Anyone else have this problem?

[exile]

I do a lot of balance/pivot training for my kicks, trying to isolate the pivot in various phases, since I've found that a lot of trouble that people have with kicking comes from technically sloppy pivots. It dawned on me recently that when I pivot 180º for a side kick, my weight winds up right on the outside edge of my pivoting foot, and that foot is slightly raised off the ground so that all the weight is on that outside edge.

When I first started skiing in the mid '70s, my instructor thought I wasn't standing quite right on my skis and told me to go to a ski shop to be tested for cants. The guy working the cant machine had me sept on the testing rails, and when I stepped off he asked, 'Um, when you a kid, did you happen to break both legs in a bad accident?' And he was more than half serious. Turns out that my legs are severely bowed outward from the knee down—apparently this was some kind of minor birth defect—though it's not visible when I'm just standing normally. It emerges very clearly when I pivot for kicking, though, and to get back on the full sole of my foot, I have to kind of kink my knee inward as soon as the pivot is completed. It makes pivoting a lot more complicated than it would be for someone without that skeletal problem, and I'm wondering, do any of you also have that problem, or something like it?

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

Hey Exile,

You are absolutely right on in that alot of people have trouble because of poor pivoting of their base foot. One need only look to the Tae Kwon Do installment of the Human Weapon at the end to see Jason do an advanced kick and injured his knee because of poor pivoting. So it is very important to pivot at the right point in time and this can be learned by kicking slowly and with a trained instructor. (that is real important) Failure to pivot properly and you risk knee injury.

 

[exile]

Hey Exile,

You are absolutely right on in that alot of people have trouble because of poor pivoting of their base foot. One need only look to the Tae Kwon Do installment of the Human Weapon at the end to see Jason do an advanced kick and injured his knee because of poor pivoting. So it is very important to pivot at the right point in time and this can be learned by kicking slowly and with a trained instructor. (that is real important) Failure to pivot properly and you risk knee injury.

Right, direct injury from the failed pivot and loss of baland damaging your joint, or falling down as a result of being off balance and getting hammered by your oppo! Not nice either way...

The difference between (i) executing a technically sound pivot on a 'normal' leg vs. (ii) doing so when you have this kind of excessive pronation of one of your feet because of anatomical/skeletal problems seems to be considerable, and is yet another reason why it makes sense to isolate the pivoting component and pay close attention to what's happening as you carry out that phase of the kick. I don't know how common that particular problem is—given the fact that I needed the biiggest cants currently being manufactured and the ski shop guy said that they still weren't quite big enough, I suspect I'm in worse shape in this respect than most other folks—but it could be more common than people realize and be interfering with their kicking technique without them being aware of the fact...

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

Right, direct injury from the failed pivot and loss of baland damaging your joint, or falling down as a result of being off balance and getting hammered by your oppo! Not nice either way...

The difference between (i) executing a technically sound pivot on a 'normal' leg vs. (ii) doing so when you have this kind of excessive pronation of one of your feet because of anatomical/skeletal problems seems to be considerable, and is yet another reason why it makes sense to isolate the pivoting component and pay close attention to what's happening as you carry out that phase of the kick. I don't know how common that particular problem is—given the fact that I needed the biiggest cants currently being manufactured and the ski shop guy said that they still weren't quite big enough, I suspect I'm in worse shape in this respect than most other folks—but it could be more common than people realize and be interfering with their kicking technique without them being aware of the fact...

Hey Exile,

I can absolutely see that being an issue for you and probably many people who have some degree of pronation. Definately something to pay attention to when showing the finer points of kicking and explain to people how they need to adjust to relieve stress to their base leg.

 

[Adept]

Hey Exile,

You are absolutely right on in that alot of people have trouble because of poor pivoting of their base foot.

Absolutely.

When I first started helping out with instruction, I made a point of making sure that everyone I worked with was using the pivoting foot correctly. For most, the change in technique and ability was significant, and immediate!

 

[Xue Sheng]

I do a lot of balance/pivot training for my kicks, trying to isolate the pivot in various phases, since I've found that a lot of trouble that people have with kicking comes from technically sloppy pivots. It dawned on me recently that when I pivot 180º for a side kick, my weight winds up right on the outside edge of my pivoting foot, and that foot is slightly raised off the ground so that all the weight is on that outside edge.

