Stance Health and Mobility Reference

Mat Manual companion guide to "Why Deep Stances Hurt, and How to Build a Stance That Lasts." Print it, measure yourself once, and work from your own numbers. Bring it to class when you talk to your instructor about stance depth.

Name: ______________________________ Date started: ______________ Dojo / instructor: ______________________________

Current grade: ______________ Main sore spot, if any: ☐ Front knee ☐ Back knee ☐ Front hip ☐ Back hip ☐ Ankle ☐ None

How to Use This Reference

This guide does four jobs. It gives you stance standards you can measure, honest self screens for the ankle and hip range your stances need, strength work with real doses matched to each stance, and progression tables, so depth becomes a stage you earn instead of a dare you accept in kihon.

☐ Fill in your body measures in the worksheet below ☐ Measure your current stances against the standards table and check the alignment boxes ☐ Run the four self screens and write down your scores ☐ Pick your starting stage in each progression table. Start at the stage you pass cleanly, not the stage you want ☐ Add two or three strength exercises from the library for your weakest stance ☐ Retest the screens and remeasure your stances every four weeks and log the results

Safety box. Read this first. This reference is a training tool, not a medical assessment. It does not diagnose anything. Muscle burn and next day muscle soreness are normal training feedback. Sharp pain, pain on the joint line, swelling, locking, catching, a joint that gives way, pain that changes how you walk, and pain that is still there days later are stop signals. If you have any stop signal, stop loading the joint and see a medical professional. The pain triage table near the end of this guide sorts the signals. When this guide and your body disagree, believe your body, and when this guide and your instructor disagree about your school standard, follow your instructor and write their numbers in the margin.