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Kittens, Hoplites & Combat Stances by Mark Hatmaker

Do you have a kitten? If so, go play with it, dangle something in front of it, activate its play-fighting mode. Watch it bat at the stand-in enemy with a forepaw.

If you don’t have a kitten, perhaps a dog? Go play with it. Rile him up a bit and toss a toy on the ground watch him pin that toy with a forepaw and go to work with the jaws.

No dogs, no kittens in the house? How about a toddler? If you have an 18-36-month-old human around the house go play with them. Roll a ball with them and watch them pick it up or roll it back.

No kitties, no dogs, no toddlers? Well, let’s have you try something.

While reading this, look around and pick up the nearest small object within your reach.

Now that we’ve all played with our pets, or our kids, or at the very least picked up a stapler or some such thing, we can repeat these activities and pay attention to the handedness of all entities.

The kitten will bat primarily with a dominant paw.

The dog will pin its mock-prey to the ground primarily with a dominant paw. (Incidentally, dogs will also wag their tails a bit more on their paw-dominant side.)

The toddler will have begun ballparking on a dominant handedness in the 18-39-month period.

And you, well, you already knew which is your dominant hand.

What am I wanting you to divine in all this?

Let’s look at how each of these animals (self-included) positioned the body in the use of the dominant hand.

When kittens bat their paws, or adult cats fight that dominant paw is primarily to the fore, not concealed behind a tri-legged stance and held aloft to the rear.

The dog reaches and pins with the dominant paw to the fore.

The toddler advances with the dominant side forward.

There’s a good chance that when you picked up something you chose from your dominant side as opposed to reaching across your body with the dominant hand.

In coordinated, precision tasks humans, more often than not, position themselves with the dominant side forward.

It is only with power-related tasks that we see a reversal of stance, that is placing the dominant side to the rear. We see this reversal in swinging an ax, throwing a ball, throwing a spear, and… we often see it in combat sports, where what is called the “orthodox” stance is placing your dominant hand to the rear.

Now why is this?

The first thought, with our minds already anchored on power from the preceding paragraph, we might assume that “Well, I really wanna wind up and make it count.”

And that may be true in some cases, but consider this — your dominant side is already stronger and more coordinated than your sub-dominant side. This being the case, why do we not just as easily assume that putting power and coordination to the fore and the weaker hand to the rear allowing the weaker hand to gain power by dint of travel and wind-up to be more wisely orthodox?

I wager that what we are seeing with dominant hand to the rear is a cultural artifact. One based on weapons training.

If we look at early warfare, we’ll use hoplites for this example, we see warriors wielding sword or spear in the dominant hand, and shield or buckler in the sub-dominant hand. The buckler is to the fore allowing the warrior to make coordinated and strong offense from behind this protection.

These sword and shield tactics ran deep in early warfare and it easy to see a translation from this weapon combat stance to the unarmed combat stance.

Much pugilistic research indicates that early “boxing” or any early throwing of hands for that matter mimicked the sword and buckler stance and in much of the tactics the lead arm used to ward off blows or to stiff-arm for distance with the rear-hand providing the power.

It is not until the era of Mendoza that we begin to really hear tales of the lead hand doing some major work and begin developing the jab. (Although the dominant hand is still to the rear.)

Now what was occurring in the Mendoza era that might have spurred this greater use of the lead hand, dominant or otherwise?

I wager we are, again, looking at an influence from weapons culture.

Sword and buckler culture gradually gave way to sword culture with personal sword without shield being the primary mode of defense. Once this development began, and metallurgy allowed for lighter blades requiring less power to swing, the dominant hand to the fore began to hold sway. (We do see some holdovers with manuals using the cloak spun around the forearm as a sort of bucker stand-in, but for the most part, once the buckler is gone, stances switched.)

It seems that pugilism noticed the value of lead hand attacks and parries and adapted these tactics but the stance shift never really followed.

I know this is all historical conjecture, but it has a ring of probability to it that might make us consider that if we train dominant hand to the rear, we might be simply perpetuating an artifact from the hoplite era.

And perhaps, we might have much to learn from kittens and dogs, and toddlers.

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20 thoughts on “Kittens, Hoplites & Combat Stances by Mark Hatmaker”

  1. Jeet Kune Do also taught that the dominant hand and leg should generally be forward, for the reason Mark outlines. My problem was always that my left hand is dominant, but my right leg was more agile and powerful. In recent years, age has taken a severe toll of my kicks. Today, my strategy has been to concentrate on being able to attack from various “neutral” positions. If threatened, I try to maintain an apparently conciliatory, or even intimidated posture. This has the advantage of making me appear not to be the instigator, and may actually dissuade a physical confrontation. a bonus point is that the aggressor is more likely to underestimate me. I’m also likely to fight in “trapping” range, at which a even lot of “tough guys” are not very good.

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  2. Bruce Lee used to fight with his right hand forward. He liked to “jab” with his “power hand”. I got that out of one of his many books on self-defence and fighting.

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  3. Good point. Also consider how trained fighters struggle with fighting a southpaw. I use in fighting if confronted because most fighters are used to fighting at punching range, or on the ground. I am in their face pounding elbows and knees before they can react. Sometimes change is good. I would recommend trying this in a self defense situation.

