One of the differences that many of us experience between WC/VT/WT styles is weight distribution for the lead-leg stance. Some learn a 100/0 ratio while others learn a combination of 80/20, 70/30, etc.
So which one is “best?”
My personal feeling is that one is not the absolute best over the others. In that, however, I also believe that it depends on your style that will dictate the stance ratio used.
Each lineage is driven off of their personal views of weight distribution, and from that, all kinds of things take place. How our initial reactions will be, how we will drive into the opponent, and how our footwork will respond if the opponent drives into u are just a few of the actions learned that are based on the instructor or lineage’s ”take” on things.
If your training is with a 100/0 ratio, then you might focus on using hand and leg attacks simultaneously, each and every time. Everything you do would evolve over time to incorporate that principle into your training, and changing to a different ratio would mean re-training your fist-fighting actions to accomodate it.
On the flip side, change the ratio to 80/20 and now more focus is on the hands. The lower body will still respond, of course, but more as a driving “wedge” into the opponent’s legs to cut off their response vs. responding to their kicks or jams.
Further still, push the ratio to 70/30 or even 60/40 and now a whole new world of hand responses open up. Sometimes it takes a great deal of training to deal with these practitioners, because their upper body has become so strong and their hands so fast that it takes a great deal of relaxation to handle it. They can easily walk right over you if you are not up to par.
Whereas all of these have their “pros,” they also come with “cons,” too. A practitioner training 100/0 ratios has to spend an inordinate amount of time in stepping and covering distances. It is not easy to respond to a gap in distance when an opponent has suddenly moved backwards or out of range. At that moment, you have to recapture the ground you lost in order to maintain the proper working distance.
And for practitioners with other ratios, they have to deal with attacks to the legs because in order to use the lead leg, now that weight has to transfer to the rear leg in order to lift the front leg. It is either that or they have to continue driving inward in order to close the gap, thereby decreasing the distance between their leg and the attack (which decreases the striking distance).
However, a great deal of training is required for that because leg attacks are very difficult to see, which means they are difficult to respond to (which we all know so well because that is the very tactic we employ).
Regardless of what ratio one trains in, the focus is on learning what all of these points are about and how to use them for your advantage. Knowing the weakness of an area, you can bring it up to become a strength.
