The last few posts we have been talking a lot about “balance” and “stability” and how they are the “first principle” or starting point in defending yourself in the real world or even just analyzing what can or has gone wrong with applying a self defense method.
To recap all that information in a simple way, we can say that balance is about control. If you cannot control your body you will not be able to apply defensive methods and if you let an opponent unbalance you, then he is controlling you in a very simple yet dangerous way that is ignored or simply not understood by most “pseudo-experts”.
Therefore, to be able to maximize our control over ourselves and an opponent and minimize the control of the opponent over us, we need to look more specifically at what measurable factors make up “balance” and “stability” and what is the difference between the two.
These two words are often used interchangeably but the way they are used by many sports performance scientist gives them specific and different meanings. They are certainly related to each other but they are not the same thing in technical usage. We can view “balance” as the starting point, it is more closely related to the term “equilibrium” and is the basic human ability to stand and overcome gravity. Some people think of it as one of the “senses”. The sense of balance is to control where your weights is distributed and balance it on some point in defiance of gravity. Therefore, you may be able to balance on one leg but this balance is hard to maintain and thus you are not very stable. As for this relationship between “balance” and “stability” let’s see how a sports performance scientist explains it:
“Balance comes in all levels of difficulty. The line that separates superiority in a specific sports skill is the concept of stability. Stability is measured in the level at which one can retain one’s balance while experiencing factors that disturb balance. In short, stability is described by the answer to the question, “How balanced are you?” Skilled athletes are able to employ certain tactics to increase their stability under oncoming forces, practically bracing themselves to be immovable.”
Now that you understand the difference between simple “balance” and “stability” and how important it is to any real world self-defense situation, let’s cover some of the specifics of Stability and how it can be improved or lost. In other words, what are these tactics that athletes can use to maximize their stability against oncoming forces beyond gravity alone.
Basically, from a scientific perspective the stability of an object is made up of three factors that we can observe, test and repeat. The first is simply how heavy it is or how much “mass” does it have. The heavier an object or person is the more gravity pushes down on it and makes it harder to move or knock off balance.
This is really important to understand from a defensive point of view and is the very essence of why a much bigger opponent is so difficult to deal with. Once again, this underlying factor is missed by so many “pseudo-experts” who want to talk about things like strength or power. It is not really about “strength” per say like so many people may think. How much they can bench press is not really the point, the ability to stay stable (and therefore be able to harness their skills and attributes) while easily destabilizing a smaller person (thereby preventing them from being able to use their skills and attributes) is far more formidable then how many plates they can put on a bar at the gym.
Yes, strength can be used to destabilize someone, but simple size and the momentum it can produce is a much greater problem and is largely based on weight as well. Weight is weight, but this is not something that you are going to be able to improve in the middle of a confrontation (you could try to have a really big meal if you thought someone looked hostile but I don’t think it would make much of a difference in the short term) but the next factors are things you can control when facing a situation so you must be aware of them and integrate them into your training and analysis.
The next factor is the size of the “base of support”. Think of it this way; take two small, identical statues, glue one on top of a small base like the size of a playing card. Now take the other and glue it on top of a larger base like one the size of a magazine. Although the two statues are the same weight the one with the larger base of support will be much harder to knock over. This is not just about surface area in contact with the ground but for humans, how far apart the supports are (think of a chair with four legs or a couch with six legs).
For humans we can adjust our “base of support” by how we use our legs. The closer our feet are together, the narrower our base of support is and the less stable and in balance we are. Therefore we want to have as wide a base of support as we functionally can. This is going to be about two shoulder lengths (like how a sumo wrestler squats). When an attacker comes into contact with you, if you do not “base out” into a much wider leg position you are going to be very unstable and consequently very easy to move around, control or knock over because of the additional forces acting on you.
Nevertheless, humans are bipeds (meaning we walk around on only two legs) so we are always fairly unstable (why do you think it takes infants so long to learn how to walk). You do not see many chairs or tables built with only two legs, they would get pushed over all the time and not be very useful. This is why such a huge percentage of real fights end up on the ground (which is in no way a bad thing if you know how to take advantage of it).
The fact that we naturally walk with a very narrow base confuses the issue and a lot of people. I actually studied the human walk or “gait” in an anthropology course I took many years ago. I was fascinated to learn that the act of walking is a process of losing then regaining your balance as your weight dramatically shifts from foot to foot. It’s a very unique form of locomotion in the natural world but makes us extremely unstable.
