front stance

[Sankeithta]

okay how should i say this. what are the pros and cons of the front stance we use for tiger, and the one we use in tkd which is off to the side a bit? is one more stable then the other or does one allows faster kicking? what are your thoughts about it?

[Jared Galloway]

I don't know what the TKD front stance entails.  Here are some basics I remember for the SLKF front stance. 

PROS:
-Lots of power from the back leg being rooted.
-Great stability front-to-back.  It's hard to get pushed out of a front stance on a straight line unless your opponent pushes you up first.
-Protects the groin in a way that practically begs an attack to the knee, which the stance is already prepared to defend.
-The basic blocks protecting the center all follow short, direct lines.

CONS:
-Not much mobility.
-Poor stability side-to-side.
-Mechanically slow, maybe?  (Chicken-egg moment: Is the tiger mechanically slow because it uses a front stance, or does the tiger use a front stance because it is mechanically slow?)

[Luke Anthony]

I'm not too familiar with Tae Kwon Do, but from what I've gleaned over the years, their front stance is different from ours in that:

 - the lead knee is still bent, but straight forward, not angled "in"
 - both feet face forward, not angled in
 - their stance is more diagonal than forward, making for a wider, shallower stance

Here's an impressive schematic: http://tkdtutor.com/09Techniques/Stances/StanceTechniques/Front/Front01.htm

As Jared noted, the Tiger front stance is maximized for stability, defense and power generation. By contrast, the Tae Kwon Do front stance is wider, more open, and less defense-oriented.

As always, just for fun, looking at the context might shed some light. Look at each of the technical differences, and see how they might maximize the stance for the situation it's built for. Tiger is a 2nd gate fighter concerned with holding ground and doing damage; Tae Kwon Do is concerned with moving at 3rd gate and making contact with fast, long-range attacks. Close range combat vs. long range sparring. How do the differences in front stances factor into that?

Granted, Tae Kwon Do in the U.S. usually means tournament sparring, but this doesn't even have to amount to the usual, silly "They train for sport and we train for REALS, yo!" scoffing you see in martial arts. One front stance would work great in an empty parking lot; the other, in a cramped hallway. No one fights in a vacuum.

This whole train of thought might offer an answer to Jared's chicken/egg question, but that's another discussion altogether.

[Will Hooper]

As someone who has earned, coincidentally, green ranks in both arts, I will - since Jason hasn't answered yet - put in two cents on this one.

First off - great question, which quickly cuts to the heart of differences of assumption between the two arts, or at least between two flavors of the two arts.

The TKD front stance, at least in my experience, allowed for good mobility. It also optimized both legs to quickly deliver kicks, and kick fairly powerfully. The closest formal stance SLKF has to this would be a very wide, loose T-Stance.
Nothing's free, however. In this focus, the TKD stance gives up a great deal of centerline protection (both by opening the centerline to the opponent more, and by simply having more centerline to be struck) and doesn't have nearly the rooted power of the SLKF front stance.
Generally, TKD seems to do far more active blocking (that is, throwing blocks and counterpunches, moving out of the way) than SLKF Tiger style - TKD maps better in many respects to our Mantis style, in both Xanshen and mechanics.

The SLKF Front stance optimizes for rooted power, at the expense of mobility. It's nearly impossible to throw any kick except a thrust, mule, or back kick from a front stance without a significant (and time consuming) center shift of your body mass. By the same token, you're rooted enough to throw really powerful short range punches and powerful close-body throws. The front stance does a great deal of protection by position - the groin is covered, the arms are up covering the centerline, one leg is behind you and the other is a trap waiting to be sprung.
You've got very little reach, however.

Hope this adds something to the conversation.