The Karate "Chop" and other "underrated" technques?

[Dirty Dog]

The 'fumi komi' or crossover kick is another inside crescent kick, but applied to a different target with different focus. Many do not realize that it's a crescent kick, event those who perform it.

Do you happen to have something showing this in use? The way it's shown in these videos, I'd consider it more of a stomp kick than a crescent kick. For it to count as what I'd call a crescent kick, the impact needs to be with the edge of the foot (inside edge, for the movement shown) while it's moving more or less parallel to the ground.

 

[Dirty Dog]

@Bill Mattocks I found this

If that's typical of the application, then no, I wouldn't call it a crescent kick. I'd classify it as a stomp kick.
But I'm not about to claim that the way our system defines kicks is anything like universal.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Do you happen to have something showing this in use? The way it's shown in these videos, I'd consider it more of a stomp kick than a crescent kick. For it to count as what I'd call a crescent kick, the impact needs to be with the edge of the foot (inside edge, for the movement shown) while it's moving more or less parallel to the ground.

It's a crescent kick with the emphasis on a different syllable, if you will. The core movement is the same in the beginning. Knee lifts, hips pull the leg across center. The difference is that as you noted, the power is delivered in the form of a stomp, and the movement to get the leg into position to do the stomp is simply how one gets to that position.

However, consider a person about to deliver this stomp kick and something gets in the way of the knee/hip movement. The resulting strike is the essence of the crescent kick, delivered point of the knee instead of the edge of the foot.

I relate the two in the same manner that I consider an uppercut in Isshinryu to be a block to an incoming punch as well. The movement of the arm extending towards the opponent's face happens to intersect the location where the incoming punch is arriving; this rudders the punch away and actually guides the uppercut into the opponent's face more forcefully. That may not make an uppercut a proper block, but it sure can be one if need be.

I was just considering the core motion. Knee lift, hip turn, power moving inside (or outside in the 'Wansu' example).

 

[Bill Mattocks]

@Bill Mattocks I found this

If that's typical of the application, then no, I wouldn't call it a crescent kick. I'd classify it as a stomp kick.
But I'm not about to claim that the way our system defines kicks is anything like universal.

Right; not quite the way we do a fumi komi, but I get the basic notion they are showing. No, in that sense, it is not a crescent kick in any manner that I can see. Our fumi komi crosses the entire body; the right foot stomps down well past the left edge of the body. It is also a long scraping kick and not just the 'stomp' at the end. Designed to bring the inside heel of perhaps a shod foot painfully down the inside of a shin, terminating in a stomp to the foot.

The fumi komi does not generate power the same way a crescent kick does. But the core movement, I argue, is the same. One merely needs to recognize it.

 

[Dirty Dog]

@Bill Mattocks I see what you're saying, but...
I'm watching the video you posted again, and I don't see any real power in the lateral movement. There's minimal hip movement, no rotation to speak of...
There's plenty of power in the stomp, though.

While there are certainly some things in this video that could be picked apart (like turning completely around), the basic technique is sound.
There's a ton of hip movement with rotation of the pelvis and torso lending power to the kick.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

@Bill Mattocks I see what you're saying, but...
I'm watching the video you posted again, and I don't see any real power in the lateral movement. There's minimal hip movement, no rotation to speak of...
There's plenty of power in the stomp, though.

While there are certainly some things in this video that could be picked apart (like turning completely around), the basic technique is sound.
There's a ton of hip movement with rotation of the pelvis and torso lending power to the kick.

I agree that the videos I posted did not generate power with the hip movement. That's why I said they're missing the goodies that are in the movement.

Sometimes I think these are the 'secrets' that everybody whispers about. It's not a secret, the ability to generate power in this way is right there in the move; the karateka just has to open their eyes and mind to see it. When applying the fumi komi, for example, I try to mindful that there is power to be had in the lateral movement of the hip and knees and to generate that power, not just 'lift the knee and move the leg over the target' like a derrick crane.

With regard to the video you posted, I see that our crescent kick and yours are slightly different if this video represents your crescent kick. I see a leg fully extended as it performs the clobbering motion. In our case, the knee comes up first, then the leg extends. It's almost like a high front snap kick that retracts along an arc instead of straight back; with the moment of contact being more the heel than the inside of the foot.

 

[Dirty Dog]

With regard to the video you posted, I see that our crescent kick and yours are slightly different if this video represents your crescent kick. I see a leg fully extended as it performs the clobbering motion. In our case, the knee comes up first, then the leg extends. It's almost like a high front snap kick that retracts along an arc instead of straight back; with the moment of contact being more the heel than the inside of the foot.

The extended leg will have more power, but be slower to the target and thus easier to block/evade. I teach both ways, because both have their place.
As a matter of fact, I had people working the various crescent kicks just this morning, and we spent some time specifically considering the pros and cons of both the straight and bent leg methods.

 

[JP3]

I blame William Shatner.

Captain Kirk had a mean tomoenage though...

Coming out of Korean styles, and never really being taught the Korean nomenclature for what we were doing in TKD & HKD (*shrug*), we called the shuto the knifehand and the haito a ridgehand, but once I sort of turned sideways on traditional TKD and went off to the more... stern... streets of hapkido, I really enjoyed all the different angles, entries, striking points etc. associated with both. For example, I was once light sparring with a guy who happened to keep his lead hand low, since he had been, and was used to be training in, a TKD school where nearly all they dealt with was kicks. After I told him 3 times his hands were low, and he'd bring them up for a second or two then they'd drop back down as he assayed a kick combination, I showed him. Very quick, light little snappy ridgehand, came straight out from the traditional boxing stance I was in, right hand flattening, and corkscrewing in to strike, slightly differently than Bill said (about the striking surface only) with the base of the thumb, the thumb's first knuckle, and the base knuckle of the forefinger (3 hard little points) and caught him on his left temple. Not truly "hard" at all, as all I was trying to do was get his attention.

