The Correct Biomechanical Use of the Feet & Knees | Part 3: Knee Alignment

Knee Alignment

The rules governing the alignment of the knees are very simple. The hip joint, the middle of the kneecap and the second toe of the foot must at all times be aligned! There is not one single instant in the short or long Yang forms when there is an exception to this rule. Even in transitions when a leg is not weight bearing, it is important to maintain this alignment in order not to interfere with the flow of qi in the meridians of the leg.

Front Knee Position

When I first started studying Taijiquan with Master Li Shao Qiang (Rose Li) I was surprised that she insisted that the front shin should be maintained in a vertical position. In the light of my previous experience in taijiquan, Shaolin and Japanese martial arts, all of which taught that the knee should be over the toes, this vertical shin seemed very strange. But I quickly began to appreciate its huge significance. Here are some interesting observations after almost 20 years of taijiquan experience and research.

In a Discussion of the Practice of Taijiquan dictated by Yang Chengfu and recorded by Chang Huang Kui it says the leg should only bend until the shin is perpendicular to the ground. To exceed this position constitutes over-application of strength. The body will thus push forward and lose its balance, (Wu Ta-Yeh 1993). He meant the front leg of course. In all the 1931 photos of Yang Chengfu you can see this principle of the vertical knee.

The lecture A Discussion of The Practice of Taijiquan was not included in Yang's 1931 book nor in his 1934 book. Neither was it included in Chen Weiming's 1925 book. It is only reproduced in Shu Diaomei's book of 1959 and Fu Zhongwen's book of 1963. So it is possible that this lecture was presented after 1931 and was only known to a few people before the Second World War. Most authors of books on Yang Style taijiquan quite explicitly taught the knee over toe method. Among all Yang style taijiquan authors, Li Yaxuan who studied with Yang Chengfu for 10 years seems to be the most outspoken in objection to the knee over foot posture (Wu Ta-Yeh 1993).

The use of the vertical shin is definitely not one of Yang Chengfu's innovations. In fact, he seems to have been a little slow in working it out. Many photographs of Xu Longhou in his 1921 book clearly showed the shin being vertical.

My teacher Li Shao Qiang started studying with her teacher Deng Yunfeng (who was a student of Geng Jishan (1862-1929) and a martial arts brother to Sung Lutang in 1923 or 1924 and had no other teachers, insisted that the front shin should be vertical and it is interesting to note that she also used a 70 to 80 degree rear foot angle. This means that Deng Yunfeng and probably his teacher Geng Jishan used a vertical shin in their taijiquan forms, which they considered Yang style forms. The fact that in this martial art tradition all of these martial artists specialised in Xing Yi Quan have something to do with their appreciation of the mechanical superiority of the vertical shin. In Xing Yi Quan the front of the kneecap is perpendicular to the back of the front heel which allows the Xing Yi boxer to move with great speed and agility and permits him to mobilise devastating power from the back leg.

It's time to put the theory to the test. Assume a Ward-off posture and push your knee over your toes. Get your partner to push against your forearm with a fair amount of force. You should have no problem in absorbing his/her push. However, if he or she pulls you forward you will not be able to resist and will be uprooted fairly easily. Now bring your knee back a little until your shin is vertical and you will have no difficulty in resisting a push or pull. This demonstrates the stability of this position. In order to test the power of this position assume a forward stance with upright shin and apply Ward-off (Peng) Press (Ji) or Push (An) force against your partners resistance. Do it slowly so you can feel the force from your back heel travelling up your back leg through your waist, into your back and through your opposite shoulder to your forearm or hand. The transfer of force will be smooth if the front knee is braced hard, and the front toes push backward and down in a braking action.

However, if you move the knee over the toes and then applied force from the back leg you will not be able to transfer the force up the back and through the shoulder to the arm since most of the force will be dissipated through your front knee. If you study pictures of Cheng Man-Ch'ing carefully you will notice that when he is demonstrating the form his front knee is above his toe, but when he is pushing hands and or executing Fajin (discharging force) his front knee is perfectly upright.

In early pictures of Yang Chengfu you see him using what in his day was referred to as the Bow and Arrow stance in which the front leg was curved like a bow (with knee over toe) and the back leg was fully extended to be as straight as an arrow. There were a number of technical difficulties with this posture. Besides the ones we have already discussed, probably the most important problem was maintaining an upright spine and at the same time tucking the tail bone under in order to create a straight lumbar spine; for if you straighten the back leg, unless you had extraordinary hip flexibility the strain put on your hip flexor muscles on the back leg would pull open your lumbar vertebrae and create a curve in your lower back, not to mention the twisting action on the lumbar spine caused by the strong pull of one group of hip flexors. Yang Chengfu and his colleagues overcame the problem by inclining the trunk forward. But this caused a new problem; in order to maintain a level forward gaze the head had to be tipped backwards, thus causing a curve in the neck and causing the chin to poke out. Pictures of a young Yang Chengfu in Tseng Ju-Pai's book Primordial Pugilism will illustrate this perfectly. As he became older, you notice (in the 1931 pictures) he overcomes this problem by bringing the front knee back and dropping the back knee down in the direction of the back second toe, creating a beautifully upright and relaxed looking posture.

Does this then mean that the Bow and Arrow posture referred to in the early Yang style taijiquan literature is redundant? Perhaps. Wu Ta-Yeh seems to think so. He also points out that the Chen School did not use the forward bow stance and that in the light of Yang Chengfu’s lecture discussion on the practise of taijiquan, Yang himself seems to reject it. (Wu Ta-Yeh 1993).

For those of you who are sentimental about the idea of the bow and arrow stance here is a possible compromise; think of the front leg as a powerfully flexing bow and think of the lower leg of the back leg as an arrow (rather than the whole leg) with the force pushing from the back heel through the lower leg and aimed roughly through the middle of the bow on the front knee. Somewhat contrived, I agree, but short of scrapping the whole idea the best I can offer.