Hence, because we are built to walk this way it feels very natural and instinctive to have our feet close together. Walking is one of the first priorities for a human so our form is built around that function and the way our legs are built is related to this. Do to this fact that a human has only two legs to walk on he is built to make this as easy and efficient as possible. Our knees have been described by anthropologists as “anti-gravity” devices because they lock out when we stand straight. This shuts off the muscles in the legs and allows them to rest but as soon as you bend your knees the leg muscles have to support the weight of the body and they can tire very rapidly. Thus, this is why people naturally want to stand with their feet close together; it is less fatiguing on the leg muscles and certainly not because it gives us any advantage in resisting an attacker trying to control us, quite the opposite.
Moreover, a lack of stability is also why a lot of offensive standing self-defense techniques also fail, but so many instructors are completely oblivious to it. Things like standing joint locks seem to work fine in the class room setting but often fail on the street even if the person knows the technique well. This is very often simply because their feet are too close together and when the opponent resists they start getting pulled or pushed off balance by their defensive movements even though you are in the position of control.
In Fact, this can happen precisely because the technique is working! When the attacker starts to feel the pain and jerks around or spasses out, it can pull you off balance because you have never felt this before in the class room and your base was not set or you were not familiar with how to compensate for that kind of real world pressure.Good base has to come before anything else.
The third factor in measuring stability is the position of the “center of gravity”. Simply put, some objects are top heavy and some are bottom heavy, the object or person that is bottom heavy is going to be harder to knock over or destabilize even if the objects or people are the same weight. For humans our center of gravity is about where our navel is and back into our center a couple inches. However, we usually reference the “hips” as our center. This is easy to observe and to apply since when we bend our legs to “base out” we are also lowering our center of gravity automatically.
When you lower your center of gravity you feel much heavier and are harder to lift and move but you are still the same weight and size. Having your center of gravity below that of your opponent gives you a tremendous stability advantage; he automatically becomes top heavy in comparison to you. This is what makes Judo and wrestling throws possible and sometimes even easy.
Therefore, before worrying about applying a technique in a self defense situation you must consciously make sure you are in a position of stability that you can tactically function from. Have your legs wide so you have a broad base of support by bending your knees which also lowers your center of gravity making your body much more stable and functional.
However, for humans the above is not the whole story, there is yet another important factor that influences our stability and balance. It is simply about the positions we put our body in. Unlike the other solid objects we used as examples humans are meant to move their parts separately. Our bodies move at our joints and our joints and muscles are built to line up and function best in certain positions, this is what is meant by “joint alignment” or skeletal “posture”. Poor joint alignment can cause all kinds of athletic performance problems but what we are discussing here is its effect on stability.
For example, we looked at how important a wide base of support is, but we can only spread our legs apart so far before we break our joint alignment, any further and we become unstable because the legs are not designed to be in that position and can’t support our weight properly; (this would happen when our feet are out much wider than the knees. The natural alignment of those joints is to have the feet right below the knees even in the “sumo” position and to have the feet out too far “breaks” the “vertical alignment”). This is easy to intuitively feel and is not generally a problem (unlike a narrow base).
Furthermore, a very common problem is bending the back. Putting the head down and bending the back is very common under the stress of a real world encounter. It can cause all kinds of problems but the worst is that it destabilizes us and once in that position it can be very hard to get our head back up again. The head is very heavy and once the “posture” of the spine is broken the muscles of the back are not designed to work in that position so they become too weak to be able to force the head up, something you will see in application in “headlock” techniques.
If you get stuck in this position (with your back parallel or 90 degrees to the floor) you can imagine how vulnerable you are, someone can keep you in this position with very little effort and can intuitively understand how bad it is for you so they won’t let go. Being in this position is much worse than some ground positions and this again demonstrates the complete lack of understanding on the part of so called “self-defense experts” who misunderstand what the real dangers in real world situations are.
Therefore, you must keep your back straight at all times and your head centered over your shoulders and your shoulders over your hips, as I mentioned, the head is very heavy but is only supported by the relatively weak neck so when the heavy head starts moving around in a fashion not coordinated with the rest of the body this weight can easily pull you off balance, (probably the biggest reason that even weak punches can knock people down when unprepared). This joint relationship is usual called “vertical alignment” in sports like wrestling which are very balance orientated . Each joint has a joint lined up below it like the floors of a building. when you bend your knees deeply the head comes forward and the back inclines to compensate for the weight of the head, which would be too close to the rear line of the base if the back stayed exactly straight as when standing upright. if the head does not come forward beyond the line of the knees then you are in a very stable position.
