Stephen Thompson: Taking Back the Horse Stance From the Haters

Years ago, I was at a fictional party and caught wind of a chat about hobbies. One lass fessed up that she was obsessed with martial arts. I reacted as anyone who overheard a pretty girl talking about a shared interest would: I figured we were predestined and I fell immediately in love with her. I continued feigning interest in my conversation with a medical student who in turn feigned interest in me, but I kept one ear to the mass around my future bride and soon I heard "Go on, show us some." I could look away no longer. I stepped deep across myself and pivoted my trailing leg back into me, sending the med student stumbling but performing a technically perfect turn which I momentarily congratulated myself upon. As my eyes came to rest on the scrum of suitors I realized that she was down in a horse stance, pumping out alternate straight punches with one hand on her hip, and counting in korean as she did so. The laughter coming from around her was riotous and my infatuation curdled. Later in the night she attempted to introduce herself to me and I pretended not to speak English.

Horse stance is a laughing stock and deservedly so. Not only is it unwieldy, it doubles down on being surplus to requirement by being completely unsexy as well. There are only two purposes in martial arts, to win or to look good dying. Anything which fulfils neither should be thrown into the slop bucket. Yet you can walk into any martial arts school in America and see lines of people standing in horse stance. Obviously it is completely impractical in a head on engagement because the legs are level and the groin and centerline are widely exposed, but many still believe it can be a passable fighting stance from the side. This is because it facilitates an easy crab walking side step into lead leg kick. If you're desperately concerned about scoring points and not letting the opponent touch your scoring areas, side on stances make more sense. However it does mean that a lot of traditional martial artists end up looking like this.

Count how many times each man accidentally shows his back.

A variant of horse stance seems to exist in every traditional striking martial art from around the world. A fun look at one branch of development is in the Naihanchi forms of Okinawan karate which consist entirely of horse stance. The Okinawan gentleman and karate master Anko Itosu supposedly either developed these himself or learned one from a shipwrecked Chinese sailor, and built much of his karate teachings around them. Everyone who went to Itosu practiced Naihanchi for three years without fail before he began teaching them classical forms and fighting methods. Naihanchi and its sequels were considered "training forms" as opposed to "fighting forms". Descriptions of Itosu paint him as a larger than life character who practically walked around every day in his horse stance. Weird to think about until you realize that Itosu's horse stance was likely something like this:

Gigo Funakoshi, the third son of Gichin Funakoshi was charged with continuing his father's work on the Japanese mainland and was responsible for introducing longer stances to Shotokan karate. Others tried to make their stances look like Funakoshi's, and this was compounded by Funakoshi naturally having bowed legs. As the stance got wider it was no longer a case of the feet being under the knees, but the knees being forced outwards, over the feet.

This kind of stance is obviously useless for anything, but a more natural side on stance with the feet either under the knees or a little bit wider opens up new offensive kicking options.

The traditional problem with side on stances is that they are susceptible to low kicks. A generation of American kickboxers found this out when they finally consented to taking part in 'oriental rules' kickboxing, where low kicks were allowed. The side on stance which allows so much creativity and dexterity with the lead leg in kicking also leaves it out there as a target. With the front foot facing across the body, the hamstring is exposed and the stance can easily be buckled or the foot knocked out with low kicks. Worse still it adds extra distance to the motion of picking up the leg and turning it so that the shin takes the kick—adding extra motion to what is already a reactionary movement ensures that it is almost impossible to check kicks even if they are seen a mile off.

But the advantages of a side on stance are obvious—the length of the lead leg and the lead arm to maximize the reach. Instead of kicking with just the arm or leg out of a normal stance, the fighter is stretching all across his hips or shoulders, putting every inch on a line and achieving his full potential. The longest jab you can possible throw is completely side on. In fact, you will see plenty of classical boxing stylists scoring with this and Champ Thomas prescribed it as the perfect punch in boxing because so much of the upper body is hidden on this line. Alternatively watch Lennox Lewis make use of every inch of his reach across his back in jabbing other heavyweights half to death. Nate Diaz boxes almost side on and beats his man to the jab almost every time. Yet he has some difficulty when opponents refuse to box and instead target his lead leg.

The offensive options have always been interesting but while the lead leg can do more exciting things, the distance that the rear hand must travel to the target is considerably greater making it difficult to sneak in rear handed punches without a change of position. It is also tough to even turn the hips to perform a rear handed punch without first taking some kind of step off the line to open the hips up. While the rear leg is further away and the path of a round kick is longer, the paths of turning kicks—such as back kicks and wheel kicks—are shortened. Side on stances, therefore, permit more lead leg kicking and more turning kicks while limiting a fighter's ability to use the traditional Muay Thai and kickboxing round kicks.

If you want to see a fighter live and die by the side on stance in kickboxing, Raymond Daniels is your man. He can pump out that lead leg side kick with venom and his turning kicks have winded or floored many of his opponents. The problems he has are with the ring. A side on stance requires more space to work and better distancing to avoid low kicks and maximize the effect of side kicks and back kicks. When he is pressed the ropes his stance compacts and he is forced to fight a in which he doesn't have the experience and is without his best weapons.

This is what makes Stephen Thompson unique. He and Daniels were actually rivals in Chuck Norris' world combat league and come from similar martial arts backgrounds. One of the advantages that Thompson has is the enormous, near circular cage that he fights in. The corners, rather than sharp right angles which a fighter can be herded into, are almost inconsequential. Watch the distances that Thompson covers in his bouts and you will realize how important that is. But for Thompson's part he also places far more importance on breaking the line once he has given up too much ground. Thompson is on the trigger waiting for a chance to kick, but he knows when to call it a day, run around to the other side of the cage and start again.

When fighters get too close to Raymond Daniels or he gets too close to the ropes, he will resort to trying to punch them as hard as he can in short, samey combinations which actually aid the fighter trying to crowd him.

Perhaps the most important thing to note about Thompson's use of the side on stance is that he uses it intermittently. It is easy for us at home to see when Thompson is going side on and spreading his feet, but in the heat of a fight, as he bounces from a more contemporary kickboxing stance to a side on one, it's a lot harder to keep up. That is the secret: moderation. Not only that but specialization. Rather than learning to fight side on and square from both sides, Thompson typically only goes side on from his southpaw stance. Furthermore he almost exclusively uses his right leg to score the important kicks from both stances.

So the danger of a side on stance can be mitigated by: picking the lead leg up regularly to side kick, using distance effectively, breaking the line and re-establishing a long range engagement when space is running out, and most importantly by using the side on stance as a tactic rather than a complete game. There are things that you can only do when you have squared up and when traditional side-on fighters like Thompson, Daniels and Michael Page have learned the value of all of that, we'll see that kicking revolution that everyone keeps harping on about.

The important thing to remember is that if it doesn't work against Rory MacDonald, MacDonald will have made that the case. That would not be the final nail in the coffin for old school, side-on kicking in MMA, just another step forward and a case study to learn from.

Pick up Jack's new kindle book, Finding the Art, or find him at his blog, Fights Gone By.