Hangetsu DachibyJames R. MeltonHangetsu is the red headed step-child of Shotokan kata. Almost no one has it as his or her favorite kata, and many only learn it when forced to by their belt test requirements. I think more than a little of this lack of favor is a result of the way many people do hangetsu dachi itself.When I learned Hangetsu I learned, from my seniors as well as books and films, the "squeeze your knees together" version of the stance. It hurt my knees and ankles because of the unnatural way in which I was using my legs.Does this sound familiar?"The knees are bent inwards and exert an inner pressure..."(Kanazawa, pg. 65, 1982)"Hangetsu Dachi is representative of the Fundamental stances where the tension on the knee is inward, toward the body's centerline..." (T. Okazaki, The Textbook of Modern Karate. Kodansha, pg. 76, 1984.)And regarding sanchin: "This stance makes use of the tension of the legs bowed inward, the reverse of that in the straddle leg stance." (Nishiyama, pg. 59, 1959)While in graduate school and instructor's school I continued my studies in karate, kinesiology, and anatomy. What is known about the knee in general, and the medial colateral ligament specifically, contrasts rather vividly with the above descriptions of how to perform hangetsu dachi. The problem with the "squeeze-the-knees-hangetsu lies in the role of the Medial Colateral Ligament.Knee Ligaments And Their Contribution To Stabilizing The Bent KneeIn plain English, the above chart points out that when your knee is bent at 25 degrees the Medial Collateral Ligament provides 78% of the restraint which holds the knee together when it is being bent inward (valgus stress, as in squeeze-your-knees-together). That means that the muscles of the thigh are not providing much protection or support at that point, so they can't be strengthened effectively in that position to protect the joint. The likely thing to happen is that the MCL will stretch or become irritated, which will result in swelling, inflammation, and knee pain. A lighter person in weight might get away with this better than a heavier person. That might account for Japanese people doing the squeeze-your-knees stance without complaining and Europeans and Americans having trouble with it.A Long Trip To A Blinding Flash Of The ObviousThe more I learned about the body, the less I liked hangetsu dachi. Squeezing your knees together voluntarily (valgus stress) is a bad idea, and that was supposedly the way to do hangetsu dachi correctly.During that period of time I was training with the Louisiana State University Karate Club which was instructed by Leon Sill. To say that he was a stickler for precise techniques in general and strong, precise stances in particular would be an under statement. We spent a lot of time on stance training for zenkutsu, kokutsu, and kiba dachi. While there, and in the course of writing the 43 research papers associated with instructor's school, I stumbled on the idea that "outside tension" stance was a misnomer. It caused people to push their knees outward in side stance, forward stance, and back stance. I decided that a more correct term would be "outside rotation" stances, where by the thighs were outwardly rotated at the hip joints. This outside rotation results in the knees being brought out into line with the feet, and then the ankles are bent in the direction in which the feet are pointed. This allows the knees and feet to be aligned in a safe, natural manner in the stances. Side stances, back stances, and forward stances now made more sense to me, but I still had one more intuitive leap to go before understanding hangetsu dachi.I left LSU with better front, back, and side stances. Fast-forward a couple of years. I didn't practice Hangetsu much because it hurt my knees, and I was still too young for that kind of feeling to be normal. Therefore I had not given it my full attention. I dismissed it as a weird, unhealthy stance, but I still taught the kata to my brown belts because it was part of the curriculum.One night one of my brown belts asked, "If we don't push our knees out when we do side stance, why do we squeeze our knees together when we do hangetsu? " Without really thinking I started out with, "We rotate the thighs outward at the hip joints to pull the knees out, so that they will be in line with the feet..." At that point I stopped and looked down at my legs and rotated my thighs inward at the hip joints , which is the perfectly logical opposite of what I did for side stance. I was hit with a blinding flash of the obvious and bent my knees and made the first hangetsu dachi I had ever done that felt normal and natural.The moral to the story is obvious: ASK QUESTIONS! You never know who might learn something.Because of my dislike for hangetsu dachi, as well as taking what I had read and heard at face value, I had not gone past outside rotation stances to the next obvious implication, which was inward rotation being the