetration and maximize your speed, you also must push off the ball of your rear foot. If you depend too much on this push—in other words, if you haven’t learned the basics—you’ll come up on the ball of that foot excessively.
It’s easy to see examples of this. Pushing off too much from your rear leg breaks the chain of connections in your body, from your foot through your hips and into your shoulders. Pushing off your rear heel makes it more probable you’ll use just your shoulders in punching instead of your hips.
AS A TEACHER
If you see a karate practitioner throwing his shoulder into a punch, you can almost bet his rear heel is off the ground. Correcting the problem by telling him to put the heel down is OK; it’s more productive to correct from the other end, though. Demonstrate the twisting of the hips and position his shoulder correctly, and you’ll see the heel drop down where it should be.
Once you have him making the movement correctly, don’t just leave him there. Begin to introduce the more advanced way of stepping and moving—with the heels lightly raised to provide spring, agility and the ability to move in or out, quickly and effectively.
