Mark Hatmaker recently asked why the human animal so often places its dominant side to the rear whenever power, precision, or survival are at stake. His list was broad and historically informed: the boxer with his power hand back, the batter with his strong foot behind the plate, the quarterback and pitcher who coil their dominant side before the throw, the soldier with rifle butt tucked to the rear shoulder, even the Spartan hoplite with sword drawn behind the shield line (Hatmaker, The Orthodox Fighting Stance). In every case, the body arranges itself to strike with strength that begins in the rear.
Hatmaker’s question is the old paradox of laterality: why, when stakes rise, do we reverse what we do in daily life? In ordinary fine-motor tasks (writing, cooking, threading a needle) the dominant side leads. But when the task demands full commitment, or when under pressure, the body instinctively loads it behind the line, and releases from there. He once explained this as an artifact of historical combat transitions, the move from sword-and-buckler to modern pugilism but now questions that reasoning. The truth, he suggested, might run deeper. Perhaps stance is not an invention of craft but a manifestation of neural architecture, a pre-existing condition of the human animal. His essay ended not with a conclusion but with a challenge: “I’ll leave my thoughtful Warriors to cogitate,” a challenge to test whether our methods reveal a deep physiology or merely a lineage of copied forms.
The distinction between form and fact is what drew my attention. Hatmaker’s musing echoes an older archaeological principle: study the artifact but seek the behavior that created it. As Grahame Clark wrote, “the archaeologist studies not the antiquity, but how men lived” (Clark 1939, 15). Forms that survive are rarely decorative; they persist because they solved problems. A kata that endures through generations is not a convention, it is a frozen victory, a testimony to the importance of winning.
Hatmaker’s survey on strong-side rear is compelling and obvious as a combat reflex in fisticuffs. But my thoughts turned to Bruce Lee’s strong-side lead (based on fencing principles) and to the use of the sword (Lee and Little 1978, 22-24). These codify the opposite, a strong-side lead.
The right-foot-forward chūdan stance in modern kendō is left-foot pressure and right-hand dominance create a forward-linear vector that mirrors the Western fencing stance (Castle, 2003). The weight rests subtly on the left foot, the right heel poised to drive forward. It is a geometry designed for one line of engagement and one opponent. The raised kissaki, aimed at the throat, constrains both fighters to a shared centerline; initiative is defined by who breaks it first. This architecture makes perfect sense for a codified sport. The front-weighted bias favors speed, precision, and minimal movement along a single vector. It is elegant, fast, and perfectly limited.
Aiki-ken, however, preserves the older pattern of balance and torque. The rear foot remains anchored because it must serve in multiple directions, the weight shifts laterally rather than purely forward. Where kendō rewards linear penetration, Aiki-ken trains a responsive readiness, a residual battlefield logic that privileges adaptability over first-strike advantage (Saitō 1973–78, vol. 3, 51). Its stance is not a posture for sport but an attitude toward uncertainty.
The classical scrolls confirm that earlier systems prized adaptability. Kashima Shinden Jikishinkage-ryū alternates kata between right (migi) and left (hidari) leads to cultivate bilateral coordination (Otake 1977–82, vol. 1, 72). Yagyū Shinkage-ryū opens Sha-no-kamae left-foot forward to mask intent, then reverses during the cut (Yagyū 2004, 54-55). Ono-ha Ittō-ryū emphasizes ayumi-ashi (alternate stepping) so that whichever foot leads arises from opportunity, not doctrine (Warner and Draeger 1978, 63). They engender the capacity to strike or withdraw in any direction. As Donn Draeger wrote, the old schools “cultivated ambidexterity not to balance form but to preserve function under duress” (Draeger 1973, 58).
