Every now and then, when checking a martial arts magazine, I see an ad for some $39.95-$150 course that will teach you the secrets of how to gain Real Ultimate Power. One of the things that seems to pop up in these books quite frequently is “How MA schools teach you to kick destroys your knees. We’ll teach you how to kick so you don’t ruin them AND make your kicks 1000% stronger,” or somesuch.
Now, without worrying about making our kicks stronger, I’m wondering exactly what’s wrong with the way “most” schools teach one to kick. I know a lot of martial artists get bad knees as they age, but so do a lot of people. Assuming that the way we know how to kick is wrong, how should we be kicking?
Assuming that these guys are correct (and the way we all kick is incorrect), the only thing I can think of to do differently is kick Thai-style, from the hip and connect with the shin.
Some of what they are talking about is kicking full power in the air, and snapping your knee straight. Both are bad ideas.
When you land a kick, your knee should not be completely straight. Doing this causes your knee joint to absorb some of the force of the kick, instead of the target. The kick should land with your leg about 98% extended, with the remaining 2% occurring inside the target.
You also want to avoid hyperextending your base leg, so try to keep it a tiny bit bent, in the same way Shodan described for your kicking leg. This is also good for your balance, in that it gives you a little bit of slack to work with to act as a shock absorber.
A good way to avoid snapping out your kicking leg is to hold your foot up there at the most-extended part of the kick for a fraction of a second. Really, it doesn’t have to be long at all, a split second is enough. You can’t hyperextend the knee of your kicking leg this way. Snapping out and back pretty much means that you’re using your knee joint to stop your kick, probably not something you want to do.
That’s basically what I do anyway (hold the kick out there a little) and I tend to get corrected on that a lot. Of course, that makes combinations a bit harder…
98% seems a bit close, but it’s not too bad. One stat I keep reading is that the strongets point of your punch is 70% extension. I wonder if that applies to kicks as well.
Are you going for huge power during combinations? Most people aren’t. In my school, at least, we’re doing them to train sequences of kicks (I find roundhouse-backside kick very natural now, for example,) and for pure endurance purposes. Since you’re probably not trying to power through it, you probably aren’t snapping your leg out too much in the first place, so it’s OK to not hold your kick for that split second. It’s more when you’re practicing stationary kicks that the snapping becomes a problem requiring little tricks to solve.
I don’t believe for a second that there is some super-secret technique that was somehow overlooked by the best schools in the country.
There is a technique, but its no secret…they call it practice.
Seriously, the above posts are dead on but getting that 98% just right is the hard part. The only way I know of to accomplish that is to practice over and over and over until you do it without ever thinking about it.
I guess it depends what you mean by “strongest point.” Perhaps this means that the punch inflicts the most damage if it first makes contact with the target when it’s at 70% extension. This sounds like it’s the same as the idea of punching through your target, which I think would apply to kicks as well. The idea is you want the majority of the momentum of your hand or foot to be absorbed by the opponents body, so you don’t want to hit them too early (because you fist won’t have built up enough momentum) and you don’t want to hit them too late (because then most of the impulse to stop your arm comes from your muscles, not the impact with your opponent.) I’m not sure if these two competing factors would balance at the exact same point for arms and legs, but I’m guessing 70% is a good estimate for both. It’s only an estimate anyway because the exact answer would probably depend on how long your arms and legs are and possibly how big your opponent is as well. At any rate, aiming your blows so that, if your opponent weren’t there to stop them, they would stop just past the far side of his body will probably give you close to maximum damage.
This just occured to me: That idea of aiming the punches for the far side of the body probably requires a little adjustment if, for instance, you’re throwing punches to the body of a very fat man. There are some people whose bodies are as deep as my arm is long, and I tried to punch “through” them I’d get almost no power. As I said, you of course need to give yourself enough space that the punch or kick can build up decent speed.
I can think of some things that are done by entire styles that make no sense! Also, I’ve still run into guys that think the best way to stretch is to get into the butterfly position and have one guy pulling on your upper body and one guy standing on your legs and pushing you down. I have a hard time imagining worse stretches.
Granted, in most of these ads, the techniques seem to be JKD stuff that gets repackaged and sold as a “secret,” but I’ve seen this kicking thing in enough places that I doubt they’re all cribbing from something so obvious, or even taken from the same source.
When practicing with power, you should only do so against resistance, in general do not throw full power techniques at air. This also goes for punches. You want your target (be it a pad, or mit, or tree trunk ) to be absorbing the energy from your kick, and not your joints. Save your power for the heavy bag.
When practicing in the air, your techniques need to be modified slightly so that your elbows or knees never become locked and reduce your power so your technique will essentially stop itself with your natural muscle tension instead of bouncing back from a locked joint.
) to be absorbing the energy from your kick, and not your joints. Save your power for the heavy bag.