When I first started skiing in the mid '70s, my instructor thought I wasn't standing quite right on my skis and told me to go to a ski shop to be tested for cants. The guy working the cant machine had me sept on the testing rails, and when I stepped off he asked, 'Um, when you a kid, did you happen to break both legs in a bad accident?' And he was more than half serious. Turns out that my legs are severely bowed outward from the knee down—apparently this was some kind of minor birth defect—though it's not visible when I'm just standing normally. It emerges very clearly when I pivot for kicking, though, and to get back on the full sole of my foot, I have to kind of kink my knee inward as soon as the pivot is completed. It makes pivoting a lot more complicated than it would be for someone without that skeletal problem, and I'm wondering, do any of you also have that problem, or something like it?

Yes I have

Relax your shoulders and lower your center to just below your navel and about 1 inch in.

 

[shesulsa]

Ah! I see you're studying the pivoting factor we discussed (and people say I don't talk about training)

It is never more clear than after spending considerable time taking note of one's own pivot challenges and those of others just how imperative good pivot habits are.

But you pose an important dilemma - what of skeletal structure challenges? Do we put shoes on these folk?

Exile, have you found a workaround or a compensation yet? I wonder if a knee bent a little more (the pivoting leg) would help? I hesitate to think it would.

 

[Kacey]

Hey Exile,

You are absolutely right on in that alot of people have trouble because of poor pivoting of their base foot. One need only look to the Tae Kwon Do installment of the Human Weapon at the end to see Jason do an advanced kick and injured his knee because of poor pivoting. So it is very important to pivot at the right point in time and this can be learned by kicking slowly and with a trained instructor. (that is real important) Failure to pivot properly and you risk knee injury.

Ain't that the truth! I also agree with the teaching method; I use slow-motion kicks, and 3-5 count kicks (stopping at specified points during the kick) to break down the motions and be sure that a) my students are performing the kick correctly, and b) I get a chance to really look at each student's kick and make corrections before injuries occur.

Students who can perform the kicks correctly slowly and by count who cannot perform the kick correctly regular speed are often having problems with pivoting.

The surface on which you are standing can also affect pivoting. When I first started, we were in a YMCA, in a room with a cement floor. Several years after I started, the Y bought new mats for the gym, and put the old ones in the room we used. They were great for rolling, falling, and throwing - they were about 3" thick. During other parts of class, however, we quickly decided to roll them up and leave them to one side, as they were so thick, and more, so cushy, that it was horribly easy to sink into the mat and not pivot properly, both because of the depth and because they were slightly sticky, especially once your feet started to sweat.

Carpet can cause similar problems - not because it's cushy, usually, but because it can catch your feet and keep you from pivoting as far as you think you are.

Hard, smooth surfaces - hardwood, especially hardwood dance floors - are the best, especially if you're barefoot. When I lived in my condo, I didn't have room to practice in my condo (it was too small, even without furniture - with furniture... let's just say I'm not gymnastic enough), so I was practicing on the grassy areas... until I realized that not all my neighbors were as conscientious as I was in picking up after their dogs :disgust:. Then I started using the tennis courts - but the surface on tennis courts is deliberately allowed to dry rough, for better traction, so barefoot was out of the question; I ended up buying a pair of swim shoes with rubber soles (MA shoes with leather soles would have been ripped to shreds). But then I had to really watch the pivoting, because the rubber on the shoes would catch the rough spots in the concrete.

 

[HelloKitty]

Turns out that my legs are severely bowed outward from the knee down [...] I'm wondering, do any of you also have that problem, or something like it?

I had a lot of problems with pivot and balance because I have flat foot and some of this bowed-legs problem too (not severe, people can't notice it, but iIhave it and it's annoying when I kick). Even jogging was difficult at the beggining and it's so easy to hurt the knees and ankles. And jumping? mission impossible!

The only effective way I found is stepping only with the front part of the foot, and sometimes with the outside parts (its helps me a lot for balance in high kicks). And it gives some rest to the knees too.

 

[donna]

The surface on which you are standing can also affect pivoting. When I first started, we were in a YMCA, in a room with a cement floor. Several years after I started, the Y bought new mats for the gym, and put the old ones in the room we used. They were great for rolling, falling, and throwing - they were about 3" thick. During other parts of class, however, we quickly decided to roll them up and leave them to one side, as they were so thick, and more, so cushy, that it was horribly easy to sink into the mat and not pivot properly, both because of the depth and because they were slightly sticky, especially once your feet started to sweat.

Carpet can cause similar problems - not because it's cushy, usually, but because it can catch your feet and keep you from pivoting as far as you think you are.

Hard, smooth surfaces - hardwood, especially hardwood dance floors - are the best, especially if you're barefoot. .

I totally agree. The mats where I train were terrible for trying to pivot. Some people tried to train in shoes or in socks but it still caused problems. We just had to be very conscious of the fact and make allowances. There were strains and knee problems though that could have been due to the matting.

