your hip and leg power. When your leg is fully extended, take hold of your pant leg with your finger tips and pull your leg up as far as you can and hold it there. Be careful not to let your arms do all the work; this is a leg exercise. Hold for 5 seconds and then slowly chamber and return to the floor. That is one rep.
2 sets, 10, 5-second reps — each leg
Seated side kicks Okay, enough fun. Here is one that will put a nice knot in your upper thigh and hip. It’s a seated exercise, so it’s hard to cheat by leaning excessively away from the direction that you are kicking in. The position places considerable strain on the muscles involved in the side kick, so much so that you have to keep telling yourself that this is good for you. Here is how you do it.
Sit in an armless chair and face forward. Lift your right knee in front of you and slowly extend it to the side in a perfect side kick. You can lean your upper body a little, but not too much since you want to make those side kick muscles work. Strive for precise form and for as much height as you can (which won’t be very high) to really get a feel for how those muscles are working. Do slow reps to develop power and fast reps to stimulate your fast-twitch muscles.
Slow chair side kicks: 1 set, 10 reps -- each leg
Fast chair side kicks: 1 set, 10 reps -- each leg
While sitting in a chair, chamber your right leg and slowly extend it into a sidekick .
Movement Continued
Extra credit After you have trashed your muscles doing the chair exercises, finish your workout with this fun drill. The idea is to practice scenarios from your chair as you did with the front kick. Pretend that you are blocking a shoulder grab from the side and counter with a side kick. Leap to your feet and finish him off with whatever you choose. Have fun with it and learn what you can and cannot do while sitting.
Taekwondo fighters definitely don’t throw their roundhouse kicks the same way Muay Thai fighters do. In fact, not all taekwondo and Muay Thai fighters throw their roundhouses in the same fashion. The same is true of the various Chinese, Japanese and American eclectic systems. They all have subtle, or not so subtle, variations that have developed over time either by deliberate intent or happenstance.
Is one method better than the other? Who knows for sure? To conduct a scientific study would be overwhelmingly complex because of the large number of variables that would have to be factored in. My advice is that you first master the method taught in your style and then examine how other styles perform theirs. You may or may not find a method so superior that you want to replace yours, but you probably will find one or more that you want to include in your repertoire.
I encourage you to examine your basic roundhouse kick to learn all the variations that are possible with it. Begin by asking yourself questions about it and then seek out the answers. For example, how can you deliver it faster? More powerfully? How can you better set up your roundhouse to successfully get it in on an opponent, both offensively and defensively?
Kicking with All Parts of Your Leg
Perhaps you learned to roundhouse kick by making contact with only the top of your foot. This is fine, but depending on the circumstances there are actually several other places on your leg that you connect with. Use your solo time to experiment to see how versatile the roundhouse kick really is.
The Ball of the Foot
When I began training back in the 1960s, we learned to roundhouse kick barefoot with the ball of the foot, just as our teachers learned in the Orient. That was okay until I was in the military. On several occasions in Vietnam, I kicked people with the ball of my foot while wearing combat boots. I curled my toes back as I had done in class, but the heavy, steel-toed boot didn’t curl, so every time I ended up limping afterwards with a sprained ankle and jammed toes. Since I’m a slow learner, I hurt myself several times before it dawned on me what I was doing wrong. When I changed to kicking with the shoestring area of my boot, the problem went away.
But don’t let my experience discourage you from considering the ball of the foot as an impact point. Perhaps you wear really flexible shoes and you can kick with the ball of your foot while wearing them (they aren’t those gold-colored ones that curl up on each end, are they?). Or maybe you train for other reasons than self-defense, so it doesn’t matter to you that you can’t curl your toes back in your street shoes.
To be completely confident kicking with the ball of the foot, I highly suggest that you practice on the heavy bag. Take it easy at first, because a bent-back toe is not a fun moment to live in. Although you can use the ball of the foot to kick any target, from your opponent’s head to his shin, I think it’s a big risk to kick someone in the head with it. If your foot is angled wrong, a jammed toe against someone’s hard skull is going to send you spiraling to the floor, wailing like a newborn babe.
One of my black belts loves to kick with the ball of his foot to the inside of his opponent’s thigh, and it really hurts. He doesn’t stretch his leg out as he would if he were kicking to the head, but he keeps it bent and delivers it within punching range. Like a boxer with a quick jab, he pops his kick to that tender spot every time his opponent starts to move in on him. He knows it’s doubtful that he could use it while wearing shoes, but he doesn’t care because he is having too much fun putting little bruises on everyone’s thighs.
Practice kicking the bag at all heights so you are familiar with how your foot position needs to be modified. But if you just want to kick at one height, say the abdomen or to mid thigh, concentrate your bag work at that level.
Heavy bag: 3 sets, 15 reps —each foot
Air: 3 sets, 15 reps — each foot
Shoestring Area
The most common impact point for the roundhouse kick is the top of the foot where your shoestrings are laced. Since it’s a broad surface, it lacks the penetration that kicking with the ball-of-the-foot has, but it’s safer on your toes. Should you kick someone in the point of his chin, you risk breaking the fine bones on the top of your foot, but it’s relatively safe when kicking to non boney surfaces. Kicking with the top of the foot is effective in competition because it provides you with several inches of reach versus kicking with the ball.
Any target from the side of the face to the calf is good, but be cautious of kicking boney surfaces. The kidneys, ribs, groin and thighs are favorites because impact to them can cause debilitation.
Air: 3 sets, 15 reps — each leg.
Heavy bag: 3 sets, 15 reps — each leg
Lower Shin
