Almost every article ever written about Shaolin Kung Fu mentions the stances, and almost none of them tells you how to stand in one. That is the wrong way round. The five basic stances are the first thing taught in every school around Songshan, they are what the first months of training are actually spent on, and everything else in the art is built on top of them. Here is each one: how to stand, what it is for, the mistake nearly everyone makes, and how long you should be holding it.
Ma Bu, Gong Bu, Pu Bu, Xu Bu, Xie Bu
Horse, bow, crouch, empty and rest. They are five different answers to one question: where is your weight, and can you move from here? Learn them in that order, hold them for time rather than collecting more of them, and give the first one, Ma Bu, more attention than the other four combined. The traditional benchmark is a five minute horse stance before a student is taught forms.
Why stances come first
A stance is not a pose. It is a position you can generate force from and leave in any direction, and that is why it gets trained before anything interesting. A punch thrown from a collapsed base is a punch thrown with the arm only. The same punch thrown from a rooted, correctly loaded stance carries the legs, the hips and the ground behind it.
This is why a Shaolin school will happily spend your first month on five shapes. It is also why the Chinese phrase for the whole category of basics, jibengong, is treated as a body of work rather than a warm up. If you want the wider picture of what that involves, we break it down in what is Shaolin jibengong, the 100 foundational movements.
未学打人，先学站桩
wei xue da ren, xian xue zhan zhuang
Before you learn to strike, learn to stand
There is also a form built for exactly this purpose. Wu Bu Quan (五步拳), the five stance fist, is the standard first form in Chinese martial arts schools, and it exists to chain these five positions together in a single short sequence. If you ever wondered why beginners everywhere learn the same unglamorous routine, that is why.
The five stances at a glance
| Stance | Weight | What it trains | The usual fault |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ma Bu马步 · horse | 50 / 50 | Root, leg strength, endurance | Knees collapsing inward |
| Gong Bu弓步 · bow | About 70 front | Forward power, hip alignment | Back heel lifting off the floor |
| Pu Bu仆步 · crouch | About 90 on the bent leg | Hip flexibility, low mobility | Rolling onto the edge of the extended foot |
| Xu Bu虚步 · empty | About 90 back | Readiness, kicking, retreat | Weight leaking onto the front foot |
| Xie Bu歇步 · rest | Mostly front leg | Rotation, compression, evasion | Standing tall instead of sitting down |
Exact weight splits differ a little between schools and between traditional Shaolin and modern competition Wushu. Treat the numbers as the intention rather than as law: the point is that you always know where your weight is, and that a training partner pushing you should not be able to find out something you did not already know.
Stance one
Ma Bu, the horse stance
马步 · mǎ bù- Step out so your feet are a little wider than shoulder width, and turn them to point forward, parallel to each other.
- Sit straight down, as if lowering onto a bench behind you. Do not lean forward to get lower.
- Bend until the thighs work toward parallel with the floor. Parallel is the destination, not the starting point.
- Push the knees slightly outward so they track over the middle of each foot, and keep the whole sole of each foot in contact with the ground.
- Stack the spine vertically, tuck the tailbone slightly under, lift the crown of the head, and let the shoulders drop.
Stance two
Gong Bu, the bow stance
弓步 · gōng bù- Step forward into a long stride. Long means longer than feels natural, roughly four to five of your own foot lengths.
- Keep the feet about hip width apart laterally. They should not be on a single line, which is the mistake that destroys the balance of this stance.
- Bend the front knee until the shin is close to vertical, with the kneecap above the toes and not past them.
- Straighten the back leg fully and keep the whole back foot down, turned out to roughly 45 degrees.
- Square the hips toward the front and keep the torso upright. The back leg, the hip and the spine form the shape of a drawn bow, which is where the name comes from.
Stance three
Pu Bu, the crouch stance
仆步 · pū bù- From a wide stance, sit down fully onto one leg, folding it as deep as you can control.
- Extend the other leg straight out to the side, close to the floor.
- Keep both feet flat. The extended foot in particular wants to roll onto its outside edge, and it should not.
- Keep the chest lifted and the back straight rather than folding forward over the bent leg.
- Look along the extended leg.
Stance four
Xu Bu, the empty stance
虚步 · xū bù- Sit your weight back onto the rear leg, bending it deeply.
- Turn the rear foot out to about 45 degrees.
- Place the front foot lightly ahead of you, touching the floor with the toe or the ball of the foot only.
- Keep almost no weight on that front foot. Empty means empty.
- Stay upright, with the hips level and the torso stacked over the back leg.
Stance five
Xie Bu, the rest stance
歇步 · xiē bù- Cross one leg behind the other and sit down until the legs are compressed together.
- The front foot stays flat. The rear heel lifts, so you are on the ball of that foot.
- The rear knee tucks in close behind the front knee, almost resting on the calf.
- Keep the spine upright and the chest open, and turn the head in the direction the technique goes.
- Sit low. The name means rest stance because it looks like sitting down, not because it feels restful.
Shi Yan Chen, headmaster of Shaolin Zhong Wu, on the warm up and stance fundamentals every new student starts with.
