TKD proper kicking techniqoes

terryl965

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How important is proper kicking techniques in your training? Does this same vphilosophy important to be street effective with your kicking?

How much real wieght is enough when you shift from front to back while proformimg the kicks?

Is proper hip posistion enough or do we need center balance more?

Like to hear everyone view on this.
 

newGuy12

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How important is proper kicking techniques in your training?

Very important. They should meet a certain standard, and that means that everyone has to practice them a lot.

How much real wieght is enough when you shift from front to back while proformimg the kicks?

This confuses me a little. Real weight vs fake weight? I take this to mean "do you step through the target?" If that is what is meant, then, yes, sometimes, especially with certain front kicks, you commit to moving FORWARD.

But, most kicks the way that we practice them, you should be able to stop just short of the target, or, for that matter, lightly touch the target, or, of course, decide JUST EXACTLY how much penetration, energy to give to the target.

Is proper hip posistion enough or do we need center balance more?

The position of the waist is most important. It is critical. Power comes from the waist. This question seems to imply that waist position to give a better kick can compromise the balance, and this does not make sense to me. I do not understand this question.

Like to hear everyone view on this.

Haha -- you said everyone, so there you go!
 

TKDJUDO

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It's probably very important to execute proper kicking techniques in training because there's always more room for improvement. In a situation on the street where you are threatened, I think that it is crucial to apply these kicking techniques as perfect as you can. I'm an assistant instructor at my school and I always stress to the lower belt students to practice, practice, practice because you don't know when you might need to use these techniques in order to defend yourself.

Now, as to hip position or center balance, I personally rely on center balance more because my hip position is just automatic for me when I execute my kicks. I don't really know whether it's the same for others, but balance seems to be key when I train.
 
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terryl965

terryl965

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Originally Posted by terryl965
Is proper hip posistion enough or do we need center balance more?

The position of the waist is most important. It is critical. Power comes from the waist. This question seems to imply that waist position to give a better kick can compromise the balance, and this does not make sense to me. I do not understand this question.

Some people throw there hips into a kick which leaves them with no center balance to land properly, they land leaning that way or falling do to excessive turning the hips while kicking. I am sure you have sen students throw every ounce of there body into a kick and then land on there *** because of it.
 
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terryl965

terryl965

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Yes, I have seen this. No, maintain the balance. To do otherwise is sloppy, as far as I know.

I agree but everyday i recieve students from other school that have BB paper and my God they cannot even throw a proper roundhouse with center balance it just amazws me all the time. The new guy I have now is a Kukkiwon certified BB and has no clue how to throw kicks it is like I am teaching a white belt when he is a BB on paper.
 

dancingalone

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Either approach can be correct depending on the situation. For example, how do you throw a front thrust kick without shifting your hips forward and into the body? With the standard snap kick, you can, thrust kick, you can not.

I'm a karate guy, but I have the utmost respect for the Korean kicking techniques. It is my observation however that too many TKD people learn only the snap versions of the kicks, and that's a shame.
 
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terryl965

terryl965

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Either approach can be correct depending on the situation. For example, how do you throw a front thrust kick without shifting your hips forward and into the body? With the standard snap kick, you can, thrust kick, you can not.

I'm a karate guy, but I have the utmost respect for the Korean kicking techniques. It is my observation however that too many TKD people learn only the snap versions of the kicks, and that's a shame.

I agree, I also have done Karate in the past and I cam tell the different between these two types of kicks. What helps the AKarate types of kicks is a wider stance giving more balance than those of the Korean nature.
 

Kacey

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How important is proper kicking techniques in your training?

Extremely - along with proper hand techniques. There is, IMHO, no purpose in training improper techniques of any type. However, the definition of "proper" will vary from rank to rank; a "proper" technique should look different for a white belt than a yellow belt, a green belt, a blue belt, a red belt, a black belt - as students should strive to continue to improve their technique from rank to rank.

Does this same vphilosophy important to be street effective with your kicking?

