"A kick to the head of a standing opponent is one thing, a kick to the head of a kneeling opponent is another" some saying.
Kicks Kicks and more Kicks
- Thread starter terryl965
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jim777
Master Black Belt
One other positive thing about delivering a high kick to your opponents head, is that it very clearly tells the 'buddies' of the guy who started with you that you are seriously trained and ready to rock. In that regard, you might be able to keep a one on one from turning into a four or five on one by flashing a little scary technique. We all know that beer and alcohol can act as a 'courage enhancer' (love that phrase!) to some bar frequenters, well a head kick is just as effective as a 'courage remover'.
Just a thought...
Just a thought...
FearlessFreep
Senior Master
So I guess the gist of it is that "yes, kicks and even high kicks can be and have been used effectively in self defense"
Everything else is highly situational and you can 'what-if' back and forth until the wee hours without getting anywhere
Everything else is highly situational and you can 'what-if' back and forth until the wee hours without getting anywhere
On the flip side it may tell them you are just reckless enough to be a good time.
Sean
Cirdan
Senior Master
The legs are excellent weapons able to do real damage but using them often puts you more at risk than a hand technique. If you see an opening, use the tool that fits best, be it your foot, knee, hand, elbow, shoulder, wrist or whatever.
Don`t feel too confident in your kicks tho.. try having a boxer attack you with you only allowed to hold your guard and kick.
Don`t feel too confident in your kicks tho.. try having a boxer attack you with you only allowed to hold your guard and kick.
Kicking is absolutely practical in SD and when I say kicking I include high kicks to the head. The problem with kicking is that the standard of what is considered a good kicker by the main stream of MAs is so pathetically low that it diminishes the reality of kicking effectiveness. Too many people often don’t realize that a higher level of dedication and a deeper understanding of kicking is required in order to consistently and effectively land head kicks. Their training does not go beyond being able to only throw high kicks. It’s a similar situation faced by practitioners of such styles as Aikido and Hapkido. People who have minimal expiries with these systems often citizen them as being impractical and unusable. They often say “it’s fine if you do it in a demo or at ½ speed but in a real fight it doesn’t work.” Dedicated practitioners, however, know that with the popper amount and type of training these systems can be devastatingly effective. A well trained Hapkido practitioner can easily deflect a strike from a man twice his size and send him crashing to the ground with a broken wrist just as a well trained kicker can rocket a kick to the head of an attacker, putting them nearly in a coma before they hit the ground.
Those who criticize high kicking as being impractical only have a superficial understanding of theses techniques and often judge effectiveness based on their own insufficient ability or knowledge. They usually fall into at least 1 of 5 categories; 1) The MA Dancers: They come form schools that emphasize refining and honing technique but spend little to no time on how to realistically apply the technique. Their training is too theoretical, they learn a lot about doing it but not much on how to use it. These practitioners are not much more than dancers but due to their seemingly high level of proficiency they are considered expert kickers. In reality they are only good at kicking the air and perhaps a few boards. 2) The “I’m really good at (insert style here) but I can’t get high kicks to work so they must be ineffective.” type: They come from a system which never emphasized kicks of this nature. If they do train them they are usually just tacked on to their original system and are not given the specific dedication that they require. These practitioner just take the low kicks they normally use, throw them higher and call it a day. Another problem is that many of the philosophies and methods of their systems are incompatible whit high kicking, severely limiting the effectiveness of these techniques. These MAist may be very capable fighters when it comes to hand strikes, low kicks and grappling but useless with high kicks. This does not mean that high kick don’t work, they just don’t work form them. 3) The Sport Nuts: These practitioners are unable to tell the difference between a combat sport and a combative system. They fail to recognize how the restrictive nature of sports dramatically reduce the effectiveness of striking. Eliminating many of the best targets and prohibiting or diminishing the use of tactics that ensure a higher success rate. If they participate in a sport that includes high kicks, they only know how to use them when applied in accordance to the rules of their game and not in a more realistic SD manner. They refuse to acknowledge the huge difference in training between being able to put your foot in the air to score a point or possibly KO an opponent in the ring and being able to consistently land a fast, powerful kick to the head of a violent attacker, immediately ending the altercation. 4) Too Old or Out of Shape: Learning to kick properly takes twice as much effort as learning how to strike with the hand (those who do, understand it is well worth it) and becomes exponentially more difficult with increased age. Even one who begins in their early 20s is at a sizable disadvantage when compared to a child in early adolescence. Flexibility, coordination and balance become serious obstacles for mature beginners to overcome. Without an extremely high level of dedication, high kicking remains awkward and unnatural for MAist who began at a later age. Consequently, their reliance on and appreciation for these techniques are low. High kicks are also physically demanding. If a practitioner is not fit their execution will be far less than ideal and not suitable for SD. 5)They learned from someone mentioned above: If one studies under an instructor who falls into any of the categories previously mentioned they are likely to never acquire the skills or knowledge necessary in order to be a practical high kicker and will share their instructors low opinion of these techniques for SD.