Problem was, he looked off in space for about a second and a half, then slowly slumped to the floor in a kneeling, then hands and knees position. My very first experience with pressure points, apparently. Open hand strikes are sort of tuned to those, should you choose to really work on them, apparently. I don't.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

The inside crescent kick is a lovely thing for clearing out an incoming strike, for example a kick. That's about all I'd use it for. I have no outside crescent kick and can't think of a good reason to have one.

I've always thought it would be useful for that, but mine is too slow and clunky.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

@Bill Mattocks I found this

If that's typical of the application, then no, I wouldn't call it a crescent kick. I'd classify it as a stomp kick.
But I'm not about to claim that the way our system defines kicks is anything like universal.

That's how we'd identify it, too. Probably another of those situations where different systems have different reasons for calling it that way. For us, a crescent kick has to pass across the body in an arc-ish motion.

 

[Touch Of Death]

I've always thought it would be useful for that, but mine is too slow and clunky.

Pick up your heel like the floor is hot, and start the kick, from there.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Pick up your heel like the floor is hot, and start the kick, from there.

It's not the "up" that's problematic. "Up" and "down" work well. It's the lateral element that's complete crap. I have a student with several years of Shotokan - I might ask him to show me his crescent kick. I'd love to get it to something useful, and it's just a neglected part of our art, so far as I can tell.

 

[Touch Of Death]

It's not the "up" that's problematic. "Up" and "down" work well. It's the lateral element that's complete crap. I have a student with several years of Shotokan - I might ask him to show me his crescent kick. I'd love to get it to something useful, and it's just a neglected part of our art, so far as I can tell.

The idea is to make it more out and back, to a tight, heel under butt, position; so that you can gauge, a controlled step, as a landing.

 

[JR 137]

I don't use crescent kicks for blocks or anything like that. I've heard of it, but honestly only seen Jackie Chan do it.

I only use them as kicks to the head. Most people in my dojo really only use them as leg stretches during line drills. I'll mainly use them at the beginning or end of a combination, most often as a beginning. Throw two in a row, wait for my opponent to try blocking high a third time, then bury a front kick into their stomach. Or I'll use it in close range to the side of the head. Or I'll turn it into an axe kick coming straight down on the collar bone or sternum. Like everything, it's all in the setup. Set it up wrong, and it'll fail. Set it up right, and they never saw it coming. I use inside-out far more than outside-in.

Since my hips are the way they are, it's either a crescent kick to the head or roundhouse to the thigh. I can easily reach a front kick to an equally tall opponent in the nose, but that's not a high percentage move by any means for me.

When I first started hitting a bag regularly, it was ridiculously weak. My foot practically bounced off the bag. It was more of a slap than anything else. After a few weeks, it was quite powerful; I'd bury my foot in the bag.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Crescent kick is one I should work on with someone who actually uses it. The version I learned in NGA has never felt useful to me, and I've never seen someone in NGA actually put it to use in anything other than a drill for that particular kick.

I never cared for the crescent kick, but I have to say that the version I'm learning in Capoeira seems much more effective than what I've seen elsewhere. I've still got a lot of work to do before it catches up to the rest of my arsenal though.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

The movement and muscle use of the roundhouse kick, or wheel kick, inherently is able to generate multiplicatively more force than a crescent kick. Because rather than a relatively isolated movement like the crescent kick, which draws most of its power from the hips, glute, groin and hamstring, the roundhouse uses a full body torque. You can still use it, sure. I think the axeing variation of the crescent is better.

The version of the crescent kick my Capoira instructor taught me is absolutely a full body torque. Very different from what I've learned elsewhere.

 

[Juany118]

I think the reason people write it off is because they think it's designed to be used in "real fights or the UFC" rather than civilian self protection from non consensual violence.

Also people think you are supposed to strike with the hand, rather than the forearm.

The "chop" with the forearm is actually a modification for those who don't do the body hardening of the hand or practice the technique properly because both are time consuming, at least in the Ryushinkan I took (and also in the WC I currently study). The hand, if properly toughened and then the proper technique applied, has the potential to do more damage than a punch and some palm strike due to physics, same force impacting a smaller surface = more force per square inch.

 

[Juany118]

As a so-called 'karate chop', it can be used on a neck or a collarbone. I think most people can visualize how that would work. Straight down like a tomahawk chop on the collarbone, or palm up in a sideways motion to the neck, base of the skull, etc.

I find that it is also very useful if you are aiming for the area just beneath the cheek bone/orbit for a few reasons.
1. due to the narrow nature of the striking surface it can fit in there and impact part of the Trigeminal Nerve. This is one of the physiological cause of knockouts.
2. if you overshoot you hit the eye itself
3. undershoot and you hit the mandible (which doesn't like moving sideways and also causes issues with the Trigeminal Nerve.

 

[RTKDCMB]

I'd use it as a way to clear an arm out the way if they've got a weapon (e.g, a bottle, knife etc) use the kick to get it out the way then follow up.

It is a bit dangerous to do against a knife as it would be an easy way to cut your foot.

It's also, because of the way human hips work, one of the easiest kicks to use on a higher target.

It is also one of the easiest kicks to learn.

 

[Headhunter]

It is a bit dangerous to do against a knife as it would be an easy way to cut your foot.



It is also one of the easiest kicks to learn.

I'd rather have a cut foot than a knife in the stomach. Anyway you're wearing shoes so it wouldn't do much damage. In any fight with a knife involved you'll most likely get cut I'd rather get cut on the foot than the wrists