Modern (post WW2) pedagogy sought standardization and disrupted that pragmatism. The twentieth-century budō systems, as Draeger observed, were intended “to educate the masses, not cultivate the few” (Draeger 1974, xii). Uniform instruction required uniform direction. Hence kendō’s fixed right-forward stance: a method optimized for clarity, and measurable progression. What began as an adaptive geometry hardened into administrative orthodoxy. The older ryū, less democratic and more Darwinian, preserved both sides because survival rewarded variability. The modern art preserved only one because teaching rewarded consistency
Sports physiology gives modern vocabulary to these old observations. In striking disciplines, the rear-hand attack consistently produces greater impulse than the lead by virtue of the kinetic chain: power initiated by the rear leg, transmitted through the pelvis, trunk, and shoulder before release (Draeger 1973, 64; Adamec 2021, 3125). This “coiling” structure multiplies mass and distance into force. Studies of lead-hand techniques, even in elite boxers and fencers, show that while total impulse is lower, time-to-contact is shorter. The lead hand wins in speed and precision; the rear hand wins in torque and commitment. The choice of stance thus reflects an underlying question: which goal to prioritize, first touch or decisive strike?
That trade-off, dexterity versus power, is more predictive than any neurological bias. Rear-loaded postures maximize stored potential; forward-loaded ones minimize reaction time. The first privileges power, the second, initiative. When space and preparation permit, the human animal coils; when pressed, it extends. This is as true in the dueling ground as in the animal kingdom. The coiled snake and the striking mantis, the boxer and the swordsman; all solve the same physical equation differently depending on proximity and risk.
The Japanese sword traditions embody this continuum. Ittō-ryū’s doctrine of itto sunawachi banto, “one sword, all strikes,” implies that the decisive cut requires total commitment, but the preceding movement, semé, demands subtlety and control. The transition from lead probing to rear release is the choreography of decision. Similarly, Aiki-ken’s awase drills (meeting cuts) train the practitioner to test range, rhythm, and timing with minimal commitment before releasing the decisive strike (Saitō 1973–78, vol. 4, 62). In both, dexterity and power are phases of the same process, not opposites but sequenced necessities.
Perception shapes this continuum but does not determine it. The classical injunction toward metsuke, to “see the whole without fixation,” is less about stance orientation than about attentional economy. Heihō Kadensho warns that the swordsman must not look directly at the opponent’s weapon but must perceive movement through the body’s periphery (Yagyū 2004, 77). This is cognitive, not optical: training the brain to integrate motion prediction and inhibition. Eye dominance, often cited as a determinant of lead, is fluid and task-specific. Skilled practitioners adjust head tilt and shoulder line to maintain binocular function in any stance (Draeger 1973, 59). Vision adapts to posture, not the reverse.
In this light, the argument that we withdraw the dominant side to “protect sight” collapses. Both leads can preserve equal visual access if the body aligns properly. What differentiates them is not what the eyes see but how the body commits. The strong-side-rear stance favors decisive, mass-driven action; the strong-side-lead favors probing, sensory-driven engagement. Each reflects a distinct logic of risk. One seeks accuracy and continuation, the other power and finality.
Firearms training reproduces the same dialectic. The one-handed, duelist-style stance of Fairbairn and Applegate in Shooting to Live (1942) was designed for close, unsighted encounters (the quick-kill method). It maximized reaction speed and mobility under stress, when orientation mattered more than precision. As engagement distances increased and sighted fire became decisive, Jack Weaver’s two-handed grip and the later isosceles stance emerged. Weaver’s system blended control and recoil management with rapid re-targeting (Weaver Stance). Jeff Cooper refined both approaches at Gunsite, arguing that “square to the threat is square to the problem” (Cooper 1989, 41). The squared stance maintained binocular vision while providing stable recoil recovery. When ballistic armor removed the penalty for frontal exposure, the isosceles became doctrine. Each shift represented a new equilibrium between speed, power, and sensory acquisition.
Massad Ayoob later captured this synthesis in StressFire, defining stance as “the integration of weapon, vision, and intent” (Ayoob 1984, 44). In his model, technique is not fixed but contextually reactive: the shooter flows between Weaver and Isosceles as distance, stress, and visibility change. The old Japanese model said the same thing more poetically: ma-ai and hyōshi, distance and timing, govern all technique. The body adjusts its geometry to preserve initiative and stability simultaneously. When the terrain, the weapon, or the task changes, so does the stance.