answer to making shorter stances stable without messing up my knees. Needless to say we spent the rest of the evening re-learning how to do hangetsu dachi and Hangetsu. Ever since I have liked both a lot better.In October, 2000 Leon Sill shared this with me by email.In the late '80's Leon Sill was also doing his own research into stances:"First of all, I decided early on that the "inward tension" thing just didn't work, since it accomplishes nothing but to screw up your knees. All one needs to do is try to punch a makiwara in either of those stances and his body will tell him it's wrong and unstable. Since I was doing a lot of experimenting at that time with the use of the base leg, I did punch the makiwara a lot (Takashina concurred with that philosophy), and experimented (actually just adjusted the stance until I had maximum support from my back foot, and my knees weren't trying to bend any way except the way they were designed)."As a result, over the years, Leon Sill and I independently arrived at pretty much the same idea concerning hangetsu dachi , and how it should be done in a way that was both more effective for creating power, and safer for the joints of the performer.Where did Hangetsu and hangetsu dachi come from?The first is fairly easy. Hangetsu is a version of the older kata Seisan or Seishan.The history of the kata is not the focus of this article, but needless to say, the "hangetsu dachi" we use today is not found in Seisan or Seishan.We can say with certainty that at some point someone decided to include this kata in Shotokan, and at that point or soon thereafter it was "Shotokanized", in order to make it more consistent with the other kata. Part of the process seems to have been to change the stances to make them comform to the "longer and lower is better" standard of stances.My personal opinion is that hangetsu dachi can be viewed and performed effectively and safely as an elongated sanchin dahi. In fact, many people find that when performing application from Hangetsu that they naturally land in sanchin rather than hangetsu:Jeff Nash shared this with us by email on October 15, 2000:"On the course at the weekend I spent some time on Hangetsu kata and apps., I seriously analyzed the way both I and the students were using the stance in apps and not once did I see a proper hangetsu dachi used. It was all sanchin dachi!""The floor was polished, so got students wearing socks and had them moving from a variety of stances. As far as the long and deep stances, hangetsu was definitely the easiest to move into and out of. Great stability. Doing apps with socks on, students were still using sanchin dachi."So Where Did It Come From?The real puzzle is where did the "knock-kneed giraffe" version of hangetsu dachi come from originally. No one has stepped forward to claim credit for this stance. Interestingly enough the oldest picture of hangetsu dachi I can find is of Mr. Nishiyama from his 1959 book.It appears from the pictures that in hangetsu dachi and sanchin dachi Mr. Nishiyama is keeping his feet and knees aligned while doing the stances, in a manner very similar to what I describe later. This seems contrary to what he says: "This stance makes use of the tension of the legs bowed inward, the reverse of that in the straddle leg stance." (Nishiyama, pg. 59, 1959) Perhaps people mis-interpreted what he said.However, an early picture of Mr. Kanazawa does not have his feet and knees aligned in the same manner.Please note that I mean no offense in showing these instructors doing this stance. It is just that these are the easliest photos I could find in my personal collection of books, and they were very influencial instructors. Mr. Nishiyama's book (Karate the art of empty hand fighting, 1959), was written in the late 1950's and is still in print today. Mr. Kanazawa's book (Basic Karate Kata) was written and published in Europe in the late 1960's or early '70's and went through several printings. Mr. Kanazawa's books containing all the shotokan kata (SKI Kata, vol. 1 and 2, 1982) also show the same version of hangetsu dachi. Who taught these gentlemen hangetsu dachi and sanchin dachi is open to conjecture until someone asks them and gets a definitive answer. But regardless of where they learned it, they influenced generations of karateka all around the world.What are Inward Rotation Stances Good For?Inward rotation stances like sanchin and hangetsu are useful in several different situations:Close rangeWhen in close, a long forward stance is not very practical. That is not what it was designed for, and is quite vulnerable. Sanchin and Hangetsu are safer to work out of at close range.When the groin needs to be protectedThis is a natural consequence of being in close to your opponent. Having the front leg turned inward makes it easier and quicker to lift the front knee and shield the groin with the front knee and shin .The result looks suspiciously like neko ashi dachi (cat stance), if done from