Praise for Trading from Your Gut

Whatever May Come
I took classes in Tae Kwon Do a few years back. One of the first
things the Tae Kwon Do master taught the students was the basic
stances. There is a front stance that is used more for attacking, a
back stance that is used for defending, and a sitting stance which is
more of a neutral posture. For each of the stances, the master taught
us to maintain our body erect so our weight was centered and
balanced.
When we were taught punches and kicks, we were taught to
punch and then pull our fists back. Likewise we were taught to kick
and pull back our legs and feed. The reasons for this became obvi-
ous when we practiced against the bags. If you kicked the bag, the
force from the kick would throw the bag backward, and it would also
throw you backward with the same force. As Newton said, for every
action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. 
So a kick without a pullback would create a force, while a kick
with a pullback lessened the force and made it easier to keep your
balance. Likewise, a missed punch by itself would throw you off bal-
ance, but a missed punch with a snappy pullback would leave you in
perfect balance.
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T
RADING FROM
Y
OUR
G
UT
From the Library of Daniel Johnson

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ptg
Some years later I moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina and took a
series of tango dancing lessons at a studio run by a famous Argentine
tango dancing couple, Mayoral and Elsa Maria. Mayoral was a clas-
sic old-school tango dancer. He and his wife could move around like
they were both connected together only to separate at times and
then come back together again like they had been dancing together
for almost 50 years—and they had.
With tango dancing, like with Tae Kwon Do, one of the funda-
mental principles is to maintain your balance. You must keep your
center of gravity over the top of your feet so you don’t put too much
weight on any one foot.
The reason balance is important for both tango and Tae Kwon
Do is the same. If you are balanced, you have options. You have the
flexibility to move in any direction at any time. If you are off bal-
ance, you have fewer options or perhaps only one.
With tango, this can be a real problem because there are two
dancers and the steps are improvised. The man almost always leads,
so the woman has no idea what the man is going to do at any point
until he signals via subtle hand and body movements. If the man is
off balance, he can throw the woman off balance. Then while the
man might indicate he wants to go one direction or perform a partic-
ular step, the woman might not be able to go in that direction or
perform that step because her weight is on the wrong foot. So both