 

[exile]

Hey Exile,

I can absolutely see that being an issue for you and probably many people who have some degree of pronation. Definately something to pay attention to when showing the finer points of kicking and explain to people how they need to adjust to relieve stress to their base leg.

It's one of those small points that translates into a big difference. This is something you often hear a lot from experienced MAists—that very small refinements and alterations in body configuration translated into major differences in biomechanics—but it's the first time I've ever sort of run up against that small-difference/major-effect relationship as a problem in my own training. Makes you wonder how many things like that there are that you haven't noticed. If I hadn't already had experienced with pronation difficulties in my skiing training, I might not have twigged to what was going on when I was doing these slow pivots with a lot of focus on what the sensations involved were. People who've written stuff I've read about the training of ballet dancers have commented that a half an inch of misplacement in where the hand or head should be is enough to make certain moves impossible to execute with control, and I've heard the same thing from gymnastics commentators on television. It just goes to show that you really need to be aware of how your limbs are position, down the smallest detail...

Absolutely.

When I first started helping out with instruction, I made a point of making sure that everyone I worked with was using the pivoting foot correctly. For most, the change in technique and ability was significant, and immediate!

... right, and that's the up-side of it: if you can identify problems and make the necessary corrections, then a small difference in execution can translate into a big improvement. This is why a really good instructor will often focus on details that students don't see the point of, at first... save an awful lot of trouble later on if you learn to do it right to start with. And kicks are notoriously difficult for students to get the hang of.

Yes I have

Relax your shoulders and lower your center to just below your navel and about 1 inch in.

Thanks for the tip, XS—will experiment with that movement, along with a couple of others I've been working on.

Ah! I see you're studying the pivoting factor we discussed (and people say I don't talk about training)

This whole thing started with that exercise you suggested here and the followup exchange. As a result of your comments, I started turning my pivoting workouts into extended self-awareness sessions on balance in circular motion and all the adjustments you have to make with both your upper and lower body—and eventually the pronation weirdness started registering: ah, so that's what's going on.

It is never more clear than after spending considerable time taking note of one's own pivot challenges and those of others just how imperative good pivot habits are.

But you pose an important dilemma - what of skeletal structure challenges? Do we put shoes on these folk?

It's a hard one, because of an issue that I was worrying about in a different thread a while back: do we do best to train for maximum adaptability, or for ideal realization, of a technique? They kind of grind against each other, because for the first, you want to make things as difficult as you can so that you become maximally fluid in adapting to imperfect (i.e., normal and typical) conditions, while for the second, you want everything to be as easy as possible so you get a kind of prototype of the tech fixed in your mind—an imprint in muscle memory of how it should feel when everything is working perfectly. It occurred to me through the course of that thread that maybe the best thing to do would be to start off training for ideal realization of the tech, to get that imprint fixed; then, once you've got it located securely in that place where our body-sense of good technique lives, to train for adverse conditions to give yourself training in reaching that ideal body sense even when the environment is fighting you. You may well have to deliver that hard side kick on a rain-slick, sloping surface, but if you've worked out what it's like to kick correctly on such a surface in training, then you have a much better chance of doing it when you have to in RL.

So I think the answer to your question, Shesulsa, is yes: it might well be best to start people off with special inserts in their MA shoes that correct the pronation, so that they have the sensation of standing flat, the way cants do when they're attached under your bindings to level out your stance on skis.
Once people have the sense of how it has to feel doing it with a perfectly level footprint, they then have to recreate that body-sense barefoot, but now they have a target to aim at, knowing as they do what 'works'. Which leads to the next point you raise...

Exile, have you found a workaround or a compensation yet? I wonder if a knee bent a little more (the pivoting leg) would help? I hesitate to think it would.

Actually, that is indeed what I have found to work for my problem. Once the 180º turn is complete, you get a very short space of time in which you can stay in equilibrium on that outward-tipped outside edge of your pivotting leg, but to maintain that equilibrium so that you can then confidently deliver the thrusting strike with your kicking leg parallel to the floor, you have to slightly bend your knee and roll it slightly toward the inside, which has the effect of flattening your foot completely and allowing you to distribute your weight over the whole surface of your sole. It's a small, subtle and delicate movement, but since I've started doing it I've found that I've been able to get the range better so that I'm getting it right more than 50% of the time, whereas when I first started playing with the technique I was missing it three out of four, or more. Like anything else, it's a matter of practice, but it also requires that you 'listen' to what your body is doing as the motion proceeds, and not just your lower body in this case, but the upper body too—if your hands are positioned wrong, for example, it's much harder to make the small corrections that keep you in balance.

