Thanks for the good information, both of you. However, what I meant was what's the application/usage for it? I've been told that it's a conditioning/breathing exercising kata but as I have seen with everything else karate related, it has to go deeper than that.
Registered: 08/25/04
Posts: 3011
Loc: Torrance, CA
I don't practice this extreme an example, but sanchin dachi has a lot of uses. Basically as a practice, this is ideally where you should be learning to punch so that you are forced to use your hip to leverage the torso in the strike and figure out how to move and stop your body momentum.
If you change sanchin-dachi a little for a more realistic application as a platform from which to punch, a la boxing, you would lift the heel of the back foot to propel the body forward. The foot placement would be very reminiscent of a boxer's stance.
In the case of using this stance to throw a punch (say a right straight), the lead leg basically stops the hip rotation where the back foot kicks off to push the hip and then the torso to "whip" the punching arm forward. That lead leg should stop the hip and forward movement of the body so that the energy you just acquired is now launched in the striking hand...and using that same "cemented" front leg will not only stop the hip rotation and forward movement of the body, but help in bringing back the striking arm.
Registered: 08/25/04
Posts: 3011
Loc: Torrance, CA
SW,
Sorry for the subsequent P.S. in this post, but I lapsed in not including one big foundational use of sanchin-dachi. The support structure of the stance, using the inside muscles of the legs, is also there so you get used moving your body laterally, but maintaining the vertical plane of your trunk to your hips to your legs, so you won't interrupt the fluid translation of your body's momemtum into any strike you wish to accomplish.
Quote: I see. Thanks for all the good information. It's funny, I asked my instructor what it was for, and he replied "a form of conditioning - you'll see".
Your instructor does not really have an answer for you by the sound of it. Hangetsu kata has various possible applications, some of which are only apparent if you look at Goju versions or something like Aragaki Seisan (a predecessor kata). IMHO no kata is just for (or even mostly for) training or conditioning. The forced breathing has been tacked on relatively recently from observing Sanchin kata practice perhaps.
Hangetsu dachi always seemed to me a waste of time Shotokan deeper/wider imitation of the very useful sanchin dachi. In practice no one I have ever seen uses it for sparring or paired exercises (although Keinisuke Enoeda used to claim in his kata books that it was "ideal for close quarter fighting"), which probably tells you something about its perceived practicality.
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