This issue has bothered me lately. In longfist, I spend a lot of training time to repeat the drill as showing in the folllowing picture. It's just a simple "cross" but done in a low bow-arrow stance.
http://imageshack.us/a/img571/3836/punchz.jpg
All my life, I have never be able to punch my opponent like this (low bow-arrow stance). If I still train this drill today, I have to ask myself an honest question. If I have never used this move in combat, and also I may never use this in combat for the rest of my life, why am I wasting my training time to train this move for?
I can see that the low bow-arrow stance is good to build up the foundation such as "leg strength". But trying to build up "foundation" when I have reached to my medicare age just make no sense IMO. Why the "cross" used in higher stance doesn't exist in both longfist and praying mantis system? In other words, why the "boxing combat posture" doesn't exist in the forms of some TCMA systems? Did the ancient form creators ever fight? The more that I think about this, the less that I have respect to the ancient form creators.
Many people when they have reached to their medicare age, they may only care about "health" and not "combat". The older that I'm, the more that I can't afford to waste my training time on useless stuff.