Legendary masters doing the Horse stand (click image to enlarge)

Horse stand (mabu) is the most basic yet important stand in all Chinese Martial Arts. If your horse stand is bad: You have no balance, no leg strength, no rooting thus whatever movement you try to do (forms, fighting, health), it will not work and you will be wasting your time. Hence horse stand is a very important jiben gong (basic skills, NOTE: Chinese interpretation of the word "basic" is not the same as the word "easy or less advance". The word basic refers to "foundation" and is of very important value). If a Chinese master tells you that you don't have any "jiben gong", it means you lack foundation and your Kung Fu sucks!

When trying to find a good teacher, watch his stands closely. It is the first visible proof, which can show you if your teacher is a fake or has proper "foundation". But, with high level skill teachers whose internal chi ripens, the movement and structure will become less clear for the beginner to see. The wide, strong stand and the big circle movements of the waist becomes more internal, while the power increases. So if you are not sure about your teacher stands, you need to see if he has great internal power. If both are absent, he might not be the person you are looking for.

Although a horse stand looks easy to do, it is one of those exercises best described with the words from teacher Mike: "Looks easy, but not easy".

The text and photo's above are taken from a forum online, the original source no longer exists. Due to that and the copying nature of internet, I greatfully put this interesting article on this blog.

Second source:http://www.hungkyun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=182&sid=64840ee1f4300e884d9d7c760fab8245