Very true, but the same can be said of and technique or style. I once witnessed a very competent BJJist resort to picking up a chair and swinging it like a mad man during a bar brawl. Why? Because the floor was covered in broken glass and the drunken thug who would have been the target of his takedown had a group of rowdy friends who would have liked nothing more than to stomp him into “chunky-style tomato sauce” as soon as he hit the ground. On another occasion, a good friend of mine, who was a Golden Gloves boxer, backed down (very uncharacteristically) from psycho motorcyclist who began to kick our car and pound on the windshield and driver side window after scratching his bike on the fender while trying to weave through traffic. As my friend told his soon to be ex-girlfriend who ridiculed him for the remainder of the drive home, “What you want me to do…break my hands on his helmet? It’s not like I could’ve lit him up wit body shots. He was wearing a f****** padded leather jacket, they would've done s***! Now shut up already! PLEASE!”
The issue isn’t whether or not kicking is appropriate for every situation, no single technique or method is, but if kicks (more specifically high kicks) can be relied upon in a real SD event; which I believe they can.
searcher
Senior Master
This is the exact dilemma I have going on today. There is quite a bit of ice and snow on the ground outside and I don't regularly train on that surface, so higher kicks are out for SD.
Just because kicking in general or high kicks in particular are ill advised in certain situations does not mean they should never be used. Everything has its place.
A person who has put the time in to master kicking is a formidable weapon. I have known people personally who used middle and high kicking successfully in self defense.
A person who has put the time in to master kicking is a formidable weapon. I have known people personally who used middle and high kicking successfully in self defense.
There is no right way to do a wrong thing.
Sean
I’m sorry, I need a bit of clarification. Are you agreeing with me?…saying that the type of people I mentioned above can not perform a high kicks the “right way” because their understanding and training is “wrong”, therefore they’re not in a position to determine the true effectiveness of these techniques. Or are you disagreeing with me?…implying that there is no “right way” to do a high kick for SD, they’re just the “wrong thing“ to do, period.
Marginal
Senior Master
In a lot of SD cases in the news, even when the high kick lands and Ko's the attacker, the kicker ends up in trouble. Would be attacker's brain is turned to slurry upon hitting the pavement resulting in their death, it's seen as a severe overreaction etc. They can work, but like anything, situational awareness is very important.
The latter, but respectfully.
Sean
Oh...OK. Thank you. Not to sound rude, but perhaps you can share with us what experience you have that allows you to declare so definitively the ineffectiveness of high kicks for SD.
searcher
Senior Master
I would hope so as well, on the first part of your statement.
And on the second portion, some of us had to learn the hard way. Myself, very much included.
Look, guys... I don't think this issue is resolvable. I've thought a lot about it since the old, now semi-legendary high-kick thread that caused so much grief way back, and it's occurred to me that a lot of the problem is that the nature of the argument is not what it seems to be about, going by the way people post on the topic. The argument is often framed as 'High kicks aren't practical'/'Wrong! High kicks are very practical!'. But I think that's not really the issue. I think what all of this kind of argument about is really a difference of opinion in the assessment of inherent risk.
Here's what I think of as the main facts about high kicks:
PRO
- Kicks at their best are more powerful than punches at their best.