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  5. I have acquired a few of your weapons and tapes. I want to give thanks to you and your buddies. I feel confident just in the way I walk since taking your courses and carrying a minimum of two knifes when I walk out the door. I’m 61 years old and have never felt a level of self confidence as I do now. I’m a construction worker and my job takes me to some rough sides of the city at different times of the day. You guys keep up the great work you do and I’ll keep being a loyal customer. THANKS AGAIN.
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  7. I noticed this and have always given it a lot of thought you always lead with you’re strongest first the weakest in back-up

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  8. Very interesting. Our Aikido is a bit traditional in this regard when we train with a Bolken we mostly have our right hand forward regardless of if they are left or right handed. With a jo it is the left side forward.
    The left handed ones do struggle a bit with weapons, without weapons we use both sids equally.
    Personally I like to stand in the neutral position and keep them confused.
    I do like the hints and equipment from FightFast.

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  9. I try training on both sides, you can be attacked from any direction, and might not have balance or be able that dominant hand wind up. Its good to talk about stances and also stretching and conditioning.

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  10. Nice food for thought, thanks.

    This can facilitate violence but the task is in causing destruction to vulnerable parts of an attacker’s anatomy. It should not matter which side is forward so long as one is.

    That said MMA bouts do have fighters switching stances to confuse the opponent and creating new angles to attack.

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  11. There is one more factor in this equation: mental trust for dominant hand to deliver precise (hopefully final, again “evolution” calls for preserving energy) blow.

    It’ll be interesting to see study for relationship bet. dominant stance/hand and dominant eye.

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  12. AS USUAL, MARK NEVER DISAPPOINTS! ALWAYS CREATIVELY INSIGHTFUL IN HIS OBSERVATIONS, ALWAYS ARTICULATE AND HUMOROUS IN HIS DELIVERY. GOT TO BE MY FAVORITE COMMENTATOR ON FIGHTFAST BLOGS!

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  13. I have recently been training either hand front. My dominant hand is much better at edge alignment / striking force either when forward or back. There are real advantages in both power and time of strike with lead hand strikes. It is less travel time more reach with your lead hand. I always work more on the weak hand side in training. You won’t regret having twice the angles of attack if you need them.

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  14. I read somewhere that you should keep your right-hand side to the rear because your liver is a vulnerable target. Hence the orthodox Boxing Stance, which is really old. The Ancient Egyptian War-God looks like a Shotokan man. Having said that, I understand English Prize-Fighting evolved from Sword & Buckler combat, which was by then a form of Historical Re-Enactment.

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  16. Fascinating subject. I never really thought about this because the reasoning was always in the bodily mechanics and the ability to create and transfer the greatest amount of energy that a person can produce. And often when we are taught a method and it’s been explained and even proven we tend to believe in it and to follow along. For example, an oldie but a not necessarily a “goodie” is the practice of keeping and returning our fist to our side or chambering the fist. It takes longer to move from the waist to an opponents face or to execute a block. Then again holding our fists up high to protect our face and be ready to punch can leave our bodies open to attack. But we do these things until someone tells us it’s a common mistake or they’ve found a problem with it.

    Then again, we can throw with our dominant or throwing hand and foot from a back position or hand and foot forward. And while our leg may remain back or forward, we might lift our foot to allow the body to move forward or we might keep it flat for stability. We might even move the whole body or be taught to hold and only move the arm. Reasons abound but we tend to follow techniques and methods and the advice of instructors or teachers.

    It’s when people test, modify, analyze or question such things that our minds can freely test the logic of such ideas and really open our eyes to what works, what is faulty and what is a matter of personal preference or works for some or in certain situations, but not always for everyone or all the time. Ingrained or hereditary instincts are another subject altogether and if there is any truth to the idea then we may have been doing ourselves an unintentional injustice in not making use of such naturally or at least ingrained skills to which we’ve been indoctrinated or programmed over centuries into our basic skill set. Again, it’s very interesting to explore these elements and how they interrelate and affect us as fighters.

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  17. I think that your animal analogy is slightly skewed. They have the power in their hind legs to thrust with and can use either paw to strike or hold. Just saying…

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  18. i agree. I am only adding my two cents because i’ve done Tai Chi for years. To me, everything is backwards — brush knee left, single whip, wave hands like clouds, parting the horses’ mane , etc. are all moves that look like a backhand strike. The single whip really looks like a sword is in one hand and the shield is being pushed out by the other. Tai Chi is really a fighting art, and as one speeds up the moves, you can see how their reversal fighting stance dominates.

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  19. Another really good analysis from Mark. In my own experience as a “southpaw” I tend to feel that I have 2 dominant hands which have the necessary power to deliver particular attacking or defensive functions. However, despite feeling that way, I would be reluctant to adopt an “orthodox” stance and feel more comfortable as a “southpaw”. Possibly, in that situation, adoption of a neutral stance positioned off centre to an opponent would be more likely to bring the best of both sides into play. Keep them coming, Mark!

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  20. In Goju Ryu and Shorin Ryu a lot of stances put the dominant hand to the rear. But, in situations I have encountered it’s just as easy to lead with the dominant limb.

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