Ain't that the truth! I also agree with the teaching method; I use slow-motion kicks, and 3-5 count kicks (stopping at specified points during the kick) to break down the motions and be sure that a) my students are performing the kick correctly, and b) I get a chance to really look at each student's kick and make corrections before injuries occur.

Students who can perform the kicks correctly slowly and by count who cannot perform the kick correctly regular speed are often having problems with pivoting.

This is an important and, for me, somewhat mysterious aspect of the teaching process. I've noticed that there are different demands on balance in doing a slow-motion pivot followed by a slow-mo thrusting extension, on the one hand, and a slow pivot followed by a fast, full-force thrust—in both cases, freezing the kicking leg in extended position, securely balanced, for 10 or 20 seconds. The demands seem to be somewhat different. And it changes again if you make the pivots in the two cases fast, rather than slow. I can easily imagine having a session every so often where you did nothing but ran students through those four possibilities—slow pivot, slow extension; slow pivot, fast extension; fast pivot, slow extension; fast pivot, fast extension, with the extension frozen in place in all four cases—for the whole 90 minutes. And ideally, they would work on this exercise at home. Getting the pivot right and the balance established for the thrusting kick is tricky enough that people really need to accept the idea that they have to..., well, practice!

The surface on which you are standing can also affect pivoting. When I first started, we were in a YMCA, in a room with a cement floor.

Ouch, ouch, ouch... too much shock!

Several years after I started, the Y bought new mats for the gym, and put the old ones in the room we used. They were great for rolling, falling, and throwing - they were about 3" thick. During other parts of class, however, we quickly decided to roll them up and leave them to one side, as they were so thick, and more, so cushy, that it was horribly easy to sink into the mat and not pivot properly, both because of the depth and because they were slightly sticky, especially once your feet started to sweat.

Yes, I've found that for kicking training, mats are the kiss of death. Challenging surfaces are good, but there's such a thing as too challenging. In our school, we have one room, really huge, with wall-to-wall wrestling mats, and it's a nightmare to try to train pivoting on. Even the thinner mats can seriously distort your sense of where you are in space as you rotate.

Carpet can cause similar problems - not because it's cushy, usually, but because it can catch your feet and keep you from pivoting as far as you think you are.

Hard, smooth surfaces - hardwood, especially hardwood dance floors - are the best, especially if you're barefoot.

Complete agreement with that. Even a thin, 'industrial' type carpet can make you feel as though you're fighting the floor in order to do basic kicks in perfect form.

I can see that once you've mastered the fundamental technique, training on treacherous surfaces could be a very useful way of extending your envelope of comfort so that your balance compensation skills are really extended to the maximum. But for students who aren't at a fairly advanced level of skill, that sort of interference is pretty discouraging. I see it with my own people, when we can't train in the enormous hardwood gym that's usually open to us at the community center we use. Going from the wood floor to the carpet makes everyone feel like a complete beginner again.

When I lived in my condo, I didn't have room to practice in my condo (it was too small, even without furniture - with furniture... let's just say I'm not gymnastic enough), so I was practicing on the grassy areas... until I realized that not all my neighbors were as conscientious as I was in picking up after their dogs :disgust:.

Yuck!!! Talk about less than ideal conditions...

Then I started using the tennis courts - but the surface on tennis courts is deliberately allowed to dry rough, for better traction, so barefoot was out of the question; I ended up buying a pair of swim shoes with rubber soles (MA shoes with leather soles would have been ripped to shreds). But then I had to really watch the pivoting, because the rubber on the shoes would catch the rough spots in the concrete.

I've had similar problems using MA shoes on broken asphalt (aka our back driveway).

I had a lot of problems with pivot and balance because I have flat foot and some of this bowed-legs problem too (not severe, people can't notice it, but iIhave it and it's annoying when I kick). Even jogging was difficult at the beggining and it's so easy to hurt the knees and ankles. And jumping? mission impossible!

The only effective way I found is stepping only with the front part of the foot, and sometimes with the outside parts (its helps me a lot for balance in high kicks). And it gives some rest to the knees too.

What I find is really important in all this is to allow your weight to `settle' (once you do the pivot and then get your weight moved back in via that knee 'roll' I mentioned) in a direction which is right over, and strictly parallel to, the long axis of your foot. In other words, (i) pivot, (ii) roll your pivoting foot towards the inside so its flat, and (iii) let your weight come 'down' (this may be in line with Xue Sheng's suggestion above) so that it's right over the long line of your foot, dead center and forward—on the ball of that foot. In that position, all other things being equal, you have the best chance of being in good enough equilibrium to fire off a hard kick in perfect balance... or as perfect as balance ever is...