sanchin.Slippery footing.Sanchin and hangetsu dachi work much better on slippery footing than outside rotation stances. In southern Louisiana, it is common to have to learn to become one with the heat and humidity. It is common for it to be so humid that the dew point and the temperature in the dojo coincide and for the floor to become coated with a film of dew. At that point it was common for those below brown belt to start slipping and sliding and falling to the ground, while those lucky enough to know hangetsu dachi to remain upright. Slide stepping worked well enough, but jumping was definitely out. The same could be true in any number of real-world environments.When you want to pull on the opponent.A forward stance is designed to make power forward. It is quite ineffective to try to maintain a forwrd stance and pull or push in any direction other than pushing forward. Sanchin and hangetsu, on the other hand, give more variety in the directions in which force can be created pushing and pulling simply because of the way the legs are arranged and used.One only has to try the block/grab found in moves 11 to 16 in Hangetsu(Best Karate #7) from both a forward stance and hangetsu dachi to appreciate the different capabilities of the two stances.How to Do Hangetsu Dachi without hurting your kneesShomen Hangetsu DachiStart with your feet shoulder width apart. Step forward two foot lengths. Inwardly rotate the front thigh at the hip joint and let the foot and knee turn until the foot and knee are turned in about 45 degrees. The rear thigh and foot should be rotated in until the rear knee and foot are pointed directly forward. The front knee will be bent more than the back knee. Each knee is bent in the direction the foot is pointed on that leg.This version of the stance is based on the idea that knees are most safely bent in the direction in which the toes are pointed. This keeps stress from being applied to the medial collateral ligaments on the inside of the knee, as will happen when the knees try to bend sideways in an effort to "squeeze together".Leon Sill shared his version of how to do hangetsu with me by email:"... adjusted the stance until I had maximum support from my back foot, and my knees weren't trying to bend any way except the way they were designed). The result was a 50 - 50 distribution, just as it's supposed to be, with the back foot and knee pointing straight forward, and the front foot and knee turned in 45 degrees. The effect was that the pointing line from both knees (or feet) intersected at a point closer to the body than in zenkutsu, and in sanchin dachi, if you bent your knees enough, (you know my ankles) they would eventually touch, but with the "healthy bend". So, since then, my byword has been practicality (and safety), and no one has ever told me I was wrong."Hanmi Hangetsu DachiStart from the shomen hangetsu dachi. Maintain the front leg position and bend the rear knee and ankle, being careful to maintain the proper alignment with the rear foot.It is possible to turn the hips back a full 45 degrees without compromising the stance or your knees. (Warning: if your ankles are flexible this is easy. If your ankles are stiff, it is very difficult. I suggest that you don't damage your knees just to turn a few more degrees.)Gyaku Hanmi Hangetsu DachiStart from shomen hangetsu dachi and over-rotate the hips until they are 45 degrees from square. Do this by straightening and inwardly rotating the back leg. Maintain the front leg position. This over rotated position is actually fairly similar to the one many people do when performing the over-rotated inside/outside blocks in Heian nidan and Bassi Dai.My suggestion for learning and using this stance is that you might want to start with sanchin-same description, just one foot length instead of two-to get the feeling for the internal dynamics of the stance. After that, lengthen it slightly and work on hangetsu dachi. Hitting the makiwara from sanchin and hangetsu will provide you with feedback as to the stability and power to the front. Grasping and pulling on something, or someone, will give you feedback about stability in other directions. Try to make it as stable as possible in all directions.ConclusionI am not sure why people keep doing hangetsu dachi in a manner which obviously hurts their knees, year after year, decade after decade. I am convinced that it is possible to do hangetsu dachi in such a way that it is both healthy for the joints as an exercise and useful in self-defense applications. Give my version a try.References:Basic Karate Kata, by H. Kanazawa, Paul Compton Ltd., 5th edition 1979.Best Karate Volume #7, M. Nakayama, Kodansha International, 1981.Karate the art of empty hand fighting, H. Nishiyama and R. Brown, Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1959.Shotokan Karate International Kata (vol. 2), H. Kanazawa, 1982.The Textbook of Modern Karate, Kodansha International, T. Okazaki and M. Stricevic, M.D., 1984.