If you want a good scientific rule of thumb, actually visualize the shape of your “base of support” like you have drawn a line around the area between your feet, including your feet. In the “sumo” stance it will be a big rectangle with your feet at either end. In a normal standing position it would be a much smaller square.
If your head gets pulled over the edge of this line you will have to take a step to keep your balance and if your center of gravity gets forced over that line, you are completely destabilized and will topple over; so you must be constantly aware of where your head is in relationship to the rest of your body and keep it centered over the middle of your “base of support”. Even if your base is wide and your center of gravity low, bad posture can still make you completely venerable and the most common fault I see in beginners is lack of back and head awareness.
Since you only have the two legs you are going to be more stable in some directions than in others. The imaginary line that runs between your feet is your “line of support”, you are strongest and most stable along this line. If you want to get technical, then you are weakest at a 90 degree angle to this line. In simple terms, if you are pushed from the side you have one foot parallel to the other and good support, but if you are pushed directly to the front or to the rear then you have no support in that direction and will have to step to stay stable.
Be aware of this and try to changes the position of your feet and body to maximize your stability, try to get the opponent to push down your line of support. You will not be able to stand rock solid like in a kung-Fu movie, so don’t try. You are going to be forced to move most of the time, so move, but the idea is to stay stable while you are moving and not be unbalanced and out of control. This is usually called “dynamic stability”. Think again of the earlier example of the two identical statues, one with a base the size of the playing card and one with the much larger base. If the base is large enough, no matter how hard you push on the statue it does not fall over but gets pushed along the floor away from you, this is how to respond to strong forces pushing into you(or pulling you).
Thus, I hope we can now see how important these factors are to self defense and just how irresponsible it is to ignore them. Something as seemingly easy to deal with like a wrist grab becomes very, very difficult if we pay no attention to our base and think we can just hit someone who is actively attacking us. This idea really is dangerously stupid. If a much larger attacker has you by the wrist and jerks you forward very hard your weight will dramatically shift forward and this will probably pull your head completely out of alignment so that its weight is now pulling you towards the ground. Try to hit someone from a head down position like this, in fact trying anything from this position except falling down and you are just more likely to fall over because you are not thinking about your body position and only making things worse.
The way you step and walk will have a big influence on your stability so this has to be factored into your training. The longer your foot is off the ground the longer you are very unstable (because for that instant you are balanced on one foot and have a tiny base of support). Therefore, keep your feet on the ground as much as possible by taking small steps and don’t cross your feet. This is how boxers and fencers step and they have a simple rule for footwork: “move the foot that is closest to the direction you must go, first”.
Thus, you step and then slide up the other foot. Make sure you don’t compromise your base by moving your feet too close together again. If you take a 4 inch step with your front leg then you must take a 4 inch step with your back leg, in order to keep the same distance between your feet.
Ergo, our bodies already know this stuff instinctively; it is only because of all the weird disinformation out there coming from “pseudo-experts” that you know have never ever tried their asinine methods in the real world or even under real pressures that there is any debate about what used to be obvious. As I suggested in a previous post, go out on a frozen pond or to an ice rink and try to walk around on the ice, you will find that you do all the above instinctively. You will spread your legs and lower your center of gravity, and then you will take small steps to prevent slipping. Have someone try to push you a little bit and you will instantly learn more about your “base” and “line of support” in seconds then a coach might be able to explain to you in weeks. Assuming this is an instructor who understands the paramount importance of stability in all physical performance and does not think that self defense is something like a “Three stooges” movie with a bunch of moronic clowns poking, prodding and slapping at each other. Hence, to recap the central point of this post:
“Balance has been defined as ability to neutralize forces that might disturb equilibrium, while stability has been defined as the level of challenge at which one can still balance.”
This is done by: (1), widening your base of support, (2) lowering you center of gravity and (3) staying in good posture or “vertical joint alignment” with careful attention to your back and head while moving in a way that best maintains this. Thus, you have to consciously bend your knees and widen the position of your legs, your body at first does not do this instinctively under a lot of non stressful conditions because it wants to conserve energy. In other words, be lazy. This is a very good indicator of how a lazy “pseudo-expert” will apply standing techniques, just like you can analyze why so many fights look the way they do you can also see the problem that many self proclaimed “experts” are not even aware of and wont be…until they have to actually apply this technique against a heaver resisting opponent. But that only happens in a far away land of “myths” called, the real world.