How to Be More Limber for the Front Kick

[stoneheart]

Any of you gurus have tips to share on how to improve front kick flexibility? I do a drill where the front kick is done in 4 counts slowly: raise knee, extend, retract, and down. Each segment is performed at a speed of about 2-3 seconds to improve leg strength, but I notice some difficulty extending the leg completely straight when doing it slowly. Do you think this is a strength issue or a flexibility issue? If the latter, any suggestions on a stretch to help out? Thanks.

 

[seasoned]

Any of you gurus have tips to share on how to improve front kick flexibility? I do a drill where the front kick is done in 4 counts slowly: raise knee, extend, retract, and down. Each segment is performed at a speed of about 2-3 seconds to improve leg strength, but I notice some difficulty extending the leg completely straight when doing it slowly. Do you think this is a strength issue or a flexibility issue? If the latter, any suggestions on a stretch to help out? Thanks.

Two person stretch. Your partner and you face each other. Your partner gets into a horse stance and you place your leg on their shoulder. They slowly come up out of their stance while you maintain a good front kick position. Once you have reached your max on hight, hold that position. They get to practice their stance while you get to stretch, then switch. This is a great win, win situation. If no partner then use your dresser at home, while you do deep knee bends with your support leg, your other leg gets to stretch. Once again a win, win situation. One leg gets strong, while the other stretches, then switch. Good luck.

 

[Kacey]

Two person stretch. Your partner and you face each other. Your partner gets into a horse stance and you place your leg on their shoulder. They slowly come up out of their stance while you maintain a good front kick position. Once you have reached your max on hight, hold that position. They get to practice their stance while you get to stretch, then switch. This is a great win, win situation. If no partner then use your dresser at home, while you do deep knee bends with your support leg, your other leg gets to stretch. Once again a win, win situation. One leg gets strong, while the other stretches, then switch. Good luck.

Those are both great stretches - here are a few more:

Stand on the edge of a stair, with just the balls of your feet on the tread; allow your heels to drop below the level of the stair, as far as you can go. As this gets easier, drop farther; easier still, do one foot at a time (hold onto the stair rail).

Rising kick stretches - this is the dynamic side of the stretches above. From a walking (front) stance, swing the rear leg as high as it will go, keeping the knee straight; this will stretch the hamstring. Do 10 on each side. As this gets easier, kick higher, keeping your foot in front kick position. Vary the stretch by kicking across your body and to the outside diagonally from your starting point.

Sit on the floor with one leg in front of you and one bent in so the sole of the foot on the bent leg is on the thigh of the straight leg, as close to your body as it can get. Keeping the back straight, bend from the hips and reach for your toes; if you can't reach them, grab your ankle or shin, and hold for 5-10 seconds; repeat 10 times on each leg. Ultimately, you want to be able to get your entire hand on your foot, reaching over your toes.

From the same position as the previous stretch, extend your foot into a front kick position, then raise it as far up as you can, using your hands on the floor for balance; hold for 5-10 seconds and repeat 10 times on each leg.

Ultimately, however, the way to improve your kicks for slow motion kicking is to kick more - try holding on to the back of a chair or a wall so your balance does not distract you from extending your kick.

 

[ATC]

Any of you gurus have tips to share on how to improve front kick flexibility? I do a drill where the front kick is done in 4 counts slowly: raise knee, extend, retract, and down. Each segment is performed at a speed of about 2-3 seconds to improve leg strength, but I notice some difficulty extending the leg completely straight when doing it slowly. Do you think this is a strength issue or a flexibility issue? If the latter, any suggestions on a stretch to help out? Thanks.

How's your ax kick? If you can keep your leg straight and do a high ax kick then your issue is not flexibility but strength in the quads and hamstring. If your ax kick is also bent and you can't throw it high then your need to work both flexibility and strength. It won't come easy or fast by over time you will get better. Just keep working on it. Kick a lot and kick as high as you can. Both flexibility and strength will come. You need to perform hundreds of kicks each and every day.

When both of my kids were Jr. belts I had them do a minimum of 500 kicks per day, usually doing upwards of 1000 was more the norm. Now they can do every kick there is with easy and to the head or above. See my avatar of my daughters round kick. They can do this with side, front, back or any other kick. Trust me when they first started they could not kick past their waist.

 

[jks9199]

As noted above, there are generally two limiters on extending the front kick. The first is flexibility, primarily in the hamstrings and hip flexors. I'm not going to try to reprise what you can find better in a good book on stretching.

The other limiter is strength. Even if you've got the flexibility to extend the kick, you need the strength to extend it. There are three main muscle groups involved: Quadriceps, hamstrings/gluteals, and hip flexors again. There are plenty of weight training books to address this; I'm recently a fan of The New Rules of Lifting by Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove. It's a whole body approach oriented around movements, not individual muscles.

You can also do some particular targeted exercises. Four count kicking is one; if you can't hold the leg up, use your hands to hold it up as you extend the kick. You can practice over chairs or other obstacles to help encourage you to keep your leg up.