Advancing & Retreating – Practice

Immediate Practice

5 minutes – Practice advancing and retreating steps from one side of your space to the other.

• Start at one side of your space. Perform advancing steps until you run out of room, then retreating steps till you’re back at the beginning.
• Work on maintaining your defensive posture throughout the steps.
• Practice the same exercise in the offensive posture.

5 minutes – Practice combining advancing and retreating steps.

• Start at one side of your space. Take two advancing steps followed by one retreating step. Once you reach the end of your space change to two retreating steps followed by one advance.
• Practice in both the defensive and offensive postures.
• Keep steps crisp and small. At the end of each step your feet spacing should remain consistent.
• Focus on maintaining posture through transitions in direction of movement.

Ongoing Practice

• Ensure that movement plays a role in your regular drilling and exercise practice.
• Incorporate movement into and out of measure at the beginning and end of lunging drills.
• There are more specific footwork drills later in this lesson.