I just finished reading Bruce Tegnar's Savate and been watching Savate fights online.

Now according to Tegnar's books and every literature I read so far, its apparent that the Savate stance overall is the same as the traditional Boxing stance with accomdations to the legs position to defend against kicks.

The guard and about almost everything else is almost the same as traditional Boxing.

I do have a question. In Tegnar's book as well as every pic on the web I saw and Savate fight I seen on Youtube, they DON'T PUT THEIR SHOULD UP!Now this is quite strange considering Boxing influenced Savate so much that basically Savate's effectiveness is greatly diminished without Boxing.

In traditional Boxing, part of the stance is to keep your shoulders up.The reason for this is to protect your face from hits. Basically instead of taking full force to the face, with your shoulders up, your shoulders will absorb a large portion of the damage from the punch before it hits you. In other words your shoulders acts like  shock absorbency for punches before it hits your face like a should does towards  hammer. Its extremely effective way of defending yourself even if your guard is sloppy and is easily applicable to defend even against weapons like batons and hammers.

I'm curious considering Boxing's influence on Savate, how come Savateurs don't keep their shoulders up in their stance?Every fight I saw on Youtube basically shows Savateurs using the basic Arm Guard of Boxing but not keeping their shoulders up!

This doesn't make sense considering how just damn effective keeping your shoulders up is at defending yourself from blows!Is there a  reason why Savate fighters don't put their shoulders up like Traditional Boxers do?