Yes. If you cannot use a technique - any technique - properly in the dojang, how will you be able to use it to defend yourself?

How much real wieght is enough when you shift from front to back while proformimg the kicks?

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here - but if you're asking how much the weight needs to shift, it's going to depend on the kick and the intended application, I think. Certainly, for power, a kick needs to have weight behind it, but the need to use mass for power needs to be balanced with the need to maintain the kicker's balance before, during, and after the kick. If the kicker falls over after the kick, or the kick does not reach the target, or reaches the target with insufficient power, then the technique will not work. Weight is shifted around the center of gravity in the body and controls quite a bit about the kick.

Is proper hip posistion enough or do we need center balance more?

Like to hear everyone view on this.

I think that the two are inter-related. If your hip position is incorrect, your center of gravity will shift, affecting your balance, and vice versa.
 

Balrog

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How important is proper kicking techniques in your training? Does this same vphilosophy important to be street effective with your kicking?

Technique is critical. You can do as much damage to your own legs as you can to someone else's. Don't pivot right and blam - ACL is gone. And in a self-defense situation, that is not a good thing.
 

exile

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Yes to all of the above: proper technique is essential—so the technique works, so you use minimal effort in executing it, so you don't hurt yourself... all excellent reasons to do the thing right, hand techs as well as foot strikes, as Kacey notes. But kicks are special, in a very precise sense: because they entail that we balance our full body weight on at most one leg, they put demands on our ability to maintain our equilibrium in a rapidly changing physical situation which are extraordinary—especially when you take into account that of the three requirements for effective kicking, balance, power and accuracy, the last two are probably much easier to approach directly than the first. Very few ordinary components of everyday life stress our balance skills in a way even remotely like what we routinely try to accomplish in our dojang kick training.

I see in my own students how the lack of balance skills leads to sloppiness and poor conceptualization of kicks as weapons. A good chamber, a powerful thrusting strike, a high level of accuracy in the kick, all demand disciplined, repetitive and basically tedious work on balance training. I'm not talking about head-height rear-leg thrusting side kicks; I love the ways these look but I don't regard them as bankable techs for realistic street defense; nonetheless, they're great training tools. But with beginners, even a simple four-step front snap kick—chamber, snap out, snap back to the chambered position, and return—where you can freeze the kick at any point and hold that position indefinitely, is a major challenge. If they don't have enough control to do that, then there's not a whole lot of leg technique that they can learn until they've worked that one out. That's the reason I've become a bit compulsive over the years about decomposing leg tech training into basic skill components—train the chamber, train the pivot, train the slow extension into fully extended position, held for a full minute if possible, train rapid return to neutral fighting sance, train very rapid movement to close the distance on the attacker—because all those things have to work together seemlessly if a useful defensive weapon is going to result....
 

newGuy12

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I've become a bit compulsive over the years about decomposing leg tech training into basic skill components—train the chamber, train the pivot, train the slow extension into fully extended position, held for a full minute if possible

I'm doing these exercises every day now! Yes, this is a good way to really get the kicks better!
 

exile

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I'm doing these exercises every day now! Yes, this is a good way to really get the kicks better!

It really does make a difference, doesn't it! The problem is that there's nothing extremely exciting about this kind of technical fine-tuning. If you're really devoted to getting training at increasingly subtle levels of good form, then these kinds of exercise will always be challenging, even addictive—but most MA students, I suspect, need something a bit more high-voltage to keep their interest and attention. Which is a shame, because if they ever got these kinds of very basic, fundamental skills under control, they've find that the flashier stuff came much more easily...
 

newGuy12

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It really does make a difference, doesn't it! The problem is that there's nothing extremely exciting about this kind of technical fine-tuning.

It is interesting to me, because it is not so easy to do yet, I struggle with this right now.

if they ever got these kinds of very basic, fundamental skills under control, they've find that the flashier stuff came much more easily...