How long to hold them
Stance work fails for one of two reasons: people hold nothing for long enough to change anything, or they attempt five minutes on day one, hurt themselves, and stop. Here is a progression that works, three sessions a week.
| Weeks | Ma Bu | The other four |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 2 | 3 sets of 30 seconds | 20 seconds each side, shape before depth |
| 3 to 4 | 3 sets of 60 seconds | 30 seconds each side |
| 5 to 8 | 3 sets of 90 seconds to 2 minutes | 30 to 45 seconds each side, going lower |
| 2 to 6 months | Work toward a single 3 minute hold | Hold, then start moving between them |
Two rules matter more than the numbers. Stop the set when the shape breaks rather than when the clock says so, because a minute of a collapsing stance trains collapsing. And do them at the start of a session, not at the end: stance work done on dead legs is where technique quietly gets worse.
At a school in China this is exactly how it goes. Stances and leg work sit in the first block of the morning, and forms come afterwards. You can see the whole timetable in the Shaolin training schedule, a real week at a Kung Fu school in China.
Knees, depth and doing this safely
Stance training has a reputation for being hard on the knees, and done carelessly it is. Done properly it is one of the better things you can do for them, because it builds strength through range and teaches the joint to track correctly under load. The difference is in three details.
- Track the knee over the foot. In every stance here, the knee should point in the same direction as the toes of the same foot. Inward collapse is the fault that causes problems.
- Earn the depth. Thighs parallel in Ma Bu is a target for month three, not day one. A higher stance held correctly beats a low one held badly, every time.
- Load, do not grind. Sharp or pinching pain in a joint is a stop signal. Burning in the quadriceps and shaking legs are not: that is simply what stance training feels like, and it passes.
If you have an existing knee injury, train the shapes higher and shorter and get advice from a physiotherapist before adding depth. Nobody in a Shaolin hall gets a prize for a deep stance and a wrecked joint.
Try this today: a 10 minute stance circuit
No equipment, no space beyond a couple of square metres. Do the whole thing barefoot or in flat shoes.
| Order | Do this |
|---|---|
| Warm up | 2 minutes: ankle circles, knee circles, hip circles, 20 slow bodyweight squats |
| 1 | Ma Bu, 3 rounds of 30 seconds, 30 seconds rest between |
| 2 | Gong Bu, 30 seconds each side |
| 3 | Xu Bu, 30 seconds each side |
| 4 | Pu Bu, 20 seconds each side, only as low as you can keep both feet flat |
| 5 | Xie Bu, 20 seconds each side |
| Finish | 1 minute walking, then stretch the hip flexors and hamstrings |
Do that three times a week for a month and the change is unmistakable, both in how long you can hold and in how everything else you practise feels. Add the morning Qigong from our guide to Shaolin meditation, Chan and Qi Gong and you have a genuine daily practice rather than a workout.
Stances are step one of a system, not a workout
What a school gives you that an article cannot is the order, the correction and the next thing. The Shaolin Foundations teaches the stances, basic movements and Qi Gong in a structured progression, 30 minutes a day with no equipment, taught by a 35th generation Shaolin disciple. If you would rather start with the free material first, our begin training page collects the free guides and practice routines in one place.
Common questions
What are the 5 basic Shaolin stances?
Ma Bu (马步, horse stance), Gong Bu (弓步, bow stance), Pu Bu (仆步, crouch stance), Xu Bu (虚步, empty stance) and Xie Bu (歇步, rest stance). They are the five positions taught first in Shaolin schools and are chained together in the beginner form Wu Bu Quan, the five stance fist.
How long should a beginner hold the horse stance?
Start with three sets of 30 seconds and build toward three minutes over a couple of months. The traditional benchmark in many schools is a five minute horse stance before a student is taught forms. Stop each set when the shape breaks rather than when the timer says so.
Does stance training actually build strength?
Yes, and specifically the kind forms demand: isometric strength through a deep range, plus the tendon and connective tissue adaptation that comes from holding load rather than moving it. It also trains the nervous system to keep a position under fatigue, which is what stops technique falling apart late in a session.
Is stance training bad for your knees?
Not when the knee tracks over the foot and depth is built gradually. The fault that causes injury is the knee collapsing inward under fatigue. Burning quadriceps and shaking legs are normal, sharp or pinching joint pain is not, and that is the signal to stop.
Are Shaolin stances the same as Wushu stances?
They are the same five shapes with different priorities. Modern competition Wushu tends toward lower, more extended stances scored on visual precision, while traditional Shaolin keeps them slightly more compact and functional. A student of either would recognise the other immediately.
How many stances are there in Shaolin Kung Fu?
More than five, but five that everything starts with. Beyond the basics you will meet cat stance, unicorn or kneeling stances, one legged stances and several transitional positions, all of which are easier to learn once the five here are solid.
Can I learn Shaolin stances at home?
Yes. Stances are one of the few parts of Kung Fu that need no partner, no equipment and almost no space, which makes them the natural starting point for home training. What you miss at home is correction, so film yourself from the side and the front and compare against the checks in this article, or follow a structured course.
Related reading
- What is Shaolin jibengong? The 100 foundational movements the stances belong to.
- Learn Shaolin Kung Fu online, how to build a real practice from home.
- The Shaolin training schedule, where stance work sits in a real training week.
- What is Shaolin Kung Fu? The art, its history and how the training is structured.
- 20 Shaolin sayings the masters train by, several of which are about exactly this kind of patience.
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