- The head is possibly the highest valued target on the body.
CON
- Kicks have to travel a good deal further to reach high targets than hand/arm techs.
- Kicks compromise balance in proportion to the the height of the kick.
The last point is well illustrated by comparing the stability of a bottle of wine standing upright with the stability of the same bottle standing upside down on its top. There's not going to be any real argument about which is more stable, even though someone who spends many years practicing the trick might be able to grab a bottle of while from a rack and plunk it down, upside down, on the table, in one go, leaving it perfectly stable. I have no doubt it can be done. But that doesn't change the fact that the position is inherently less stable than if it's sitting on its much wider bottom. In the same way, when you raise a leg—a very heavy part of the body. I've seen estimates of 20% of total body weight somewhere for each leg. And the higher you raise one leg, the higher your center of gravity shifts, while at the same time, the radius over which that weight is distributed shrinks by half. A relatively high center of gravity supported on a narrow base is just intrinsically way less stable than a having a low center of gravity with a wide base of support, which compromises stability, and is therefor risky, to a significantly greater extent as the height at which one of the legs is increased. This isn't controversial, surely? So the argument really comes down to this: is is possible to train kicking techs so that the pros above can be exploited reliably enough to outweigh the cons, and is that possibility accessible enough for the normal trainee? And most important, is the time devoted to such training by the normal trainee better spent than the same amount of time spent on other techs which didn't compromise stability to the same degree (but possibly also lacked the advantages of the high kicks listed above under PRO)?
The thing is, I think that in principle you cannot answer this question reliably—in a way, that is, that generalizes across the whole spectrum of practitioners. A story of an unsuccessful use of high kicks does not signify any more than a story of a successful kick, because by the very nature of the question, individual anecdotes aren't going to be definitive. People do very risky dangerous things and get away with them (most of us wouldn't have lived to adulthood if that weren't the case). On the other hand, people go in for a simple bit of dental work, go into shock from the anæsthetic, and die. It takes very detailed data and very sophisticated analysis to come up with a robust assessment of risk even where we have a huge amount of data under controlled circumstances—and that's hardly what we have in looking at the use of kicking techniques in street attacks, eh? So in the end, what you always seem to come down to is a personal assessment of risk, based on your view of your own abilities (maybe more accurate, maybe less), of the kind of attacks you're likely to be facing and the kinds of environments where they're likely to happen (again, maybe more accurate, maybe less accurate), of the relevance of other people's experience, and a host of additional factors that, taken all together, seem to me to rule out definitive or even very probably status for any one person's answer.
But I'll say this: I think it's a mistake to dismiss people's opinions on the basis of their presumed lack of competence in kicking. Take age: I learned TKD kicking starting in my mid-fifties, and I've only been doing it for five years. But on the other hand I can in fact kick high, accurately and powerfully (as measured by board breaking, say), and I still have the balance skills and reactions of the slalom ski racer that I once was, along with biomarkers that I wouldn't trade for those of most forty- (and many thirty-) year olds. I train high kicks more than anything else... because, as I say, they're intrinsically more difficult. But the issue isn't my ability to deliver powerful high kicks, but my assessment of the risk involved relative to other techs. I emphasize, that's my personal assessment, based on many factors, and I certainly can't say that a high kick in an violent encounter with a experienced street thug/sadistic bully will never work. My own personal judgment is that the inherent risks are excessive, compared with what I can do with hand, elbow, knee, and low-target kicking techs. I know that f2f's assessment differs from mine in this respect, but I submit that the basis for his judgment and mine are largely the same: a certain amount of personal experience with street violence, and best-guesses as to what we'll be facing in a street assault and what will work most reliably.