Seen through this lens, Hatmaker’s question about dominant-side placement becomes a question of temporal strategy. The rear-loaded stance is a geometry of potential energy; the forward-loaded stance, of kinetic immediacy. One is preparation for the decisive act, the other the act itself. We do not stand strong-side-rear because of any deep evolutionary bias toward one eye or limb, but because the body alternates between two enduring strategies of survival: probing and committing. The rear-loaded posture delays engagement to ensure completion; the forward-loaded one accelerates engagement to ensure contact. The difference is not in nature but in intention.
The surviving kata of the old schools reveal this understanding. Their forms, alternating migi and hidari, were perceptual and tactical drills, training the practitioner to act decisively regardless of which side happened to bear weight. As Omiya wrote of Ueshiba’s early practice, alternating right and left was “a search for unity within change, not symmetry for its own sake” (Omiya 1998, 103). The goal was adaptability and internal balance. By training both configurations, the fighter internalized the shift between dexterity and power as a single continuum.
This adaptability is also perceptual. Draeger noted that the purpose of kata was “to coordinate perception and action until they become one” (Draeger 1973, 91). Alternating stances forces the nervous system to remap proprioception and attention continually, producing what modern psychology would call situational awareness or Gestalt perception. In practice, this means that stance becomes less a fixed shape than a mode of attention. The swordsman who can move from lead to rear without hesitation has integrated the full rhythm of combat.
The same integration appears in evolutionary terms. Lynne Isbell’s theory of primate vision proposes that our perceptual systems evolved under the pressure to detect movement (specifically snakes) before conscious recognition (Isbell 2009, 78). Omiya interprets Aiki’s evolution as the reconciliation between “natural movement and cultivated perception” (Omiya 1998, 119). The link is direct: both imply that the nervous system is built to alternate between scanning and striking, between awareness and action. Combat stances exploit that oscillation. The coiled posture heightens perception through readiness; the extended posture resolves perception through action. What we call “stance” is therefore a physicalization of a neurological potential.
The lesson, finally, is humility. The koryū masters did not reason their way to these truths; they suffered them into knowledge, Pain as a Teacher. Each cut, like each shot, was a test of judgment under pressure. When we train these patterns today, we are not reenacting rather re-entering the same experiment: discovering when to value accuracy over power, speed over decisiveness.
Both of Hatmaker’s intuitions stand. The unarmed or shield-bearing fighter presents the sacrificial, non-dominant lead in anticipation of delivering a decisive blow from the rear. When armor, space, or time allow, we coil power behind the line, favoring commitment over speed. When immediacy and precision rule, we bring strength forward, favoring dexterity over mass. Both are correct because both are conditional.
Stance is not a relic of habit or a flaw of neurology. It is the record of an adaptive equation, how human combatants learned to balance dexterity against power, perception against decision, freedom of motion against finality of intent.
Stand where you can respond. Move when you must commit. The rest is practice.
Selected Bibliography
Clark, Grahame. Archaeology and Society. London: Methuen, 1939.
Cooper, Jeff. The Modern Technique of the Pistol. Gunsite Press, 1989.
Draeger, Donn F. Classical Budō. New York: Weatherhill, 1973.
Draeger, Donn F. Modern Budō and Budō Systems. New York: Weatherhill, 1974.
Fairbairn, W. E., and E. A. Sykes. Shooting to Live with the One-Hand Gun. Paladin Press, 1942. (summary link)
Hatmaker, Mark. “The Orthodox Fighting Stance.” Extreme Self Protection (online essay).
Lee, Bruce, and John Little. The Tao of Jeet Kune Do. Santa Clarita: Ohara Publications, 1978.
Omiya, Ryuji. The Hidden Roots of Aikido. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1998.
Otake, Risuke. The Deity and the Sword: Katori Shintō Ryū. Tokyo: Japan Publications Trading, 1977–82.
Saitō, Morihiro. Traditional Aikido, Vols. 3–4. Iwama: Minato Research, 1973–78.
Warner, Gordon, and Donn F. Draeger. Japanese Swordsmanship: Technique and Practice. New York: Weatherhill, 1978.
Yagyū, Munenori. Heihō Kadensho. Translated by William Bodiford. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2004.
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