Yes indeed. You are preaching to the choir, here, Sir. I understand the importance of the basics. The variations are just built upon these basic techniques - front kick, roundhouse kick, side kick (and perhaps the axe kick/crescent kick motions).
 

matt.m

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Terry and to the rest of you,

Everyone knows I am more of a Judo/Hapkido fella. I love Tae Kwon Do for it's poomsea. I am here to tell you that if you don't have proper chamber your kick will all be but worthless. Sorry, I like to watch olympic style sparring and all of that.....but I have always worried about chamber, chamber, chamber first and foremost.......the rest is elementary.
 

foot2face

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Terry and to the rest of you,
Everyone knows I am more of a Judo/Hapkido fella. I love Tae Kwon Do for it's poomsea. I am here to tell you that if you don't have proper chamber your kick will all be but worthless. Sorry, I like to watch olympic style sparring and all of that.....but I have always worried about chamber, chamber, chamber first and foremost.......the rest is elementary.

You are absolutely correct a proper chamber is essential for a good kick. One of the drills we used to do ay my school was dynamic high knee rises. We would quickly raise our knee as high as we could to the outside of our same side shoulder then bound off the floor and raise our knee straight in front of us, trying to touch our chest, then bound off the floor once more bringing our knee to our opposite side shoulder. All a long keeping our foot as close to our hamstring as we could, touching our rear if possible. Exercises like this helped us develop fast and powerful kick. This one was particularly effective at helping us maintain a proper chamber at speed. Too often people sacrifice form for speed and instead of having a fast execution they end up with lousy technique. They don’t know the difference between a fast kick and a rushed one.
 

zDom

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Too often people sacrifice form for speed and instead of having a fast execution they end up with lousy technique. They don’t know the difference between a fast kick and a rushed one.

Great point!!

Also, when I teach kicking, I always emphasize that every kick has THREE parts:

Chamber
Extension
RE-chamber

All three are important to a quality kick.
 

exile

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Great point!!

Also, when I teach kicking, I always emphasize that every kick has THREE parts:

Chamber
Extension
RE-chamber

All three are important to a quality kick.

Getting students to `parse' a kick into these kinds of subelements is crucial to their learning each kind of kick correctly, I've found. Because it seems as though, when they do it as though it were one single continuous motion without separate phases, they can't seem to keep straight the technical differences among the kicks. They wind up doing roundhouse and sidekicks that look very much the same, and aren't all that different from their front kicks—maybe with a bit more angular arc off the vertical, but not all that much. They don't `get' the crucial differences. The emphasis on the chambering phase that f2f, you and others have noted is therefore especially important because it's the `shape' of the chamber that plays a major role in setting up the difference between the front kick and the other two, and unless they can hold a chamber in the latter cases, they can't really feel the way they should do a straight thrusting extension for the side kick and a rotation of the lower leg around the knee as the business end of the roundhouse. Getting them to use the open hip technique to add power to the kick is also important but represents a separate teaching problem, I've noticed...
 

newGuy12

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This is all so important. Bad kicks are bad in such a horrible way. Not only are they ugly, not pleasing to see, but they lack power!

Some people like to whip the roundhouse kick around in a special way to gain speed when they freespar, but should also know the correct way. These drills where the student knows the parts of the kick are very important. They should deliberately know these constituent motions, that is how I feel.

At some time, after long practice, they can do the kicks without thinking of these things. At that point, the kicks are their kicks. They belong to them. But until then, they must absorb this understanding in their brain and body.

Also, this is why I believe that breaking (kyuk-pa) practice is important. The target boards should be strong, mean boards, not sissy boards that break easily. The student then must use good form to break the boards with. None of this whipping the kicks out freesparring style. For a strong target that will not do. The student will fail to bust the target.

Also, for the round-house kicking motion, there is even a pre-chamber part of course, where the kicking foot (from the back -- kicking from the rear leg), PUSHES off, to add rotational motion of the waist from the beginning -- adding even more speed and power.
 

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