My own inclination is to be guided by people who fight bloody, brutal and no-rules for a living—and LEOs, personal protection pros, and especially club security people are probably the best guides to that kind of information. I find it reasonable to weight very heavily the judgment of someone like Geoff Thompson, widely viewed as the 'dean' of British street combat veterans for his decade of work as a doorman/bouncer in some of the roughest clubs in Coventry, one of the UK's roughest towns for that sort of thing. Thompson has been involved in 300 police-documented incidents (official reports are part of the professional doorman's job; it's CYA with a vengeance over there), and this is what he has to say:
When the time and distance are suitable, kicking techniques can be invaluable. Unfortunately, a favourable range for this type of technique is a rarity, and I can see little point in manufacturing kicking distance when other attacking techniques are already immediately available... kicking is a highly skilful art, but it doesn't take a M.E.N.S.A. membership to realise that two feet on the ground are more stable and mobile than one... there is nothing to gain and everything to lose by taking risks. I spent the first ten years of my martial arts training learning to kick, and I am a good kicker, only to find that when the pavement was my arena, my kicks fell short of adequate
High kicks aimed at face height impair the balance markedly. On an uneven or slippery surface this could prove to be very dangerous, leaving the kicker at the mercy of his opponent... This is not to say that high kicks do not work, only that the risk factor is very high and the penalty for a mistake even higher.
High kicks aimed at face height impair the balance markedly. On an uneven or slippery surface this could prove to be very dangerous, leaving the kicker at the mercy of his opponent... This is not to say that high kicks do not work, only that the risk factor is very high and the penalty for a mistake even higher.
(The Pavement Arena, pp.25–30) I cite Thompson as an instance of a professional real-world fighter and MA experimentalist, who has trained just about all the techs out there with his equally street-combat-experienced partners in the British Combat Association, people like Peter Consterdine, 8th dan Shotokan, former UK karate International team member, with ten years bouncer's experience in Manchester, a specialist in the close personal security business with his own company in that line, and many others of that steel-hard group—you folks from the UK know who I'm talking about here, and what these guys are like. Thompson is offering what he sees as practical risk assessment from one who's taken more risks, probably, than any ten of us who aren't in law enforcement will in our whole lives. He's trying to explain why he doesn't favor high kicks in most situations. You can disagree with him, but I think it's way off the mark to say that if he only knew how to kick high his opinion would change.
My point is just that you can be a very good kicker and experienced fighter and still find high kicks too risky in all but a few, relatively rarely occurring kinds of situations. And logically speaking, you might have the same skill and experience level and find high kicks within your radius of acceptable risk. And you both might be right: the first person might simply demand a lower level of risk than the second to qualify that risk as 'acceptable'. In the end, I just don't think the question can be given a quantitatively definative answer. I think that's partly why it often seems to lead to so much heat and intensity.
OP
OP
All of us did hopefully and we better to remember to use everything if need be.
newGuy12
Master of Arts
No, it is not resolvable.
No, it cannot be answered so nicely. There are other things involved too. Myself, I do not fancy myself to be a good street fighter. And, to be honest, that is not my goal.
NewGuy12 is crazy, everyone now thinks. Oh no, I am not.
I could, if I wish, seek out Teachers to show me very violent techniques to maim, kill, destroy targets very efficiently. They could drill me with their other students in manner to hardcode all of these methods into my brain and body. I could then be very vicious if I were attacked. I know some Teachers who can teach these methods.
I prefer the School that I am at. Why? Because it gives me a more happy feeling. I get a more "total package". This is not for everyone, but is the way that I choose, for ME (only). Everyone must choose (at least, those that HAVE a choice).
So, I do not practice this primarily for SD. I am so situated in my life that I do not daily meet such danger. It is a calculated risk that I take to NOT study with such a goal, you see.
I enjoy big kicking motions. They feel good to do. I like the BIG feeling. It has a powerful feeling and is very expressive, and enjoyable. Some like to grab, some like to strike with the hands more, everyone to his own.
But, consider this -- if *I* were attacked, say, bearing in mind that I primarily kick, and not strike with the hand so much, do you think that I would, given the chance, try to land a kick?
In a NY minute!
But I am not a bouncer. I am not a bodyguard or law enforcement officer. I am not some thug who goes around and "collects debts" or any such thing. I am not one that has to fight all of the time. With that in mind, I practice what gives me pleasure to practice.
IF I am ever attacked, well, then, the chips must fall where they may. But to give up what I love to practice, just for "insurance" in the event that somewhere in the nebulous future I will be attacked, no, I will not make that trade.
There is more to this idea, you see.
